"work started at six o'clock in the morning, which meant getting up at 4.45 am.

"It was a long trudge by myself so early in the morning.

"All the other boys were strangers to me and my job was to walk along the rope and smear slushy, black messy stuff all over it with my hands before it was twisted into a rope."

After his morning's work he arrived home tired and hungry - with an afternoon's school in front of him.

"I had earned 6d, but I never went for it - instead I went to a calico bleaching and printing works where it was a full day at work and a full day at school."

He found it was a filthy place to work with low wages and there was no canteen to have meals.

"I worked in this particular job for some months, doing one day at work and the next day at school.

"The wages were 10d a day for working from 6 am until 5.30pm." He did similar jobs in the same works and found that chemicals and the wet calico sliding through the fingers caused the skin to wear off the ends of the fingers.

Later, when he was 14 in 1915, he was considered old enough to go and work down the coal mine.

Starting at one of the Hulton Collieries, he helped other boys push empty tubs from one haulage rope to another - and found out how easy it was to become covered in bruises.

"The First World War was still on and men and boys were leaving the pits to join the Army.

"This made it much worse for me: I was put on work which was far too heavy for a growing lad.

"The food obtainable was far from being the best and the submarine warfare made it very scarce.

"It was only at weekends that I saw any daylight in the winter."

In 1923 the colliery where he worked closed down and he found jobs at others, including Swan Lane at Hindley Green.

Although he did not get any severe injury in his mining career, he had earlier had three fingers crushed when a full tub of coal jumped off the rails.

"It was still a brutal age for the wage earner.

"I had no special treatment, just a visit to the local doctor, who generally had the surgery full of injured miners.

"He trimmed my fingers with a pair of scissors and redressed it.

"After about two weeks I had to go to the colliery office for my few shillings compensation.

"The chief clerk who paid me looked at my hand and said I could manage a light job.

"This light job they found me was labouring for a bricklayer on night shift down the pit."