Thomas Armstrong (18481920), known as Tommy Armstrong, was an English poet, singer-songwriter and entertainer dubbed "The Pitman Poet" and "The Bard of the Northern Coalfield". Writing largely in the Geordie and Pitmatic dialects, he was renowned for his ability to chronicle the lives of the mining communities in and around Stanley in north-east Durham and to commemorate mining disasters.
Tommy Armstrong was born at 17 Wood Street in Shotley Bridge on 15 August 1848. His father, Timothy Armstrong, a miner originally from Hamsterley, and his mother, Mary (née Wilson), from Wigton, had married in Easington in 1842. Tommy was the second of five children.
Where and at what age he first worked down a mine is unclear, with varying statements in the local press (Medomsley Colliery, aged eight) and by his eldest son (East Tanfield Colliery, aged nine). Official records show him employed at Addison Colliery in 1866, first as a putter, and then as a hewer. According to his younger brother, he then worked at East Tanfield Colliery from late 1866 for several years. The 1901 Census shows him as a "Coal Worker Underground", and later records refer to him as a miner or coal-miner. His death certificate records him as a "Retired Colliery Shifter".
In 1869, on Christmas Day, Tommy Armstrong married Mary Ann Hunter, who was 16, at Gateshead Register Office. They had 14 children: eight died young. Mary died in 1898, and in 1901, Armstrong married Ann Thompson, a widow, at Tanfield Parish Church.
He lived for the most part in Tanfield Lea, though from 1902, for a few years, he moved to Whitley Bay to start and run a business as a newsagent. In 1906, he had an address in Ouston. In 1911, he was living with his widowed eldest child, Mary, and her children in Tanfield Lea; his second wife resided in Chester-le-Street with another daughter from his first marriage.
He died on 30 August 1920, aged 72, in Tantobie, and is buried in the churchyard of Tanfield Parish Church.
Songs in domestic settings predominate in Armstrong's repertoire. He also wrote many concerning the life, work and struggles of miners in the pits, and several disaster ballads. The sociologist Huw Beynon states that what makes Armstrong stand out from other coalfield songwriters is his "impish irreverence" and "imaginative devilishness", with "nothing cloying or sentimental" in his descriptions of mining life, while the folklorist A. L. Lloyd, according to Beynon, thought Armstrong wrote "as a herald of the dawn, who welcomes the day with a cock crow". The folklorist Roy Palmer noted the playfulness, sympathy, and humour in his works. As Armstrong himself put it:
Folk-songs and the musical forms associated with music hall performances both influenced Armstrong's compositions. The stage was most strongly reflected in the lyrics, and the folk-song influence most clearly evident in the melodies he directed his songs be sung tohe rarely wrote his own tunes, and in most cases made up the words with an existing one in mind: many were urbanised versions of folk melodies. In particular, Armstrong loved and was influenced by the Irish ballads that were popular amongst coal-miners in the second half of the nineteenth century, especially the genre dubbed "Come-all-ye": these were usually written in lines of 14 syllables, with tunes in time, and often in the Dorian or Mixolydian mode.
Armstrong directed that this be sung to the tune of The Pride of Petticoat Lane. The version below was collected and transcribed by A. L. Lloyd in Tanfield in August 1951.
Armstrong directed that this be sung to the tune of Robin Tamson's Smiddy, a ballad written by . The version of the first verse below was collected and transcribed by A. L. Lloyd in Tanfield in August 1951.
Armstrong wrote this song to the tune of the parlour-song Go and Leave Me If You Wish It, and sang it, within days of the disaster, at the local Mechanics' Hall. A. L. Lloyd collected and transcribed a version of the first verse below, noting "As sung (one verse only) by R. Sewell of Newcastle (June 1951)".
According to Vicinus (1974), The Trimdon Grange Explosion exemplifies the later style of nineteenth-century pit disaster poem, with the traditional tone of lament accompanied by elements of .
Some of Armstrong's works incorporate patter"passages of prose ... to be spoken in between the verses and chorus, both of which are meant to be sung." An example is Th' Borth E Th' Lad, one of his first poems:
A version of Th' Borth E Th' Lad was recorded by Bert Draycott, a miner, in the 1970s.
Armstrong wrote one song, Th' Skeul Bord Man, in the form of a short play featuring the voices of a father, mother, son, and an inspector from the son's school:
Armstrong's compositions were initially published as one-penny broadsheets, the most widespread form of literature consumed by the working class at the time.
Subsequently, the Song Book, a collection of 25 songs compiled by his son William, was produced in three editions: the first appeared during Armstrong's lifetime (1909, priced at three pence), the second, a decade after his death (1930, three pence), and the third in 1953 (one shilling). Several of these songs, together with the tunes Armstrong had set them to, were anthologised in Lloyd's 1952 compilation of coalfield songs and ballads, Come All Ye Bold Miners, and in his 1967 study of Folk Song in England.
Tommy Armstrong Sings, a facsimile of the Song Book with added line illustrations, appeared in 1971: this was produced by a local publisher during a surge of interest in printed versions of Tyneside songs and tunes in the wake of the second British folk revival. A Complete Works containing 29 songs (many with tunes) followed in 1987, published by the Tommy Armstrong Memorial Trust. In the preface, the Trust stated it had been founded (in 1986) "with the aim of restoring the Tanfield Pitman's Poet to his rightful place in the history and culture of the North East", and declared that Armstrong's output "reflects the hardship and humour of West Durham mining life during the last century and the early part of this one."
In 2010, a grandson of Armstrong published a biography containing 30 previously published works and a further 16 printed in local newspapers. A sequel in 2011 contained several additional works, including a poem, first sold as a broadsheet, commemorating the 1909 West Stanley Pit Disaster.
From 1962 onwards, "The Trimdon Grange Explosion" was recorded by many artists in studio albums and compilations, including the 1993 version of The Iron Muse.
In 1965, Topic Records released Tommy Armstrong Of Tyneside, an LP with 14 of his songs, with an insert containing a biography and notes by A. L. Lloyd. A CD version was released in 1997. Reviewing the original release, The Gramophone's critic considered the album "beautifully done, with gusto, understanding and musical ability" and "a well recorded, well documented selection of songs" with "some excellent singing by Johnny Handle, Louis Killen and Maureen Craik."
No recordings of Armstrong himself are known.
Stanley Town Council unveiled a plaque commemorating Tommy Armstrong at Tanfield Church on 11 June 2016. Part of the ceremony was held next to Tommy Armstrong's two memorial headstones: the original, and one dedicated in 1986.