03 School, Whitburn FC and Coal Mining.

Jimmy Seed always claimed that from the time he could walk he loved football, and was 'rarely seen without an old squashy tennis ball at his feet'. Along with many of that generation Jimmy, like his brothers, was swept up by football fever. The beautiful game had been around, in some form or another, for a very long time, but industrialisation and urbanisation accelerated its development to the point where football became not just a community recreational activity, but a major spectator sport.

Many clubs that we know and support today formed at the latter end of the nineteenth century, the Football League itself forming in 1888. The Seeds' local team, Sunderland, was registered in 1879 and joined the Football League (initially as 'Sunderland and District Teachers A.F.C.') in time for the 1890/91 season. The fact that they won the League the following season set the tone for the future.
The older Seed siblings were regulars at Roker Park [above] which had opened in 1898, some ten years after the League's inception. By the time Jimmy was ten or eleven he was deemed old enough to tag along with his siblings on their pilgrimages to Roker Park.

'The giants of soccer came and went as week after week I went to Roker Park, but the man who held my attention longer than any among my schoolboy heroes was Charlie Buchan. His tricks and subtle moves impressed me so much that I would spend hours trying to copy him. I didn't wait until I arrived home. The lesson began as soon as I had turned down some side street to avoid the crowd. Then for two miles with the help of a small rubber ball I would attempt to reproduce the latest Buchan move'. [-JSS] 

By the time of his visits Sunderland were already established as one of the biggest clubs in the country; and by the time he signed in 1914 Sunderland had already won the League four times and Roker Park, after the concreting of the Roker End, was able to host 50,000 paying supporters. It wasn't until 1958 that they were first relegated, their term at the top level having lasted 68 successive seasons. 

At his local school in Whitburn Jimmy was making a name for himself as a goal scorer, netting 50 times in the season.

'We were lucky at the local school to have a teacher called Mr Grundy who lived for football. He had a tremendous influence on my early days. As my brother Angus was at the time captain and assisted Mr Grundy in picking the school team, I was always pestering Angus for recognition at centre forward, but Angus told me I was too small. Eventually I was given a chance and scored three goals-all from headers. I became the regular centre 

forward, scoring 50 goals in the season, and turned out twice in trials for Sunderland boys.' 

Unsuccessfully, as it happens, with bigger boys being preferred at centre forward, his favoured position at the time. 
Nonetheless, Jimmy was still dreaming of making a career for himself in football as an alternative to life at the coal face, the less appealing future that fate appeared to have mapped out for him.
The following year his footballing ambitions were dealt a serious blow:

'Angus and most of the first team left school the following season, and our school dropped out of the League and took part only in friendly matches. This was a terrible blow to me as my one ambition was to play for Sunderland at Roker Park. That ambition was never realised, and later the town team always preferred Greaves, a much bigger fellow than me. He afterwards became a reliable defender with Darlington.' [-JSS] 😏

As Jimmy did well academically at school his parents had ambitions that he become a schoolteacher, but it wasn't to be, as teaching jobs were very hard to come by at that time.

He left school in 1909 aged just fourteen, too young to follow the family's normal papermaking career, but old enough to sign up to work as a pit boy at the Whitburn colliery, initially probably as a trapper*, but then as a driver, 'driving' the ponies that pulled the coal carts on the main tunnels which led to the coal face. He would walk to and from the colliery in Marsden, just north of Whitburn,  and initially worked night shifts which he explained at least meant he 'had plenty of time for football during the hours of daylight'. Initially this wouldn't have been organised football as far as we know, probably just kickabouts with friends.

'I began to shoot up when I reached sixteen and was beginning to think of football as a full-time profession. I had a trial with Whitburn and played with the reserves'. 

He was now playing inside left, the position he was to play throughout his career, initially for the Whitburn reserves in the Sunderland & District Nonconformist & Brotherhood League. Meanwhile at the colliery, having turned 16,  he now started work as a hewer, working at the coalface, a much more demanding, and frankly dangerous job.

*[For more on the various roles in the mining industry, see the article at the bottom of the page.]

Whitburn Reserves in 1911, Jimmy aged about 16 is front row, second from the left. Angus Seed is back row on the right.

They topped the table, and Jimmy was happy to finish as leading goal scorer.

'The following season I was promoted to the first team which played in the Wearside League. Towards the end of this season, Arthur Bridgett, the old Sunderland winger who had become manager of South Shields, invited me to visit his home nearby. After a short chat about football, he took me into his back garden where he stuck a couple of sticks into the ground, rigged up an improvised goal and told me to dribble round the sticks and attempt to beat him in goal. He later asked me to have a trial for South Shields, but I couldn't have impressed Arthur Bridgett because I never heard from him again'. [JSS]

Jimmy maintained his scoring touch though, totalling 80-odd goals over the two seasons, a record which started to attract interest from reigning League Champions, Sunderland.

The 1913-14 Whitburn squad: C. Jones (Whitburn's cricket pro), J. Hogg, W. Browning, T. Watson, W. Stenton, J Stenton, T. Shiel, J. Seed, A. Seed, J. Hubbard, E. Smith, J.Farrar, G. Kirby, R.Ramsey, D.Blakey, J Creighton, F. Curry, S. Preston, A. Buzzard, G .Brown, R. Brown and W. Lewis.

Whitburn was at this time a real hotbed of football. Over the next few years seventeen boys from the village (population under 2,000) would make a career in professional football, including Jimmy's brother Angus who played for Scottish club Broxburn, Leicester Fosse and Reading. He went on to manage Aldershot from 1927 to 1937 and Barnsley from 1937-1953.

Another brother, Anthony ('Anty'), was chief scout for Charlton, and in 1934 discovered Sam Bartram.
With his success on the field and rumours of interest from Sunderland Jimmy's desire to escape from working in the pits only intensified, and professional soccer seemed at the time like his only chance of escape.

He had other hobbies however. He was very cricketer and tennis player, but was also good at drawing, as shown in later years when his cartoons were regularly published in a national newspaper, and a very good musician, playing piano and concertina. He was in a concertina group with his brothers Angus, Alexander and John, and it's possible they performed together in public, perhaps in the two or three pubs that graced Whitburn, as the Seed brothers seemingly paid to have this studio photograph taken [below].

Meanwhile if Jimmy wanted to make a career in football, playing for Whitburn wasn't going to hold him back. In an article about the forthcoming 1923 FA Cup Final between West Ham and Bolton Wanderers (the first final to be played at the newly built Wembley stadium) Jimmy wrote:

'Whitburn's Distinction
I am very much interested in the West Ham side. In their ranks are two old school fellows of mine, and I hope to see them hold an English Cup medal. Then our little village of Whitburn, on the North East coast, will hold a record that will be very hard to beat. The population of the village is not a couple of thousand, and yet it has sent no fewer than seventeen men to play professional football with first-class clubs. If Henderson and Young play in the final, as they will barring accidents, there will be three Cup medallists among the seventeen players.'

And before long his opportunity came. His description in his autobiography of the events of the forthcoming months need no embellishment:

'Meantime, I was more excited by the prospects of a trial with my beloved Sunderland. I had heard rumours that Bob Kyle, the boss at Roker Park, had heard about my 80-odd goals for Whitburn, but I was not presumptuous. Rumours travel so much faster than truth, so I just kept hoping.
One day fiction became truth. I was in the bath after a night shift when Bob Bawn, one of the Whitburn club, called. He had a card from Sunderland offering me a trial at centre forward in a North-Eastern League match against Darlington. Mr Bawn advised me to think twice before accepting. He realized I wasn't ready for such high standard, but I saw it as an oppor­tunity and I was out of that bath like a shot.
Perhaps I should have taken Mr Bawn's advice. Since my schoolboy ambitions of being a centre forward I had settled into my best position at inside right. Yet I dare not let this chance slip, and so I accepted the trial. I went to the pit for my night shift and took a bath on arriving home in the morning. I then went to bed to try and snatch a few hours' sleep before the game but, as you can guess, I hardly slept a wink. It was not to be a lucky day for me. I did nothing in the centre forward position and realized as I dressed after the trial in readiness for another night shift that Sunderland would not be interested in me. I was low in spirits because I had come to loathe working in the pits, and success at football seemed my only escape. I had failed hopelessly. If only Sunderland had given me a chance at inside right!
Thanks to the kindness of a local councillor, a Mr Bell, I did get a second chance. He had faith in me and wrote to Sunderland with the result that I was given another trial—this time at inside right. My luck was in, and I claimed three of the seven goals scored against Wallsend in the North-Eastern League. It's always results that count, and I was immediately invited to become a professional.
That night I went home with five golden sovereigns—I after­wards learned it should have been £10—my signing-on fee, to­gether with the League forms. My pit togs were spread out before the fire to air. But I did not go down the pit that night—or ever again. It was with joy I folded my miner's clothes for the last time. I was eighteen and a professional footballer. Life seemed good.' [-JSS]

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Addendum 

By the time of the 1911 census for Adolphus Street, Whitburn, Jimmy and Angus were described as miner drivers. However, in 1909 Jimmy may have been a trapper. It's likely that at 16 Jimmy would have become a hewer, working at the coalface, as confirmed in his 1947 book Soccer From the Inside.

*The following is taken from The History, Topography, and Directory of the County Palatine of Durham by Francis Whellan, published in 1894:

'The wages of the hewer in every case depend upon the amount of mineral sent out by him. In narrow workings a price is paid for each lineal yard the place is driven. Next to them come the putters, who with the drivers and offhanded men commence their labours at six o’clock. The work of the putter, which is both laborious and dangerous, consists of bringing the coal in single tubs from the "hewer" to the "flat" or siding, from which they are taken by the driver to the landing, and thence by a self-acting incline, endless chain, or hauling engine to the shaft. The work of the putter is paid for at so much per score of 21 tubs, varying from tenpence to two shillings, plus any percentage of the County average.

The putters were formerly divided into trams, headsmen, foals, and half-marrows; these were all boys or youths, and their employment consisted in dragging or pushing the corves containing the coals from the workings to the passages. Now small waggons called trams are generally used. When a boy "put" or dragged a load by himself, he was designated a tram; when two boys of unequal age or strength assisted each other, the elder was called a headsman, and the younger a foal; and when two boys of equal size worked together, they were styled half-marrows. Before the introduction of metal plates and waggons, the labour of the putter was of the most exhausting kind, and was often performed by boys too weak for the purpose. The carves were generally dragged over a fir plank or even the bare floor, but now the whole way being laid with metal, even up to the workings, one boy can perform the previous work of two. The hours of the putters are now regulated by agreement between master and men, and limited to ten hours from bank to bank, and their ages range from sixteen years upwards, at which age they generally start to "hew." 

The trappers are the youngest boys employed in a mine. When a boy of thirteen first goes down in the pit, he is sent to "trap" or mind a door, which consists of opening and shutting one of the ventilating doors (so as to allow the passing of the waggons) used for the purpose of directing air through the workings. After being employed for a short time in this capacity, he is promoted to drive a pony  used in drawing the tubs, which are in sets of from two to six, from the "flats," to which they are brought by the putters. 

The working hours of the trappers and drivers, who are usually under sixteen years of age, are restricted by Act of Parliament to ten hours from leaving the surface to coming back, shifts. It was formerly the practice to send down boys of not more than six years into the mine as trappers, and there to remain in darkness and solitude for the space of eighteen hours, for which he received fivepence as wages. As he usually went to work at two o’clock in the morning, his chances of seeing daylight oftener than once in a week were very slight.

The rolley way is a road or path sufficiently high for a horse to walk along it with the rolley, and is kept in repair by the rolleywaymen, stonemen, and gatewaymen, all of whom are engaged in keeping and repairing the tram roads and waggon ways, and who generally do their work in the night, when the coal drawing is not going on.

From the enumeration of the officers and men given above, the reader will plainly perceive that colliers are not merely black-faced diggers and shovellers, who attack the coal wherever they meet with it, and roam about in a dark pit to seek their coaly fortunes. All is pre-arranged and systematic; every one knows exactly whither he is to go, and what he has to do. But the preceding list, formidable as it appears, does by no means include all those engaged at a colliery – they are nearly all of them the "under-ground" hands, who could not transmit the coal to the market without the aid of the "upper-ground" establishment, which comprises banksmen, brakesmen, waiters, trimmers, staithmen, screen-trappers, and many others.

- Taken from The History, Topography, and Directory of the County Palatine of Durham by Francis Whellan. Second edition published in 1894.

George Orwell's brilliant Road to Wigan Pier also portrays the life and dire working conditions of a coal miner in the 1930's collieries of the north of England. Little had changed since Jimmy Seeds time as a coal miner.

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