Jarrow is a small town six mile's east of Newcastle-upon-tyne England.
At one point it was one of the main parts of the U.K for ship building, with the like's of Palmer's and the Mercentile dock's Jarrow had plenty of work to go around.
After many year's of Industry,work in the town of Jarrow started to decline, by 1936 three out of every four men were unemployed, and the people of Jarrow were by this time starving .
The town had the secound highest infant mortality rate in the country.
The town folk had decided that enough was enough so on the morning of the thirteenth of October 1936 led by the then M.P of Jarrow miss Ellen Wilkinson, two hundred men set of from the town hall on a march to London to deliver a pettition in protest of the situation in their town.
One of those men was a man called Ralph (ralphy) Smith.
This man would sometime's carry the marcher's banner he would some time's bang on a drum but he was famous among the marcher's for his skill at cutting hair, even when he was back in Jarrow and money was short he would set up his barber shop in the back ally and charge the locals tupence for a quick cut.
This man was of course my Grandfather a man I never met but through my late Father a man I feel I have known all of my life.
This site is not only dedicated to him and two hundred other's but also to the one's who were left behind mainly the wive's and children.
In 1936 if you were married and your Husband was unavailable for work then the goverment stopped any benefit's you may have been getting, so when the men went off on the march theWomen left behind had nothing to feed her self and the children on so thing's were proberly even more difficult for them than the men.
When the men were on the march if word of a job reached one of the marchers he would have to leave the march and go to were ever the job was. |
