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

William George Holbrook

On Saturdays I worked for my grandfather. He was a mean man. He was a greengrocer with a ginger beard and he used to pay me a shilling for the day. I had to walk to his house about four miles away through the fields. In those days there were no houses beyond Romford. So I spent Saturday making deliveries in his greengrocer's van to the people he knew in Romford. And when I went back to his house at night, he gave me a shilling. He used to keep his money in a bag that he kept in the scales. So I would say, ‘Grandfather! A lady would like to see you!’ and while he was gone, I used to pinch his money. He didn't know. When I got home, I shared it with my older brother and sister. Once, I bought fifteen shillings' worth of fireworks with it. When I left the job to start work on a farm, my younger brother took it on. When he came home the first Saturday, I said, ‘Tom, he keeps his money in a bag in the scales.’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’ Tom worked it out on the first day. I took a year to find out. The funny thing was, just before he died, I went to his shop in Romford and on his deathbed he gave me a gold watch. And I was the one who stole from him.

Bill Smartson

Every Saturday, before I started at the quarry, I used to go over to Ravensworth golf course caddying for the golfers. I got on caddying for a chap, Mr Nixon, he got me to wait every Saturday, and I carried his golf clubs, and I used to clean them after the match with emery paper. He would come out the golf house and say there's four shillings, take that home to your mother and there's sixpence for yourself. Well, out of that sixpence I could go to the pictures for tuppence, buy a bottle of pop for a penny, and get a three-ha'penny paper of fish and chips. I used to give my mother the four shillings on the Saturday. Many a time she was waiting on me coming back, and as soon as she got the money, she was away off to the butcher to get a bit of meat for the Sunday. There was about nine of a family, I was the eldest of nine. Hard days.

Harry Matthews

Pretty nigh every morning when we got to school, first thing the master used to say was, ‘Come out the boys that have been on the breeze lumps’ – picking over rubble for small pieces of coal to burn. There'd be about four or five from Oare and some from this way, and we used to go out and stand in front of him, and he used to send us home to have a wash and clean up, because we smelt so where you'd been on the breeze. Whether you'd been on it or not, when he said that, you went up, because that meant we never used to go back to the breeze till after dinner. Pretty nigh every morning, out we used to troop. I always used to be there.

I've been out here before it was daylight and I can remember raking the snow off once to get some breeze to have indoors for a fire. I've been out there and got that before breakfast of a morning, the firing what comes out of the breeze what they used to burn the bricks with. A policeman caught two of us getting this coke and we had to go up over the market in the court house – but we got off with it.

Kitty Marion

Strange how one learns the bad parts of a language most easily. I came home one day, having taken the baby for an airing, and cheerfully hailed my aunt with, ‘You bloody bugger!’ She was shocked and horrified. Where had I heard such dreadful language! I didn't know it was bad. I had passed two men in the street and one slapped the other on the shoulder laughing, using that expression. I thought it was something nice and friendly.

Ethel Barlow

I remember the Penny Bazaar. We called it the bazaar. There was nothing over a penny. You could get a lovely silver bracelet, a silver ring, earrings. When I bought a pair of the earrings, my dad used to say, ‘Take them out your damned earholes and put one through your nose. You see! She ain't ours! She's come from the gypsies! They've changed her!’ He always swore blind I came from the gypsies. I had long curly hair when I was small, but then I had concussion of the brain and they cut off all my hair.

Once my mum and dad were invited to a ball, because my dad worked on the railway. My dad had to buy a rubber collar and a V-front that looked as if he was wearing a white shirt. My mother bought a straw boater that cost sixpence. She bought a black veil and a pair of gloves. Her blouse was years old with a collar of lovely lace. She had a lovely long feather boa round her shoulders. I don't think she had any pants on because she hadn't got any. None of us had. She curled her hair and she looked beautiful. All us kids were left behind that night with no food, so we raided the cupboard to look for all the dry crusts of bread. We found some sugar and we dipped the crusts in hot water and then dipped them in the sugar and we had a feed.

Helen Bowen Pease

On my eighteenth birthday, Mother walked out on us. It was pretty shattering. She was an odd person. She stuck to Father as long as she stuck to anyone. Father was only just forty and it was all excessively upsetting. I had six younger brothers and sisters and it was extremely difficult to explain to Father's friends that the last thing we wanted was to be handed over to our mother. Father was our principal protection. Mother was as hard as nails – or diamonds – because she had a certain brilliance. We had to fight it out in the law courts because she tried to take us children. I gave evidence, and it must have been quite a shock to the judge because Mother's father was a very famous judge.

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

In those days you only had to see a policeman and you'd run. You hadn't done nothing – but you still ran. You were terrified of the police, and there used to be some tough customers. In the coal yards by us there used to be some battles on Saturday nights. There were houses off Maynard Street and there were steps and railings – I've seen the police getting knocked over those railings.

Polly Oldham

My father was a labourer with Blackburn Corporation and my mother stayed at home. There were eight of us children – Harry, Jim, Jo, May, me, Frances, who died of diphtheria, Ethel, who died of TB, and Albert. There were two years between us all.

We lived in a two-up, two-down, in Hannah Street, Blackburn. We all lived there, but some got married and moved out. We were all very happy, although we weren't well off – Dad was a labourer, boiling the pitch all round Blackburn.

We had a wash boiler and Dad used to make broth in it. It tasted good. He used to put sheep's heads in, big lumps of beef, and vegetables and barley and dumplings. Then we'd go round the street giving out broth and sometimes patty cakes to the old girls.

Every child they had made it that much harder for my mother, because there was just the one wage coming in. Some of the children were at school when I was born, and within a fortnight she was back washing and so on. The older lads and my dad looked after the family for those weeks.

I started work when I was twelve – half a day at the mill, half a day at school, then I went full-time when I was thirteen. I had a bad arm, and I had to go to the infirmary every twelve months and have it scraped. They wanted to take my arm off, and my mother said, ‘What chance has she if you don't?’ ‘Well, just as much chance as she has now.’ So she said, ‘Leave it on, then. We'll risk it.’

We used to play games with old buttons, and we used to have wooden hoops which you put round your neck or waist, and then swing them. Then we played tips – rounders. You'd hit the ball with your hand and run, and they'd try to hit you before you got to the next stop. We played in the street, and the organ-grinder used to come round once a week, and we'd go and dance on the flags to the music. The boys used to dance as well. Then a rag-and-bone man used to come round with a peep show. You'd give him rags, then he'd let you look through a little hole, while he was pulling a string to make these dolls dance.

We had a good wash before we went to bed. We had no bath, so we used a big bread mug. Mother used to bath us and Father used to wipe us – girls one night, lads another. We washed our hair every week in the sink, and then she'd put Rankin's ointment on – ooh it did stink! Our lads used to say, ‘Is it sassafrass night? We're going out.’ It smelled like sarsaparilla but very strong, it was to stop you getting nits. She wouldn't let us go to school with Rankin's ointment on, but she used to put it on Friday nights, then she'd wash our hair on Sunday before we went to school on Monday. She was a very clean woman – spotlessly clean. We had sand on the floor, but you could have eaten your dinner off it when she swept that sand up, and the bedroom boards were white – she used to struggle with bleach and water.

At Christmas we used to hang our stockings up, and we'd get a toffee pig, an apple and an orange, a bar of chocolate and a little toy – and you could buy a little doll then for tuppence, with a black head, and she'd give us girls bits of rags to make clothes for them. The boys would get a whistle or a flashlight – something like that, and a new penny. She'd make a rabbit pie with some beef in – I used to like the head. I used to like picking it over.

I had rheumatic fever when I was eleven and I was ill for a long time then. I went to Blackburn Infirmary and I got St Vitus Dance – they had to strap me down. You never hear of it any more.

When I was fourteen we moved to Providence Street next to the Co-Op – to a house with a bath! We wanted more room and it had three bedrooms. The toilet was outside, and downstairs we had the front room, a hallway and a kitchen.

Father was a great fellow – marvellous. He used to like a pint, but he'd do anything for his kids. When the fair came to Blackburn, the marketplace was full of horses that went up and down on a carousel. Then there was the cakewalk – all of it run by steam engines. There were huge swinging boats with each side holding fifty people. They were on big pulleys, and there were also swinging boats for two, where you had to pull yourself up, and on the ground there was hoop-la stalls. You could buy peanuts, hot chestnuts, popcorn and black peas. They used to sell lotus in the shop – you could chew it. It was like a big piece of root – like liquorice to chew on, but you'd spit it out – not swallow it.

Lena Burton