Pre-war childhood

[dogduke]

stutterdog wrote: Brandy wrote: I really enjoyed reading through that Geordie nice one mate I think Iansmithof otley put Geordies thead up a week or 2 back? Ithink I made a comment about it too.I think I said that things hadn't moved on much from the 30's to thelate 40's? Thanks for putting it up again though it's well worth a read. Lots of things mentioned were still in 'vogue' in my early days,circa 1945 plus.The midden,shared outside toilets and such.We had a back to back in Newtown.Room,scullery,two bedrooms,attic and cellar.Door straight onto the pavement.We were probably lucky in as much that we had a fairly big bath in the scullery.It had a heavy wooded hinged top which served as extra storage/table space when in the down position.The council later 'modernised' a lot of b to b's,converting the second bedroom into a bathroom.No fridge,milk,cooked/raw meat was kept on the cellar head.One huge key for the door which no one in their right mind would carry about,Yale type lock in daily use.The back end of rationing.Paying the doctor to call.All in all nobody had much by way of money,good health,employment etc.,but they were the times when you could rely on and trust neighbours and workmates,not many can say thattoday.All in all a lovely series of stories,well put together and certainly very worth reading.ANY MORE PLEASE ??

[String o' beads]

dogduke wrote: ANY MORE PLEASE ?? Well - I'll tell me Dad he has a very appreciative audience who would welcome more tales.

[Uno Hoo]

My mother's cousin, who was my Godmother, was born in Farsley in 1904. She was an only child, largely because her father died suddenly at a young age. The doctor carried out the post-mortem on the kitchen table, which the widow had to scrub clean afterwards. To add to her distress, she found body parts. I suppose this incident ought to be headed "A Pre-First War Childhood", but along with the other accounts in this thread it serves to illustrate the hardships which were endured not that long ago.

[Si]

dogduke wrote: stutterdog wrote: Brandy wrote: I really enjoyed reading through that Geordie nice one mate I think Iansmithof otley put Geordies thead up a week or 2 back? Ithink I made a comment about it too.I think I said that things hadn't moved on much from the 30's to thelate 40's? Thanks for putting it up again though it's well worth a read. Lots of things mentioned were still in 'vogue' in my early days,circa 1945 plus.No fridge,milk,cooked/raw meat was kept on the cellar head.All in all a lovely series of stories,well put together and certainly very worth reading.ANY MORE PLEASE ?? Yes, very good.When I bought my first house, it came with a free-standing kitchen cabinet. It had a (zinc?) lined cupboard for storing raw meat, a plate rack, a fold-down work-surface with an enamelled top, and two cupboards with a mesh front. I suppose it was the 1920s version of a fitted-kitchen. We used it all the time.    

[Barwicker]

I am sure that my parents "enjoyed" a young life similar to that of Geordie's dad and then made sure that I did not. I am more than grateful to them.However when researching some of my maternal grandmother's relatives I came across two who had been born in Pocklington Union Workhouse. I had to know more and soon found that the admisssion records for the appropriate period (the 1850s) were held at Beverley Treasure House. Once I had applied for a CARN card, a reader's ticket issued by the County Archive Research Network, I was able to examine to examine the records at my leisure.First a young female (15/16) relative was admitted to the workhouse being described as both "pregnant and destitute" and in due course produced a little girl. Some time after the birth both were released but soon returned "destitute". Following a further release and readmission on the same grounds they were again released only to be readmitted once again due to "mother's" pregnancy. This time she produced a boy. In due course all three were released but it was only a short while before they back in the Workhouse. Around this time "mother" served two short sentences in Beverley Jail, presumably for begging or vagrancy and shortly afterwards she left the workhouse, abandoning her two children to its care.The next entry I found was the notice of the death of the little girl, treated by the workhouse in an efficient Victorian way as a "departure". For that day I could take no more workhouse but returned a couple of weeks later to find out what had happened to the boy. Happily for him he had been released to his grandparents a year or so later. In the meantime his mother had married and moved to a different part of Yorkshire, where he eventually joined her and lived for some years before marrying and raising a sizeable family himself, seemingly unaffected by his early upbringing.He probably remembered little or nothing of his sister but once I got to the end I wondered why the grandparents did not intervene earlier. Could she have been saved too?How our lives have changed in the last 150 years

[geoffb]

Geordie-exile wrote: I've transcribed my Dad's memories of a pre-war childhood if anyone's interested. Ignore the dates - I've manipulated the blog so it reads chronologically I hope. Wordpress is a bit of a trial to edit!Hope you enjoy. http://oldleeds.wordpress.com/ Well writen Geordie, If my mother was alive she may well have known your dad, she was born in 1926 and lived on Wolseley Place. She was also evacuated to East Retford, we lived on Servia place in the early fifties. I think the cobbler you refer to was Lesley Sixton he and my grandad used to go to watch Leeds RL together his shop was at the bottom of Wolseley Place at the junction with Cambridge Road

[String o' beads]

I'll ask him about the cobbler to see if it was the one you mention.

[peterg]

Hit this thread by chance, searching for something else. I was born in February 1933, the day of the great blizzard that paralysed the North. My pre-war memories are not of poverty, because both my paternal grandfather and my father were Crown employees, the G.P.O. telephones, to be exact, and while not bathing in opulence as they would say here, they had a secure job and a regular income.My first memories of home are at Middleton on the housing estate there. The words Acre Road and Sissons ring a bell but I cannot remember the name of the street where we lived.In 1935 we moved to Roseville Terrace which backed onto Rosebud Walk. My grandparents lived in Grant Mount. They had a private toilet, but at the end of the street. The houses were back-to-back and each group of four had four toilets in a block, followed by the next four houses. We had our toilet stuck on at the end of the kitchen, but you had to go outside to reach it. Our house was a through terrace house of three storeys. I remember George, the greengrocer, who came around with his horse and cart as a travelling shop and who saved his cigarette cards for me.My family was and still is Catholic, but since i should have gone to St. Agustine's School, which was a long way away, my mother sent me to Kepler School.The other day a friend here commented that it annoyed him that after the Epiphany (the day presents are traditionally given in Spain) things were 50% cheaper, so gifts should be bought later. This reminded me a a friend of my mother's who more than once bought me a Christmas present bought after Christmas.I remember creating a scandal at a showing of The Wizard of Oz. I ended up under the chairs, the cinema had chairs, and had to be taken out.In February 1939, on my birthday, we moved to a Bray house (£495) in Crossgates, because my mother had more ambition than my father and wanted to get away from the Roseville Road environment. She came from a slightly higher social level, her father was also G.P.O., but on the postal side, being Head of a Sorting Office when he died.Another thing I remember of 1939 is that my father, having joined the Territorial Army only six months before, was called up on 1st September, before the Declaration of War.Other things, such as the Dispensary, where I had my tonsils removed, the war scars on the new Woodpecker Inn, also ring a bell.When talking about wages, I remember finding an old wallet of my father's which had only two pieces of paper it it, dated 1938, one said that he had been named for promotion and the wage would be around £3 and a second one saying that he had been promoted and the wage would be £3.7.6d

[String o' beads]

Some nice memories there peterg.Coincidentally, my Dad also worked for the GPO in later years.