The old photo was taken in the Spring of 1892 by Edgar G Lee at the west end of Neville Street, with the Central Station in the background. It shows four women selling oranges, which were the fast food of the day and popular with passengers on the trains. They were so popular that Newcastle’s first litter laws were introduced after a spate of accidents caused by people slipping on discarded skins.
The intriguing thing about the photo is the name ‘Thomas Bolton’ scrawled in chalk on the wall to the right of the women. If you zoom into the photo you can see the name copied below in sloppier handwriting, as though someone was being taught how to write it. We can never know for certain who this graffiti artist was, but the 1891 Census provides a suspect.
The surname wasn’t common in Newcastle at the time but there was a Thomas Bolton living half a mile away near Westgate Road, who would have been ten years old when the photo was taken. He had older brothers and sisters, one of whom may have been helping him spell his name. His father was a bootmaker, also called Thomas, and subsequent Census returns show that young Tommy followed in his shoes, so to speak, and became a bootmaker too.
There are several photos from around town during this period with words chalked on buildings in childlike writing. Literacy rates were unusually high among children in Newcastle towards the end of the nineteenth century, but access to pens and paper would have been limited in the homes of poorer families.
A stick of chalk and a stone wall would have provided a good substitute for bairns wanting to practise their skills.