Thread by @TripeUK

The following thread is published as a public service to customers of @SouthernRailUK to help you pass the time whilst waiting for your delayed train.

There will surely be few readers who are unfamiliar with the work of Harriet James.(1) In her heyday, the popular South Yorkshire vet sold millions of copies of such works as Thank Heaven They Can’t Talk, All Creatures Small and Vicious and It Shouldn't Happen to a Gelding.

Harriet James practised(2) as a veterinary surgeon in beautiful South Yorkshire in the mid 20th century.

Her stories are set in the fictional town of Buggerdup(3), and chronicle the lives of the fine, upstanding, salt-of-the-earth Yorkshire folk she met (both of them) and the animals that formed an integral part of their dinners.

The earliest stories tell how Harriet first arrived in Buggerdup, and settled into life at Realale House surgery, with her veterinary partners, the brothers Paul and Barry Tickle.

At first mistrusted and treated with suspicion by the locals, she soon settles in and, after little more than 30 or 40 years, the local community begins to accept her.

In an early case, she diagnoses a valuable horse as suffering from a serious illness, and has the creature euthanized. The furious owner demands a second opinion from a senior partner but Paul Tickle silences any criticism of Harriet by having the owner shot, too.

As she becomes more used to her new life, Harriet starts to enjoy the varied and fascinating scenery of the South Yorkshire valleys.

She begins to appreciate the ever-changing shades of grey of the steelworks’ fumes drifting over the slag heaps, and at one point the sight of a low sun glinting on shopping trolleys in the River Don almost moves her to tears.

Harriet tells of treating a wide variety of animals. We hear of the case of Picky-Poo, a Pekinese whose owner persistently overfeeds him despite Harriet’s best efforts to persuade her otherwise.

Eventually the dog explodes, and her account of peeling sticky bits off the wallpaper and painstakingly sewing them back together is one of the most touching - yet hilarious - moments in Yorkshire literature.

Her stories are known for exploring the foibles of humans as much as animals, which is actually just as well, as the miners and steelworkers didn’t own too many flocks of cows.(4)

Thus we hear of the eccentricities of the Tickle brothers, whose hilarious “To me, to you” routine kept waiting rooms amused for hours.

Harriet’s love of the outdoor aspects of the job meant that she had her arm up a cow’s bottom as often as possible (even when there was nothing wrong with it).(5)

Asked about this predilection during an interview with Rupert Hardy on BBC Radio Calderside, she laughed off any suggestion that it was in any way peculiar, saying: “I just like to keep my hand in.”

Sales of her books prompted West Yorkshire TV to serialise them as a popular Sunday night drama. Call The Vet ran continuously for almost nine years - quite a feat, given that James only ever wrote four, quite slim, books.

Harriet’s own story has a tragic ending.

Called down a mine in 1971 to investigate the mysterious deaths of several canaries, she found that she needed better light in order to make a close examination of the dead birds. The few surviving witnesses agreed that her last words were “What do you mean, don’t strike a ma…”.

Footnotes
1. Harriet James was the pseudonym adopted by Ms Belinda Sharp of South Elmsall for her veterinary tales. In her autobiography Bring on the Cow’s Behind (currently out of print) she admitted she had chosen to write under an assumed name ‘In case anyone sued’.

2. Sadly, although she practised very hard, Harriet was never able to make it to veterinary school, owing to a chronic condition diagnosed at the time as ‘incompetence’.

3. Buggerdup is generally believed to have been based on a combination of the most scenic parts of Rotherham, Mexborough and Wath on Dearne.(i)

4. Herd of cows!(ii)

5. Daisy, the cow in question, eventually grew very tired of this.

Sub-Footnotes
i. As featured in J. Arthur Rival’s adaptation of John Beckstein’s The Grapes of Wath, a fictionalised account of life in the South Yorkshire wine district.

The area was famed for producing such fine vintages as Chateâux Manvers and Maltby, both extremely popular until the 1970s, when the importation of even higher quality wines, such as Hirondelle, began.

Manufacturers were keen to promote their product more widely and paid Rival over £100 to produce the film - one of a number for which the studio accepted sponsorship.

J. Arthur Rival himself never publicly acknowledged that his film was in fact a remake of an earlier one by the Lancashire studios of 20th Century Spatchcock. See pp. 46-49 on the Yorkshire film industry for more details of Rival Films.

The End

The TMB is grateful to @TMB_Books and @ForgottenYorks for permission to reprint this extract from Forgotten Yorkshire and Parts of North Derbyshire and Humberside - but not nearly as grateful as we would be if you purchased a copy.
Just £9.99 via amazon.co.uk/Forgotten-York…