Lost Voices of the Edwardians: 1901–1910 in Their Own Words

During the summer we roamed far and wide over the plain, with no restrictions of any kind and seeing no one but an occasional shepherd. In due season we went in search of peewit eggs to take home for breakfast, or to fill our baskets with mushrooms. The cry of the peewits and never-ending song of the larks, the beautiful little harebells, the rabbit warrens, the sudden start of a hare and, above all, the short, springy turf that was so pleasant to walk on. This is what Salisbury Plain means to me.

Dorothy Wright

I had a beloved Highland nanny who was the most wonderful naturalist. She knew the names of all the wild flowers. She knew where the various birds nested and she used to take me out carrying old leaking kettles that she found on rubbish heaps and she'd put one at the root of certain bushes and she'd say, ‘You see! A robin will build in that!’ And one almost invariably did.

William Keate

Butterflies. On a summer's day you could count twenty or thirty different species, and we would spend hours trying to catch them – and when we got tired, we would sit on the grass, dig out a square hole, put some twigs across the top and catch the grasshoppers – of which there were hundreds. What did not get out of the hole, you lifted out and set free while you went on to something else. We respected wildlife and flowers.

Henry Allingham

As a boy, I was friendly with the sons of Andrews the Chemist. They used to have a big house, and I used to go and play with their children. It was there that I sat in my first motor car. They had a lot of lovely swings and roundabouts in their playroom and they had a little lake in their garden with a boat on it. We used to be given a lovely peach melba in a long glass – and I wasn't used to that sort of thing. They were way ahead of us.

Joseph Henry Yarwood

We had Battersea Park nearby, and that was really marvellous. It had a boating lake and I used to go down there on a Saturday afternoon to read a book. They had a deer park and some wonderful cavern-like aviaries, full of owls. It was perfectly quiet. If I'd been on a gentleman's estate, I couldn't have had better surroundings.

George Perryman

We used to keep linnets, canaries and finches. There used to be a little pub opposite us in Canal Road called the Moulder's Arms that had competitions for the best singing birds, so we used to put our linnets and finches in little cages, and a black handkerchief over them, and take them over to the pub, where we'd hang up the cage with our name on it and they'd have the competition. When I was a youngster, I used to go on a bike to see my grandfather on a Sunday and he used to take me over to Hackney Marshes just beside the River Lea. He was a bird fancier, my grandfather. We used to set a trap. We put a linnet in a cage and put a trap next to it. We put food in the trap and attached a stick to the door and attached twine to the stick. We lay on the river bank and watched as all these linnets came down. They used to come down in droves. As soon as they got into the trap, we pulled the twine and the piece of wood came loose and the trap shut. We might catch two or three linnets at once. My grandfather used to sell them privately for two shillings or half a crown. The cock bird was the singer so he was more expensive.

Mr Lockey

My father didn't give me any pocket money so I had to make it in other ways. I had three long nets, a 100-yard, a 70-yard and a 33-yard, and I had a clever dog. I used to go out at night and set the 100-yard net up at the quarries while the dog lay in wait. Then I would send him round while I lay down. I would see the rabbits in the moonlight being herded towards the net as the dog ran back and forth. When he arrived at the net he would jump over it and come to me. Then I went to the net and took out the rabbits. At the time I was supplying fifty rabbits a week to the miners of Boldon colliery. The price was three shillings and sixpence a couple, but if they'd been shot, the price would only have been eighteen pence a couple, so it's clear why I was taking them alive. I was also a bit of a poacher, and when I was hard up, I would call hares. If the wind was the right way, I could call them from about a mile. Then I used to shoot them. I'd get five shillings a time. That kept me in pocket money.

Bessy Ruben

There was a barrel organ on a Saturday afternoon in Thrawl Street during the summer, and the children would dance in the street. We'd look forward to it. My mother didn't like it, but she'd let me go. I used to have my hapenny ready for him – his name was Percy. There was one little girl – a beautiful dancer – and we used to make a ring round her and clap while she danced.

Ted Harrison

I used to like the fairs on Hackney Marshes. I loved the joywheel. It was a flat wheel and it spun you round and we used to like it because you could see the girls' knees and their drawers. Or ‘freetraders’ as we called them. They were bloomers that came just above the knee. They were the latest thing. Another new thing was fancy garters. Some of the girls were daring – on the bottom of their petticoats they used to wear a little bit of lace that would show under the skirt. That was the enticement, you see. It used to get them a free drink at the pictures or a fish and chip supper. A little bit of lace showing.

Tom Kirk

On one occasion, when I was invited to Sunday dinner by the parents of a boy at school, we threw mud from behind a hedge at the girls of Lowther College who were coming out of church in a crocodile. We were spotted and soundly thrashed.

Arthur Harding

We used to go hop picking in Kent. Mostly it was people from South London. The farmer was called Hawthorn, and every year he sent a letter and paid for our fare down, otherwise we wouldn't have gone. He used to send the train tickets because he didn't trust us with the money. Because, frankly speaking, nobody was honest. When we got there, we all used to sleep with our clothes on in a great big barn – about thirty or forty of us. We children were a priceless asset because we were very quick at picking. We used to bung the whole lot in the bins, anything we could get hold of.

Albert ‘Smiler’ Marshall

We used to have a day's holiday from school for picking pears, and for lifting potatoes, the whole family taking part. Our only excursion was to an agricultural show at White City, and that involved a two-mile walk to the local station.

Sonia Keppel

Usually, Kingy, too, spent Easter at Biarritz, and gradually I came to realise that Tweedledum, Sir Ernest Cassel, was quite easily distinguishable from Kingy – Tweedledee. For one thing, Tweedledee laughed more easily and, as I already knew, he could enter into nursery games with unassumed enthusiasm. Always, he was accompanied by his dog, Caesar, who had a fine disregard for the villa's curtains and chair-legs.

Beach parties and parties with other children took up our time, and one Easter Sunday, Kingy, ourselves and a host of others set forth for a mammoth picnic. Kingy liked to think of these as impromptu parties, and little did he realise the hours of preliminary hard work they had entailed.

First, his car led the way, followed by others containing the rest of the party. Then the food, guarded by at least two footmen, brought up the rear. Kingy spied out the land for a suitable site and, at his given word, we all stopped, and the footmen set out the lunch. Chairs and a table appeared, linen table-cloths, plates, glasses, silver. Every variety of cold food was produced, spiced by iced cup in silver-plated containers. Everything was on a high level of excellence, except the site chosen. For some unfathomed reason, Kingy had a preference for picnicking by the side of the road. On Easter Day, inevitably, this was packed with carriages and the first motor cars, all covered with dust, and when we parked by the roadside, most of the traffic parked with us.

Ruben Landsman

The children used to do an annual trip to Crystal Palace, and all the boys lined up and the teacher gave you a brand-new sixpence each. And the monitor got one and sixpence. We marched to Aldgate Station or Liverpool Street Station. I remember the first time I saw the train.

Ellen Clark

We lived next door to an engineer, and every Christmas Eve he used to send his daughter round and she would ask my sister and I to their house. They would have 2 lb of the best raisins and they put them on a plate and they put some rum over them and they set light to them. The first time we saw this, we daren't touch them – we were frightened, so the other girls were eating them all. So the mother said, ‘What's the matter with you Barbara and Mary Ellen?’ And her daughter said, ‘They're frightened to touch them’. ‘Oh’ she said, ‘Get on with them – they'll not hurt you!’ So we tried them and after that we didn't stop.

Tom Kirk

In 1908 I remember staying with the Robsons, a wealthy family in Stockton. I arrived at noon to hear that Sidney, the second son, had been locked in his bedroom with bread and water because he had tortured a cat. Meanwhile, Marjorie, Sidney's sister, was left alone with me. She suggested that we should change clothes. Not realising what this implied, I was starting to strip off, when her mother came in and marched me off to another room where she gave me a lecture on sex. Later that summer, when Sidney was again locked up for some misdemeanour, a game of hide and seek was organised and Marjorie disappeared. Some time later, she was found lying beside a haystack in the arms of a naked farmhand.

Arthur Harding

We used to do a trick – a bloody dangerous trick and all. We'd pin a sheet of paper on a bloke's back when he was in a crowd and we'd set light to the paper at the bottom. I had two pals – Wally Shepherd and Billy Warner. They both got knocked out in the First World War. Billy was a diddicoy – a gypsy who'd settled down – and the three of us were always up to bloody mischief.

Thomas Henry Edmed

A gang of us went into Windsor Park and we walked miles and found this hut. It was a carpenter's hut and inside it, there was everything; beautifully polished saws, choppers, axes, chisels and screwdrivers. It was the most elaborate place. What we did to that hut was really dreadful. We left the lot all piled in a heap in the middle. The police never found out who did it.

Sonia Keppel

At first, the Christmas holidays seemed to have a movable background. At the age of three, I spent them at Gopsall, where lived Lord and Lady Howe, and where I have no recollection of anything except of an enormous grown-up, fancy-dress dinner party on Christmas Eve. To this I was brought down, dressed up as an Admiral of the Fleet, impersonating my great-uncle, Sir Harry Keppel, whom I was said to resemble. My uniform was perfect in every detail, including the sword. But it was hot and smelt nasty, and my white, cotton-wool eyebrows and side-whiskers were gummed on, and were most painful to pull off. Violet was dressed as a Bacchante, and Mamma and Lord Herbert Vane-Tempest were got up as a pair of immense twins, pushed into the room in an enormous double perambulator by Papa, as a very hirsute nurse. I remember an alarming collection of Turks and Chinamen and Eastern houris and Watteau shepherdesses. I felt like Gulliver in Brobdingnag. And, the minute I sat down to dinner (as one Admiral to another), I fell asleep with my head in Lord Charles Beresford's lap.

The journey to Duntreath seemed to take nearly as long as that to Biarritz, but it had compensations. At Carlisle, we were allowed out of the train for ten precious minutes, dogged by my fear that the train might proceed without us. During this time we were allowed a change of magazine, and bottled sweets, at the bookstall. And here too, we took on a luncheon basket. ‘Fee fi fo fum’, we said, as we opened it, taking out mammoth rolls of bread containing sides of chicken. The meal tasted delicious, consisting also of the otherwise forbidden fruits of Cheddar cheese and unripe pears. And there was the fun of putting out the basket at the next station. Later, the inevitable pangs of indigestion were dulled by peppermints from Nannie's bag.

Nina Halliday

There were musical comedies in the London theatres, with lots of gay tunes. My sisters used to go and see them and buy the music and play and sing them for their own pleasure. There was one very special one called The Geisha, and for a while Japanese things were very popular. One shop sold them in Windsor. They had brightly coloured paper fans, and dolls of all sizes in crinkly paper, the small ones with arms and legs just stuck between the paper, and a soft paper body. There were coloured parasols of many sizes and they all had a lovely strange scent which seemed to come both from the wrappings and the clothes. I was given one lovely doll dressed in a green satin kimono, with a wide obi or sash, and a bisque china face, hands and feet, but she must have been made in this country – she had not the right scent. But the very best thing I had was the programme of the play – it was made of crinkly rice paper with a fully coloured picture of a Geisha on the cover, and a red silk cord and tassel, and it too had the same unusual attractive scent.

Joe Garroway

We had a circus every two years, Sanger's or Williamson's circus. They used to come to Consett, which was a busy place then. We would get up at six in the morning to see the elephants and antelopes and camels, it was the sight of a lifetime to see the circus come in. They had to get to Tow Law and put the tent up, and do the ring, and at one o'clock they had to give us a procession. The last procession I can remember had a lion on a steel chain and the keeper sitting beside him. They went up the reservoir and back, then performed at half two and half six. They were only here for one day, yet they had the show to put up, the procession to arrange, two performances, and then to get ready to go to the next place the next day.

Albert Rowells

We used to play a lot of matches on the Moor at Newcastle on a Saturday. We had a brown paper parcel under our arms with our boots and such like, and we used to walk through the Fell, then get a penny car down to the High Level end, and then it was a halfpenny to walk over the bridge. And we used to walk from there onto the Moor. We went back into town and we would go into a café to get a tea, then maybe go to the Pavilion or the Empire or the Hippodrome.

Mr Spark

My uncle, Jack Cameron, knew that I had a sailor doll and nigger minstrel doll – when nigger wasn't a dirty word. The nigger minstrel stayed on the wall but I was allowed to play with the sailor doll. My father taught me how to spell nigger in letters. I wouldn't have been able to write those things but I had them memorised. Uncle Jack said, ‘Spell nigger minstrel.’ I said, ‘N.I.G.G.E.R … nigger minstrel.’ That was association of ideas.

Sometimes we used to get a pig's bladder and blow it up as a ball, and then smuggle that from one lad to another. That's all it was, it wasn't really running with it. We used to smuggle it from one to another and we either had to get it to the top of the schoolyard or the bottom of the schoolyard to score points. I was in my element if I was in the bottom of the scrum wrestling to get that bladder. And it didn't matter how you got it, you could push it up your jersey or put it inside your jacket pocket or under your arm. There was too much tackling, you were underneath a score of boys often, scratching around to get it. I was in my element doing that. That was probably why I went on to take up rugby.

Mr Powton