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

Our chief fun was dressing our father up – we used to dress him up in all sorts, and he used to sit there and let us. Proper silly games, but there was nothing else to do.

My father was bothered with gout a lot, and was off work, so I had to start working when I was thirteen. I felt awful in that mill, it was horrible. It was at Kinder's and I was with a woman by herself in the basement – she never used to talk to me. I used to cry every night. After six weeks my father said, ‘You're not going there any more,’ and he got me in at Bocking – and I was really happy there. I gave my mind to it – but I knew I could have done something better if I'd had the chance.

We used to look forward to the Christmas tea party, which was held at St Mary's School – each school had their own party. We used to make our own entertainment – dialogues and singing and recitation and dancing. And Whit Friday we used to get up at six o'clock in the morning to get ready, then we'd assemble at school and go on a walk, then come back at dinnertime for tea and buns. Then we had sports in the school field and then we came in for tea. The sports were running, racing, three-legged races, wheelbarrow races, skipping rope races and egg-and-spoon races.

We had a maypole, but not at school, at the band club. The band used to parade round the village with a horse and cart all dressed up – and once a year there was the bike parade, and the bicycles were dressed up with flowers. This was for May Day, and the May Queen and Princess would be on the parade too. They had to vote for the May Queen – and there was a lot of jealousy. I was never May Queen – I was on the retiring side – a bit shy.

We never sat down for a meal. My mother and father sat down, but we had to stand round the table – and we couldn't leave until we'd asked permission. And we hadn't to speak at the table – if we spoke he'd say, ‘Let your meal stop your mouth – that's enough.’ We never answered back. No matter how tired we were, we had to stand, and we went to bed at half past eight every night.

At Christmas we used to hang our stockings up on the mantelpiece and we would get an apple and an orange and a thruppenny bit, and one little toy – then it was filled up with carrots and things.

An aunty of mine bought me a doll, and as I was very fond of sewing I used to make this doll little clothes. I think my sister poked the doll's eyes out with a pin when she was a baby – and I cried.

When I was about twelve I helped out at school teaching the little ones ABCs and counting. There was a teacher there – I was just a helper. I'd wipe their noses and take them down to the lavatory, that sort of thing.

We used to have slates tied round our necks with two strings, and the school provided slate pencils. We'd sometimes say, ‘Please sir, I can't write because my pencil wants sharpening,’ and he had something to sharpen them. Then, when we were older, we started with copy books, and we had black lead pencils. When we got pen and ink, it was glorious, we made a lot of blotches, but we thought it was great. The ink was in inkwells set in a little hole in one corner of the desk. That was a great day in our lives when we got inkwells.

We always wore all sorts of clothes. First a vest, then a chemise over the top, then a liberty bodice, then a flannel petticoat and a cotton petticoat, then your frock, and a pinny over the top. And knickers – and woollen stockings that Mother knitted herself – she used to make all our frocks too. We kids were sweltered to death in those days. We had clogs and shoes for Sundays. I had to have buttoned-up boots and we had a button hook to fasten them. We had to take our Sunday boots off when we came back from Sunday school and put our clogs back on. You'd take your frock off while you played, and then change back to go to school in the afternoon.

My father used to dose us with castor oil every so often, whether we needed it or not. He would stand us in a row, the three of us, with a spoonful of jam in one hand and the castor oil bottle in the other. If your stomach was out of order Mother used to brew gentian root, wormwood and camomile flowers – and we used to have to have bitters – that put your stomach right. Every spring, we had a jar with black treacle and powdered sulphur in it, and we would have a spoonful of it every morning, whether we wanted it or not. That was to purify your blood. If we had a cold, it was black treacle, butter and linseed tea. We didn't go to the doctor's unless it was absolutely necessary, because we had to pay.

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 George Holbrook

I attended a little one-roomed school of around thirty children. The headmistress, Miss Weedon, was an old devil. She lived in a house next door to the school and one afternoon, during a very heavy thunderstorm, her house was hit by lightning. They had to clear us out of the school and I can remember standing outside in the pouring rain singing, ‘Oh Miss Weedon's house's on fire!’ We were all clapping our hands as her house went up.

Emma Ford

Our school was very basic. It had rough whitewashed stone walls and it was very dusty. We had the old combustion stoves and the smell of the coke used to get on your chest. But the rooms were warm. We got out for quarter of an hour in the morning to play, and then ten minutes in the afternoon. In the yard, we didn't think of anything but skipping. The boys played with whips and tops. Sometimes I took my doll to school, but more often than not it was taken from me and I lost its frock or some of its hair. There were no toys in school to play with. We played with bits of paper and we drew. Our teacher, Miss Stephenson, used to wear a great big hat and her hair was all piled up. And her little waist was tight in and her bust stood right out. I don't know where they got their bustles from, but people's busts and behinds went right out.

Mary Allison

We used to use slates. They were horrid things – they used to scrape when you wrote on them. We had to bring in our own rag to clean them, but sometimes we used to spit to wipe the writing off. It wasn't a nice thing to spit, but in those days you just did it.

Jackie Geddes

Our teacher was Mr Rose. He lived at Chester-le-Street, and he used to come in on a little Douglas motorbike. He'd been in the Boer War. The slates we had were about twelve inches, bigger than the infants' slates, and you had to buy your own slate. And you used to have a string fastened on so you could put it on your back, or inside your satchel. You did your homework on that. When you came back though, it might be raining, and if you had put your slate under your coat, it used to get rubbed off. If you put it in your satchel it was just the same. So you couldn't protect it, it got rubbed or washed off, and when you got to school the next morning, it would be ‘Where's your homework?’, ‘Sir, it was raining’, ‘It wasn't raining where I was,’ and you got the cane. I thought that was very unfair.

Rebecca Bowman

When we got our photos taken, the teacher would get an exercise book and make a paper collar. You would never think they had a paper collar on when they got their photo took. They had bare feet, but still the teacher put a paper collar on.

We used to get a great big ball of thick wool on a Wednesday afternoon for knitting with and we used to have big long needles. And we used to knit a whole lump and then whoever had knitted the most got some marks for it. Then when we'd finished, it was pulled out and wrapped up and then put on the needles. The same ball of wool.

Emma Ford

In the summer, we all wore cheap straw hats with elastic underneath. In the winter, we wore woollen, hand-knitted hats. The boys always wore cloth caps. We would hang up our hats and then we went to wash our hands in the basin. There was one basin with a roller towel. When that was done, we went and sat in the classroom with our arms folded, waiting for the teacher to come in. When she came in we stood up and she would say, ‘Good morning children.’ And we had to nod our heads and say, ‘Good morning Miss Johnston.’ Then she came round and examined our hands, back and front. A lot of boys were sent to get their hands washed again.

Bessy Ruben