The wee shop on Waverley Street

I never saw this picture of my dad’s mother, Martha, until about 10 years ago.  She died, aged only 54,  thirteen years before I was born and I’m glad to say at the time of writing,  I’ve outlived her. She and a friend went to have their photograph taken in their best hats and furs in the early years of the 1920s. She wasn’t to know that before long, her world would collapse around her.

Martha Robertson Higgins (I’m fairly sure she would have been known as Matty, Matt or even Oor Matt) was born in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, the middle child of 12 children.  Her father Joseph was an underground fireman down the pit and he and mother Martha both came from Lanarkshire. It’s possible, though, that the Higginses hailed originally from Ireland.

In 1912, she married a coal miner from Hamilton – John Cowan. ¹ There is a photograph of his parents with three of their children and, by process of deduction, I think that the young man in that photo is John. I want it to be him because there’s no other images of him but I can’t be sure.

They set up home in a Fife Coal Board house in Waverley St, Lochore.  A description from 1926 describes the street like this (it’s a fair bet that Martha and John lived in one of the 2 apartment houses):

Built 1909 by Fife Coal Co Ltd. 16 houses of 3 apartments
and 32 houses of 2 apartments with sculleries & WC.

Two months before the events in Sarajevo that would catapult Europe into a World War, their first child was born. She was, as family tradition dictated, named Martha after her maternal grandmother. Tragically, this little girl died of meningitis before her second birthday.  I don’t know why John wasn’t called up to serve, but I think it likely that the government regarded miners as a vital job in time of war.  As WWI dragged on into 1916, Annie (known from the start as Daisy) was born and finally, as the last British Tommies straggled home, Tom (my father) in 1919.

A year later, the coalfields of Fife claimed their first Cowan brother.  Thomas, John’s older brother, was killed in a roof fall. The whole of West Fife was riddled with underground workings and the Coal Board was the major employer in the area.

Martha’s life changed forever on a cold January night in 1925, when my grandfather, working at the coalface in the Aitken pit, was killed by, in the stark words of the official report,  ‘a stone falling on him from the roof’. It seems clear now that he wasn’t wearing a safety hat – but it’s unclear if these were even issued by the company.  The death toll in Fife pits in the 1920s was appalling and safety legislation was slow to be implemented.  John is listed in the Fife Pits & Memorial Book, a wonderful project by Mick Martin (himself an ex-miner) which is described here. The local paper reported John’s death and noted ‘The deceased who was an instrumentalist of marked ability is survived by a widow and two children.’

After John was buried, the battle began for compensation.  Martha was eventually awarded a tiny amount which went almost nowhere to keeping her children in food and clothing. But she was resourceful and practical -  there was little alternative. At first she ‘took in washing’, laundering other people’s clothes.  Then she began to bake, selling plain cakes & scones from home. Eventually, she set up shop in the front room of her tiny house on Waverley Street and the family lived in the back room.  These kind of shops were commonly called Jennie a-things because you could buy anything from a twist of tea to a bar of washing soap. Trays of children’s sweets were kept under the counter – the farthing tray, the ha’penny tray and for the privileged, the penny tray!

A few years ago, I met some very old people who had actually known my grandmother’s shop. They remembered her as friendly and kind.  One story was that she once made toffee apples and gave them away free.  Other people described small items of baked goods appearing from under the counter for hungry – but poor – children. I like these stories for it seems to show someone whose generosity of spirit was undaunted by tragedy and the hardships of poverty.

This photo from around 1939  shows Martha (far right) outside the wee shop on Waverley Street – in a shapeless frock and apparently wearing her slippers for comfort!  To her right is her daughter Daisy, already a striking and stylish young woman.  I don’t know who the couple to their right are, but the girl behind them is Matty Rodger, one of Martha’s nieces.

Two years later, in the middle of another World War, Martha died. She never left Waverley Street. Her will shows that she made extraordinary provision for her children Tom and Daisy – a four figure amount.  A woman who, left widowed while still in her 30s with no means of support, went on for many years to work all the hours a day could hold in order to scrimp and save for the future of her children.