Henry was Sam's younger brother. In his later years Henry recorded a history of his life - 'HH remembers'. These are some of his recollections of Sam.
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| Sam in about 1928 |
Business had been quite slow round about 1924/1925 but Sam was an enterprising young man and he gingered up the trade. Father bought a 12 h.p. Morris Cowley tourer, one of those with a round bull-nose radiator and a canvas hood which could be put up or folded back to suit the weather. I used to like to shine the bull-nose with metal polish. That was my job, to make that bull-nose shiny. We started selling pies for retail and the production in that little back room reached perhaps two or three hundred pies per day. Sam used to drive much much faster than Father. Sam might reach a speed of perhaps 25 miles an hour, maybe even 30 or 35 m.p.h., and I used to watch the speedometer and will the motor car to get above 30. He had great style.
Now Sam had played the piano. We had a piano in that living room as well and he must have reached a pretty good standard. I enjoyed hearing him play the piano and we had in the house for many years after he died the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Mendelssohn's Songs without Words, a full vocal score of The Gondoliers in a red binding.
But Sam fancied a motorbike. He bought himself a motorbike, AJS. Later he bought another, he had two at the same time, an AJS and a BSA. AJS was AJ Stevens and BSA was short for British Small Arms. I expect they made rifles or bullets or something like that. He was keen on going on motorcycle trials, I think they call them scrambles nowadays. Rochdale and District Motorcycle Club would set off, usually on a Sunday, and one of their runs used to be up Blackstone Edge, one of the rockiest, roughest and steepest tracks you could imagine, up to the White House, and once or twice we would go and watch these motorcyclists struggling up to the top of Blackstone Edge. He was awarded a silver cup which we kept on the mantelpiece for long enough. He won a little silver spoon as well.
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| R&DMC (Rochdale & District Motorcycle Club) BEST PERFORMANCE OF DAY 19.6.27 S HILEY |
I don't know that the family was 100% behind Sam with his motorcycling. When he set out on a Saturday to come back on Sunday we didn't know whether he was going to come back in one piece or not. He attempted a long distance, reliability trials they called them, Bradford Scottish 24 Hours Trial at midsummer in 1927. There was no question of racing. They had to do all the stages in a strict time limit and he managed that very very well indeed and he was one of the very few finishers. But I think it was a long distance reliability trial to Scotland that brought on his consumption. All that motorcycling did no good for his chest or his lungs and I can remember – I slept in the same bed as Sam – him coughing up blood. He was diagnosed with consumption and he spent a long length of time in sanatoriums. That was a spartan regime, plenty of fresh air, they even slept outside on a verandah or something like that. Most of the time he was at High Carley at Ulverston. Ulverston was in the Lancashire county in those days.
Now then, Mother having died of consumption, and Sam having been diagnosed with it as well, the medical authorities decided that the four of us, Edith, Agnes, Mary and me, should be given a thorough examination to see what was the state of our lungs, and we went one day to Ashton-under-Lyne to a clinic there. We were all four of us x-rayed and it was found that Agnes was already suffering. She would be about 12 to 12½ at the time, and as far as she was concerned that was the end of her schooling. She went off to High Carley as well, to Ulverston, and between 1927, or whenever it was, when all this was going on, and 1939/1940 she was in and out of hospitals and sanatoriums as a patient.
Anyway the other three of us were alright, we were passed reasonably fit. We hadn't caught the bug, or whatever it is that causes consumption. Living where we did at Littleborough, some 80 or perhaps even 90 miles away from Ulverston, we couldn't pop in every weekend to see Sam or Agnes or both of them.
I'm going back now to 1928 or 1929. I idolised Sam. I loved it when he was driving that Morris Cowley in the Lake District. He used to drive much faster than Father and I used to like to go with him during the school holidays delivering pies to the little shops round Littleborough, even as far as Rochdale.
It was a great sadness to us when Sam had to go into hospital. He'd not been well but he was diagnosed with what I remember was called Gastric Flu. He went into the Infirmary at Rochdale. He was only in hospital a few days and, a calamity for the family, he died at the age of 21. Useless to speculate but I wonder what would have happened to the business if Sam had lived. He was an enterprising man. I can remember that funeral very well. The procession of cars went off to Mankinholes once more, and I think I cried as never before.
