Barrow Boys Taximen Complain
Source: Skegness Standard 27th July 1960
Photo: Wrate’s Press
Another coach arrives – the boys get busy!
Young “barrow boys” flock round a newly-arrived coach [in Lawn Car Park] offering luggage transport and guide service.
Taximen say they are affecting their livelihood.
Skegness barrow boys – the lads who carry visitors’ suitcases on home-made trolleys and old prams at four and five shillings a time – are doing local taxi-drivers out of lots of business, it was claimed last week.
The barrow boys – there are sometimes as many as fifty or sixty of them at week-ends – are “causing a serious loss of trade” to the taximen who use the ranks outside the Lawn Motor Coach Park, because the boys and their barrows can weave in and out of the buses and tout for custom whereas the taximen cannot.
I was a barrow boy but a bit later than the photo you have on here, probably around 1967. The taxi-drivers were still moaning then and used to give us a real hard time. Mind you some of the holidaymakers would do the same. I remember hauling a real big barrow load, so big that one of the adults had to make sure the suitcases all balanced on the barrow, from the railway station all the way to Butlins. The cheapskates got a collection up for me between the 6 of them and gave me 2 and thruppance. We used to shout up for trade “Get your baggage on me barrar, won’t be he tomorra apart from special orders”. Great times.