The Herring Girl...

...on the quayside at North Shields...

This new Ray Lonsdale sculpture was unveiled yesterday - appropriately by Brenda Blethin ( aka Vera )! 
We had a wander down the river to see it this morning before we came home. There were still quite a few people around taking photos, and marvelling at the conditions the Herring Girls worked under.

A bit of history, if you're interested:

Herring girls (or herring lasses) were groups of women who would travel the east coast of the United Kingdom from as far north as Aberdeen to as far south as Great Yarmouth, following herring as they migrated throughout the year.

Men worked on trawler ships catching the herring, but on land, it was the herring girls job to preserve them. Because there was no refrigeration, when herring were caught, they needed to be salted, smoked or frozen quickly. The herring girls typically salted their catches. Women worked in groups of three or four, gutting and salting, each group packing one barrel at a time. The women were paid depending on the amount of barrels they finished, so it paid to work fast.

The work was all outside, so it could be freezing cold in the winter. Standing in a quagmire of mud and fish guts (imagine the smell!), the women worked with sharp knives to gut the fish, which could cause injuries, and combined with the salt and brine, the work could be very painful. It was also extremely tiring. The women had to work for as long as it took to gut and salt the whole day's herring catch, which could be up to fifteen hours a day.