by Sue Taylor
Dad came into the room, took out a brown paper bag and put it on the table. ‘I’ve brought you some prawns,’ he said to my Mum. She came in and said ‘You’re drunk.’ ‘No, I’m not,’ said Dad in a slurred voice. Mum said ‘There’s something wrong with you. There’s me waiting for some money to go and get some food and tomorrow’s Sunday - there won’t be any shops open.’ ‘Oh,’ he said and, as he was hanging his coat up, Mum got the tablecloth and - I’ve never forgotten it - we had this big black range you know, and she shook the tablecloth in the range with the prawn bag on it and then she went back out into the kitchenette with the rest of the cups!
Dad turned around and said ‘Where’s my prawns?’ Mum called out ‘In the grate where they should be!’ My mother was very placid, but when you put her out, you knew about it. She went to the sink - she had the whole of the tea service in there - and began throwing its contents. They went ‘Bing, bing, bing!’ He was dodgin’ ‘em and they was comin’ through the door and whizzin’ by me and do you know, when I looked at his face, he was gasping, he couldn’t believe it. She said ‘I’ll keep you waiting for grub. I’ve no food in the place, so there’ll be no dinner tomorrow and you girls go to bed!’ Edie whizzed out of the door like a bomb and the other one. We went to our bedroom and shut the door, ‘cos it frightened us a bit, you know. We never heard another sound, so we put our bedclothes over our heads and went to sleep. How the argument finished, we never knew, but next day, Mum gave us some toast - she never gave my Dad anything, never even made him a cup of tea. None of us had any dinner that Sunday. On Monday, when Dad came home, he’d bought a new tea service for my mother! I remember, it was cream with green leaves on it.’
Edwin in his army uniform aged 17
Three
Inkwells, Laundry and Doh-Ray-Me
‘I went to school when I was five. Coppermill Lane Infants School was the first one. You went to the infants’ school then the juniors and then you went to the big girls’ school. It was all in one massive building down one side of the street and then you had the big boys’ school on their own. At the bottom of the sandy path there had been a copper mill years and years ago, that’s why it was called Coppermill Lane.
When I had just started at the infants’ school at the top of the road - my Mum’s sister-in-law (my Aunt Florence, who had brought me into the world), she took me to school that morning. Before she got back home, I had run back, run away from school. My aunt took me back again, and I ran away again. The third time she returned me to school, I had to stay. I didn’t like the kids looking at me - being a new kid, I suppose that’s what it was. I was a shy person.
I was about ten or eleven when I went into the big girls’ school. I couldn’t go to the high school, ‘cos Mum couldn’t afford the uniform. But I wasn’t all that clever and I couldn’t picture meself in that uniform - it was green and yellow.
I hated arithmetic. I was wonderful at sewing though - more practical than academic - but, at school, if anyone laughed at my stitches, I hated it.
We didn’t have no uniform while we was there. We just wore a skirt and blouse or a dress. You had to be smart and clean. They used to look at your shoes, look at your fingernails, everything, you know. Dad always used to make us polish our shoes every morning before we went to school. If we forgot, he would soon find out!
Miss Muffet was a lovely teacher. She was a governess, actually. She was our head teacher. And we had a head teacher of the juniors and one for the infants, you see. Girls and boys were mixed in the infants and juniors.
They had a big hall and all the doors leading to different rooms were off this hall. For one subject, you went into one classroom and for another subject, you came out and went into a different classroom. We always used to be in the hall for morning prayers. Then we dispersed to our rooms. One teacher, Miss Wilmer, used to teach singing. She had a long stick and used to say ‘Doh-Ray-Me’ and, if you went out of tune, she would say ‘Come out here!’ and the ol’ cane used to reach across and pull you out.
When I got to big girls’ school, the girls used to have one day a fortnight laundry and one day a fortnight cookery. I think that the boys were taught carving, woodwork and all that. They used to alternate it every week. We went to a different school for that. It was the William Morris School for cookery and Chapel End School for laundry. When we had cookery lessons, my Mum used to give me a mug with cocoa and sugar in it and say ‘When it comes to your break time, you can ask them to fill it up with hot water and make you a drink.’ I used to keep the mug under me desk, and keep dipping me finger in it, so by the time it was break, it had all gone!
Meat pies, cakes - I enjoyed that. They would give you a demonstration in a little room and, if you cooked it all right, they let you take it home and we often did. They gave you all the ingredients and they showed you how to do it and, if you wanted it, they would sell it to you. We didn’t have to pay a lot of money, roughly sixpence.
We were also taught how to light a fire, how to do our ironing and all that. How to do the washing - it was good. We had a lovely sewing class. They reckoned I was a good sewer. I used to do a lot of sewing - my stitches were very good.
We were taught reading and writing, the ABC, but no story writing, nothing like that. We were taught how to add-up, times-tables and that sort of thing. I used to like geography. They used to give us a lot of geography - about foreign countries, different wars and how they lived. I used to like history too.
We had a service every morning, when we went into the hall. We had prayers and Miss Muffet used to pick out the hymn. My favourite hymn was ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ - I used to love that.
There must have been about 25 to 30 in a class. We didn’t have it overcrowded. We used to write with pencil mostly. We wrote with ink if we had any compositions to do. One or two summers, they took us out of the school up to Richmond Park (recreation ground), up the end of Coppermill Lane, where I lived. By the reservoir there, it took you out to Richmond Park and the next day, you had to write a composition about what leaves you saw, what colours they were, what their names were - about nature, you know. We never went out on no coaches, just walking. We couldn’t afford a coach-ride then. We took ourselves.
Once a month, we could go to the swimming pool, if we wanted to. We had to walk two miles for that. But my Mum wouldn’t let us go, ‘cos it meant that, as we came out and had to walk home, our hair would be all wet and we might catch cold.
School started at 9 o’clock in the morning, ‘til 12, then you could go home ‘til 2 o’clock and lessons ended at 4. During the morning break, my mother used to come along if it was cold, with a hot cup of cocoa or soup. She would give it to us through the railings to Florrie and me. A lot of the mothers used to do that. The majority of children used to go home for their dinner (not lunch) at dinnertime. They never did meals at the school then, not like they do now. We never sat down for a meal at school. We never had no homework either.
Miss Simpkins was one of our teachers and Miss Osborne - I didn’t like her. Miss Harvey was lovely. One of the girls I was at school with, she was always in trouble. She was always having the cane, ‘cos if you done anything wrong, you went to Miss Muffet and, if she thought you deserved it, you got the cane and your name went in a book. It was one Monday morning and all the inkwells were filled up - they used to fill them up every Monday morning. We were all sitting in the class and this Miss Harvey always used to wear a lovely coloured blouse, pink or blue, and she would hold onto the back of this old-fashioned Windsor chair and talk to you. I remember, this particular morning, she said something and this girl answered her back, so the teacher said ‘Come out here!’ Before she did, this girl picked up one of these inkwells and threw it at Miss Harvey, right in the middle of her lovely pink blouse. All the ink ran down it, so Miss Harvey said ‘That’s the cane for you again!’ That girl was always getting the cane. Right across the legs, it was. They only got a couple of lashes, but Miss Muffet didn’t used to h
it them hard. I never got it, My Dad used to say ‘Don’t you ever come home here if you get the cane!’ And I never did get the cane.’
Indeed, it seems that Ethel was a model pupil, always on time - ‘Dad wouldn’t allow us to be late anywhere and I never am now.’
Miss Muffet, wrote her last school report, dated December 20th, 1923, of which Ethel is justifiably proud, for it states: ‘Regular and punctual in attendance. Clean and tidy, polite and a neat worker.’
‘We used to have to go to Sunday School. My Dad made us go until we left school and went to work. Then I didn’t bother so much. I used to think about enjoying myself then. We had to wear our one set of best clothes and change when we got back.
For one hour on a Sunday afternoon, I taught the Catechism to about 12 children aged eight to twelve. Two years I did it at St. Oswald’s, Walthamstow. I was 14 when I stopped. I used to love it. I wouldn’t say that I was all that religious, but I believed in it quite a lot.’
Four
Cockles, Carts and Motor Cars
Occasionally, after school in the summer, Ethel’s mother would take her daughters on outings to Southend-on-Sea:
‘We left school at 4 o’clock and we used to get ready and Mum would take us to Blackhorse Road station to go to Southend. About 25 minutes roughly, the journey took on the train. Mum, Florrie and me used to walk right down the Front, where that big hotel is down the slope, and we used to sit on the Front there and get an ice cream. It was just a trip - lovely though.
We always came back for tea. Mum couldn’t afford to buy us tea there. Perhaps we might buy rock or something. My sister sometimes had some cockles, but I didn’t, I didn’t like them. Under the pier there was a family business called Going, I think, which sold dinners, cockles and all that. We used to have a cup of tea and a slice of toast or something like that. If Mum could afford it, ‘cos they were quite dear, she might have some jellied eels.
You never had a lot of money to spare. One shilling and threepence, I think the fare was to Southend for an adult. I was about eleven or twelve then. We used to go about two or three times in the summer. When she could save enough money she would take us. When she hadn’t got quite enough, she’d take it out of our money boxes (she always paid us back though). It was mostly on a Monday when we went. Dad used to pay her on a Saturday, and, if she’d got a few coppers over, she used to save it and take us to Southend. We were never back late, ‘cos we used to have to be in bed by 8 o’clock.
We had one holiday to Southend, when we were children, and Dad had come out of the forces at the end of the First World War. We stayed near the old gas works in a bed and breakfast, but we came home after two nights, ‘cos the place was full of bugs.’
In the early 1900’s, there were only a few thousand private motor cars in Britain. However, by 1914, this figure had increased dramatically. Although Ethel’s father later drove a Lipton’s delivery van, he did not acquire his own car until the early 1930’s:
‘It was an Austin Seven and we went to visit Florrie in it after she was married. Mum was not allowed to ride in the back, in case the body broke in half!’
When Ethel was very young, her father drove a horse and cart for work:
‘Dad used to work for London Parcel Delivery and he had a horse there - he used to love his horses; he always used to have the light-grey ones. He used to come home at dinnertime and have a meal and always used to take me up and down the road sitting on the horse’s back. Florrie didn’t like horses, but I loved ‘em.
Mum would send me out with a bucket and a shovel whenever a horse went by. Cousin Flo told me that they used to call it ‘pringling’ - picking up the horse manure for the garden.
On one occasion, when Dad was doing his deliveries, he went back to his cart only to find a black dog eating some meat that he’d pinched out of one of the parcels. Dad didn’t dare touch him, in case he got bitten. The dog came every day after that for Dad to give him his lump of meat. Another time, he jumped off the back of the cart, ran into a butcher’s shop and grabbed some beef!
Dad named him Jack and eventually took him home with him. Jack once chased off a burglar over the back fence. Dad finally lost the dog when he was chased off himself by the butler at one of the houses he delivered to!
I remember the trams - they had a pole and seats on top. They used to pull the pole down and put it on the other line and go the other way. If you got in the way, you’d feel it all right! When it was pouring with rain, when you went upstairs, all the seats were wet, so we used to take an old cloth in our pockets to wipe the seats before we sat down, ‘cos there were puddles on them.
My Mum used to walk everywhere, so did my sister and I, so did Dad. The road where I lived was all gritty sandy stuff. I used to love it when the old water carts came down. I asked ‘Mum, can I hear the water carts?’ and she would take me out and stand me at the side of the road and I loved all the water that used to splash on you and the smell when the water was going on the hot sand - it was lovely. I can see it now: the cart with all the pipes at the back spraying the gravel. When it was hot, the sand shifted, so they used to water it to keep it down.’
Five
Jellied Eels and Christmas Time
When she was still a baby, Ethel’s family moved from Cassiobury Road to Glenthorne Road, Walthamstow. They lived there for a shorttime before moving again to Edward Road. Of their downstairs flat in Edward Road, Walthamstow, Ethel says:
‘We didn’t have a bathroom, only an outside toilet for eight: four from the upstairs flat and us four from downstairs. There used to be a bit of a queue if anyone was in the toilet for very long! The twins, Alice and Mary, who lived upstairs, were a year older than me, so I had all their cast-offs.
We had a copper in our little kitchenette and we used to boil that up for the bungalow bath. Once a week we did that for our bath on a Friday night. We called it Amami Night, ‘cos we used Amami shampoo. Most people did. Our flat was lit by oil lamps. There was a tap in the kitchenette and a big black range. We could only have a roast dinner in the winter when we had a coal fire. We had an oil stove for cooking and a Primus stove. We used to boil all the kettles on the Primus or the oil stove for the washing and the washing-up. When Mum did a very big wash, she used to boil up the copper in the other little room where the sink was.
My Mum used to blacklead the range. It had one oven and by it was a plate. We had an old tabby tom-cat, which used to sit on the plate by the oven and, when it turned round, I used to have to put its tail out! It used to catch alight!
That was when you could buy cats’ food on a stick. In the market was a shop and they used to sell it. There was a big glass case in the window with a horse carcass in it for cats’ food. You got three lumps of meat on a skewer. You had to order it and they used to bring it round and stick it through your letter-box. It cost a penny. I always remember that. The cats used to love it - the raw horsemeat. They used to know when it was coming round and would grab it as they put it in the letter-box. Funny, that was. We used to call our cat Tommy. I can still see that cat.
We had a dog called Laddie at one time too. He was an elk-hound and used to worship our family, especially us girls. When Dad shut him out of the home and wouldn’t feed him for 24 hours, ‘cos he bit him, it broke our hearts. He gave him water and he didn’t hit the dog, just shut him out.
On Fridays, Mum used to go along to the fishmonger’s to buy a cod’s head. She would boil it up to make a jelly, which she would strain to remove the bones. We would then spread it on our bread and eat it. It used to be lovely.
After cooking tea for us when we came home from school, Mum would treat herself every other Friday to fish ‘n’ chips from Methven’s fish shop. They cost threepence and she was known as Mrs Threepence because of that.
She used to go up to the market on a Friday, shopping. Once a fortnight she would have jellies (jellied eels) and mash for sixpence from Manze’s Eel and Pie Shop and the next Friday, she would go to the fish sh
op… so she had a variation. That was her dinner. My Cousin Flo always knew when she had jellied eels. She used to say ‘Aunt Flo - you’ve got a bit on yer blouse’ (‘cos Mum was a stout woman in her chest, you know). She always used to catch Mum going down the High Street. ‘I know where you’ve been Aunt!’ she would say.
Ethel’s cousin Flo
Mum loved jellied eels. Dad didn’t and I couldn’t eat eels if you gave me a shilling… yet they’re marvellously good for you. Cousin Flo used to love ‘em. She always had them when she went down to the seaside.
Joe (Ethel’s husband) used to go and catch eels at Walton-on-the-Naze, when he went to visit his friend in his cottage. He brought a big one home one day and it slipped down the sink and out into the drain and he caught it. His brother used to love ‘em. I remember at the beginning of the Second World War, I saw some live eels in Manze’s, so I went in and said ‘I’d like a couple of those for my mother-in-law, ‘cos she’s got a bad leg.’ But the shop assistant gave them to me all wriggling. I said ‘I can’t take them like that, can’t you chop ‘em up?’ But he didn’t, so I sat on the bus with the paper bag screwed up tight at the top in case they got out in the bus!
Another thing we used to have at home when I was a girl: we used to take a jug into the butcher’s shop and get it filled with pease-puddin’ and faggots - used to be lovely. That was only about threepence or something, ever so cheap. And we used to dip our fingers in the pease-puddin’ and, by the time we got home, it used to be nearly all gone! We used to eat it goin’ along. That was in the market again.
