Meet the long-serving Sheffield community club chairman who has never thrown in the towel
One of six children, Jim spent his early life growing up in the slums of Burngreave at a time when poverty was rife.
He recalls sharing an attic bedroom with his siblings but, despite living in crowded homes, says the community remained in high spirits and would help each other when needed.
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Hide AdSpeaking of his childhood, Jim said: "Mum was a buffer at Walker and Hall, and dad was working for a property repairer in Burngreave and then because work was so short he would make wreaths in the marketplace – he had two or three jobs at that time but they weren’t highly paid.
“Sooner than sit there and wait for handouts they’d be doing something else, they were very hardworking.”
He added: “When I was about six or seven I remember on every windowsill there would be breadcakes ready for when the menfolk came home from work. Then, it was quite usual for someone to come round and ask mother if they could borrow two breadcakes if their husband had come home early and theirs were still cooling.
"You could leave your door open, nobody had got anything to pinch anyhow but there was that sense of community.”
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Hide AdThings began to look up for Jim, he says, when the family were moved to Cowper Crescent in 1939 during the large scale slum clearance.
And, despite leaving school at 14 without much of an education, he was able to gain a job with British Gas where he remained most of his life, working his way through the ranks.
During this time he met his wife Mary and the pair welcomed four daughters – although, sadly, life was not always plain sailing.
"We moved from my parents' house in the Kelvin area,” Jim said. “It was a run-down property and when the wind came down in 1963 it blew all the roofs off. It was just like the blitz but they put all tarpaulin on the roofs. The bedroom was just open to the elements, it became so desperate that they rehoused us so quickly to the Fox Hill area.
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Hide Ad"Mary and I went on to have four daughters – Mary, Valerie, Janet and Carol. Valerie was mentally handicapped and she passed away when she was 13, she couldn’t talk or walk sadly. It was a tough time, there was no assistance in those days.
"I would come back from work and I’d take her to an osteopath, thinking that if she didn’t her limbs would waste away. I’d catch a bus from Fox Hill to town then carry her the rest of the way. Those were hard times but we just got on it with.
"I wouldn't have swapped anything though, even as hard as it was we got a lot of value back from Val. We never thought it was any hardship, we took everything on board and kept going.”
Life did “take a lot of nice turns” though, Jim added. In the late-1980s he became somewhat of a ‘community champion’ and was part of the Foxhill Forum and Foxhill Tenants and Residents Association (TARA) often campaigning around issues involving transport.
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Hide AdNow aged 90, he is president of the Wadsley Bridge Working Men's Club – and is possibly the longest-serving member of the club, having joined aged 16 to train as a boxer.
Jim now visits the club most nights and credits the hardship he went through for giving him a fighting spirit, one which he still holds to this day.
"I’ve always been busy,” he said. “Every day I’m out of my house about eight o’clock in the morning, I pack up my sandwiches and I’m off down to my allotment. I often take what I’ve grown down to the club and give it away for free because I’ve had the enjoyment of growing it, all I ask is that they put a few pennies in the collection box for the hospitals.
"Just keeping going is the secret of life – keeping your brain active and finding something new to do. I lost Mary in April, it’s been a couple of months but I’m doing well. I’ve got to keep going.”