Kenton Bar Celebrities Pre-1988 - The Provvy Lady

An explanation…….Kenton Bar Estate had amongst the highest council rents in the area and maybe the city – no idea why as it was not particularly posh or anything but I am guessing it was because it was:-

1. Modern

2. All houses had central heating

The majority of the tenants were typical working class families (like my own) where Dad was the main wage earner and Mum maybe had a part time job (at the VG for instance) so………typically money was relatively short. This is where The Provvy Lady came in. The Provvy lady on Kenton bar was Mrs. Blakey, I went to school with her son at Kenton School. She lived at the top of Hazeldene avenue. The Provvy Lady was lovely – always smiling and a local hero. Provvy Money I think was also collected on a Friday night so had to compete with the pools, the potatoes and the milk for attention. What was provvy? Well I suppose these days you would call them micro financiers. You could secure a small loan, typically of a hundred quid or less, and pay it back week by week. Here’s the catch – as far as I know they did not give you actual money but credit – which was only spendable at certain shops, the biggest of which was Shepherds Of Gateshead.

Comments

  1. Provi are still going, I work for them!

    Provi vouchers are still available in the form of Love2shop vouchers and Visa money cards. Cash loans are the most popular though.

    Mrs. Blakey was an Agent (self employed) and that is how it still works to this day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks - so you are technically the "Provvy Man" :)

    I was not aware that cash could be had though - thought it was just tokens. I used to love the annual Christmas trip to Shepherds Of Gateshead with the Provy money as they had the best Santa Claus. Next best was Fenwicks on Northumberland Street - but Fenwicks had great Christmas window displays - do they still do that?

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  3. I don't know when Provi started doing cash loans- certainly before I started the Group in 1999.

    Callers had the best Christmas windows as a kid (until the 1969 fire. Fenwicks still do a Christmas window tableaux in Northumberland Street and parents still take their nippers to see it.

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  4. I missed out "working for" before "the Group" above. (I originally worked at Provident Insurance in Halifax).

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  5. Shepherds had that great system where they put your money in a tube and it was sucked accross the ceiling to the clerk in the office, you could not get real money back if you had one of their tickets but got this weird token instead, I have been searching ebay...some one must have some of these!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Farnons near the Grainger market had the tubes as well - they used to fascinate me as a kid

    ReplyDelete

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