Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue by Lynn Knight Read Free Book Online

well as to a husband’s plate, a spoonful of mustard pickle enlivening a nice piece of ham.
    Boiled ham, brawn and hazlett, plus bacon by the slice, were delivered by the butcher, and stored in a meat safe which did not exactly keep meat fresh, but at least kept the flies off. The butcher also supplied ha’penny ‘ducks’: pieces of chopped liver and other intestines stewed in a seasoned gravy. These arrived as a dark, not-quite-solid rectangle faintly quivering on a tray, and were cut into wedges by Betsy, a task she accomplished while holding her breath. (My great-grandma might sell ‘ducks’, but she couldn’t bring herself to eat one.) As with the relishes and boiled ham, bacon was usually destined for the man of the house, his wife and children making do with bread and dip: the fat that had fried the bacon, mopped up with a slice of bread.
    The women of Wheeldon Mill were Betsy’s chief customers,their purchases revealing both the pattern and the detail of their lives, their days determined by the occupations of husbands and sons. The majority of the men were manual labourers, many employed as miners. Mining accounted for the largest portion of Chesterfield’s workforce, but there was also a whole vocabulary of skilled and unskilled foundry men, plus general labourers, railwaymen and brickies. Whatever their occupation, the result was the same: most of the men were engaged in filthy work; collar-andtie chaps were the exception.
    Wives fought a constant battle against dirt, not just the dirt in poorly ventilated houses but the muck their men brought home. Betsy’s stock described their unequal struggle. Borax, Rub-a-Dub, Dolly Blue, Carbosil, Fairy Flakes, Sunlight Soap, Reckitt’s Blue, Robin Starch, Persil – she sold every brand of laundry soap and washing soda you could think of, plus donkey stone for whitening sills and doorsteps, and peggy legs for pummelling wet clothes.
    Coal dust was particularly pernicious. These were the days well before pithead baths, when men came straight from the mine. There was kettle after kettle of hot water to boil and heavy clothes to dry for the next day. Even the moleskin trousers miners wore were stiff with perspiration by the close of a long shift, sweat and dust intermingling, each rearrangement of their steaming bulk, as they dried before the fire, releasing further coal dust into the room. It was impossible to keep a baby clean with a collier in the house and, no matter how hard you scrubbed them, there was no such thing as clean sheets. Coal dust ground its way into the very grain of the cloth.
    Colliers’ wives were as wedded to the pit as their menfolk, the timing of colliery shifts setting the rhythm of domestic life: one steel cage descending as another ascended towards daylight, withthe expectation of hot water at the ready and the stew pan simmering nicely regardless of the hour. Those with husbands and sons working opposite shifts could be on their feet from dawn till nightfall, a coat pulled over their nightdress at both ends of the day when they stumbled out of bed to stoke the fire.
    Betsy’s neighbour Nora Parks had four sons follow their father down the pit. Five loads of pit clothes to darn, wash and dry; five colliers working a mix of shifts, five men requiring hot baths and food; Nora sluicing water into the tub (and out again, once the bathers were through), her skirt and apron splashed with filthy water, perspiration running down her face; the whole room steaming and condensation puddling on the sills. If they were in from school, her daughters Lil and Edna were called upon to swill their brothers’ backs, in anticipation of a future like their mother’s.
    In the early years of the corner shop, at least until the First World War, most wages kept purchasing to a minimum: 3s 3d was the going daily rate for a foundry labourer, while skilled foundry-men might earn the same as a curate or junior clerk.