COMMENT
Business Buzz
with Harry Pearson
From the back of a cart to a business giant – and don ’ t forget the rag-andbone man !
Award-winning columnist Harry Pearson recalls when business was brokered from a horse and cart …
As you can read elsewhere in his issue , Arthur Vernon Dawson started his business that ’ s grown into AV Dawson ’ s Port of Middlesbrough from the back of a horse and cart . To younger readers , this will sound like something from Victorian times , but the fact is that even in the swinging sixties when I was growing up , there were still people trading in much the same way .
Many people around Teesside will recall the fishmonger Harold “ Rosey ” Bowers - so called because his weather-beaten cheeks were the colour of a post box or , as my grandad preferred to style it , “ red as a baboon ’ s backside ”.
That the fish man had a face it looked like you could boil a kettle on was hardly surprising . Mr Bowers lived in Guisborough ( his piebald horse used to graze in a field opposite Gisborough Hall ). On his red and yellow cart , Rosey would travel to Whitby over the moor-top road to buy his fish at the quayside every morning . Then he ’ d come all the way back again to sell it around places like Normanby , Great Ayton and Stokesley .
It didn ’ t matter whether it was snowing or blowing a gale – there was no weather that could stop Mr Bowers and his faithful steed . Dressed in his coat made of brown oilskin , Mr Bowers was so famous in Teesside and the North Riding in the 1960s , they actually made a jigsaw puzzle featuring him .
Rosey died in 1975 – but he wasn ’ t the last of the region ’ s horse-borne businessmen . In the 1970s , many ragand-bone men still came round on a cart . Rag and bone men collected scrap metal and old clothes . They trundled around Teesside laden down with broken gas
Horse-drawn – ‘ Vernie ’ Dawson ’ s brother Jim with horse Dina .
cookers , bits of piping , busted bird cages and bedsteads and bundles of unwanted clothes .
Today , they ’ d be able market themselves on sustainability – and the fact they used a horse-drawn vehicle would add to their green credentials .
The horse was an important element of the rag-and-bone man ’ s marketing because it was a magnet for kids . Children had an important role to play in the rag-and-bone man ’ s trade . We knew that if we gave him something particularly good , he ’ d reward us with a goldfish swimming around in a plastic bag .
Naturally , you were only supposed to give away something the grown-ups in your house didn ’ t actually want , but did your dad ever wear that suit hanging in the bedroom wardrobe ? The temptation was too much for quite a few children and loud shouting and general pandemonium often followed the visit of the rag-and-bone man , especially during school holidays .
Amazingly , the area ’ s last cart-borne rag-and-bone man , Sonny Walker from Darlington , only retired in 1991 . Which brings us , via a suitably slow and roundabout route , to AV Dawson and the Port of Middlesbrough , which was , of course , originally called Port Darlington .
Port Darlington was the brainchild of Joseph Pease , who bought the stretch of salt marsh around 1825 and had the coal
Businessman – Arthur Vernon Dawson , who began what was to become AV Dawson from the back of a horse and cart .
staiths built there five years later . The port that would become Middlesbrough opened on December 27 .
To celebrate , a banquet for 600 people was held on the quayside . Anyone who has ever stood on the banks of the River Tees in winter will wonder how a ) the wind didn ’ t blow the food away and b ) nobody froze to death . Doubtless they were tougher in them days .
Thanks to Pease ’ s vision , within 20 years the area had been transformed . Viewed from the river , visitors could see church steeples , tall warehouses , the masts of ships and the chimneys of foundries .
Gazing at Port Darlington in the 1840s , historian JW Ord wrote that it looked like “ some enchanted Arabian Nights spectacle ”. In response , you imagine an old lady calling out : “ I ’ ll have what he ’ s having !”
Harry Pearson ’ s latest book The Farther Corner – A Sentimental Return to North-East Football is out now .
20 | Tees Business