Former Yorkshire journalist marks 100th birthday after a lifetime telling other people's stories

A former journalist who left school at 15 to start work as a reporter has celebrated her 100th birthday.

Eileen Parkin first cut her teeth as a young hack in the newsroom of the Batley News.

As a young female reporter, Eileen was a bit of a rarity, although the paper was then owned by a woman, Gertie Roberts.

In spite of her young age, she remembers being sent to the houses of local people who had died to gather details of their lives.

Eileen said: “I was a bit nervous at first because, in those days, the dead were kept at home for a few days and I’d get there with my notebook and sometimes the family would say: “You’d like to see him, wouldn’t you, love?” Well, I couldn’t say “No, thank you.” So, I learned to look round the bedroom door, nod and say how peaceful he looked.”

Deaths and occasional golden weddings were staples of local newspapers, as were the courts, where Eileen, with her 140 words per minute Pitman shorthand, became a regular on the press bench. Another popular, though then rather less frequent, story was a one hundredth birthday.

“You had to ask the old girl, and it usually was an old girl, not an old boy, to what she attributed her long life,” Eileen added.

“Sometimes it was never drinking or smoking and sometimes it was doing a lot of both. So you were never really any the wiser.

“I signed the pledge when I was a child. People did then. Not that I’ve ever been a teetotaller, but I suppose I haven’t drunk much at all or ever smoked. I don’t know if that’s part of it, though. Really, you know, you just wake up every morning and go on living. Or not.”

Batley then was a town of mills, churches and chapels, the Salvation Army and even a Rugby union team, for which Eileen’s father, Percy, played while also turning out for the local football team. There were Easter parades with new bonnets and a regular Sunday-best stroll for young people with an eye to courting.

“That wasn’t all that was happening on Sunday mornings,’” recalled Eileen. “We called the Methodist Chapel on Commercial Street the Shoddy Temple because a lot of the millowners went there and did their deals on the front steps on the Sabbath.”

Her mother, Marjorie, was an amateur soloist for local choirs.

“Her speciality was Handel’s Messiah,“ says Eileen. “But before the talkies, she played the piano for the pictures at the local cinema, coming up with fast stuff for the exciting parts, like trains about to hit someone on the tracks, and slow for the romantic bits. A shilling a time. She wanted to teach me the piano but I wasn’t interested.”

In 1950, while she was working on the Harrogate Advertiser, Eileen married another journalist, Leslie Parkin, born in neighbouring Dewsbury, who went on to become chief assistant editor of the Yorkshire Evening Post.

They had first met in 1941 when Leslie, another reporter, used to whizz past Eileen and Irene on his pushbike as they walked to Batley girls’ grammar school. They married at Batley Parish Church.

The couple had two daughters, Janet and Jill, and Eileen went back to work on the Wakefield Express series of newspapers, where again her shorthand was in great demand for court and council reporting. Both daughters went into journalism. Leslie died in 2024, at the age of 98.

Eileen has three grandchildren and two great-grandsons. She and Leslie lived for more than 40 years on King Lane in Alwoodley before moving to Wike Ridge, between Shadwell and Alwoodley, when they retired.

Fast forward to 2026 and she celebrated her hundredth birthday at Adel Manor care home in Leeds on Tuesday, July 14.