Mrs Clark
We lived close to the sea, and every morning, after my mother got the baby and me washed, we used to go onto the sands with a two-handled basket. She took one handle and I took the other – and of course she was carrying the baby. When we got to the seashore, my mother used to put a piece of cloth down for us to sit on, and I had to look after the baby. My mother then gathered sticks and coal to put on the fire. The wages were that small, you had to do something. So when my mother had got plenty of coal and sticks we used to come away. I would only be about three years old.
Polly Lee
I remember my mother having a small pail, and we used to go round the marketplace asking if people could spare us a little coal. My mother was a widow at the time, and when she remarried she got her coal, I think that was one of the things she got married for. She had to keep us.
Florence Hannah Warn
When I was about ten, I did some housework for a crippled lady, scrubbing cement paths with a long-handled broom bigger than I, then scrubbing a long passage of linoleum and polishing it afterwards, black-leading a huge old-fashioned fireplace, scrubbing the floor cloth in the living room, and then scrubbing the scullery floor. It must have taken four or five hours. I was paid the princely sum of one shilling, but I had to hand it over to Mother, and received tu'pence for myself, but there was no feeling of resentment, as it was expected and quite usual.
Mr W. Cowburn
At times you just hadn't got a shoe to your foot. There were schemes where they sometimes used to send a pair of shoes, but they were nearly always much too big. You were either crippled with them or hoping your feet would grow. I remember me sister carrying me to school on her back. You were all right once you got into the classroom.
Mary Lawson
Great-grandfather was a wonderful old man. He was six foot three and about sixteen stone. On a Saturday he used to walk down the town, wearing a grey alpaca suit and his grey top hat and his stick, to the co-operative store. At the head office he'd pay the grocery bill and I would get a packet of boiled sweets, which used to last me all week. If he had pigs to sell they would already be in the market and he would meet his fellow cronies. They were all selling hens and chickens and what have you, and he would have a glass of whisky, thruppence a glass then. He would say to me, ‘Now, if you sell a pig, I'll give you some pocket money’ I think I was only once lucky enough to sell one. Then we would walk back, strip off, have a meal, then he'd feed his family, feed the horses, the chickens, the pigs, and then I think perhaps he would get a sit down, because he liked to smoke and he smoked a clay pipe.
Mrs Linsley
I was born in Cornwall, where my father was a miner. But within a year he got a job working for an urban district council. He said, ‘This bairn's brought us luck.’ He built us a house, at West Kyo, ten miles south of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In those days when you moved house it was on a horse and cart, with men with caps on. Mother was carrying me, trying to keep up with all our possessions, trying to get there with the key to let him in. She put me on the doorsteps to open the door. She opened the door and I walked along the passage – they didn't know I could walk. My father said, ‘I told you that bairn was going to bring us luck.’
My mother's father had a stroke, and he lay there for five years. There weren't nurses, if you had a stroke you just lay there. He lost his speech, and he was paralysed. My grandmother couldn't manage, so my mother sent me to school at three, so she could walk from West Kyo to the Lizzie Pit every day to help her mother turn and bath and feed him. I think my father used a bit of influence with the headmaster, but at that age, I couldn't do a lot.
Mrs Carter
My father was very strict with us, we all had to be in by ten o'clock, even when we were engaged to be married. If we weren't in he went to the door and blew his whistle. Everybody heard his whistle, even if we were a long way off. ‘It's after ten o'clock you know’ – ‘Well I've been …’ ‘It doesn't matter, ten o'clock's your time,’ and that was it. Mother was a little bit sympathetic; she used to say, ‘You should be in as you've promised.’
Polly Lee
We sometimes got on with our stepfather, but he never seemed to forget that we weren't his. I remember one night I wanted to go out. ‘Has thee done tha homework?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Has thee washed up?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Has thee done the pit clothes?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well stop in.’ If he was washing in front of the fire and you went between him and the fire, oh my! He had a song he used to sing when he was getting washed, ‘She's in the aslyum now’ – he meant asylum, but he got a hold of it the wrong way. I don't think he could spell asylum.
He was kind with the little uns though, when they were poorly. My mother had quite a few babies die very young, and he'd sit up all night with them. That was one good point he had, but of course they were his. She had eight to my stepfather, and just one lived. They were breastfed in those days, and her body wasn't nourished so she couldn't feed the children.
There were some awful houses, with no road out the back. Ashes had to be carried through the house. We used to have to put old matting down – there was no wash-away closet then – we had ash closets. Everything had to come through the bedroom and the kitchen on to the street. We had to ask the farmer when he could come and take it away, but then maybe something would happen and he couldn't get all ash and stuff out the closet. It would just be lying on the street, then the hens would come and have a feed. Then you'd eat their eggs! They kept the hens on the streets – there was nowhere else to keep them. My mother would never have an egg off anyone who'd got hens on the street, so there were very few eggs in our house.
William George Holbrook
I started school when I was four years old. We had to walk two miles to the school and on the way was this pub – The Good Intent. It was just a wooden building, but every morning, as we walked past before nine o'clock, there were two old boys with their billycock hats, sitting at a table in the yard, drinking beer.
Fred Lloyd
I was five years old when I started at Uckfield Holy Cross School. There were fifty children in the class. The school day started at nine and at twelve we had a break. Then we carried on until four. In the break, we played conkers, skipping, and football – except we used to kick a tennis ball because we didn't have a proper football. I was pretty good most of the time, but the headmaster, Mr Richards used the stick on me once. I let a firework off in the cloakroom and it went off right outside his window. When he gave you the stick, he liked hitting you on the tips of your fingers where it hurt most.
Albert ‘Smiler’ Marshall
My mother Molly Ellen was ill when I was young, so I started school when I was just two and a half years old, although I didn't go on the register until I was five. My brother drove me to school – he had an orange box on wheels, and I used to sit in it. I was four when my mother died – two days after Queen Victoria.
William