NATIONAL LIFE STORIES ARTISTS' LIVES William Gear Interviewed by Tessa Sidey C466/33

281 Pages·2011·1.1 MB·English

NATIONAL LIFE STORIES

ARTISTS’ LIVES

William Gear

Interviewed by Tessa Sidey

C466/33

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The British Library National Life Stories

Interview Summary Sheet Title Page

Ref no: C466/33/01-08 Digitised from cassette originals

Collection title: Artists’ Lives
Interviewee’s surname: Gear Title:
Interviewee’s forename: William Sex: male
Occupation: Dates: 1915-1997

Dates of recording: 1995.7.12, 1995.8.8, 1995.8.18

Location of interview: Edgbaston, Birmingham
Name of interviewer: Tessa Sidey

Type of recorder: Marantz CP430 and two lapel mics

Recording format: TDK C60 Cassettes
F numbers of playback cassettes:
Total no. of digitised tracks: Mono or stereo: Stereo

Additional material at the British Library: William Gear, ‘A Golden Jubilee Exhibition’, Redfern
1997; William Gear ‘Past and Present Friends’ Birmingham Museum and Gallery 1995; two black and
white installation photos of Birmingham exhibition; colour laser copy image from Cobra Museum,
Amsterdam; Guardian obituary

Copyright/Clearance: Full clearance. © The British Library

Interviewer’s comments:

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William Gear
C466/33/01 F4737 Side A
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F4737 Side A
First tape of an interview with William Gear in George Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, on the
twelfth of July. And I know, Bill, we are going to be celebrating your eightieth birthday on
the second of August.

That's right.

Could you tell me where were you born in fact?

Well, I was born in a small town in Fife, Scotland, a town called Methil, but my father was a
miner and they moved when I was about three years old, they moved to a...another mining
village nearby called East Wemyss.

Did he come from a mining family?

Yes, my Grandfather was a miner, as did his father and my Great Grandmother was a miner
(laughs) so that, you know, I remember my father saying that, in his Scots voice, he would
say, 'me fether's muther worked doon the pit'[ph] and, of course, would
take, we are going right back to about 1840s or so when girls were employed in the mines
and, of course, this was abolished around that time, but anyhow, so this was very much... My
Grandfather was a miner and this is how the...

Your Grandmother actually went down the pit?

Yes, yes, yes, my Great Grandmother.

Your Great Grandmother? What? Would she have been assisting or...?
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William Gear
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Yes, they employed the girls as, to pulling hutches and helping out, they weren't, you know,
full-scale miners digging coal, but they just helped out by dragging the hutches around and
helping with whatever, you know, but they employed girls, they employed
girls and there was...

Did you know, you didn't know your Great Grandparents?

Oh no, no, no, no.

You knew your Grandfather?

I knew my Grand, my Grandfather...

What was he like?

He was a sweet old man, I mean he was, they were all, apart from the mining thing, they were
all military, they had all been in the army, you know, there was a kind of army tradition
among them, too. And he was very smart. He lived until he was eighty-
four and I remember him quite well, you know...

The same, in Methil?

Well, the thing was he, there was, apart from my own father and family there was another, he
had another brother who lived in Methil and another sister, so that in his, in my Grandfather's
old age he would spend six months with us, and six months with
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William Gear
C466/33/01 F4737 Side A
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the other... He was, he was shipped around, and finally he died in, well, I was a student at the
time, it must have been around 1930 or something like it, he died anyway.

So he must have been quite an influence or presence in your childhood?

Well, I, you know I, I wasn't really, you know particularly aware of him, you know, but he
was around and, and I was at school I suppose, and so on, anyway...

Your Grandmother, did she come from a nearby...?

Well, his, my Grandmother on that side, he had, she had died many years before...

His wife?

But I never knew him, knew her. But my mother's family, I knew her, I mean my mother's
mother and, again, my Grandfather on that side, he had died early, you see, he died quite
young, leaving, the old story, leaving a widow with seven children, or something like that,
you see, and of course the tradition in those days was that the girls, as soon as they left
school, went into service, and the boys went 'doon the pit', and that was the standard thing,
and it had to be, I mean, they had to earn some money
because the income from mining and anything else was minimal in those days and this was
the normal sort of routine.

Did your mother...?

However...

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William Gear
C466/33/01 F4737 Side A
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Did your mother? Stick to your mother. Did she actually go into service then?

Yes, yes, she went into service, when, I presume, when she left school, and she went into
service in East Wemyss, where my father was by this time, and it was where they met, in East
Wemyss...

Do you know how they met?

I wouldn't know how they met. But I mean she, she was in service in a, in a house of a
factory manager, which was quite near where my father would live, you know, within a few
hundred yards, but they would, you know, I suppose they would meet around that time. This,
and they were married in 1915 or, I suppose, 1915. I was born in 1915. But he was a miner
as I say...

Was he already, what age would he have become a miner?

Well, he would, again, he would have gone 'doon the pit' when he was fourteen...

Yes.

.....you see. When he got married...

Which mine was he actually working in, one mine or...?

A mine called the Michael, which is now closed, the Michael was one of the big pits in Fife at
the time. But, the, you know, that was the tradition and, of course, I was going to say that
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William Gear
C466/33/01 F4737 Side A
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since he was a miner they, he didn't go into the army, in the First World War, even though he
had been what they called a volunteer, the equivalent of Territorials. I even have a
photograph of him in uniform somewhere. But the miners were kept back, to produce coal
for the industry in the railways and so on. So the miners, some of them I suppose, the younger
unmarried, unmarried ones went into the armies and were slaughtered of course. And of
course...

Would he have been in his twenties when he...?

He was probably, let me see, '81, he was about thirty-three or four I suppose.

He was born in '81?

He was born in '81, he was born in '81.

And your mother was born...?

A little later, I think 1890 thereabouts, yes. Somewhere about there.

Nine years difference?

Yes, there was a few years difference, she was younger, slightly younger I suppose, yes.

Yes, yes. Did you have, come from a large family?

No, my, there was only myself and a sister, in due course.

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William Gear
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Yes.

She did have, my mother did have another child who died in infancy, when I was a kiddie, a
toddler I suppose...

Do you remember that? Do you remember that?

I vaguely remember the funeral. I can still - a kind of vision of a, the, the tiny white coffin. I
was probably not more than three and a half or something like this at the time. But I still have
a picture of us, a tiny, a pretty little box so to speak, I mean, I wouldn't, I wasn't aware of
funerals and death and these sort of things, but, anyhow, she died. I don't know of what,
pneumonia or something like this, as an infant, a few weeks old I should think. That was it,
you see. And I think, I'm not sure, but I think at the time I would suspect that the doctors then
said, 'Oh, no more,' I'm not sure, but I would think that was the case probably. 'No more,' you
know.

Where did you live in fact? What, what was...?

Well the, at the time there was, as I say we moved to East Wemyss when I was, I think in fact
they got, first, when they were first married they didn't have a house, and accommodation was
very difficult, and so they lived with my, my mother's mother, with my Granny, you know,
but they, they got a house in East Wemyss, a miners', in a miners' row, in East Wemyss.

So where were you born in fact?

In Methil, in Methil...

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William Gear
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In a house they were renting...?

Yes.

.....or with...?

It was the house of my mother's mother...

.....So, was it...?

.....my Granny.

.....your Grandmother?

Yes.

Yes.

But they lived with her for the first couple of years anyway.

So in fact you were born there, at home. Were you born, born at home?

I presume so. I mean how would I know? In those days one was. You didn't have things like
hospitals and so on.

And so was, your first kind of memories were not of Methil particularly, no...?

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