Lillah Bonetti
My mother became a widow at twenty-three, leaving her with me. Then she married again. When I was fifteen, I decided that Southampton wasn't the town for me. I'd read about white slavery. I thought how lovely it would be, to be adopted or taken away or kidnapped. My mother was horrified when I said I wanted to go as a nursemaid to a family living in France. She tried to put me off, but being the rebel that I was – and red-headed – I decided I knew best. So I went over to France, resplendent in my nursemaid's uniform, thinking I was the cat's whiskers. I was there for two years. I learned French, which has never done me much good. I was a rebel.
John Wilkinson
After my brother was born, my mother died, so my father was landed with two little boys. We had no other women in the family but our two aunts, so they offered a very happy solution, that we should go and live with them in South Shore, Blackpool. So I went in 1898, and we went to Raggett's kindergarten and then to Arnold School.
I remember a day's fishing trip in January 08. We'd been on our bikes to Garston, fishing in the river there, and I got the biggest fish I'd ever seen in my life. We wrapped it in some newspaper and I put it across my handlebars. Frank Raynor worked in the newsagent shop, so I asked him to weigh the fish for me. And it was five pounds! I was thrilled. Just as I was leaving, Frank said, ‘Jack, have you seen this? It's a new book we've just got in.’ It was called Scouting For Boys by Baden-Powell, and I thought, ‘This is something new.’
I could hardly put it down and I read it through three times that night, and before the end of the evening I decided that I was going to get some lads together and join the Boy Scouts. There was no Army about it – never military – it was quite the reverse. It was the outdoor life, camping and cooking, birds and animals, and singing. I wrote out the first chapter that night, and put down a list of chaps I was going to ask to join. And when I'd finished with them, they were as enthusiastic as I was. I'd copied the chapter out and we made more copies from that over the weekend. We had a meeting every day that week, I got these chaps red-hot on scouting. It was out of this world. We formed our little patrol in the next six days. I had seven or eight people and I made myself the patrol leader. We picked on the name of Lions, as I thought it was a good sturdy animal, and in any case I couldn't make many animals' noises – but I could roar.
We sent fourpence for a dozen membership cards to the head office. Our first outing was the first weekend – we didn't waste any time – we were getting down to it. We were never short of things to do. We could walk up to the cliffs and all round was fields. Then sometimes if we were at my end of Blackpool, we could go down in the sandhills with the wildlife. We used to camp in the hills, not far from home, and we'd all got bicycles. We did all the usual things, and in the summer we went fishing and scouting and signalling and we collected cigarette cards and football cards.
We did all right for uniforms – we were in short trousers anyway, and we could always get short khaki or blue trousers, and a green shirt. My aunts made the shirts. When I went to Cheshire I made my own uniform – I got my tailor's badge for that.
Ernest Taylor
We used to watch the shrimpers bringing their long poles in, and one lot of them had a little shop where they would boil their shrimps and sell them. To get to their shop you'd go round in front of the fort and up the ladder. Sometimes you'd find a body washed up – and that used to put me off shrimps a bit. Of course the only thing to do was feel in his pockets to see if there was any money. You'd put your hand in his pocket and all these little things would run over you – they were shrimps, and you were eating these shrimps, and they were eating him. If you found a two-bob piece or a couple of coppers in his pockets, then you were well in. We would go back up the shore and tell the bobby on the dock gates there was a body down there. Then there would be a bit of a commotion, while we would walk around the docks and see what we could pinch. We only found two or three bodies, but they reckon there was one every day of the week.
Edward Slattery
I was born in Bacup, Lancashire, on 21 December 1891. It was a traditional valley mill town and cotton was still king. It was a world of cloth-capped men and women in shawls who wore wooden clogs with irons on the heels that clattered and sparked on the cobbled streets.
I was the first of thirteen children. Only six of us survived childhood. My mother, Maggie, was a short, stout woman – five feet tall and eighteen stone – of Scots and Irish descent. She had many friends among the neighbours, the doors of our house were always open and anyone in need always found solace from Maggie, either in money to lend, goods to pawn, or hunger and thirst to quench. It was there for the asking without any question.
At eight years of age I would look after my brothers and sisters whenever my parents went out. When they became ill, I often rocked them to sleep in the cradle through the long winter nights. They might have measles, scarlet fever or whooping cough. My mum and dad would stoke up the fire with coal and slack and make me comfortable in a large rocking chair, giving me instructions to wake them should my brothers or sisters get worse during the night. They then locked the doors and went to bed. As soon as they left I would tremble with fear – what frightened me was the expectation of a ghost coming from the dark passage near the stairway to the bedroom. Our house was built on the hillside underneath another building and the stairway, which was wet and dark, ran up behind the dining-room wall like a railway tunnel.
I shall never forget the sight of my twin brother and sister, James and Sarah, suffering with the croup. My mother got some stiff brown paper and covered it with goose grease, then heated it before the fire and placed it on their chests and necks, but they screamed more and more, and looked as if they were choking. When morning came, she sent me for the priest – she had more faith in his treatment than the doctor. Anyway, prayers or medicine, it made no difference, my brother and sister died just the same.
Six of my siblings died before they could walk – somebody seemed to come or die at our house every year when I was a boy. I was eleven when I first learned where babies came from. My mother was preparing to bake our weekly 20 lb of dough, when she started to scream for me to run and ‘fetch Mary O'Donnell and tell her I am sick’. Mary lived a few doors away. She was not a certified midwife, but all the children around knew that she brought babies from somewhere. They loved her and thought she was an angel.
When she heard my message, she ran to my mother, and I followed. My mother lay on some papers spread out on the floor, which seemed to be covered with messy blood, and Mary was pulling a baby from her belly. She told me to go out and play for a while. I was reluctant – I thought my mother might die. However, I returned soon after and Mary had cleaned my mother up and put her in bed with the baby. She told me to put more coal on the fire and make the house warmer. She said, ‘Your mother is asleep, and she has brought you another little sister.’
Harrison Robinson
I was born in 1892 in Burnley. I had four sisters and a brother, but my brother died of appendicitis when he was ten. My dad worked at the gasworks – he was a labouring type of chap from a farming family in Yorkshire. My mother never went out to work. My mother went into service at Kettlewell when she was eight years old. After that she never went back home on her holidays. She left service to get married.
I went to Alder Street School until I was twelve. Then I went in the mill half-time, mornings one week and afternoons the week after, with school the rest of the time. The doctor had to pass you as fit when you went, but it was a bit of a farce. He came to the mill – and everybody passed.
We weren't tired at school when we were working half-time and we had no homework. But we had tests we had to pass. I was very good at sums and arithmetic. I used to go to the corner of the class and teach the dunces how to do their sums. I left school when I was thirteen.
Bill Owen