I can add more about that Morris story.
My mothers side of the family had McNeill’s in it.
When the Tennants Chemical Works closed down, the little terrace of houses where chemists/managers lived was put up to be rented as 3 seperate houses.
My McNeill relatives moved into one of the houses in the 30s.The Sewell's moved into another & is where Mrs Sewell offered Piano Lessons to people wanting to play the piano.
My mam (Marian Rodgers) used to go to Tyne View regularly and told me her aunt Jane McNeill used to send meals along to Mr Morris, a neighbour living who was living alone.
My mam was born 1922 so the old Mr Morris she saw must have been the Grandson of one of the Morris twins who reached 80 yrs of age waay back in 1903.
Mam and great aunty Jane’s daughter Jenny McNeill sometimes took meals along the riverside for ‘Old Morris’ and he’d drop a rope down from the upstairs window and haul the bag with the meal upto his room. Mam said her and Jenny went into the house sometimes and there were models of boats in glass cases. (whatever happened to them?? ) Old Morris was artistic and he asked my mam if he could do a painting of her one day.
Here is another family story.
My cousin, the late George Dent’s mother was my aunty Esther McNeill & she was brought up at Tyne view.
George said he heard that during WW2 someone spotted someone in Morris’s window looking over at the shipyards with Binoculars so reported it to the Air Raid Wardens thinking it could be a German Spy. They checked it out & found it was just old Morris .
Old Morris had observed something being done in the yards & said he wouldn’t have done it that way as there is an easier way.
This got back to the shipyard bosses so they invited old Morris to meet them.
They sent a car round to pick him up and take him to their Offices at Wallsend.
They recognised that Morris’s were an old boat building business so took notice. After that they used to send a car round to use him as a bit of a consultant.
As I said, Esther McNeill was my aunt who married George Dent & in WW2 George was in the Tyne View garden overlooking the Tyne when a German Bomber that had tried to bomb the High Level Bridge & missed it but hit Spillers Flour Mills flew past just above the river & waved to him. That Bomber pilot was soon to die because I recently discovered that the bomber was shot down over the sea by guns at South Shields.