Newsletter
Albert was born in 1933 in Peel but describes a place from another time where everyone closed their door on Mondays to stop cattle walking in to their house when they were being driven to the slaughterhouses from the fields on the outskirts of the town, where the undertaker picked up bodies in the evening in a cart and was heckled by the local kids “what yer got under there”, a place stinking of kippers from the fish yards dotted everywhere where one of his jobs was spraying ‘eau de parfum’ on the herring girls when working in the chemist as they didn’t have access to baths, where children spent all their time at the quayside with the fishermen and at the age of 11 were going out on the boats, sometimes ending up away overnight, where his grandmother in her eighties was given two months’ notice to leave her house after fifty years there so that people could be interned there, where the family chemist was kept busy with locals who had no green veg to eat and became ill and covered with boils because of this, a town full of poverty but rich in community with a buoyant fishing industry and a harbour full of boats - not just Manx but Irish and Scottish also, so much part of the community that in the school Irish and Scottish songs were sung and games were played, a wonderful home that gave Albert a lifelong love for Peel and for the sea.
Albert has many stories of characters in Peels, local superstitions, hop tu naa, the Peel ‘gangs’, life at sea, Peel football club, he talks of his family - his great aunt, Sophia Morrison, he grandfather Frost who ran away to sea from the slums in Douglas aged twelve and the family boat yard which closed in 1938.
…The next best thing to experiencing early twentieth century Peel is listening to Albert’s wonderful, colourful descriptions!
Interviews
When you click play on one of the interviews below there will be a slight delay as the audio file is downloaded. Large files or slow internet connections will increase the length of this delay.
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Interview with Albert Frost
