Wigan Album

Judging by the state of the towpath on this one, it would appear that Wigan council weren't quite as hypercritical about dog owners cleaning up after their pets back then, as they seem to be these days.

Ozy, it's a sign of how opinions have changed that, at the time that this painting was made the dog responsible may well have have ended up in a sack at the bottom of the canal accompanied by a couple of house bricks.
It sounds appalling now but in the 50s it was a common way of getting rid of unwanted puppies.

Ozy/DTease: If that's dog do da in relation to the scale of the picture, let's hope to god we never see the size of the dogs. It's more likely to be horses pulling the barges down or up the canal then swapping over to the other towpath.

At first glance I thought they were cobbles - but it's the horses hooves flattening the manure. It was a common sight at one time after the Rag 'n' Bone man had been down the street- I can still remember that as a child.

Veronica: My grandmother didn't give it time to be on the road for long, it was scooped up in a bucket then on the rose bush. I can see DTease put the name of the artist down as B Glover 75, I think this is a female hand, a fellow Glover that pays attention to detail like drawing horse doo doo. May be because most of my life I've always been in it, that's why I recognise the signs I suppose, yes I think this lady would have been a Brenda with a heart of gold.

John G sometimes steam was still coming off the said business when neighbours shovelled it up! We didn't have a garden as my dad had a big
shed in the back yard. A distant memory of mine was people saying 'put some horse muck in his shoes - that ull make ''im grow!'

Veronica, why did your dad keep it in his shed?

He had birds in his shed - more an aviary really (the feathered variety) which he bred. Certainly wouldn't be able to do that these days! Poor things - they we're linnets. He made all the cages for them and built the shed himself. My mam hardly had room to peg the washing out! So we had no room for a little garden. No he didn't keep 'horse muck' in it Dtease!
He was like the 'bird man' of Alcatraz! There were a few men kept birds in our street... I suppose it kept them occupied. They would visit one another's backyards to see them.

As a kid, I remember our next door neighbour, Albert, used to breed canaries. In fact there were a number of pitmen that lived locally that did the same thing. Albert was a fireman at Stones' pit, ( park colliery ), and I suppose the tradition of breeding canaries was a legacy from an era when they were used to detect firedamp,.....by dropping dead. There was also a bloke in the village called Harry Bullen who bred budgerigars. I've had a few of those in my time.... Who didn't have a budgie in the 50's?. Mine were all called Joey,.......I know.....imaginative or what?.......and of the one or two that didn't take the opportunity to make a dash for freedom through an open window, a few of them of them turned out to be hugely entertaining. The majority of my school books had scalloped edges from where the budgie had nibbled the edges of the pages.
" Ozy has ability, but he really must address the issue of his homework looking like a meat and potato pie ".