Mexborough & Swinton Times, Friday 8th July, 1932
Mr. John Gawthorpe
Mr. Gawthrope probably owes his long allegiance to the Miners’ Union to the influence of his stepfather, the late Mr. William Winder. John’s father, Thomas Gawthrope, lost his life in Edmund’s Main Explosion when John was a baby, and his stepfather was “a very strong union man.”
John Gawthrope started work at Pindar Oaks when he was twelve years of age, and joined the Yorkshire Miners’ Association immediately. He had been employed in the mines just short of 60 years when he left Mitchell Main site at the beginning of this year.
Mr. Gawthrope is known in all the nonconformist churches in the Dearne Valley for his keen interest in choral work. A member of St. Thomas’s Church, Worsboro’. as a boy, he afterwards joined the Primitive Methodist Church, and has sung in Methodist choirs over half a century. Despite this (he is fifteen years older than he looks) he has one of the best tenor voices in the district. He devotes all his spare time to a well-stocked and well-kept garden.
People who make the acquaintance of Mr. Gawthrope are surprised to learn that he has been a great-grandfather for six years.