Polly: Memories of an East End Girl

by Jeff Smith

  Because he was in the market, Dad didn’t work on Mondays and so when I left school and started work he used to make my lunch for me on Monday mornings. He didn’t have much idea really so there was nothing delicate about his lunches, but they were ever so welcome. He would just cut a couple of slices of bread and stick a quarter-pound of cheese between them, adding a cucumber from the market and anything else that came to hand. When I got to work I used to take the lunch apart again and share it out between those who were short. Sometimes three or four girls would share that lunch, and Monday became a high point of the week. As soon as I arrived at work girls would ask what ‘dad’ had given them for lunch today. It does doesn’t bear thinking about, but that is how you live when things are really tight.

  When Fred and I got married we took half a house, just up the road from Mum. In the downstairs half was a woman and her husband with five kids. Not only that, she had a brother who was out of work. He lived in one room a little distance away but spent a lot of time with the family (when he wasn’t looking for work, that is) and always had Sunday dinner with them. The woman used to go out late on Saturday, when the meat was cheap – well, the butchers didn’t have refrigerators like today so what they didn’t sell on Saturday would be spoiled by Monday. The woman, her husband and her brother would then have the meat, whatever was cheap, for their dinner and the kids would have rabbit stew. Rabbit was always cheap. That was the only meat they ate all week, just on Sunday.

  I remember one Monday though, when the woman came upstairs with a face like thunder, and clutching a bit of meat from the dustbin. My mum never had much idea with leftovers and always used to throw out anything that hadn’t been eaten. I never really thought about it and just carried on the same. I suppose I thought that everybody did the same. Anyway, the woman suddenly stuck this piece of meat up in front of my face and asked, ‘Did you throw this out?’

  ‘Yes,’ I muttered, ‘we had too much.’ I couldn’t think what else to say.

  ‘You are a wicked, evil, girl,’ she said, ‘Don’t you realise there are kids in this house and you go throwing out perfectly good bits of meat.’

  She really tore me off a strip and by the time she had finished with me I felt about half-an-inch tall. It had just never occurred to me to do anything else. Anyway, after that I always gave her any leftovers every Monday. In fact, I used to buy a little bit extra just to make sure of the leftovers. From then on, she and her husband used to save up thre’pence every week for half a pint of beer so that after the kids had gone to bed they would sit up and have meat sandwiches and beer. That was the highlight of the week for them.

  6

  Derby Day

  (early 1920s)

  My father was a porter in Stratford Market, then one of the most important fruit and vegetable markets in London. He was pretty good at it too and on one occasion he held the record for the number of baskets he could carry at one time. The fruit used to be packed in flat, circular, baskets which stacked on top of each other, and the porters used to carry them, piled-up, balanced on their heads. Of course it was hard work but it was steady and he was allowed a sack of vegetables every week as part of his pay.

  Apart from the obvious holidays, like Christmas, Dad only got one day off a year and that was Derby Day. The whole market would close for the workers to have their day out to see the Derby. Dad, though, never went on the outing but instead used to go up to the Borough Market to see his old friends there. It was quite a day for him, and he used to get dressed up in his best suit for the highlight of his year. The only trouble was that Mum didn’t trust him not to get thoroughly drunk, so to restrain him a bit each year she insisted that he took me along. It must have cramped his style, but I thought it was wonderful, because I too used to get dressed up in my best clothes and was taken off on an adventure up in London. We used to visit a succession of pubs and at each one he would disappear inside for varying lengths of time. I suppose he must have been a bit of a ladies’ man in his time, because all the women used to make a tremendous fuss of him. Each one used to give him a great big kiss and wild exclamations of ‘glad to see you Wally,’ ‘how are you Wally?’ ‘what’s the news?’ and so on.

  Much more fun to me, though, was the fuss and attention that I got. Of course I had to stay outside the pub, or very occasionally I could stand just inside the door, but this endless succession of women would come out to see ‘Wally’s girl’, ask me how I was, buy me a lemonade and sometimes give me a sixpence. I thought I was in heaven and could have stayed there forever. I could certainly drink as much lemonade as they could buy for me, it was wonderful.

  I used to make a big profit on the day and, more to the point, I was allowed to keep it. On the bus home, Dad would ask me how much I had got and what did I want to do with it. Usually I would take a halfpenny a day to school and buy myself sweets on the way home. Just once, I bought a quarter of a pound of toffees and I sat on the wall round the corner from home, where nobody would see me, so that I could eat them all myself. Getting back to Derby Day, the most important question was then, did I have somewhere safe to keep the money I had collected? The answer to that was yes, the corner of my drawer. Dad would always finish by saying that ‘Yes, that sounded alright,’ but perhaps I should not tell my mother how much I had or where it had come from. I never needed to be told twice.

  7

  The Holy Cups

  (about 1920)

  Like all families in those days we more or less lived in the kitchen. Along one wall of the kitchen was a large dresser which was where all the kitchen hardware and that sort of stuff was stored. Up the back of the dresser were three shelves and these were used to store and display the china. On the bottom two shelves were the everyday bits and pieces, but the top shelf was Mum’s pride and joy. There, carefully displayed, was the best china. I don’t know where it had come from, maybe Grandma had bought it as a wedding present because she was quite well off by then, but it was clearly a class better than the rest. Of course, we never used it. In fact we never touched it, or even dared to touch it. It stood untouched and unmoved on the top shelf, just like a museum display.

  Our house was the last but one in Carpenters Road. Beyond the next house, which was the last, there were factories all the way through to Hackney. One summer’s day, and it must have been just after the war [Editor’s note: First World War], Mum was standing on the doorstep watching the world go by. That was quite the usual thing to do then. Everybody used to leave their doors open and when you had time to spare you would stand in the doorway and chat to your neighbours up and down or across the street, and with anybody passing by. If you were particularly relaxed, or in the evening, you might even get a chair out and sit there.

  Well, Mum was standing there when two nuns appeared coming down the road from the factory end. I suppose they had been round the factories on the scrounge for donations. Now Mum enjoyed a bit of religion – although Dad didn’t. In fact he could be pretty brutal about it when he wanted to upset Mum. At Christmas, sometimes, he would express his views on the true nature of Jesus’ parentage and ‘virgin birth’ in no uncertain, or delicate, terms. It used to send Mum off in a spin and I think she was genuinely worried that a thunderbolt would strike us all. I got the impression that Dad had seen too much suffering and death in the war to have time for any platitudes about peace and love. Anyway, Mum was always on for a spot of religion so when these nuns got nearer she greeted them with a most respectful ‘Good afternoon, sisters.’ They returned the greeting, and went on to ask if they might possibly have a drink of water. Mum got ever so excited and promptly invited them in for a cup of tea, which they graciously accepted.

  When we got home from school we were immediately suspicious, because there on the table were two of the best cups and saucers from the top shelf. We couldn’t believe it; we had thought that they would never, ever, come off the dresser. So Mum put on her most dignified voice and told us how the nuns had visited and sat at our table to drink a cu
p of tea. To be honest, we felt sorry for the nuns! Mum was a wonderful cook, she could cook anything even if she had never done it before, but there were three things she could not do: make jelly, make custard and make tea. You wouldn’t have thought any of them were difficult, but they were beyond Mum. Her tea was undrinkable. It must have been a tribute to the nuns’ Christian humility and charity, as well as desperation for a drink, that they sat at our table and drank her brew.

  Now, of course, it was time to wash up. Normally we kids did all the washing up, but not the best china: that was far too precious. Mind you, even then she did the least she could without us kids actually touching the china. She sat at the table and called for a bowl of water – you always washed up in a bowl on the table, nobody ever used the sink. She called for an ordinary cup to collect the dregs in so that we could then pour them down the outside drain. She carefully emptied the first of her best cups into the dregs-cup, went white as a sheet, and exclaimed ‘Oh my God!’ She reached for the second cup, drained it just as carefully, looked into it and with a voice wobbling in emotion said again, ‘Oh my God.’ Then she sat back in the chair, and looked far away into the distance beyond the wall. We kids were stunned, then gathered the courage to look into the emptied cups. In the bottom of each was a collection of pins, needles, a razor blade, a thimble, buttons – all the things that you found laying around when you tidied up. Because the best china was never used Mum had got into the habit of dropping these odd bits and pieces into one of the cups whenever she came across them. She had been so excited about entertaining these nuns she hadn’t thought to look into the cups as she poured the tea! Those poor nuns, to have to drink Mum’s tea and then find the cups full of odds and sods – mostly sharp and dangerous ones. They must have wondered what sort of test was being given to their faith!

  Of course, we kids thought it was hilarious. Nothing was ever said to Dad, but after that we always called the china on the top shelf ‘The Holy Cups’.

  8

  The Prize

  (about 1920)

  We never had much money, especially when I was a little girl just after the First World War. I suppose we were lucky to have any money because there were plenty of people around us who had nothing at all, and I mean literally nothing at all. Anyway, one year I qualified to go away with the Ragged School Union Country Holiday Fund. This offered a week away in the country for just 10s. To be honest, I didn’t want to go. I wasn’t a very adventurous little girl and, I suppose, I was pretty insecure. I didn’t want to leave Mum. But she said I would have to go, and how lucky I was to qualify, and how exciting it must be for me, until I thought I would have to go or there would be trouble. So I kept my mouth shut and just went.

  The holiday was in a big house in Letchworth. I had no idea where Letchworth was; in fact I never came across it again until well after the Second World War. As far as a little girl from the East End of London was concerned it could have been anywhere – we were taken there in the back of a lorry, and by the time we arrived I could well believe it was on the other side of the world. I had never travelled so far in my life, I wasn’t even sure you could travel ‘so far’ and still be in England.

  We arrived in the late afternoon at this great big house just outside the town. As soon as we arrived we had to take a bath and a dose of Liquorice Powder to open the bowels. Maybe it was the excitement of the journey, maybe an attack of nerves, but my bowels remained firmly closed. The next morning, though, when I woke up I was absolutely bursting to go to the loo but that didn’t matter to the ‘powers’ that were in charge. As soon as we got up the first task was to wash our hair and all my requests to go to the loo were ignored. According to their rules I couldn’t possibly want the toilet at that time and that was the end of it. As they worked their way through us all doing our hair I got to feel worse and worse until I finally shouted out that I ‘had to go!’ The matron looked down at me for a couple of seconds, probably trying to make up her mind whether I was just trying to destroy their routine or whether I was afraid of having clean hair. Meanwhile, I could feel that my belly was on the verge of exploding. I had my legs wound tight together to try and contain the explosion until the last possible moment and was rocking my whole lower body backwards and forwards in a sort of desperate effort to encourage the muscles to hold together for a little bit longer. After looking at me for some time I think she had decided that I was being awkward and just wanted to get out of being clean, while getting a bit of attention at the same time. Her strategy must have been to humiliate me so as to teach me not to make a fuss. Instead of sending me off to the loo she said something to one of the staff who quickly went out through a door and reappeared a couple of moments later with a chamber pot. She put it down in front of me and matron ‘invited’ me to use it! To be honest, I didn’t need any invitation. Normally I would have been terribly embarrassed and nothing would have made me use the loo in the presence of anybody else, but as soon as that pot touched the ground I had my knickers off and was on it. And my bowels just emptied and emptied and emptied. The stink was awful but I didn’t care. At that moment I didn’t have a care in the world, all I wanted to do was sit there and let my belly empty. Slowly the pain went off and my tummy relaxed. When I finally stood up the pot was full almost to the brim. In fact, it was so full they couldn’t trust me to carry it away without spilling it. Instead, one of the staff got a cloth, which was carefully laid across the top of the pot, and it was carried ceremoniously away. The matron kept a very stiff upper lip and continued to look straight across the top of our heads, but I think it must have taken her aback. Especially when she thought how close she had been to disaster.

  I can’t remember much about the holiday. Its most lasting legacy came from having porridge for breakfast every day – I have disliked porridge ever since. Apart from that, I think that most days we used to play games in the grounds. But one day we were going into the town to look at the shops and maybe buy presents for our families. As it happened, every lunchtime from school I used to go and get half a pint of beer for an old lady who lived up the street and she would give me sixpence a week. She had fallen behind with my ‘pay’ and eventually one of her daughters gave me a postal order for 2s 6d just before the holiday so I was really rich. But before I could get any presents I had to cash this postal order, and the matron decided I should go to town with her for the purpose. All the other kids wanted to come with us, but matron refused. That morning we got up and had breakfast as usual but we had to wash ‘especially clean’ and were then lined up to walk into town. Except the matron called me to one side and told me to wait. I kicked up one hell of a fuss, but she wouldn’t change her mind, and I had to stand there as all the others trailed off in a long crocodile towards the town.

  I was decidedly upset and decidedly suspicious. Then things got worse, because matron told me to go and put on my Sunday best. Well, Sunday best was exactly that; you did not dare to wear it at any other time, Mum would have killed you! So again I kicked up merry hell and said how you could not wear Sunday best on any other day, Mum would get ever so cross, it wasn’t right and all the rest, but it didn’t help. In the end I had to go off to get changed into my best mauve and white! I was a reasonably pretty child and in good clothes must have looked quite presentable.

  When I got back downstairs to the hall matron was already there, dressed up to the nines with a very impressive hat on the top. I was getting more and more worried by the minute – after all, I hadn’t wanted to leave my Mum in the first place and now we were getting all dressed up on the wrong day.

  ‘Come on then Mary,’ she said, ‘we are going into town.’ That was exactly what we did, following the steps all the others had taken half an hour earlier. Goodness knows what was wrong with the woman, I guess these days she would be sent for counselling, but everywhere we went she introduced me as her daughter. Whether it was just her fantasy, or whether she had had a husband and daughter who had died, or whatever was going on, I just do not kno
w. I am sure none of the people we met were at all fooled: you couldn’t keep secrets in little places like that. As far as I was concerned, though, it was terribly worrying because I was not her daughter and I didn’t want to be her daughter. My Mum was back home, and that was where I wanted to be.

  Of course, by then the other kids had seen us and were tagging along to see what was going on. That gave me some comfort, so I tried to keep them with us. We went into all sorts of shops, some of which we kids would never have gone into on our own. The other kids thought it was marvellous that I was going in and started asking me to buy things. Since I wanted to keep them with us I obliged with whatever they wanted – including loads of bananas which most of the kids had never tasted before. I spent pretty well all my money in the process, but it was worth it. I think matron was showing me off around the town and giving everybody the story about me being her daughter. It was a tremendous relief to get back to the house and be able to dress in my ordinary clothes and start playing with everybody else again.