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 The Northenders of  Kings Lynn

magical tales of the old north end

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The Fishermen's Cottages

 

 

 

"...a man called Howard lived in Pilot Street and he decided he wanted to be a Lord.  
So he gave himself the title, but everyone called him Lordy after that..."  

Quoted by Josephine Garford, the daughter of North End fisherman Charles Chase,  and published in the Lynn Trader when Charles was 92.  The origins of many of the humorous nick names bestowed on the hardy Northenders have generally been lost to society, so its especially illuminating to find out from Charlie Chases daughter Josephine,  the reason Lordy got his!  

One hard winter the fishermen got into such poor straits that the corporation decided to give them a job cleaning out the Gaywood river at a wage of 25 shilling a week. Now after a week or so the fishermen thought the job was worth more than that and appointed a spokesman to take their proposal to the town hall. The spokesman was ‘Lordy’ Howard. ‘Lordy’ made his way to the town clerks office. “What can I do for you, Mr Howard?” said the clerk. “We ain’t gonna to work no more for 25 bob, we want 30” said ‘Lordy’. After a consultation with his boss the clerk came back. “All right Mr Howard, he aid, “We’ll give you one Pound and ten shillings a week”. ‘Lordy’ scratched his head and then said “No — we want 30 bob or nothing”. “Well” said the clerk, “Then we’ll give you the thirty bob”.

Lordy Howard
The comments below are taken from the autobiography of Lordy Howard's son Tom, pictured on the left, and is contained in the Howard family file  - one of hundreds held in the archives at True's Yard museum.  These files are made up of photographs, memories and family trees donated by the Northenders and their descendants over more than a decade, and are available to students and other serious researchers. 
"...  we could go fishing with our fathers or uncles, ...go into the fields collecting cowslips, bluebells, crow's-foot and primroses...walk right to the Point and watch the fishing smacks come in to the Fleet... it nearly breaks my heart to think that this community, which we knew as North End, has been decimated.  I think of the old school which is no longer there... of the people that I knew as a boy.  Of the hard life, of the old fishing community.  Of the hard life.  Why on earth was it destroyed?  It was the finest thing Lynn ever possessed..." "...we had hard times sometimes, especially when my father couldn't go fishing, one had to remember the average wage was about £2 a week in old money and very often father would have to go before the Board of Guardians and get a meal ticket, usually five shillings which you took to a food shop and got that amount in groceries..."
"...My mother Betsy was known all over the Northend, she would lay out the dead and like my father was well liked as they would help anybody. He died when he was 74.  When in his coffin I held his hand and wondered at the amount of work he had done with them all his life (phenomenal)..." "...father was a moocher and knew how to get coal out of the mud in the Wash where the dredgers used to dump it.... you had to be a moocher in those days, we were a family of fifteen, my father was always doing something, catching eels or butts.  That was what Northenders were, hard workers, you had to be fit and well to survive..."

For more information about any of the characters or families mentioned on these pages from the old North End, then simply e-mail here