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
