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
