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,
