Harry Tector's Recollections

Told to Freda Butterworth in 1970

and written up by her in 1982

William Tector

[Freda's Grandad:]
His father was James Tector, blacksmith at L & Y Bury, Black Lane. Grandad was a choirboy at St Andrews. His grandfather was William Tector: bespoke shoemaker, 3 Howell Crofts, Bolton: James Tector & Son. See 1820 Directory (or 1815) in Bolton Reference Library. (A man in Boots, Horwich, had married a Tector. I don't know what period this would be - I think the Boots branch closed in the 1930's).

[Below this Freda has drawn a family tree starting with William Tector & Hannah McCarty; below them, James Tector & Martha Kitchen, and their 4 children William (m. Elizabeth Higham); James (m 1: F.Powell 2: Dorothy); Polly (m. Will Russ); and George ("Judd").
The children of William & Elizabeth Tector are Walter (?) who died in infancy; Muriel b. 1898 (m. Frederick Butterworth); and Harry Gordon b. 1902 (m. Edna Hilditch).
The children of James by his first wife F. Powell are Fred, James & Dorothy, these last two apparently being twins; and by his second wife Dorothy, Noel.
The children of Polly Tector and her husband Will Russ, a gas fitter on the GWR, are Alan & Will.
Finally, under George ("Judd"), is the note "never married. Played football for Horwich RMI. Went to L & Y Leeds, never came back. Lived in Lower Wortley in a back-to-back house. Uncle Harry once went on his motorbike and saw his Uncle George sitting in the corner, waistcoat undone, shirt with no collar, smoking cigarettes, with a voice like gravel"]

I wrote the details [above] in my diary but seem to have mislaid some other notes. I remember however that Uncle Harry said his grandfather (I think) died from falling downstairs and breaking his neck - I think drunk. This would be James Tector, the blacksmith.
I remember my mother [Muriel Tector] telling me that her father, my grandad William Tector, had been deeply affected by his father's drunkenness and he himself tried to make it up to his mother (who I think was widowed early, although James seems to be alive at Grandad's wedding) by looking after her and by avoiding drink. I can't remember if he was a teetotaller, but certainly never saw him remotely the worse for drink.
(Incidentally his sister-in-law Nancy Higham married a publican, Tom Pendlebury; but I don't think he drank, or if he did, a bare modicum. The Higham family had lost 1 if not 2 parents early - I remember Auntie Nancy telling me she had to learn to look after the house and the other children when she was very young.)
We have a photo somewhere of Great Grandma (Martha) Tector standing in a little garden (perhaps on Lee Lane); she had a very lined face (something of JV Tector's countenance) and looked as though life had been hard on her.
When I was little, perhaps 4 or 5 - my mother took me on a holiday to Wiltshire to stay with Great Auntie Polly at Rowde near Devizes. I can't remember her or Uncle Will though I think there is a photo somewhere of them in the garden - I think they grew tomatoes outside. The boys Alan and Will were a few years older than me. I remember that the stairs were behind a door & also that I fell out of bed, dreaming I was falling down a mountain; the bed must have been higher than my own. I also remember being shown a fairy ring on the downs, and faintly remember my mother showing me a flint and talking about the early men who used them; and perhaps Auntie Polly might have shown us the flint as a thunderstone.

Another memory of Uncle Harry's was from his childhood when he was staying in Bolton, presumably with his grandfather, and he was very impressed to be able to see the trains (at Trinity Street Station, presumably) from his bedroom. I don't know who the "son" was ("James Tector & Son") - Grandad's uncle, or whether he had taken over by this time & Uncle Harry was staying with his uncle.

Another family of children who lost a parent early was Grandad's brother James's, Great Uncle Jim (my mother used to take me by ferry as a child - when retired he used to visit Dad & Mother [Then Freda seems to have written "curtains (i.e. killed) in car races"]. His wife Frances Powell died when the children were young, and Uncle Jim as a sailor in the Royal Navy was rarely at home, & so the children were brought up by their grandmother Powell. My mother told me once, and the children may never have known, that Uncle Jim wanted Grandad to bring them up with his own, but he refused. At this distance it is impossible to understand the ins and outs. My mother sounded regretful, and of course sorry for the motherless family; but Grandad would never promise more than he could perform, and in that little house, 34 Crown Lane, Horwich, there would be no room for 3 extra children and I imagine they would have had to move to a bigger house. Grandad could hardly have afforded this on his own, but I daresay Uncle Jim would have made sure he paid his share. Grandad was always generous to me, and took education seriously; he was interested in politics and music and concerned to see our talents developed. Thanks to him Mother went to college and passed on to us an interest in books, music and life generally. Grandad's other activities included amateur acting (we have photos of him in "The Silver King"), the Volunteers (again a photo) and he produced some beautiful photographic studies, of the seas and sands in the sunset, for instance.
So, reverting to the foster children question - I can't think Grandad refused out of meanness. It could well be that he was concerned not to give extra work to Grandma - I think he was a loving son, husband, father and grandfather and chivalrous towards the women he felt responsible for.

Grandma herself was the last sort of person to try to get out of work, but I don't know that she was very robust; she died the year my brother John was born, at the age of 57, on 13th June 1932. I have a memory of standing in her bedroom at the front of the house in Crown Lane and she as always speaking to me very cheerfully and taking an interest in my ideas - on that occasion agreeing that we ought to call him Donald rather than John (my Mother told me he was named for John the Evangelist, and his 2nd name was Dad's tribute to Donald Fraser (?), one of the officers in the Liverpool Scottish in which Dad served in the Great War. Basil Rathbone & James Dale were also in their regiment).

The Tector Family