Reg Mitchell Takes the Proverbial

Colin Melbourne's statue of R. J. Mitchell
outside the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery,
Hanley.

In 1911, long before he went on to design his world-beating racing planes and later the Supermarine Spitfire, 16 year old Reginald Joseph Mitchell, served a local apprenticeship. Originally from Butt Lane near Kidsgrove, but raised in Normacot, Reg was enrolled as a lowly apprentice engineer at Messrs Kerr, Stuart and Co, locomotive engineers in Fenton. Before moving on to the drawing office where he would make his name, he like the other apprentices had to spend time in the workshops getting his hands dirty working on the firm's machines. Reg's pragmatic father Herbert saw this as a sensible grounding for his ambitious son, but young Mitchell loathed this introduction to his profession, hating the grime-caked overalls he had to wear and the monotony of the work that kept him from what he really wanted to do. He was also less than enamoured with the workshop foreman.

One of the first jobs that Reg had when he started at Kerr, Stuart was the traditional one of tea boy, brewing up for the other apprentices and the foreman, the latter, though regularly complained that Mitchell's tea tasted like piss. Tired of his grumbling, Reg decided that if that was what he thought, then that was what he would get. The next morning Reg arrived at work and as normal took the kettle to the wash room, but instead of filling it with water he urinated into it, then boiled the kettle and made tea. Warning his fellow apprentices not to drink, Reg served the foreman as usual. The man took a sip, then a larger gulp and said, “Bloody good cup of tea, Mitchell, why can't you make it like this every day?” 

Reference: Gordon Mitchell, R.J. Mitchell, from Schooldays to Spitfire, pp. 21- 25

A Million to One Chance

On the afternoon of Sunday 9 May 1943, 40 year old colliery maintenance worker Joseph Boulton of 12 Blake Street, Burslem, was engaged with others in recapping a winding rope at the top of No. 2 pit at the Sneyd Collieries, Burslem, when he overbalanced and fell backwards head first down the pit shaft. He turned several somersaults and in his headlong fall happened to see a wire guide rope glistening with oil from the light reflected from the top of the pit shaft which was rapidly disappearing from his view. Reaching out he grasped the guide rope first with one hand, then with the other, and succeeded also in wrapping his legs around it, the thick coating of grease preventing any serious injury from friction burns. In this way he slowed his descent and eventually came to a stop and stepped off at a pump inset about 300 yards from the top of the pit shaft. The pump attendant was not there, so Mr Boulton sat in the pump house and read an illustrated magazine until a manager Mr J Hebblethwaite, and other colliery officials, who had expected to find him dead at the pit bottom, found him with only slight burns to one hand and one leg. They were amazed to see the man and find that he was comparatively unhurt, but insisted on him receiving first-aid treatment at the ambulance room before he went home and went to bed.

Describing his miraculous escape to reporters Mr Boulton said 'A million-to-one chance saved my life.'

Reference:Liverpool Daily Post 11 May 1943, p.3; Staffordshire Advertiser 15 May 1943, p.7

News and a Narrowboat

On 1 September 1939, Tom Rolt and his wife Angela were travelling along the Trent and Mersey canal aboard their narrowboat, Cressy. Arriving at Trentham Bridge to take on some fuel they were hailed by a boatman at the tiller of a passing barge, who told them that Germany had invaded Poland. That day they passed through the Potteries, and the Harecastle Tunnel on into Cheshire, where two days later they heard the announcement that war had been declared.

Rolt, a future campaigner for preservation of Britain's neglected canal system and one of the founders of the Inland Waterways Association, later wrote a lyrical account of their journey entitled Narrow Boat, which sparked a post-war resurgence of interest in this by-then woefully neglected transport network. A traditionalist at heart, Rolt was dismissive of many of the towns and cities they passed through, but devoted two short chapters to their brief passage through the Potteries. His appreciation of the area and its people stemmed from the fact that he had some years earlier partially served his engineering apprenticeship at Messrs Kerr, Stuart and Co, locomotive engineers in Stoke.

Reference: L.T.C. Rolt, Narrow Boat pp. 115-129; Landscape With Canals, p.3.