MILL STREET:
My dad worked for Scudamore the tailor. He was what was called a gentleman’s tailor. He started work there when he was 14 years old in 1904 and was paid a shilling a day (5p) for four years. He sat on the floor with his legs crossed and the light came down over him. He did all his sewing by hand, without a machine. We used to take him his tea. I said one day to my mother, “Why on earth didn’t Dad show us how to sew?” She said, “Your dad hated his job and he wouldn’t show you how to do it”. This is something I have always felt sad about. He was a very quiet man; you didn’t often hear him speak.
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The boys slept in the back bedroom and Joan and I slept in the bedroom with mum and dad. Joan and I had a single bed between us. On a Sunday we had to stay in bed until 10 o’clock. I remember my brothers used to pillow fight and used to get told off. When we got downstairs Mum used to cook a very large tin of tomatoes. She would put some dripping in the pan and salt and pepper and a little sugar. It was lovely. I still like it today. With that we had thick pieces of bread. Mum would buy her bread and keep it for three days so it would fill you up.
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There were no school dinners. You went home for your lunch. Every Monday when we got in from school Mum would be washing and would be bad tempered and everywhere would be full of steam. I hated it.
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Every Sunday we had to peel the potatoes and shell the peas and then Dad would take us up South Street to see my grandmother. She was a little old lady with white hair and really deaf. My dad would shout at her and she would say “What did you say Joe?”, and after dinner we would go to Brook Hall, the church. I loved it. It belonged to the bakers. They had a shop in West Street, and when it was celebration time at the church we had fresh bread and butter and Madeira cake and I would eat as much as I could, it was so good.
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When you got home at dinner time Mum would send you up the town to do any shopping needed. She only went to the town on a Friday. She would wait for us outside the school, and we would have to stand by her while she talked to different people, then she would go to Broad Street and stand on the pavement opposite a shop called Ferris. They had lovely cream cakes in the window, and just before they were going to close they would drop the blinds down almost to the bottom, and then Mum would send us in to buy the cream cakes, which would be very much reduced in price.
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Tom the milkman would come on Saturday lunch time. He used to have a little home made cart that he would pull along. He had two big metal milk cans on it, and he had a ladle with which he would measure out the milk into Mum’s jug. My younger brother, Ken, would always stand there with his enamel mug and Tom would fill it for him. Mum would pay Tom on Saturdays and Tom would always say “A halfpenny for Joan, a halfpenny for Vera and a halfpenny for Ken”.
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Every winter they would have what was called a soup kitchen in the town hall. It was for the poor people of the town, and my mum would make us go to it. We used to feel awful but we had to do it. There would be all the old ladies and men there, but the soup was really good and we had lovely fresh bread with it.
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Every September we had to go hop picking. My mum and dad didn’t come, it was just us. We had to be at the top of Mill Street and a lorry used to come and we would all jump on to the back of it and it would take us to the hop yards. We would have what we called a crib, which was like a big basket, and we would start picking the hops and we would have to pick them all day. A man would come round and take the hops from us and would record each bushel against our name. At lunch time another man would come round and sell us fish and chips, which were cold by the time they got to the fields. This would go on for four weeks, and at the end we would get paid for what we had done. My mum would have all the money. She said it was to buy our winter clothes. They never ever gave us any of it, but we didn’t ever think we should have any of it. That’s how we all were in those days.
