Telling Environmental Histories by Katie Holmes & Heather Goodall

Author:Katie Holmes & Heather Goodall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Pre-clean up Stories

Eighty years ago [in 1880] my grandfather with a few friends would take a small boat from the quay at Jarrow and row out to mid-river to fish. Sometimes as a variation they would slip on their old-fashioned bathing costumes, jump over the side and swim either to the Howdon or Jarrow landings - and then back to the boat. My grandfather recalling all this in his old age would say how refreshing a dip in the Tyne could be. He never spoke of pollution. I doubt if he knew the meaning of the word. If he could come back from the dead today, regain his youth, and push the boat out again, he would see no fish. And if he was so unwise as to attempt a swim, he would emerge not only fouled and filthy, but in some danger of contracting one of those diseases like diphtheria, yellow fever, even some sort of plague, which we on dry land have all but forgotten. But even 80 years ago my grandfather could not have seen or experienced the Tyne at Jarrow in all its wonderful clarity. Even then the insidious process had begun of converting quite deliberately an ordinary stretch of pure water into a noxious ditch, even, to repeat the cliché which so exactly describes it now, an open sewer. 12

Harry Thompson writing in 1960 about his Grandfather’s experience of the River Tyne in 1880. His letter was originally published by The Journal newspaper.

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