She only had the rubbing board and sink or bath for the washing. And she was pregnant every year or eighteen months. We had a copper in the scullery, where you lit the fire. Any old thing went on that fire. Any old shoes if they was beyond repair. My dad used to try and repair them until he couldn’t do any more. I used to be scared of that copper; as a little child I always thought it had no bottom to it. When she used to fill it up and put the clothes in, I always had that fear that there was no end to the water. The old copper stick and the mangle, with the huge wooden rollers and great big wheel, were out the back. One of us kids had to turn it and we were so small you needed two hands to get it round. One to catch the washing at the other side. Mind your fingers! All year. Freezing cold.
*
I used to go on this errand for my nan. With an old pushchair, I’d go round to the wood place under the arches, to collect a load of offcuts for her to light the copper. I can remember the smell now, like pine resin, of all the wood being cut and all the sawdust everywhere. A whole load I’d get her, so’s she could boil up for her washing.
Not all coppers were used just for heating water.
I remember my brother hissing at me, ‘Quick, get the lid off.’ I did as I was told – he was bigger and older than me – and with that he opened his jacket and pulled out two pigeons that he’d nicked from somewhere. He shoved them in the copper and slammed the lid back down. He winked and said, ‘Mum’ll be pleased with them.’ She used to make pies, you see, and when he ‘found’ a few birds he had to hide them till she was ready to pluck and draw them for cooking. [Laughing] Everyone had pigeon lofts round there and they might have been lost by their owner.
Memories of damp washing hanging on the clothes-horse in front of the fire, or draped on a line over the cooker, steaming up the cramped kitchen and filling the house with the stifling smell of drying cloth, paint a miserable picture.
I used to hate coming in from school on a Monday afternoon if it had been raining. Washing was always done on a Monday. You knew wet clothes would be draped everywhere. Even over the fireguard. It was so unwelcoming, wet washing. Worse than the smell of a wet dog. I never thought about all the hard graft for my mum, I just didn’t fancy seeing it all hanging around. Or smelling it. Typical selfish kid!
Not every household’s washing was done at home. There were the laundries, many of them having been started by Chinese immigrants who had settled around the docks in Limehouse.
The main washing was taken to a laundry in the next street, a bolster slip containing as many clothes as we could push in for half a crown. It reminds me of the Richard Murdoch and Arthur Askey radio show with the character Mrs Bagwash.
And, of course, there were the public wash-houses. The importance of these can be seen in the elaborate celebrations to mark the ‘Order of Proceedings on the occasion of the laying of the Foundation Stone of the Baths and Wash-houses Old Ford Road, Bethnal Green’, described in smartly engraved programmes produced by the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green. The ceremony, which took place on 23 October 1926, included afternoon tea and a full orchestra ‘playing selections’.
The completed York Hall Baths, as they became known, were opened three years later by the Duke and Duchess of York, the future king and queen.
The scheme was certainly a grand one, comprising an impressive three floors and a basement which would hold:
Swimming, Slipper, Turkish, Electric and Russian Baths, and a Public Wash-house and Laundry, equipped with modern labour-saving devices, and is estimated to cost £120,000.
On the ground floor alone there were to be:
First Class Swimming Bath, 100 feet by 40 feet (65 Dressing Boxes).
Second Class Swimming Bath, 75 feet by 30 feet 6 ins (42 Dressing Boxes).
Public Wash-house and Laundry (accommodating 170 Washers per day).
23 Women’s Slipper Baths, Second Class, and 2 Vapour Baths.
Main Entrance and Crush Halls.
Cloak, Artistes’ and Refreshment Rooms.
First Class Bath, when used as Public Hall: Platform, 100 Seats, Hall, 1,120.
Poplar Baths was obviously as big an attraction. In June 1953, it was reported in the local press that Mathias Joe, the ‘Red Indian Chief of the Capilano tribe of Vancouver, who was in Britain for the Coronation, paid them a ‘surprise visit’ and took advantage of the facilities, enjoying a slipper bath.
Such exotic distractions apart, for those who were responsible for the laundry, when the washing was eventually dry enough to iron, the work continued.
When my mother did the ironing, she had to heat a heavy iron up on the gas stove. She would spit on the bottom and if it sizzled then it would be hot enough to use. The trouble was it didn’t last very long and had to be continually reheated. There was no ironing board. Therefore two or three blankets and a sheet would be placed on the table to be used instead.
But regardless of the poor, or non-existent, facilities in the home, large families and multiple occupancy meant that, until the slum clearances and the building of the new estates in the 1950s and 1960s, overcrowding, with its ramifications for health and hygiene, would remain the major problem for the big, extended families that lived in east London. Yet despite the cramped conditions, the lack of privacy and the poverty, memories of living as part of those families are filled with genuine warmth and pleasure.
[ 10 ]
We all lived within a few streets. Nan and Grandad, from Mum’s side, all her brothers and sisters and their kids, and all the brothers and sisters, cousins and that, on Dad’s side. That was apart from all the neighbours who were ‘Auntie this’ and ‘Uncle that’. That was usual. If you didn’t call an adult Mr or Mrs, it was auntie or uncle. It was usual, but it got bloody confusing at times. ‘Is that my real cousin then, Mum?’
Unless they were going away to sea or to join the armed forces, or, in an earlier period, into service, working people from east London did not usually leave home until they married. When they finally did leave, they didn’t usually go very far, but would move to somewhere close by found for them by their parents’ or a relative’s landlord. This availability of affordable, if sometimes grotty, lodgings, meant that families would remain in the same area for many generations, only leaving the East End when they were in a position to ‘better themselves’.
If there was any moving to be done by a young married couple, it was the man who most often did so, going to live near to, or even with, his wife’s family. With their roots firmly based in the tradition of variety and music hall, the older generation of comedians who, now infamously, depended on mother-in-law jokes were reflecting on and observing the anxieties and predicament of the many young men who found themselves lodging with their new wives in a strange, matriarchal household with similar rules to, but different privileges from, their old family home.
Remaining close to their mothers, daughters could enjoy emotional and practical support.
I wouldn’t have dreamed of moving away from Mum. I don’t mean I wasn’t capable of looking after myself – I’d been at work since I was fourteen years of age – but I still saw Mum every single day. I’d pop in to have a cup of tea, have a chat. Nothing special. But she was always there, just a couple of streets away. And, of a Saturday, we’d go down the market, while my [husband] and his brothers went off to the football or for a few drinks, or something. It’s not like you see now, with women shopping with their husbands. He’d have been a right nuisance while I was looking on the stalls. Like I say, I was capable, but Mum did a lot for me. I never had to worry, she was always there. Especially once I had kids of my own. That’s when I realized how much she did for me. And how hard it is to be a mum. Especially a good mum, like she was.
Ours was a very typical close family, my mother being the eldest of fourteen children. One died as a baby and another died in the war, but all the remaining twelve lived in the East End with their own families as and when they all married.
If I had to do something, or
if I’d managed to get myself a little job, Mum had [the children] for me. I wouldn’t have fancied the idea of strangers having them. Not at all. I’d just pop them round to Mum and know they’d be looked after.
Extended families might have been a blessing for young working mothers, but the effort involved in raising a large family, especially during times of financial difficulties, could be exhausting.
Do you know, my mother was like an old lady when I was growing up – this was before the war, remember. There was a whole mob of us to see to, seven kids and my dad, and when I look back, I think of her, and, do you know, she must have been, what, only in her late thirties, but she was worn out. Thirty-odd – that’s young nowadays. But she’d had seven children and there wasn’t all the washing machines and that then. We must have worn her out. By the time a woman was in her forties then, well, she was elderly really, wasn’t she?
With the experience of age [I was born in 1916] I think the parents of my generation were, in most cases, to be applauded for their efforts to raise a family under the circumstances in which they found themselves. It should be remembered that they themselves were born into an era of Victorian harshness when ‘children should be seen and not heard’. Then to start married life at the beginning of the First World War, bring up children in the aftermath of a war that should never have been, to endure the Depression of the 1920s, with its unemployment and poverty, only to find that, in the late 1930s, when things were beginning to improve, they were plunged into another war, even more destructive than the first one… Is it any wonder that so many, like my good parents, never lived to enjoy retirement? Not killed by bombs, but worn out. They were the type of mothers and fathers of my childhood: good, honest, caring, hard-working folk, with little of the comforts of life we know today.
In spite of all the effort required to raise your family, there was a strong sense of pride in keeping them looking respectable.
My socks were white. Pure white. Mum used to pull them over her hand and scrub the heels clean with a nailbrush. She wouldn’t have let me out of the house in grubby socks. And I had my hair put into plaits every morning, so it would stay tidy all day. I remember one of my older brothers, he must have been about thirteen or fourteen – I know he was already at work and he was a big old chap – but he hadn’t washed his neck right. According to Mum, he hadn’t. She was only little, but she dragged him over to the sink – it was one of the deep, old butler sinks – and stuck his head under the tap – brass and all nice and shiny, of course – and scrubbed his neck like he was a sock heel! She had him held there, and he didn’t dare move or he knew what he’d get. ‘That’ll teach you to show me up with a dirty neck!’ she said. Didn’t matter he was old enough to be at work, she wasn’t going to be shown up.
But caring for their families was not all that East End women were capable of.
The women then were amazons and had long hair which, when they fought – oh yes, they could fight and swear like troopers in those days – was pulled out by the handful. Yet these women had eight or nine children… They were a hard-working lot, they had to be, looking after such large families.
Some of the women could fight as roughly as the men. They’d go at it like cats. Usually over someone taking exception to something the other one had said, or she’d been thought to have said. Rows over the kids were always a favourite!
My nan was a fat, jolly drinking lady and a notorious flirt. It was apparently a common sight to see her legging it along the street at turning-out time with my jealous grandad in hot pursuit with a broken bottle in his hand. As was the custom then [the early decades of the century], the men sat in a different bar from the women and grandad always said he could see her making sheep’s eyes at other men. I would have thought fourteen children were enough for her. She was born in the Peabody buildings and her family were costermongers in the market close by. I think she must have been quite fun as a young woman. She had a home-made tattoo on her arm done by injecting indian ink into needle holes and always said she had done it to shock her father.
Physical strength, determination and a fighting spirit might be admirable qualities in some circumstances, but being strong and coping were not always virtues, especially when it meant you and your children’s welfare were taken for granted by your husband, who conveniently complied with your pretence that all was well.
She hid any troubles from Dad. [As I got older] I used to say to her, ‘You should have made Dad more aware of the troubles you had to put up with.’ We know he knew that he wasn’t bringing in enough money, but he still used to say to Mum, ‘Can I have my dinner money for tomorrow so I can go and get a pint?’ He got his money to go out to be with people, and that’s where I think Mum went wrong. A man should share the good as well as the bad with his wife. There was more bad than good in her life. He had luxuries we never had. There was a butcher’s that sold cooked meat. ‘Go up and get two ounces of boiled pork for his sandwiches.’ We never saw a bit of boiled pork. It’s lovely to be affectionate [with your husband] but you can carry it too far. I’m not saying we were neglected, but she always put him first, [never] let him be worried about anything.
It has to be remembered that many people who spoke to me had parents or grandparents brought up in Victorian times, when rules were far stricter than would be considered acceptable today.
I’m nearly fifty years old. My mum smoked like a trooper, all her life, and so do I, but I never, ever dared smoke a cigarette in front of her. She’d have clipped me round the ear if I had. It was always do what I say, not what I do with Mum. You didn’t answer back then. You just got on with it and did as you were told. Didn’t do any harm, respecting your mum… My old nan was even fiercer than Mum ever knew how to be. I was frightened of her to tell you the truth!
You’d be picked up for ‘bloody swearing’ and told off for saying ‘ain’t’.
I was the eldest in the family. There were eight of us and, up to when I got married, I had to be in by a certain time, because then the lock went on. Many a time I slept in the passage or jumped over and slept in the shelter in the yard until next morning.
There was no vandalism as such, simply because when a boy got in trouble the father would give him a tanning with his belt. Children were seen and not heard.
Family rules did, however, vary, usually depending on your gender.
Being a boy, even though I had four sisters older than me, I was allowed to get away with more. Stay out later and that. Mind you, they wasn’t scared of me getting into trouble, was they?
Mum and Dad were much stricter with me than with my brothers. I don’t think it was because I was the only girl. I think it had more to do with them worrying I’d get into trouble. The days I’m talking about, the 1950s, we didn’t have the pill. Mind you, they wouldn’t have been any different if we had have had it. Girls – their girl – had to be good, and boys had to be careful I suppose. I don’t know who the girls were meant to be who they were being careful with though. Trollops, as my mum would have called them! Seems like the Dark Ages now, but that’s how it was.
It wasn’t just Mum and Dad who made sure me and my sister behaved ourselves. Our brothers, including the two younger ones, if you don’t mind, watched us like hawks. They made sure we got up to nothing and that no one took liberties with us. My cousins were all the same. It was like being kept on a chain. Wonder we ever managed to meet any boys, let alone start courting.
Being male didn’t always mean you would be treated more leniently, or that you could enjoy a carefree youth. Sometimes there was little choice but to buckle down and do whatever needed doing.
When my mum died, I was fifteen [and] the only one who had left school. My dad had charge of eight of us and, instead of putting us in a home, he kept us together. I had managed to get a lovely little job, and was well in with it, in a lorry firm that used to do waste paper as wrapping material. Dad only had work three days a week [but] I had to give it up to help look after the family. We lived
upstairs and I used to get out on the windowsills to clean the windows. I had to scrub the floor – we had no oilcloth down – [and] I was in charge of the cooking and that. My dad also had to pay half a crown a week towards his father’s keep, who lived three turnings away.
There were advantages in being part of a big family. Whether support, company or entertainment was being sought, having relatives around could be a bonus.
I loved it when I’d see my aunts or my grandad or someone else in the family sitting out in the street. I might get an errand to run and be able to keep the change, or a sweet out of their apron or waistcoat pocket.
Because there were so many of us, some of my uncles were not a lot older than me, a few years maybe, so when I was a boy they were like young men. If I got myself into one of my usual scrapes, I’d say, ‘If you hit me, I’ll get my uncles on to you!’ [Laughing] It worked and all! Made me a right cocky little sod!
We sometimes would go and visit my [aunt and uncle] at their house in Plaistow. I thought they were really posh having a house with a garden, and when we were leaving [my] uncle would shake hands with me and slip me sixpence or a shilling, which seemed like a fortune to me.
My East End Page 17
