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

Don Murray

My dad used to do everything wrong. He went with the choir one weekend to a cricket match. He only went as a spectator, but they were a man short so they decided he should keep wicket. He had no flannels and he decided not to take his bowler hat off. Well, the ball came to him and instead of using his hands, he stuck the hat out and the ball shot straight through it. When he came home that night, he stood in the doorway as drunk as he ever could be, with this little lid on top of his broken hat and a lot of sausages hanging out of his coat pocket down one side. He'd bought them for Mum as a gift offering to keep her sweet. She took one look at him and called him a damned fool. He looked at her. ‘What have I done wrong now, my dear?’ he asked. He was a very funny man. He was a very good singer, too. He used to sing in the pubs on the Saturday night. Mum would go down there to listen and when they came home they'd quarrel. I used to lay in my bed shivering, dreading them coming home and quarrelling.

Reece Elliott

In those days we were lucky if we had one pair of boots – no shoes, dear me. Many a time we walked with two odd uns. People who were well off would hoy them out over the wall, we used to get them and pick all the good uns out, you'd be maybe running about with a six and a seven, or maybe a seven and a nine.

My father cut my hair, and you know what he used to cut my hair with? Horse clippers. He was in with the horsekeeper at the pit, who used to give him big combs, when they were too bad for the horses. They had that many teeth broken, they used to give them to my father. You can imagine what that was like, sitting on the bloody cracket, getting your hair cut, all off, little bit top left, aye, the yakkers cut! Just a bit left on top. With the teeth being broken, he must have gone o'er the bugger umpteen times, like a bad cut in a cornfield! I used to be laughing when he was doing us. Sitting there squawking and scringing. My mother, not showing sympathy, would say, ‘Be canny, you bugger, sit still!’ Especially our Lance, he had a cowlick, Father says, ‘I cannot do nowt with this bugger, it'll all have to come off!’

Bessy Ruben

My friend Dinah's mother had a cheese stall down Petticoat Lane every day except Saturdays. I used to go with Dinah to collect this cheese. One day, we dawdled along, taking our time, and we changed dresses, like children do. I put her dress on and she put mine on. Her mother was waiting for us to come back, and when we finally arrived, she mistook me for Dinah and clouted me. I said, ‘I'm not Dinah!’ and she said, ‘Never mind, you're just as bad!’

Tom Kirk

In 1908, my father died. I went to the reception after his funeral, where I was reprimanded by Uncle Harold for kicking a football about the lawn. ‘Tom, please, NOT at a time like this!’ Sadly, I realise that I had seen so little of Father in the preceding year that his death meant little.

Jim Crow

When Mother died, Father got married again, and it was disastrous. She drank like a fish. I remember my father visiting my grandfather at his house in Lincolnshire and bringing the second wife with him. We were in the sitting room, having lunch, when my grandfather turned to my father and said, ‘Jack, I don't think much of your choice.’

Jack Banfield

On the way home from school, one of the routines was to pick up what bits of wood you found along the wharves on the Thames, so that when you got indoors, Mum'd be able to light the fire. When I got in, Mum'd say ‘Your dad's not been in, he must be working. Go round to the wharf and see.’ So we went to where he was working and he'd say, ‘Yes. We're working till seven o'clock. Fetch me a jug of tea.’ So I'd take him a jug of tea and wait outside the back gate. When he'd finished the tea, he'd give me the jug back and there'd be some ripe bananas in it, off one of the ships, for us to have for our tea.

Freda Ruben

I didn't have any new clothes and I used to cry about it. My friends Fanny and Florrie used to go to Petticoat Lane to buy lovely dresses, and I wanted one. My mother said she'd got no money. I cried and cried – but I never got anything. If I wanted a farthing, I used to cry for it and not get it. I remember crying myself sick because I wanted one of those peppermints shaped like a walking stick. My mother wasn't impressed. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘cut my throat.’ ‘I want a walking stick,’ I wailed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you can't have it.’

Ethel Barlow

Dad was an engine driver. He drove a steam train between Plaistow Station and Aldgate East. My brothers used to wait for him and he'd take one at a time on his engine for a little ride. When he came past our house on the goods train, he used to toot us up and my mother would come out to the garden and he'd thrown her a side of bacon and a huge lump of coal for our fire. That happened very often. There was a lot of pilfering like that. One day he came home and he had about ten pairs of new boots in his bag. We all had a pair. Another day, he came home with six bottles of whisky and gin. He hid them in the coal cupboard underneath the boards. He used to come home with all sorts of things: thirty bars of Fry's Chocolate Cream, a bag full of crabs and shrimps, all sorts. It helped us a lot – his wages was only £2.10 shillings. Every day of his life he went to work on bread and cheese and a can of tea. The railway police came to us once but they didn't find anything. My cousin Frank was also an engine driver and he lived round the back of us. The railway police went in his house and his wife tried to hide all the bottles but the police heard them clinking and they locked him up. He lost his job.

My mother was nearly always drunk, so I used to take my three brothers out of the house when I got home from school. One day, when my dad got home from work, he couldn't find my mother anywhere. We went out into the garden to see if she was there and we found her in the chicken shed on the ground, blind drunk, all the chickens running over her. So he picked her up, fetched her indoors, washed her and put her to bed nice and clean. He never said a word to her about it, not an angry word ever. He had the patience of a saint.

Arthur Harding

Every night, there were children in the pub all night long until the Liberal Party stopped it, and that was as late as 1911.

Mary Keen

On the Sabbath, I used to wake up with an awful feeling that something terrible had happened. There was just a feeling in the air. You daren't laugh and all your toys and books had to be put away. My father used to sit with a newspaper while we washed, tidied up the house and got ready for church. I had one special frock for Sunday and a top petticoat. In those days, I was bundled up from the top down to my boots. This petticoat had a starched top which used to cut into my neck. It was so painful that when it got to tea time, I would look at the clock, thinking, ‘God, only another two hours before I go to bed.’ I was so glad to take that thing off. At church, we sat in a pew and I would pass the plate, and if we were flush, one of us would put a ha'penny in, otherwise we put nothing in. I told a vicar once how I hated Sundays. I think I shocked him. After church, we had to go to Sunday school. In the evening, we were allowed out, but we were never allowed to ‘hang about’ as Father called it. We had to go for a walk and I used to like going to Kensal Green cemetery. I used to watch the people weeping and putting flowers on the graves and I used to think it must be lovely to be dead.

Ernest Hugh Haire

I can remember our Sundays. My parents were great churchgoers. Father wore a frock coat and a tall hat and Mother wore leg-o'-mutton sleeves. We went to morning service and evening service and I went to Sunday school in between. People used to come to our house after church in the evening to have refreshments. We had cold meats, jellies and blancmange. Our friends brought music with them and we sang round the piano.

Ronald Chamberlain

I was brought up in a very strict environment. On one occasion, I went round to the home of a schoolfellow and he played some rather doubtful comic records on his gramophone. I went home and relayed these to my parents with great glee and was immediately told that I must never go to that place again. There was great strictness about table manners. No elbows on the table. Don't put food in your mouth when it's already full. Don't speak while you're eating. We always said grace before and had to ask permission to leave the table. Similarly, there were very strict rules in regard to the treatment of ladies. We had to open doors for them, let them go before us and walk on the roadside when they were out with us. The way we were dressed as children was very restrictive. At the age of five or six I had a velvet suit with an elaborate lace collar, and I can remember how uncomfortable it was.

Albert ‘Smiler’ Marshall

Manners were very important in those days. If the boys didn't raise their caps and the girls curtsy to the gentry, then we were given a lesson in manners.

Mrs G. Edwards

There was a lot of crime going on in those days. I was always warned never to speak to anybody and never to take money or sweets from anybody I didn't know. I remember walking in Thornton Heath and a man came the other way, carrying a big bag of coal. As he passed me, he knocked my head and I started to cry. He offered me a penny but I wouldn't take it. That frightened me far more than the bump on the head.

Ella Grace Hunt

My mother used to keep a cane on the table, and if we didn't behave ourselves she said we would get ‘Tickle Toby’. That's what she called the cane – ‘Tickle Toby’. Well, for the most part we were very well behaved.

Thomas Henry Edmed

We lived in a millhouse on an estate owned by the chairman of the National Provincial Bank. Father was a labourer on the estate. He had been a colour sergeant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He was paid eighteen bob a week, from which he had to pay four bob rent. That left mum with fourteen shillings, for seven children. She had a hell of a time making this money go round. We used to get wood from the estate. We had a big brick oven and mother used to get flour in by the sack and she baked all her own bread. For clothes and shoes, we were always on our uppers. Father had a pension from the Fusiliers. He got seven pound every three months, which would have helped, but the trouble was he used to spend most of it at the tavern.

Edith Turner

While my mother was in hospital with my brother and sister, my father had the opportunity of selling papers to earn himself a few coppers. When he was out doing this, I was locked in a room at home so that I couldn't come in contact with the landlord. The landlord would knock on the door, and when he got no answer he tried to open the door to get in. I used to lie on the floor and watch him to see when he went away.

Mrs G. Edwards

When we were little, my mother would fill the bath in the kitchen and bathe us in there. One day, she brought in a saucepan of boiling water and poured it into the bath, and when she went off to get some cold water, my younger sister fell backwards into the bath. My mother took her to the doctor straight away but he wouldn't have anything to do with it and told mother to take her to St Thomas's Hospital. We didn't think she was going to live. My father came home and when he heard, he was in an awful way and went straight to the hospital. After he left her, he was walking away when he heard her crying. He rushed back again and he found her in the ward with nobody with her and he made an awful fuss about it. He said he wouldn't leave her there. They told him that if he took her away, he'd be responsible for her death. So he left her in the end, but he told my older sister Nellie, who was about fourteen at the time, to go to the hospital to talk to the nurses to try and get them to take an interest in my little sister. She lived, but her back's been all scarred ever since.

Tom Kirk

In 1905 I remember a great adventure – a visit to London! I still remember the smell of leather seats and the swishing of the horses' tails as we went along Station Road. I remember Father's remarks on the train as we neared Peterborough. ‘Look out on the right and you may see a red Midland and Great Northern train racing us!’ The following day, we went to Brixton to pick up a tram into the City, but the electrical supply had somehow failed, and when the tram finally appeared it was pulled by a horse.

Dorothy Scorey

Mother said we all had to have a trade, because she was left a widow when she was in her forties and she said that if we were ever left like her, you have to have something you can put your hand to. She was so blooming strict with us. ‘Any of my girls bring trouble home to me, the workhouse you'll go.’ That's what she used to say. She wouldn't let us out after ten o'clock, and if we were talking to a boy, she'd come up and say, ‘I don't thank you boys for keeping my girls out at night time!’ I always used to say, ‘We'll never get married, any of us!’

Ernest Hugh Haire

We had a servant who lived in. Her name was Bridget and we used to call her Biddy. She was a delightful Irish person who kept us in order as children. Her husband was a sailor with the Cunard Line. He lived with us too when he was home from sea, and did odd jobs for Father. He made all sorts of toys for us. They were marvellous people. We had another woman there for a time who was paid £8 a year.

Mary Keen

My father was a very hateful kind of man. None of us liked him. He ruled us with a rod of iron. We were afraid to speak or laugh. He thought we were a lot of dummies. He always rowed with my mother for no reason at all. We'd be sitting at the table, having our meal, and he'd glare at her, then he'd start swearing and cursing and he'd fling up the window and shout out, ‘I'm going to let everyone know what you are! You're a so-and-so and a so-and-so!’ His language was filthy. Then he'd go out for a walk and he'd come back and he'd be as right as rain. I think he was a bit mad. One morning we woke up and found that he was gone. We were rejoicing, but he'd only gone hop picking in Kent.

Jack Brahms

I was twelve when my mother died and after that I had to fathom for myself. Father couldn't do much for me. He used to make me go to the synagogue every morning and evening but apart from that he wasn't interested. He might have made a meal at the weekend but most of my meals were a ha'p'orth of chips from Phillips, the fish and chip shop in Brick Lane. I'd sit on my doorstep and eat it. Or else, I'd go to the soup kitchen to get a can of soup and a loaf of bread. I used to go to McCarthy's lodging house because they had a fire burning there and I'd have a warm-up. I had to bring myself up.

Daniel Davis

I had an aunt in Rothschild Buildings – Aunt Bessy, and she was very orthodox. Her eldest son was a cripple and he used to sit on a settee all day. He used to sleep there and eat there and everything. It was terrible to go into that place because he used to do his business in the room. You used to think twice about going up there.