Martha Longhurst

Martha Longhurst
Occupation	Cleaner
Born	2nd September 1896
Died	13th May 1964
Father	Jack Hartley
Mother	Mary Hartley
Spouse(s)	Percy Longhurst (1919)
Children	Lily Haddon Harold Longhurst
First appearance	14th December 1960
Last appearance	13th May 1964
Duration	1960-1964
Number of appearances	298
Played by	Lynne Carol

Martha Longhurst (née Hartley) was a widow who resided at 7 Mawdsley Street. Her husband Percy had died in 1946, with whom she had two children: Harold, who was drowned at age three, and Lily, who went on to marry Wilf Haddon.

As a pensioner, Martha spent most of her evenings gossiping with her lifelong friends Ena Sharples and Minnie Caldwell in the Rovers Return snug. Unlike her companions, who were also widows, Martha was open to finding love again and dreamed of better things. In 1964 she accepted an invitation from the Haddons to join them in Spain - her first foreign holiday - but died of a heart attack before she got the chance to go.

Biography

Martha in 1934

Martha Hartley was born in 1896. In her youth, she enjoyed a flirtation with Handel Gartside and she was also involved with Ted Ashley before he left to make his fortune in Australia. Martha eventually married Percy Longhurst on 18th May 1919, and went on to have a daughter, Lily, and a son, Harold. Martha was especially proud of Lily and her son-in-law Wilf, and often spoke of them to her friends. Constantly referring to the conspicuous success of her son-in-law, Martha was cut down to size when Ena Sharples said Wilf earned so much by working nights.

Martha was a fellow denizen of the snug of the Rovers Return Inn along with Ena Sharples and Minnie Caldwell. She lived at 7 Mawdsley Street and was employed as a cleaner at the Rovers, and also briefly as caretaker at the Glad Tidings Mission Hall. More likely to speak her mind openly to Ena than Minnie, she was often criticised for her continuous references to Lily.

During the Blitz, Martha's home was bombed. Percy and Ena feared she was dead. The panic was destroyed when Martha walked over and in her usual tone questioned.. "What, you cryin' bout..here, where's me house?". Martha and Percy moved into 13 Coronation Street until the house was rebuilt. Percy died in 1946, leaving Martha a widow.

Martha fell out with her friend Ena, when in late 1960 she was asked to temporarily take over Ena's job as caretaker at the Glad Tidings Mission Hall. Ena thought that Martha was taking the opportunity provided by Ena's hospitalisation to steal her job. Her friendship with Ena was often fractious, and when Ena moved in with Martha after being sacked from the mission and subsequently evicted from her home in the Vestry, Martha was driven to write to an Agony Aunt seeking advice. Discussing the situation with Minnie she was shocked to find that Minnie had deliberately let Martha take Ena in so that Minnie wouldn't have to cope with her twenty-four hours a day.

Martha has a heart attack in the snug

Martha collected the pensions of Ena and Minnie for them on a regular basis and this was to lead to trouble when, in 1963, she lost Ena's pension book. In 1963 she became cleaner of the Rovers Return, and also worked in a similar capacity at the Viaduct Sporting Club.

In 1964, romance entered Martha's life when Ted Ashley returned from Australia for the first time in fifty years. Hoping to continue the romance of her youth, Martha followed Ted to London, hoping that he would propose. Unfortunately she had misread Ted's intentions and came back to Weatherfield disappointed.

Martha spent her last days daydreaming of a holiday in the sun. When invited to go on holiday abroad to help look after her grandchildren, Martha bought her first passport and proudly showed it off to anyone who showed the slightest interest. It was during a singsong at a party in the Rovers thrown by Frank Barlow that she became ill, un-noticed by anyone else. Dying of a heart attack alone in the snug, she was eventually spotted by Myra Booth who thought she had fallen asleep. Her friends were stunned to discover that she was dead.

Other information

• Martha was often critical of the ways of the younger generation and was responsible for Len Fairclough getting the sack from his job at Birtwistles. She had complained about him spending too much time with Elsie Tanner, despite him being a married man.
• As Ena and Minnie went on living in Coronation Street for several more years, Martha was referred to on several occasions. In 1969, when many Street residents went on a coach trip to the Lakes, Minnie wept as she told Ena how much Martha would have loved to have been there. In 1970, Handel Gartside returned to Weatherfield and was saddened to discover that Martha had passed away. In 1979, Ena spoke of Martha on the anniversary of her death. Martha was mentioned again by Jed Stone in 2008 when he returned to Weatherfield.
• In 1975, the Rovers was assumed to be haunted when barmaid Betty Turpin believed she had seen Martha's ghost, as well as heard her voice in the snug. Betty and Annie Walker were shocked when what appeared to be Martha's glasses were found on the bar, but the mystery was solved when a customer claimed them. This was referenced again almost forty years later, on 2nd September 2011, when Dennis Tanner joked that a mysterious voice Roy Cropper could hear was "Martha Longhurst's ghost". The noise was actually caused by Leon Southam who was locked in the butchers fridge next door.

Background information

Creation and casting

Publicity shot of Lynne Carol as Martha

The character of Martha was conceived early on, when Tony Warren realised that Ena Sharples would need drinking companions. His experiences of the real-world Enas and their cronies greatly informed the character. Warren: "Whenever you got tough old viragoes like Ena, they always had henchmen. They generally had a talkative one that could be shouted down, and then there was always a silent one who nodded but was a bit rebellious." (Minnie Caldwell Remembered - A Tribute to Margot Bryant) The former character outline turned into Martha Longhurst, and the latter Minnie Caldwell.

Martha was present in the second of the two dry runs made in November 1960, where she was played by Doris Hare. During final casting for the show proper, casting director Margaret Morris offered Hare the larger part of Ena Sharples, but Hare had to turn it down as she had commitments with the RSC. (The Coronation Street Story, Boxtree Limited, 1995)

Lynne Carol was a Welsh-born actress who was living in Blackpool in 1960. The daughter of stage actress Mina Mackinson, Carol had been a child performer since the age of three and went on to have a long career in theatre, radio and television. Though Martha was the second-oldest character in the programme, 46-year-old Carol was given the part of the 64-year-old. Her relative youth compared with her co-stars was obscured by the character's wardrobe, with Martha normally wearing a hairnet, beret, spectacles, and an old mackintosh, all of which were provided by Carol who bought them second-hand in a jumble sale.

Development

Martha and Minnie were initially supporting characters, with their storylines revolving around Ena Sharples. Over time, they got stories of their own, notably Martha's attempts to affect a relationship with her old school friend Ted Ashley.

The three were most often seen in the Rovers snug, where they reminisced and shared the latest gossip over glasses of milk stout. Most of these scenes weren't connected to any storylines, but proved very popular with viewers. Carol: "The scriptwriters used to say that. 'We don't need to think about scenes for you, you three, we can say anything, and as soon as they see those three chairs round the table that's it, and you can make it funny without meaning to, just by being ordinary.'" (Minnie Caldwell Remembered) About the popularity of Martha in particular, Carol once told Weekend: "There are an awful lot of Marthas in the world. Some viewers used to tell me to mind my own business but most people could see that Martha was really a pathetic old dear." (The Coronation Street Story)

Axing

In 1964, 29-year-old ex-journalist Tim Aspinall replaced Margaret Morris as Coronation Street's producer. January that year had seen Coronation Street beaten to first place in the ratings by a regular episode of another TV programme for the first time since November 1961 (the sitcom Steptoe and Son on BBC One). Although ratings were actually up on the same month in 1963, Aspinall felt that Coronation Street needed a shake-up.

On 1st April, Lynne Carol was one of several unsuspecting cast members informed by Margaret Morris that they had been fired. Nearly half the cast were axed, although some of them were granted a reprieve by H.V. Kershaw when he returned as producer in September after working on Granada's The Villains. Carol was the first to depart, with Martha suffering a fatal heart attack in the Rovers snug in Tim Aspinall's inaugural episode as producer. Due to the nature of the character's exit, and her popularity with the cast and viewers, Carol's colleagues fought her sacking, with Violet Carson threatening to resign. She was talked round by Carol. When rehearsing the death scene, Peter Adamson refused to deliver the line "she's dead", and during recording he hesitated before saying it so that his words could be cut, with the order likely to come from Cecil Bernstein, one of Granada's chairmen who was the programme's strongest advocate within senior management. However, no such order was given. After her sacking was announced by the press on 7th April, Carol spoke to a reporter, where she was resigned to her fate: "They've been three wonderful years, and I am sorry to be leaving so many good friends behind me." (The Coronation Street Story)

1964: Coronation Street films Martha's burial

Martha was the first character to have an on-screen burial. The graveside scenes were shot on location at Manchester General Cemetery in Harphurey on Tuesday 12th May. The episode featuring Martha's death was shown with silent end credits played over a shot of Martha's glasses, passport and sherry glass on the snug table she was sitting at when she passed away. Carol played Martha one further time: her voice was heard in the following episode, when Ena and Minnie played an old recording of Martha's in which she and an unknown man called Philip proclaimed their love for each other. The same episode featured Stephanie Bidmead as Lily Haddon, Martha's daughter who previously had been spoken of frequently but never seen.

The killing of Martha has since been heavily criticised, with H.V. Kershaw describing it as one of the worst decisions in Coronation Street history. Kershaw: "No doubt Tim Aspinall felt that by such action he would bring the programme a great deal of publicity and in this he certainly succeeded. However I do feel - and this is only a personal opinion - that he broke the rule of conservation. By killing an established character he doubtlessly gave us a few episodes of high drama and created a talking-point in the factories and laundrettes which boosted our viewing figures for a period, but when the dust settled we were simply left with a Coronation Street without Martha Longhurst. The trio had been reduced to a rather sad duet and there is little doubt that by that one action many future stories were denied us." (The Street Where I Live, Granada Publishing Limited, 1981)

Legacy

Subsequent producers have lamented the loss of Martha, with Bill Podmore referring to it as "the Street's greatest mistake". After the death of Margot Bryant in 1988, Podmore appeared with Carol on a BBC Open Air programme where they discussed the possibility of Carol returning to the programme as Martha's twin sister, who had been living in Australia, although the idea went no further. (Coronation Street: The Inside Story, Macdonald & co, 1990)

Eleven years after leaving the programme, Martha's voice was heard in Episode 1501 (16th June 1975) in which Betty Turpin heard her "ghost" in the empty Rovers. A voice clip from an old episode was used for the scene, for which Lynne Carol wasn't credited.

Quotes

"Evenin'. 'Ave you got a packet of crisps?" (First line, to Annie Walker)

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"Can I 'ave a large sherry?" (Final line, to Concepta Hewitt)

See also

• Full list of appearances

External links

• Martha Longhurst at www.corrie.net