It was something of a mystery why I was attracted to the cause of the miners.
True, the National Union of Mineworkers was never out of the headlines in the Seventies and Eighties when I was Labour Editor of The Times.
But that didn’t quite explain why I felt at home with them. Now I learn that it’s been in my blood for nigh on 200 years.
The 1851 Census shows my forebear Joseph Routledge, born in Durham in 1832, was a miner, living in Shincliffe and married to Alice, nee Longstaff. Longstaffe is my middle name. I don’t know where the “e” came from.
Joseph and his family became Mormons and for a time he emigrated to Salt Lake City in the USA before returning, disillusioned, to his native county. Joseph went back into mining, studied hard and gained a manager’s certificate and was in charge of Ryhope colliery, Sunderland, for at least 10 years.
Joseph was also the co-inventor of a safety lamp for use underground, and must have been quite well thought-of despite being the boss, credited with trying to keep the miners happy.
He died in 1899, and his widow, Alice, 14 years later. They are both commemorated in a stained-glass window in St Paul’s Church, Ryhope. Remarkable.
I was dimly aware of these facts before, in relation to a novel by the Sunderland writer Glenda Craig. But I am indebted to the Routledge Clan Society, of which I am now a member, and its newsletter, The Blackmail, for the full story.
No, I don’t know why they call it that – something else to find out.
Maybe it’s what we paid the reivers who stole our cattle when we lived on the Scottish borders.
