Kirkleatham museum talk

David Mulholland’s Home
A talk given at the Kirkleatham Museum, Redcar on 13 May 2014 by Pete
McCarthy
The theme of this exhibition of work by David Mulholland is, as its title suggests, Home. But,
what does Home mean? Does it refer to the house in which one lives, the street, the town or
the wider area around it? The work selected to depict David Mulholland’s home, in this
exhibition, covers a wide area; from South Bank and Grangetown to the Cleveland coast, the
Eston Hills and the North Yorkshire Moors.
Any definition of home inevitably includes reference to a place, but what is it that affects
how we relate to a particular place and how it, in turn, affects us? Does it emanate from the
place itself, or is it more to do with the people who inhabit it – family, friends or neighbours?
Or is it something more esoteric?
The author Jeanette Winterson has postulated that, ‘Where you are born – what you are born
into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who
you are.’1 I think this is right; reading those words led me to exploring the connections
between the associated histories of South Bank – undoubtedly a significant place in David
Mulholland’s life – and the Mulholland family. I searched through census records to establish
when the Mulholland family began their relationship with South Bank. The history of South
Bank is short; it did not exist until the mid-1850s, when John Vaughan persuaded Bernhard
Samuelson to open an ironworks so as to take advantage of his discovery of iron ore in the
nearby Eston Hills. The ironworks needed workers and the workers needed somewhere to
live; thus, South Bank came into being.
The first connection between the Mulhollands and South Bank, that I found, was in the
records of 1891 Census. At that time, a family headed by one Daniel Mulholland was living
at 37 Munby Street [see Figure 1]. Although, I can’t be absolutely certain, I reckon that he
was David Mulholland’s great-grandfather; the Christian names of family members suggest
so. Daniel was an Irishman, born in Co. Armagh in 1843. He would have been three years old
at the time of the outbreak of the potato famine (1846–51), during which about a million Irish
people died of starvation and some two million emigrated.
It is difficult to imagine what it would have been like for people, like Daniel Mulholland, to
leave rural Ireland, arrive in somewhere like South Bank, as it was then, and spend every day
toiling in the heat and dirt of the ironworks. They did it because, like all the other people that
migrated to there, they were hoping for a better life: at least they would be earning money to
put food in their bellies.
1
Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
1
It is not clear when Daniel left Ireland; the first record of him being in England here relates to
his marriage to Elizabeth McCabe, in Stockton in 1871. Elizabeth was also Irish; born 1846
in Co. Monaghan. Clearly she and Daniel had both been in England some time before settling
in South Bank. By 1891, they had three sons and two daughters, and the birthplaces of the
two oldest and two youngest is given in the census as Newport, Yorkshire; the middle child,
who had arrived in 1877, was apparently born in South Bank. This indicates that the
Mulholland family had spent some time in South Bank although they had obviously returned
to Newport. The family could not have been permanently resident in South Bank for more
than nine years. Nevertheless it is interesting to note that they’d had some experience of the
place but still came back.
Besides Daniel and Elizabeth and their five children, 37 Munby Street also accommodated
four lodgers; fellow Irishman who seemed to have the same job as Daniel in the Ironworks.
One of these was a James Mulholland, who may have been a relative of Daniel’s.
Munby Street lay at the eastern end of South Bank, and was the nearest street to the
ironworks. There were twenty-one houses which ran down only one side of the street. These
houses faced allotments, where residents grew vegetables and kept livestock. David depicted
the street and allotments in his 1972 work Municipal Sculpture [Figure 2] but the houses had
actually been demolished by that time.
Two of the houses in Munby Street were common lodging houses with, between them, thirtyeight residents on census night [Figure 3]. According to local folklore there were no beds in
the lodging houses: residents slept leaning back with their arms over ropes stretched across
the rooms. The remaining nineteen dwellings were occupied by families; in ten of these the
designated ‘Head’ had been born in Ireland. All but one of the ‘Irish’ households had lodgers,
all of whom had migrated from Ireland. Four of the ‘non-Irish’ households had lodgers, none
of whom was Irish. Thus, the majority of boarders, outside of the lodging houses, were
Irishmen who were boarding with Irish families – maybe they were friends or relatives from
back home.
It was just like immigration always has been; people travel away from their homes looking
for work, get established and help find work and accommodation for family and friends from
their homeland who follow. Initially, there is gross overcrowding and segregation but,
eventually, people find their own places and become integrated into the indigenous culture. In
the South Bank case, though, there wasn’t an indigenous culture; all South Bankers were
immigrants from somewhere and created their own culture. Munby Street, just like the rest of
South Bank, was a melting pot. People arrived there from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and
various parts of England, and even further afield– one of the residents of the lodging houses
was German and another was born in the United States – and stamped their collective identity
on the place.
The rest of South Bank was just the same as Munby Street; built to house the workers needed
to keep the rapidly expanding iron and steel industries going. Given the rate at which so
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many people from multifarious backgrounds had been thrown together, it is amazing how
quickly a viable and ordered community was established. As one local historian has recorded
The community of South Bank became a flourishing township and had a Local Board, a
gas company, a town hall, a town crier, a weekly market, churches, chapels and schools.
A Roman Catholic Church was established to administer to the large number of Irish
workers and their families. The railway station was half a mile away. In the early days it
had only been a shed but, by 1887, a fine new brick station had been erected near the
centre of town with a platform 600 yards long. 2
The Baptist Church in David’s drawing [Figure 4] was opened in 1905. The town
established its own brass band in 1879 and, a decade later, the South Bank Football
Club became a founder member of the Northern League – currently the second oldest
football league in the world – and, in 1913, won the FA Amateur Cup. David’s drawing
of South Bank football ground [Figure 5] is currently a proud possession of relatives of
his who migrated to Australia; a reminder to them of the South Bank that they left.
By the start of the twentieth century, South Bank was the third largest township south
of the Tees; behind only Middlesbrough and South Stockton (which eventually became
Thornaby). It was big enough to have every amenity necessary for a reasonable life,
though small enough to be a complete community with a unique identity. And it was
continuing to grow. Given that the population was made up of people looking for work,
it was inevitably a young population, predominantly male, with a higher than average
proportion of children and a lower proportion of old people. The orderliness of this
growth is further indicated by extremely low, and below average, rate of births outside
of marriage [Figure 6] – less than three per cent of births were to an unmarried mother.3
There were obviously some problems, though. For instance, in 1882, the developer of the
new town in Grangetown, envisioned as feeder for South Bank, told the Daily Exchange
newspaper that although there were, as yet, no pubs in Grangetown ‘a lot of shebeening takes
place’ and so ‘the men can get a drink, and are often seen reeling about the place.’ According
to him ‘Sundays are spent by drinking and lounging about’. Besides, there were already
public houses in South Bank, where – as indicated by reports in the local newspaper –
drinking sessions often culminated in street fights between the Irish ironworkers and
mineworkers from Eston, few of whom were of Irish extraction. Mostly, though, people just
got on with each other: they were all in South Bank for the same reason.
Life was undoubtedly hard for the Mulholland family, and the other families who settled in
South Bank; it continued to be so for some time. The work in the steelworks was hard, dirty
and dangerous, and the living conditions were not great. Then, in 1914, the First World War
came along; its impact on South Bank is indicated on the War Memorial which bears the
2
Minnie C. Horton (1979) The Story of Cleveland: Cleveland County Libraries, p. 282
3
All graphs are taken from Gll graphs in the figures come courtesy of GB Historical GIS / University of
Portsmouth, A Vision of Britain through Time. http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10002620
3
name of 377 men who lost their lives in that conflict. Those that survived returned to a land
that wasn’t fit for heroes: wage cuts followed by a General Strike in the 1920s. Then, in the
1930s the great depression put millions out of work (in 1931 more than a quarter of men in
the Eston Urban District were unemployed), and that didn’t improve until the outbreak of
another World War. The young men were marched off to war again, although many stayed
behind to keep the steelworks running, and, because of the steelworks, South Bank became a
target for German bombing.
Nevertheless, life was gradually getting better than it was in the days prior to world war one:
people were living longer, infant mortality was falling rapidly, indicating improving health
care [Figure 7] and housing circumstances were improving; especially after the first Labour
Government introduced its 1924 Housing Act which aimed to radically increase the supply of
council housing. The population was still increasing in the Eston Urban District, in which
South Bank was by then located, but the housing supply was increasing even faster [Figure 8].
By the early 1940s, the number of rooms exceeded the number of people: the arrival of what
poor people are no longer supposed to have; i.e. spare bedrooms.
The Mulholland family don’t seem to have moved far from Munby Street. David’s father,
Jim, was born two streets away in Codd Street [Figure 9] and David was born in the adjacent
Henry Street [Figure 10]. David’s mother Jean (nee Wells) would have probably known his
father for some time prior to their marriage. At the time of the 1911 Census there was a Wells
family – who had migrated from Kent – living in Codd Street. The Wells family that Jim
Mulholland married into had five daughters – besides Jean, there were Alice, Tillie, Olive
and Lilian – who remained close to each other all of their lives. All of the sisters had a big
influence on David Mulholland. His respect for South Bank women illuminates his drawings
of Irene Blom [Figure 11] – his next-door neighbour when he was growing up in Henry Street
– and Auntie Renie [Figure 12]. Renie, so far as I know, was not a real auntie – although she
may have been his father’s sister – but in those days we tended to call all of our mother’s
female friends Auntie. I haven’t seen any drawings or paintings of David’s mother and the
only depictions of her sisters that I have come across are in those he did after his mother’s
funeral in 1977 [Figure 13 and Figure 14]. He said that all of the women who had influenced
his life are in his 1999 picture Feminine Forest [Figure 15]; the Wells sisters are all likely to
be in there somewhere.
I don’t think there is much doubt that David Mulholland’s generation – which includes me
– lived through the best of times in South Bank. David was born in 1946 after his dad had
returned from the war, and by the time the 1950s came along there was a feeling that things
were getting better. It was a complicated time though, because although there was hope, it
was also a time of austerity. Foodstuffs such as meat, bacon, eggs, butter, cheese sugar and,
tea were rationed, as were other basic goods such as fuel and paper. Rationing didn’t end
until 1954. This all gives a particular cogency to a story about David Mulholland that I told
at the opening of the exhibition. The story belongs to Brian Daniels. He told me.
This particular time, at Cromwell Road, when we were about seven, the teacher gave us
all exercise books and said, “Right lads and lasses, this is your diary and every morning,
4
when you come to school, I would like you to write down what you did on the day
before.” Believe you me, I found that very difficult. As a seven-year-old, you think,
“Well, I came home, had my tea, and then I kicked a football about” and such. I found it
difficult to write two lines, but David didn’t write anything at all: he just drew everything
that he had done. I would sit near him and would look at him drawing in his exercise
book. I couldn’t draw at all, but he would draw himself playing football – with goalposts
and things – and he would draw himself having his tea with his family, and he would
draw the places that he had been. He would draw everything.
My exercise book would probably take me about twelve months to fill, but his was full
after about a week. I looked at him then, and I thought, “Well here goes; as soon as he
shows this to the teacher there is going to be big trouble”. You used to get your hands
slapped if you did anything you weren’t supposed to do, in those days. It was absolutely
the opposite, though. The teacher obviously saw talent and, when she looked at his
exercise book, she was really over the moon. She didn’t chastise him or anything; she
just gave him a new book and told him to carry on drawing. And she kept on giving him
books and he kept on drawing.
Brian told me that he had always wanted to tell someone that story because he had always
wondered how David’s life might have been affected if that teacher had responded
differently, and told him to write in the book like everybody else had to. Nobody can know
the answer to that, but the support he got from that teacher, and others, was clearly an
important factor in how his life did develop.
Things continued to improve in the South Bank area during the 1960s and 70s. The industrial
base of the area continued to expand, and one observer boasted that it had
One of the most up-to-date steel works in Europe as well as a huge chemical complex
[I.C.I Wilton), and by 1967 [Eston] was said to be one of the richest urban districts in the
country.4
And when Eston Urban District Council became merged into Cleveland County, in 1974,
stated that
The four townships of Eston, Grangetown, South Bank and Normanby can be depended
on to play their part, for it is reckoned that Cleveland County has probably the largest
growth potential in Europe. It is certainly one of the fastest growing areas in Britain and
it is predicted that before very long it will supplant Newcastle and the Tyne in
importance.
South Bank was still a working class town but the number of skilled workers in the Eston
Urban District was increasing [Figure 16] although the numbers of professional and
managerial workers were not. It was also a major turning point in that the number of
unskilled jobs was beginning to decline; something which ultimately had significant
consequences for South Bank.
4
Minnie C. Horton (1979) The Story of Cleveland: Cleveland County Libraries, p. 288
5
Amidst the optimism generated by the growth of the 60s and 70s there was also anxiety about
how communities were changing; not always with consent of the people. Better housing with
more space, bathrooms and inside toilets were becoming widely available, but what was
being lost? These are concerns alluded to in some of the pictures that David Mulholland was
creating at the time [Figure 17, Figure 18,Figure 19]. His Municipal Sculpture picture is
particularly apposite here [Figure 20]. In this work, he was looking back to the past – Munby
Street where the first Mulholland’s lived – and forward towards what he feared the future
may hold, following the demolition of places like Munby Street that was happening at the
time. Not surprisingly, given developments elsewhere in the UK, the future seemed to be
high-rise housing and the breakdown of traditional communities. It is interesting to compare
David’s vision with that of Vin Garbutt, who, in his song Slaggy Island Farewell foresees a
time when “windowed mountains take the sun from the sky.” Although Vin and David were
later to become brothers-in-law – twice – they had not met at the time. I find it intriguing that
they were both expressing exactly the same concerns, via different mediums, totally
independent of each other.
Housing and community were also issues that Mulholland addressed in short stories
that he was writing at the time; as with the following.
Moving
“Old Beadle won’t fix our back yard wall ‘cos they say all these houses are coming
down.”
“Really, Eth?”
“Yes, really Betty. I didn’t believe it. Well what are we going to do? Where shall we go
to live?”
“Up on that new Longlands estate, or on the Whale Hill estate. Can’t say I fancy it really.
The rents are too high aren’t they? Our Albert only gets £15 a week and they say them
rents start at three pound ten.”
Yes, I know love. We’re only paying 15 bob in our little street house. It might only have
two bedrooms but it’s good enough for me, our lad and the two bairns.”
“Aye, well you’re lucky really, ‘cos my two bairns are getting older now. On bath night I
have to send Mark to the kitchen while our Sue gets in the tin bath next to the fire. Then
our Mark comes in for a bath and our Sue has to sit in the back kitchen till he’s finished,
and it is cold in there you know.”
“Aye, yes I do. Don’t know how we are going to find the money. It’s hard enough now
managing on what we have. Isn’t it?”
“Well I suppose we will have to go when our turn comes. Don’t suppose we’ll have any
choice in the matter. They all think they’re posh up there. I don’t think I’m going to like
it. Do you Eth?”
6
As it happened, the high-rise developments predicted by both David and Vin never came to
South Bank. There was plenty of demolition, but little replacement with any kind of housing
at all: only a hypermarket and a road to Middlesbrough or Redcar.
Nevertheless, the years after the war were great times to grow up in in South Bank, and that
had much to do with the community spirit engendered by all those Slaggy Islanders who had
preceded us. Primarily, we were allowed to be kids; the school leaving age was raised, from
14 to 15, in 1947, delaying the time we had to go out and earn a living. And you knew that,
when you did leave school, there was a job waiting for you; so long as you could spell Bob
backwards, as a friend of mine puts it. After you failed the 11plus – as most of us did – there
was little pressure; you just enjoyed life. There was not the range of material goods available
to us, as there is nowadays, but we were not targeted by marketing campaigns that made us
want things. We were free to roam – to get up to mischief – and we did, while our parents
accepted it: in fact, they probably expected it.
That was the world in which David Mulholland grew up. He had a talent that set him apart,
but was very much part of his gang. His mates admired his ability to draw but didn’t make a
big deal of it – he was one of them. He was inclined to be a little bugger, really; apparently a
committed smoker when still in primary school. He was fortunate in going to Victoria Street
School. The commitment to Art that was there made a difference to his prospects, but it
wasn’t easy for him. South Bank had little tradition of people going off to University and he
was advised against anything other than commercial art when he was at Middlesbrough Art
College. Working class kids were expected to get proper jobs, and even art colleges were
geared towards that end, albeit into careers that helped them to get out of their working-class
cultures.
David wasn’t having any of that. He was determined to be a painter and he proved everybody
wrong by winning a scholarship to go to Byam Shaw School of Painting and Drawing in
London, and then went on to the Royal College of Art; from where he graduated with an MA.
At the time, that was a major achievement for a lad from South Bank. Few of us stayed at
school beyond the age of 15 [Figure 21] and less than one in a hundred of us had a university
degree, although slightly more did have some form of qualification [Figure 22].
Although he obviously got a lot out of being in London, at two prestigious art colleges, he
still spent most of his time back at home, and home continued to be the inspiration for his
work. He spent six or seven years at London colleges but we have found only two pictures
with London-based themes [Figure 23 and Figure 24]. They both demonstrated his concerns
about the destitution that he found alongside wealth and privilege. His heart was with those
who were struggling for survival.
Even after two or three years travelling around the world with the Seafarer’s Education
Association, David Mulholland felt he had to come back to South Bank. But the good times
that he remembered didn’t last long. His Thanks for Nothing picture [Figure 25] marks the
point at which it really changed. After that his vision of home, as represented in his later
work, became different; more scenery, fewer people.
7
It is worth noting that during the time David was obsessed with South Bank it was not
fashionable for artists to record working class experience, and it still isn’t. We have had no
success in getting David’s work shown in Mima, and it is virtually impossible to get the
media to take any interest; although the one review that we have managed to get for the
Kirkleatham exhibition – in the Morning Star newspaper – gave it the highest accolade of
five stars. Those who come to look at his work in this exhibition will make their own mind up
about it. I am proud that we are giving them the opportunity to do so. If it had been left to the
art establishment – locally as well as nationally – it would not be happening. I know from the
comments in the book – both here and at our previous exhibition in the Dorman Museum –
that it has been appreciated. In his Morning Star review, Mike Quille wrote
Mulholland paints a world which is local, “ordinary” and known, a world of brutally hard
work and suffering but one which is appreciated with tenderness and compassion. 5
There can be little doubt that this “appreciation and compassion” stems very much from
David’s embedding within the unique culture of South Bank, his connections with the
Mulholland and Wells families, the teachers that he came across and the mates that he had.
His MA degree from the Royal College of Art was in Fine Art and Anthropology, and he was
also a social historian, besides being a painter. His work is of and from the social world that it
portrays. It touches on real lives, and has an empathy that comes from a shared history with
the subjects of the work. As several people have said to me, it pays respect to working-class
lives without romanticism.
I will finish with a paragraph about the role of the artist that was written by the philosopher
RG Collingwood. I was first introduced to this by Murray Martin, a founder member of
Amber Films, based in Newcastle. Although I struggle with the complex philosophy-speak, I
think it gets at what we see in this exhibition; art that comes from the soul of Teesside.
We can perhaps detect one characteristic which art must have, if it is to forgo both
entertainment value and magical value and draw a subject matter from the audience
themselves. It must be prophetic. The artist must prophecy not in the sense that he
foretells things to come, but in the sense that he tells his audience, at the risk of their
displeasure, the secrets of their own hearts. His business as an artist is to speak out, to
make a clean breast. But what he has to utter is not, as the individualistic theory of art
would have us think, his own secrets. As spokesman for his community, the secrets he
must utter are theirs. The reason why they need him is that no community altogether
knows its own heart; and by failing in this knowledge a community deceives itself on the
one subject concerning which ignorance means death. For the evils which come from
that ignorance the poet [or the painter] as prophet suggests no remedy, because he has
already given one. The remedy is the poem itself. Art is the community's medicine for
the worst disease of the mind, the corruption of consciousness.6
5
6
Mike Quille (2014) Home is where the heart is, Morning Star, April 22, page 11.
R.G. Collingwood (1958) Principles of Art, Oxford University Press
8
Figure 1 Residents of 37 Munby Street at the time of the 1891 Census
Figure 2 Feature of the drawing Municipal Sculpture 1972
9
Figure 3 Residents of Munby Street in 1891
H = head of household; W = wife; S = son; L = lodger; Irish households in green
Figure 4 Baptist Church, Henry Street 1970
10
Figure 5 K.O, 3.0, South Bank A.F.C. 1970
Figure 6 Proportion of births outside marriage: South Bank and nationally
11
Figure 7 Rate of infant mortality, Eston Urban District and nationally
Figure 8 Growing population and housing provision in Eston Urban District
12
Figure 9 Birthplaces of three generations of Mulholland
Figure 10 Henry Street in the Snow 1971
13
Figure 11 Irene Blom, 24 Henry Street, South Bank 1971
Figure 12 Aunty Renie in Henry Street, on Staithes Beach and on Eston Hills 1970
14
Figure 13 Friday Morning – Eston Cemetery 1977
Figure 14 Untitled drawing 1977
15
Figure 15 Feminine Forest 1999
Figure 16 Changing social class composition of Eston Urban District
16
Figure 17 View of steelworks from part-demolished house on Bessemer Street 1971
Figure 18 Bessemer Street 1969. The last street standing in old Grangetown
17
Figure 19 Old Station Master's House, South Bank 1971
Figure 20 Municipal Sculpture 1972
18
Figure 21 Age at leaving full-time education in Eston Urban District
Figure 22 Qualifications held by population of Eston Urban District
19
Figure 23 Doris May Clegg: Waterloo Tube 1969
Figure 24 Isolation; Survival 1969
20
Figure 25 Thanks for Nothing 1984
21