Mexborough

Abstract

During the summer of 1938, Billy and Edith Hughes shocked their three children by announcing that the family was to leave Mytholmroyd and move 40 miles south to Mexborough, where they had acquired a newsagent’s shop. The decision to buy such a business, in Mexborough in particular, was not made on the spur of the moment. Billy and Edith had investigated the possibilities of several other newsagents in other towns in the southern West Riding before settling on the business they eventually acquired.¹ It is not clear from where the Hughes parents acquired the capital to enable their family to move from the working class into the petit bourgeoisie during those hard-pressed Depression years. Olwyn Hughes is under the impression that it may have come from a legacy from either her maternal (Farrar) or paternal (Hughes) grandmother — or perhaps from both.² Gerald Hughes seems certain that the move was enabled by a legacy from ‘Granny Hughes’ (T&I 65), while Elaine Feinstein asserts that the legacy was bequeathed by grandmother Annie Farrar.³ Alternatively, Billy and Edith may have borrowed the money from other family members.