Mexborough & Swinton Times – Friday 12 August 1932
Stranded and Broke Urchins
Boarding a trackless for Swinton the other night my attention was drawn to a couple of grubby urchins, brother and sister apparently, who, it seems, mere being given a passage back to Rotherham.
Their story was that their mother had despatched them from Masborough to spend the day with their granny at Denaby. Evidently they had been furnished with their outward fare only for when they reached Denaby and found granny not at home they were stranded and broke.
However, modern babies are not upset by trifles. Instead of piping the eye they boarded a homeward bus and told their tale. It may have been a frame-up; no child old enough to talk is too young nowadays to stage a come-back, but their appallingly dirty condition marked them as real waifs.
However, a man on the bus, overhearing their lisped tale, promptly passed the hat round and put them handsomely in funds. For the rest of the journey they were objects of tender interest and two shillings in pocket.
“That’s Yorkshire all over,” said my companion, a Yorkshireman exiled in Derby. “Down our way they would have been dumped at the nearest point to a police station to be left till called for, if ever.”
I don’t know that that is not the wisest way, but it is certainly not the Yorkshire way.