Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral Now and Then Did you know?

With apologies to the anyone who might be offended, but did you know that before they built Marine Promenade the sand used to come right up to the bottom of Rowson street in New Brighton.

This part was known as "Niggers hill" in either Victorian or Edwardian times. I can only assume it was called that because the minstrels probably performed there. Not nice but times were different.

Any more did you knows that we might not know?

Could it be linked with the slave trade?

Interesting

It could be that the hill presented a problem . In the past, nigger was sometimes used as a synonym for "defect", deriving from the phrase "nigger in the woodpile", which originally referred to escaping slaves hiding among woodpiles being transported on trains. It came to mean some unseen problem.

Or it could be in relation to it looking in a particluar way. Because the word was used freely for many years, there are many official place-names containing the word nigger. i.e

"Nigger Bill Canyon, Nigger Hollow, and Niggertown Marsh".

In 1967, the United States Board on Geographic Names changed the word nigger to Negro in 143 specific place names, although this did not always eradicate common use of the word in reference to such places. One specific example is that of Nigger Head Mountain, located just outside of Burnet, Texas. For decades, a particular hillock was referred to as such due to the forestation at the peak resembling a black man's hairstyle of the times.

Crazy Stuff, but then it a historical part of our heritage. No matter how wrong we were i dont belive they should be changed.

Two more did you knows seeing as not many are playing.

Did you know that ships had to line up both Leasowe and Bidston lighthouses to be in a safe channel?

Did you know that the USA threatened to invade Canada and keep it if Britain did not pay them a shed load of money in reparation for supporting the Confederacy by allowing things like the Alabama to be built at Lairds. Great Britain paid up!

Did you know that around 2% of £1 coins in circulation today are fake?
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7628137.stm

Did you also know that no coins were minted in 1998 and 1999?

That's a hell of a lot of money when you think about it. It's never been the same since they got rid of the pound note.

Back to the word "nigger", it was also the name of Douglas Baders black Labrador dog in WW2!!

At least up here Morseman, we still have pound notes! Sadly no ten bob notes though !

It was indeed. Unfortunately, those in charge of tv programming decided that because of that, it would not put the film of his life on tv in case of backlash!!

This country is getting PC stupid!!

The movie has been on tv loads of times Pagan. Its called "Reach for the skies"!!
Classic black n white `o` vision!!

I know and you want to hang on to them. I was embarassed by the actions of a young girl in one of our shops a few weeks back. A lady obviously from Scotland paid with Scottish notes. Of course the girl had to make a big fuss and shout "are we allowed to take these?". You would think these stores would train their staff correctly wouldn't you? I actually apologised to the lady for the ignorance of some of the locals.

It wasn't reach for the sky but the dam busters. Guy Gibsons dog was called Nigger. It was also the code word they had to send back (in Morse ) to say they had breached the Mohne dam. Digressing slightly, I have walked over that dam and around the whole lake twice. It's a long walk.

P.S. I have also been to Colditz castle. Fascinating stuff.

My aunty had a dog called n*gger. I think it was very common in the 40s-50s to use this word to describe something which was black.

Home Bargains in Birkenhead went through a phase of not excepting Scottish £20 notes because they were so easy to fake, or there was a huge amount of fakes going around at the time, 2005 iirc.

I've seen the film a few times, but it was recently that they decided not to air it again. If I could remember where I saw this information I'd put a link up