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
