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Photograph of Alex Hastie wearing Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade gansey

Alex Hastie

Alex belongs to: Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade

Alex joined the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade in 1950. He is now the Brigade's chairman. Alex worked as a fish merchant on North Shields Fish Quay and is chairman of the Fishermen's Mission.

Alex was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 15 February 2006. The interview took place at the interviewees's living room and lasted 29 minutes and 48 seconds.

Photograph of Alex Hastie wearing Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade gansey
Photograph of Alex Hastie wearing Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade gansey

Working on North Shields Fish Quay

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"The job down on the market… was go down buying fish, taking it to our store"

The job down on the market… was go down buying fish, taking it to our store, my father was a fish merchant on the quay and I also had a store and I was a fish merchant with a separate business. It was then to process the fish, and when I say process, that’s to fillet it. People had this aversion to bones as they still have, so we used to fillet the fish, portion it and sell it out to the shops ready prepared to be sold as fillets, as fish fillets. And this was where the work was- processing the fish and filleting it, and then supplying the shops and your customers to what they wanted so they could in turn supply the public.

Now this has changed an awful lot now, it’s, a lot of the small businesses have gone out and now it’s supermarkets that market it, with a different approach to the fish trade.

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This memory has these themes:
Change | The North East | Work

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