This is one of two films on YFA Online made as part of the Goole Silent Movie Project.  The origin of the project is explained on their own website: “Goole Arts Officer, Nicola Dixon, took a group of young people from Goole to an International Youth Theatre festival in Poland.   One of the items in the festival was a showing of Charlie Chaplin's 'The Kid'. The young people enjoyed the film so much they began thinking about creating our own silent film based on the history of...

This is one of two films on YFA Online made as part of the Goole Silent Movie Project.  The origin of the project is explained on their own website: “Goole Arts Officer, Nicola Dixon, took a group of young people from Goole to an International Youth Theatre festival in Poland.   One of the items in the festival was a showing of Charlie Chaplin's 'The Kid'. The young people enjoyed the film so much they began thinking about creating our own silent film based on the history of our local area. Following a successful funding bid to Heritage Lottery Fund, and sponsorship from Kodak, the young people helped recruit and chose three professionals: David Bunting (animator), Peter M Kershaw (producer and film-maker) and Madeleine Frost (dramatist).”

 

So, from a film club viewing early silent films, this a project got off the ground, co-ordinated by Goole Town Council. A steering committee of local young people between the ages of 13 and 20 was set up to choose some stories that could be turned into silent films. In helping to do this the group came to the Yorkshire Film Archive where they saw some 1920s Pathé newsreel. This inspired the style of film that they decided to make. The idea for this story of Dr A. D. Holmes came about from reading old newspaper clippings on display at one of Goole’s Museums.  The project got going in October 2006 and the two films premiered at the National Media Museum the following October. 

 

All the writing, acting, directing, filming, animation, editing, and research for the films, was undertaken by this committed group of young people.  They were given support, for materials, props and advice, from Goole Community Museum, Goole Waterways Museum, and the National Media Museum, as well as the Yorkshire Film Archive. The films subsequently had showings in 2008 at the Cambridge Film Festival, the Culture Shock Festival and the Swiss Super 8 Festival, and has been held up by the Heritage Lottery Fund as a model of good practice. 

 

An important part of the project was to find out about the history and heritage of Goole, which involved walking tours of the town and looking at old photographs. All the information was collected together on 'Mood' boards. Goole is divided up into an ‘old’ and a ‘new’ part, with the biggest part developing in the nineteenth century following the opening of the Knottingley and Goole Canal in 1826 – see the Context for Port of Goole (1964) for more on this history. But Goole could also be divided into rich and poor, with large impressive houses for the merchants who benefited from the port (many still standing), and the small, cramped and unhealthy dwellings for those who worked on the docks. 

 

One contributor of ill health was an inadequate supply of good water: there was a bad outbreak of cholera in 1831, followed by other epidemics, including smallpox.  Priority was given to supplying water to steam engines, and it wasn’t until 1899 that Goole had a Water Bill. A Sanitary Board was established in 1875. Prior to this Goole was managed by the Snaith Vestry, an ecclesiastical organisation with vested interests, and which lacked both the power and the inclination to deal with Goole’s social problems.  Joyce Mankowska gives an account of some of the poor conditions, and states in her book that, “Goole was built for merchandise, for commerce, not for people.” (Mankowska, p 19)

 

Into this context entered Dr A.D. Home – note the slightly different surname: presumably the better known fictional sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, a contemporary of Dr Home, might account for this poetic licence on the part of the filmmakers.  As an employee of the medical department of the Local Government Board, Dr. Home was commissioned by the Privy Council to carry out an inspection of Goole for the local Sanitary Board. In his Report of August 1871, Dr. Home strongly criticised the overcrowded housing, the supply of water and the inadequate disposal of sewage. The report states: “In Doyle Street and in Clarke’s Yard and in Red Lion Row and in Wesley Square, the accumulated nuisances of dwellings so arranged that all purifying winds are intercepted from them, of overcrowding of people in dilapidated homes, of overflowing privies, and heaped-up ashpits so placed that their odours must pervade the houses, of choked drains in close proximity to the wells, were too common to permit me to note particular instances, seeing that sanitary neglect of the kind noted is universal in the back streets of Goole”.

 

On the poor water situation the Report states: “It might be thought that the height of loathsomeness … had been reached when people drew water for domestic use from wells placed under privies, but in Goole the alternative plan [to drink water from the canal] would seem to be as bad.” It was critical of the major landowners and employers for this situation, and in particular the Calder Navigation Company. Out of this Report a petition was started in support of the proposals that the Report came forward with; namely for the locals themselves to implement the Local Government Act (of 1858) and regulate the health of the town. Homes was joined in this crusade by fellow MD, Dr. Parson, who made his own report in 1874.

 

Of course, housing conditions and general health standards have improved immeasurably since the late Victorian age. In this sense the film gives us a glimpse of a past that will hopefully never return. But the film also shows that much of this improvement came from individuals making the effort to highlight poor conditions and do something to change them. In this the film has a universal quality. This film, together with other initiatives such as the excellent Goole-on-the-web, demonstrates that there is a willingness among all generations in Goole to make the town a fit place to live in.

 

(with special thanks to Janet Tierney of Goole Museum, who has contributed most of this information, and whose graphics panel in the Museum accompanied the 'Silent Movie' exhibition they put on)

 

References

 

Christopher Ketchell, A Goole Bibliography: sources of local history information about Goole, manuscript, 1998.

Joyce Mankowska, Goole, A Port in Green Fields, William Sessions Limited, York, 1973.

Goole Silent Movie Project

The Gate, Goole Arts Theatre, Goole Silent Movie Project

Goole-on-the-web

 

Further Information

 

S. Garner, ‘A case study of slum clearance in Goole’, essay, Hull College of HE (copy in HCHE Inglemire Library Local Studies Collection).