Polly: Memories of an East End Girl

by Jeff Smith

  Back at school we had to write an essay, well in those days we called it a ‘composition’, about the holiday. You can guess that the idea terrified me and I couldn’t possibly tell the truth about it and how I had felt. I couldn’t think what to say. However, all the grown-ups had gone on and on about what a wonderful opportunity it was, how beautiful it was in the country, the trees and the walks, all the fun and games we would enjoy with each other as children, how dedicated the staff were and how good the food was and so on, so I decided that the best thing was to repeat it all. That is what I did, working in everything that ‘they’ had said and not revealing any of my own feelings and terrors. The big surprise was many weeks later when I was called to the governess’ room to be told that I had won the essay prize for my age group. The school was very proud of me and greatly honoured by the prize, so they wanted me to go up to the Mansion House in London to receive my prize, and would my parents be able to take me up there on the appointed Saturday? Honestly, I had been doing my best to forget about the whole thing; I had hated the holiday and believed that I had come within a hair’s breadth of never going home ever again. Suddenly it had come back to haunt me. So I looked very sad and told the governess that my parents couldn’t possibly take me to collect the prize. She tut-tutted and said she quite understood, though really she didn’t have the faintest idea. Another narrow escape, or so I thought.

  Two days later she sent for me again. This time she told me that the school was so honoured, and they so wanted me not to be disappointed, that Miss Davidson would give up her Saturday afternoon to take me to the prize-giving. There was no way out of this so I finally gave in and accepted the inevitable. She gave me a letter for my parents explaining the arrangements and that Miss Davidson would meet me at the tram stop in the High Road at whatever time it was. Mind you, when it came to it Mum and Dad were ever so proud of me and when I got home I had a terrible job explaining to them why a teacher had to take me and they couldn’t go! Really, telling lies is not worth the hassle, you have to be so quick-witted and have such a good memory about what you have already said, and even then each lie just gets you into more complications.

  Come the fateful Saturday I got all dressed up in my Sunday best, in fact Mum bought me a new Sunday dress. It was bottle green, I remember. I got dressed up in that, shoes and stockings, and my best hat. Mum was so proud of me I had to be dragged in next door to show off to Mrs Nicholson, and then I sat watching the clock waiting for the dreaded time to come round. Dad worked on Saturday mornings and always stopped in the pub for a couple of drinks with his mates on the way home. Just before I was due to go out he came in, drunk as usual. He looked at me approvingly and said how nice I looked, but then said he wasn’t so sure about the arrangements. He had stopped in at the Greengate pub as usual when Miss Davidson had come in so he had got talking to her. He was shocked, he said, by her language and the way she swore – her being an educated lady, too. Even worse was the way she drank, not beer but shorts. She could put down the whisky faster than he was drinking his beer. He had to admit that she had drunk him under the table, and there were not many men who could do that let alone a Miss Schoolteacher. My eyes were popping out of my head and I was ashamed, scared, humiliated, and shocked, all at the same time.

  ‘Did you say you were my dad?’ I sort of asked.

  ‘Of course,’ he replied and went off on an even more lurid account of Miss Davidson and her drinking. Mum didn’t seem at all worried and suddenly said it was time to go, and packed me off on my way.

  I couldn’t understand why Mum was so relaxed about it all and so I walked up to the High Road going slower and slower, wondering whether I could run away somewhere. When I reached the end of the road there was Miss Davidson standing at the tram stop and waving to me, so there was nothing more to be done. We waited for the tram in silence and when it came we went upstairs. I was absolutely terrified about what had happened and what Miss would say, but she seemed to ignore everything that had gone before. When she spoke I carefully tried to smell her breath but couldn’t pick up any hint of alcohol, which just proved to me that all Dad had said about her being a hardened drinker must be true. How else could she cover up so well?

  We got to the Mansion House and I was led off with the prize-winners while Miss went off to the audience seats. I don’t recall much about the actual prize-giving, or the rest of the day. My prize was a picture of a dog – or it might have been a puppy. Mum was ever so proud of it that she had it framed (without glass!) and it went on display on the mantelpiece. It stayed there until I got married and moved out. At first I just wanted to forget the whole affair but it wasn’t possible with the picture stuck there in front of me. After a while I began to like the picture and, I suppose, feel a bit proud of myself. We kept it right until we were bombed out. When the salvage workers were struggling to see what they could save I told them not to bother with the picture; after all, there were much more pressing issues. Looking back, I think it would have been nice to have salvaged it, but it is too late now.

  After the war, a long time after the war, I had a sudden rush of revelation. The pub at the tram stop was what we used to call a beer pub. It just had a couple of pumps of beer on draught and a couple of types of bottled beer and that was it – it never sold spirits. No wonder Mum was so relaxed about Dad’s lurid tale of Miss Davidson’s drinking.

  9

  A Daughter’s Story

  (about 1925)

  In the early 1950s I got an early morning job cleaning the offices of a factory up near Bow. Somehow I seemed to meet all sorts in that job and some of them were really odd. They would tell you stories that just didn’t and couldn’t make sense – it used to leave me dumbstruck that they expected you to believe them, but I listened anyway. If nothing else, it helped the job go along. I do remember the story of one young woman though – it still makes me shudder to think about the Depression and what happened to people.

  This young woman came to work as a cleaner for a while. She was ever so nice, quiet and easy going, and never had a cross word for anyone. Until, that is, one morning when three or four of us were working at one end of the Drawing Office and she was at the other. One of the women with us put on a disapproving face, gestured down to the other end and said that ‘she got sent for again last night’ and went on to tell us, in a stage whisper, about ‘her mother, always drunk,’ and how she would ‘have to keep going down the pub to collect her.’ She was just getting into her stride when the young woman reacted. She came storming down from the other end of the office, her lips pulled in so tight that it looked as though if her mouth opened there would be an explosion. She fixed us all in one stare that had us rooted to the spot. Finally she spoke, ‘My mum’s welcome to get drunk any time she wants to. And they can send for me to collect her any time of the day or night. And she’ll have a home wherever I am for as long as she needs it or wants it.’ And then she told us her story.

  Her mum had got married just after the First World War and soon had two daughters – this woman was the older of them – followed a few years later by a son. It wasn’t easy, well life wasn’t easy for anyone then, but they managed and were getting along as well as anybody else around Stratford. They were living in two rooms at the time, nothing like luxury but at least it was home. Then the husband died. Within a week or so the tiny savings were gone, the rent wasn’t paid, and they were simply thrown out onto the streets. That was it, a young woman with two daughters aged about six or seven and a baby son, with nowhere to live. Their only possessions were a couple of bits of clothes apiece and the bucket, scrubbing brush, soap, stone and apron that her mum had salvaged from their home.

  Luckily it was summer, so they walked over to Victoria Park and just used to wander around there. The two girls would look after the baby in one of the shelters that dotted the park and their mum would go off round the streets, knocking on doors to get work scrubbing steps and the like. With the couple of coppers she made from this she would
buy food and return to the shelter in the park to spend the night with the kids. That was how they lived for the rest of the summer. It couldn’t last, though, and as the year wore on it got colder and colder until eventually the winter meant that they just had to find some proper shelter.

  Well, her mother had a brother who lived over in Poplar so she and the kids walked over there. There was nothing he could do. If he had taken them in he would have been in trouble with the landlord and soon been on the streets himself. Maybe he didn’t want to do anything, I don’t know. Anyway, the best he could, or maybe would, do was to let the family sleep in his hall. They couldn’t come in until it was getting dark and would bed down straight away on the floor. The brother would lend them a blanket but that wasn’t much between the four of them, and with no heating it was bitterly cold. Then next morning, almost as soon as it was light, they would have to go out again and spend the day on the streets. As before, they would find whatever shelter they could and the girls would look after the baby while their mum did whatever work she could find.

  It couldn’t last. The end came when they woke up one morning and found that the little boy had died of cold during the night. Of course, then the story came out and there was a dreadful scandal – it was a pity nobody thought of that when the family had been thrown out onto the streets in the first place. Anyway, the mum was forced into the workhouse and the two girls put into a home.

  A shelter in Victoria Park, possibly the one the girl’s family had to sleep in over the summer. © Patricia Philpott, English Heritage/National Monument Record

  Despite all that had happened she was determined to keep her family together and she kept in touch with the two girls, visiting regularly and promising that they would get back together again. She managed to get a job and then rent a couple of rooms and when the older girl was thirteen, her mum was able to get her out of the home. They both got jobs and eventually got the other daughter out when she was fourteen. While she had been in the home she had learned to speak ever so posh so that when she came out she used to get into all sorts of trouble because people thought she was putting it on and trying to show them up. In the end the older girl had to get a job in the same place as the younger one just so she could look after her and keep her out of trouble!

  Anyway, that was it. Slowly they got back on their feet, managed to get a little house and build a home, the daughters got married and in the end the mum went to live with our ‘young woman’. That was her story, but she finished it by repeating where she had started; ‘Mum is welcome to get drunk any time she likes and she will always have a home with me!’

  10

  The B Family

  (1920–7)

  When I was a girl my best friend was Jenny B. She was one of a large family, with one sister and goodness knows how many brothers – loads and loads of them. Us kids and the Bs were all the same sort of ages, and so we all played with each other. Although the rest of them just played, me and Jenny ‘clicked’ and we became very close friends until the passage of time took us on different paths. I must say that Jenny was not at all good looking, in fact she looked a bit funny. But she had the most wonderful nature and she was the nicest person you could ever know.

  The family were all clever enough and did well. I think Jenny was the brightest; she and I were the only ones from our school to get the scholarship and both of us could have gone to the grammar school, but neither of us was allowed to. I seem to remember that the second brother was a bit simple – not the full two bob – but he was a real hard worker. He would have a go at anything and really put his back into it. In fact, he always managed somehow or other and in time got married, had a family, and for as long as I heard about him was ever so happy. The youngest brother was Tommy, who was about the same age as our Bob. Mr B had been badly wounded in the war and, although he survived it somehow, he was never well and never worked again. In fact he only survived a couple of years and died soon after the war, from his wounds if the truth be told. I think it was because of this that the British Legion took an interest in the family and they more or less took Tommy over. We only heard the occasional bit of news, but did hear that he had gone to university. I don’t think we had any idea what that really meant, but it sounded good.

  Another of my brother’s friends was Ginger. He had a rough life, poor kid. His mother was suicidal and every so often she would have to be pulled out of the canal and taken back home. I suppose nowadays she would be given some help or something but there was nothing like that then. Anyway, as you can guess, Ginger had the biggest mop of ginger hair that you had ever seen. The other thing about Ginger, though, was that he was incredibly tall. He was only a kid like the rest of us, but he was already as big or bigger than most adults. The trouble was, he was as clumsy as any other kid, maybe worse because of his size. Mum used to fly into a real panic whenever he called round for the boys – ‘tell him to be careful,’ ‘don’t go there,’ ‘hurry up and get him outside’ – anything to get him out of the house. She was absolutely terrified that he would walk into one of the gas mantles. We had gas lights in those days and the mantles were extremely expensive and unbelievably fragile. You only had to touch them and they would disintegrate, and the sight of Ginger’s enormous frame trying to fit into our house was more than Mum could stand. Maybe he had already broken one of the mantles but I don’t remember it at all.

  During the Second World War he was called up and went in the army. I am not sure whether it was in the desert or Normandy, but he was terribly wounded in some battle. He said himself he could feel that he was dying and slowly slipping away, when he heard this really brutal voice suddenly shout at him, ‘Right you ginger bastard, don’t die on me now!’ He said that he was so shocked he could feel himself struggle to get control again and open his eyes. When he did, he looked up and found himself looking straight at Tommy B. He had become a doctor and was in the Medical Corps. He was as surprised as anybody to find a ‘dying’ friend from his childhood on the battlefield, but Ginger was convinced that Tommy had pulled him back from death and saved his life.

  After the war Tommy returned to Stratford and worked at the London Hospital. He never married, but lived with the eldest of his brothers who was a writer and artist. Sadly he died quite young – he got appendicitis but being a doctor didn’t take proper notice of it and by the time they operated it was too late. He was very well known and much loved around Stratford and the whole place came to a stop for his funeral.

  Going back to Jenny, we were great friends all through school and even when we started work. Then she sort of disappeared in a bit of a scandal. There was a lady up the road who was the local ‘unofficial’ midwife. She was not trained at all, but had lots of experience and had delivered most of the babies in the street; certainly those of the poorer families who couldn’t afford to go to the hospital. She knew what she was doing. Anyway, one day she was visiting the Bs and there were several people around when Jenny came in. Without thinking, she asked, ‘Oh, and when are you going to have the baby then?’ Goodness knows what, but she instantly recognised from her body shape or something that Jenny was pregnant. The family had managed to cover it up until then and nobody in the street had suspected anything, but now the cat was out of the bag. There was a terrible stink and Mum went mad and said I was never to talk to Jenny again. It didn’t matter because, as I said, Jenny more or less disappeared. It turned out that the father was a married man. Believe it or not, he was married to the local Stratford Beauty Queen but somehow he got caught up with Jenny for all her funny looks. He left his wife and set up home with Jenny and they did, like the fairy story, live happily ever after.

  I know that because years after the war we were going out to a dinner and, as we were walking into the station dressed up to the nines, we came face to face with Jenny. I don’t know who was most surprised but we had a rapid catch-up on twenty years or more. To be honest, I would have rather sat on the platform all night and carried on talking, but we had paid f
or the tickets and it was important to my husband Fred so we went to the dinner. She was a lovely girl.

  11

  Families

  (1925)

  When I look back I can see that we had a pretty good life really. Dad was always in work and because of his work in the market we always had plenty of food. He used to drink a lot – somehow it seemed to be part of life in the market – and almost always came home drunk or, at least, ‘the worse for wear’, but family came first and he always gave Mum her money. He only ever came home stone cold sober once that I can remember and that was from the funeral of a friend who also worked in the market. He had only been a young man, younger than Dad, but one day he suddenly dropped dead at work. It affected all his mates, including Dad, pretty badly. On the day of the funeral Dad got dressed up in all his best clothes – and he could be an extremely smart man – went out and not much more than an hour later was back again without having had a single drink. He walked into the house, sober and absolutely immaculate. The dog took one look at him, growled and bit him. He had never seen ‘this man’ before and didn’t recognise him, so assumed he was an intruder!

  I had no complaints though. Dad looked after his family and we always had a home there. There was a fellow round the corner who reckoned to look after his kids until they were ‘old enough’ and then they were turned out. ‘Old enough’ to him meant fifteen, and he was absolutely rigid about it with no exceptions. I suppose he had to be because there was never any spare room in their house. They had a new baby every year without fail, the last one when his wife was fifty-seven! That must be a bit of a record in itself.