17 Comments
May 21, 2022·edited May 21, 2022Liked by Dan Hayes

Thanks very much for sharing this. Very interesting. Statistics are useful, but personal stories like this are much better at helping people understand what life was really like.

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May 22, 2022Liked by Dan Hayes

My name is John O’Brien. and i worked at brown baylays fore thirty years.and i remember Fred.and i would like to comment on what I have just been reading about

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I vividly remember as a child seeing the men come out of the factories, covered in sweat and grime, with furnaces blazing behind them like Dante’s Inferno. A very, very hard way to make a living but the camaraderie among the steelworkers is vividly evoked in this excellent account.

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May 21, 2022Liked by Dan Hayes

It’s a fascinating book.

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May 21, 2022Liked by Dan Hayes

Terrific writing - I used to read New Society and miss this kind of thoughtful detailed journalism touching on real life

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This article made me cry: my husband, John, who died in 2017 worked at Turton Platts and we have the framed painting of the photograph you printed. During his last illness, a friend, who is a local poet (Adrian G Scott) wrote a poem about John's life as a retired Steel Worker and how such work had shaped him. It was included in Adrian's exhibition about life in Sheffield at the Arthouse in 2019 (18?).

This article brought back so many memories of life in the Steel City when it lived up to it's name.

John was never made redundant but did contract COPD through his work, went on to be a Health& Safety officer when he could no longer worker as shift superintendent in the drop forge and retired through ill-health when he was 59. He died aged 70.

Thanks for this article

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Thank you for reminding me of the remarkable 'Survivors of Steel City'. I bought my copy when it was published in 1986. It's now fading a little round the edges (as indeed am I) but now has additional significance as a record of its time. It sits on my bookshelf alongside 'On the Knife Edge' by Clare Jenkins and Stephen McClarence (pub. 1989), a similarly vivid record of Sheffield industry, this time featuring Sheffield's cutlery workers, and well worth seeking out. The reason I subscribe to Tribune is that you are interested in the history of Sheffield as well as current 'hot topics', and also because, like Beattie, Jenkins and McClarence, you offer quality, thoughtful journalism with the emphasis on individual stories that shed light on wider issues.

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excellent piece

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I agree with the other contributers, articulate first hand accounts tell so much more than facts and figures. Fortunately I have a copy of Geoffrey Beattie's 'Survivors of Steel City', would love see it in print again.

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