It was good, when all the family came round. There’d be a house full, and you might get a few coppers as they were leaving. But that would always mean having to kiss every aunt and they’d smell all beery by the time they left, and you’d get a pat on the head from every uncle. You’d feel like a boiled egg being tapped by a spoon by the time they’d all finished with you.
You never wanted for company. That was a good part of being in a big family like ours. There’d always be someone you could turn to, someone who’d be there no matter how bad things got, or someone if you just wanted a bit of a natter. You wasn’t ever alone. In good or bad times, they’d be there.
Relatives would definitely be there, or at least ready to celebrate at important moments such as weddings and the birth of a new baby or commiserate at funerals.
Taking part in the traditions and customs surrounding these rites of passage was an important part of being a member of an extended family in the close-knit communities of east London.
It was a bit like Christmas. All the women in the family flapping about and all the excitement. We weren’t explained to, what was going on, kids were kept in the dark then, but we knew it was exciting. Then I had a little sister! There was even more coming and going, in and out, with all the family, than I’d ever seen before. I loved it.
Us kids would be sent along to one of the aunts to be minded by the cousins, while all the women got on with the business indoors and all the blokes disappeared down the pub, ready to wet the baby’s head.
My nan was proud of the fact that she had delivered every child in [the street] except her own, and they had been delivered by her bosom pal and drinking partner, ‘Auntie’ Sally, at number 90. This, off course, was [around the time of the First World War] when a midwife charged about half a crown to attend.
I was so proud when I got my Silver Cross pram for my first. Mum and Nan had helped me pay it off weekly. But even when I’d paid for it, I never brought it home until I’d had the baby. You didn’t then. It was like a sort of superstition. Just in case. But there I was with my new baby and my lovely coach-built pram. I used to keep it spotless. I hated to see a pram with all biscuit crumbs over the covers. It had a sort of lid in the bottom that you could lift out and, when the baby was old enough, he could sort of sit up with his little legs in the space underneath. Used to walk for miles with that pram, with my mum and my younger sister with me. Not showing off or nothing, I was just so proud.
It was always a joy when a new baby was born. If you didn’t have much, your family would help out and you’d soon have a lovely layette for the little one. It wouldn’t be all new, of course, though some of it would have been knitted for you, but there would be plenty of hand-me-downs, and you knew you wouldn’t have to have your baby going without. Your family would see to that.
Sadly not all experiences of the birth of a new baby were as happy.
My brother’s arrival, when I was four and a half years old, put my nose out of joint. Till then I had been the first, much-loved and welcome grandchild in both my parents’ families. Now I was ousted by a baby! But I did not get to know him immediately. [When] my mother was pregnant, she was evacuated. I never asked why she did not take me with her. I went to a children’s home in Essex run by the West Ham Central Mission, a large Baptist church in Plaistow. I remember [it] as full of space, big airy rooms, fields and playground. We were looked after by nurses in white uniforms and large flapping white veils. I remember eating good meals at regular times, having baths and wearing clean, comfortable clothes. Although the memories are good, I also have a memory of loneliness.
I lost my first baby. It was just after the war had finished, but I still had to be evacuated. I was twenty-seven. I couldn’t get into a local hospital, and Mum said, ‘You can’t have it at home. I can’t have you round me.’ I suppose she’d had so many of her own, she didn’t want to be bothered with babies. I had to go to this place in Cambridgeshire. Just to have the baby. And then I came home without him. He died after a week. But I managed to get him brought home and buried. So I know where he is. It seemed a hell of a long way on that old steam train. And I never had many visitors. [My husband] used to get over once a week. It was a terrible place. It was a wing they had taken on from an old men’s home. The only place they could find to put us London mothers. It was a terrible place, but you didn’t know any different, and you thought that’s what you had to do, where you had to go. There were a lot of faults in the birth, but I couldn’t prove it. I never had my people round me, my family, to sort things out. All I wanted was my mum. I was so frightened. But she couldn’t get down to me. I don’t hold it against her, but when I came home all I wanted was a cuddle, [but] she said, ‘Come on, you’re not having all this fuss over losing a baby. You can have another one.’ That stuck in my mind for a long time. When I look back, it was as real as yesterday. When you hear how they sue for this and sue for that. But I didn’t have the know-how then. You thought [they] knew best. You put up with a lot of things they wouldn’t put up with now. I admire people for speaking out and doing things. We never did because we didn’t think we could. You couldn’t question the staff, say, ‘Why did my baby die?’ The matron was horrible. [The staff] were cruel to us London mothers… [I didn’t see him until] hours after the birth. He had a big graze on his face. I said, ‘What’s happened to his face?’ ‘Oh, that’s nothing for you to worry about.’ You didn’t question it… I had to stay in bed for a fortnight, and she used to come and press and press my breasts to get rid of the milk. Never give me anything to dry it up. I used to lie there, so weak. Sweat used to pour off me. But they didn’t do anything to [help me]. They treated us London mothers as if we were the scum of the earth, but we was the salt of the earth.
According to most of the people of around fifty and older to whom I spoke, contraception and sex education were not subjects which were widely discussed in their youth. In the pre-pill, pre-abortion-reform days, the fear of pregnancy led to some terrifying experiences, with a local woman ‘helping you out’ being the last, desperate resort of a girl who would otherwise be shamed, or even shunned, by her family.
If it hadn’t been for my friend’s aunt, I don’t think I’d have lived long enough to have brought up the children I already had. I’m serious. It wasn’t long after the war and it was all so hard. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I’m not ashamed of it either. If she hadn’t have helped me out… It’s not something I had much choice about. I couldn’t have gone through it again. Not only not being able to feed another child, but my health wouldn’t have stood it either. I had to make sure I could look after the ones I already had. We’d been as careful as we could have been. It didn’t work, though.
Young folk were not well versed in family matters. It wasn’t talked about – unless, of course, a ‘mistake’ was made.
Close families and communities, so praised in other contexts, could be suffocating or threatening places for those who chose to go through with their ‘mistakes’.
My cousin disappeared for a few months. It was only in later life that I found out she’d been sent away to a mother and baby home, and had had her child adopted. It seems so cruel to me when I think of it now. I’ve never discussed it with her, but we were such a big family and close neighbourhood, I wonder if my aunt, her mum, was concerned what people would think and say. Gossip can be very hurtful when you live so close to people. Not just hurtful, nasty. The family might have been kinder than some of the neighbours, but I’m not so sure. She has a husband and family now and it wouldn’t be right to bring it up.
A girl at our school went missing for a while. When she came back, her mum had a new baby. None of us realized at the time, but the girl’s new sister was actually her own daughter. It was all done to cover up. So sad.
I’m in my late forties now and I was very young when my periods started, about ten or eleven. I had on little powder-blue pyjamas and when I woke up I thought I was dying. My mum was sort of prudish. She co
uld row and swear with the best of them, but there was this thing that you didn’t talk about things like that. Most of the women in our family were like it. Seems funny when you was all living on top of one another, but there was a lot of whispering under their breath in front of the kids. Things you didn’t mention. Women weren’t even ‘pregnant’, they were ‘expecting’, in the ‘family way’ or were in a ‘delicate condition’. And there was a lot of disapproval of girls who were, as they used to say, ‘no better than they ought to be’.
You weren’t told what it was all about, but you were expected to know what they meant when they told you to be good. I’m an old lady now, but I don’t think you should keep people ignorant. How can you know how to look after yourself if no one tells you?
Getting married before you had children was expected, but, as courting could last a while and so many were living in what would now be seen as ignorance, making a ‘mistake’ really was a constant fear.
When it [came] to the problems and fears of pregnancy, the biggest fear was what would happen to me if I was the cause of it.
I met my husband when I was sixteen, in Victoria Park. I was with my girlfriend on our bicycles. I was engaged at eighteen and married at twenty-one – a virgin. The fear of pregnancy and ‘what my mother would say’ – the latter even more feared than the former – prevented any premarital relations… Girls who ‘did wrong’ and got pregnant were talked about and frowned upon, her family was shamed.
But if you were courting seriously, it was usually with the intention of being married once you had saved a little and had accumulated a few things for your bottom drawer, so pregnancy didn’t have to be a disaster. Instead it could simply speed up what might otherwise be a rather slow process.
I met my wife in the park in 1929. They were playing ball and the ball came our way. We were chasing the ball and the next thing you know, we’re chasing the girls. My life changed once I met my wife. I started thinking: I want to do this, I want to do that. I started thinking it’s about time we thought about getting married, [but] it came to the fact that my wife was five months pregnant when we got married. We had been courting for seven years.
Looking back, it was strange. You started going out with a local boy and he’d sort of do. You’d start courting and, so long as he was a reasonably respectable type of a chap, your mum and dad would be relieved. You were spoken for and they wouldn’t have to worry. Cos, say you did get caught out, you could get married on the quick, couldn’t you?
Many people spoke of a rather disciplined, formal approach to the business of wooing which, though perhaps sounding as if it lacked something in terms of romance, offered expectations of security and longevity in the eventual marriages.
There was a lot more discipline in the family in the 1920s and 1930s. People courted, got engaged and then got married; they did not just live together.
The charmingly formal language of the following description of courting and sexual attraction in the 1920s clearly relates to the way in which such matters were dealt with by this particular man’s family.
Whilst the appeal of the sexes has been a natural act since life began, time has changed the mode of approach to it. In the 1920s, we still had the Victorian, Edwardian attitude and concept of what was acceptable. I would not say there were no clandestine meetings of lads and lasses, but it was recognized that after a couple of meetings the parents of each side would invite a visit in order to make an assessment… If satisfied, the [couple] were known to be walking out. Girls were lectured at great length on promiscuity – but in down-to-earth language – and the threat of banishment was a fear for all young ladies if found pregnant out of wedlock. I would think that there were a number of shotgun weddings, but to be a mother with no wedding ring was unpardonable and divorce was only for the rich folk. The accepted procedure for the courting couple was for an engagement ring to be given and a set period of time to save, and for the girl to start a bottom drawer, collecting linen, cutlery and so on, with one of the mothers making themselves responsible for finding rented accommodation for them. It was always a local boy or girl that you married and it was accepted that they would remain living local… When considering the opportunity for youngsters to meet the opposite sex, there were no mixed schools or clubs back then and, apart from friends, brothers and sisters or parents’ friends’ children. The only place was the dance hall, but, nature being what it is, we managed. Because there were not that many venues for meetings then… the tendency to couple occurred a little later than today. Most of my generation were in their twenties. I suppose it could be that the age of consent, manhood, was twenty-one. You were not entitled to a man’s wage until that age and the thought of leaving home may not have been so prevalent as in the minds of the young today. The one thing that stands out is very little effort was made either in school or in the home to prepare us children for sex education. Boys seemed to learn by innuendo and school playground gossip. Girls, from frightening lectures from mother.
Courting was not simply for the benefit of the happy couple and their ‘relieved’ parents; other members of the family could also profit from the loving relationship.
When our Alf started courting Margaret, it was like a miracle. From being a miserable sod who’d have begrudged me and me brothers the drippings off his nose, he started giving us ha’pennies for sweets and for the pictures. We loved it. Only when Margaret was there, of course. Did it to impress her, see. He wound up marrying her. Nice girl, and she made our life happier!
When my eldest sister started courting her husband, he used to treat her to sweets and things, and when she came home from the pictures she used to put them in the drawer. Rowntree’s Motoring Chocolate. I used to love to go up there when she wasn’t around and have a nibble of this chocolate. And I used to rub my teeth marks off so she wouldn’t know. We never used to have any money, especially for sweets, so it was a real luxury to know we had chocolate in the drawer. Couldn’t resist it.
Weddings were important social events, with even quite poor families doing their best to put on a ‘good do’. I can recall my mother’s horror when one of the pair of white, buckled shoes she had saved so hard for, for my brother to wear to a family wedding as part of his pageboy’s outfit, was mysteriously flushed down the loo. The mystery was easily solved: the indignity of wearing those shoes was simply too much for my brother to cope with.
The wedding itself wasn’t that elaborate. I couldn’t afford a dress, so I borrowed one, but I had lovely flowers, and new shoes and a veil, and the party after! We had enough food to feed an army that night. And there were so many crates of beer out there, you could hardly get in the back kitchen. I don’t know how everyone fitted in, but there was all our families and half the streets round there as well, all crammed in. Mum and Dad did us proud that day.
Weddings were a very big affair, with many guests, including lots of children. Weddings were always in a church. Catholic in our case. A hall was usually chosen for the reception, as this would have been the least expensive choice. As everybody toasted the bride and groom, guests would [give gifts of money], as much as they could afford. The food would be prepared by members of the family and would always include jellied eels, mussels, rollmops, cockles and so on, which would all be bought from the local fish stall, which would be found outside most pubs.
Outside photographs – no flash bulbs then. My parents, complete with wedding cake that had been heaved out into the backyard, are standing there, beaming, for the snapshots.
It was wartime, but we still did what we could to make it special. And it was special. I didn’t have a dress, I had a two-piece costume, and one of the girls at work – we were machinists – made me a new blouse, and my sister trimmed my hat for me. The cake was made of cardboard, with a little drawer at the side with a piece of real cake in it.
The wedding itself might have been something to remember, but that didn’t always guarantee romance.
I was twenty-seven when I got marri
ed in 1930.1 had three days’ leave and we went to Sheerness on our honeymoon. In all, the wedding cost twenty pounds. The bouquet cost seven shillings and sixpence, and the rest paid for drink and some furniture, which was not much, as we lived in one room only. This was in May. When we returned home the bugs would not let me sleep… We ruined the sheet using caustic soda trying to kill them, but it was useless.
Or even that the marriage would last.
My grandfather had a pub in Hackney and he was carrying on with the housekeeper. My mum said she was an ugly woman… had all whiskers hanging out of her. Ever so ugly. But she was very lustful and used to pour gin in the teapot when she was supposed to look after my mother and aunt. She used to say, ‘I’ll have a drop of tea now,’ and used to be drinking this gin. My grandmother was very sedate… [she] knew what was going on with my grandfather and this housekeeper. It came to a bust-up and my grandmother left him.
There is an odd practice, mentioned when family relationships were being explained to me, of referring to married women by their maiden names. This might have been an aid to identifying people within large families, but, in my own family’s case, it only added to the confusion. My mother, Dolly Griffiths, was often referred to by her single name, Dolly Sheekey, and my auntie, who became Dolly Sheekey when she married, was referred to as Dolly Stephens. The additional complication was that a brother and sister, my mum and her brother Charlie, had married two cousins, my dad, Tom, and my aunt, Dolly. In addition to these, there were several other relatives who also went by the name of Dolly, who would have to be identified in ever more elaborate ways, such as, ‘You know her, the one who married your second cousin, on your nan’s side.’ But these interwoven family histories were not rare, as I was told by a man who is now almost ninety:
My East End Page 18
