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

In 1906, the average coalface worker earned £112 a year, approximately £2 a week, though there were frequent slips and stoppages. The majority of shopping lists varied little from one week to the next. Requests for two ounces – of cheese, butter or flour – were commonplace: most customers bought food in small quantities. Many women shopped daily, especially those whose husbands were paid by the day. Weekly wages were easier to manage, but with basic foodstuffs sold loose and weighed out by hand, it was easy for Betsy to adjust quantities to reflect people’s needs, or, rather, their purses. ‘Just do me that corner of hazlett, Mrs Nash, and a mouse-size piece of cheese.’
    Trade was conducted in pennies and halfpennies more oftenthan shillings; a half sovereign was something to change down into more useful coinage. You could buy a surprising amount with small coins: a quartern loaf cost approximately 6d, a pound of tea one shilling; a halfpenny could buy quite a lot. Even so, it was impossible to run a corner shop without offering credit; several neighbours relied on tick by the end of the week. But there was nearly always someone willing to risk a little splurge and, for the better-off, temptation came round each Saturday in the form of the few iced fancies Betsy displayed on a tray.
    It must be remembered by those who are convinced that the working man can live well and easily on 3d a day, because middle-class people have tried the experiment and found it possible, that the well-to-do man who may spend no more than 1s 9d a week on food for a month or more has not also all his other expenses cut down to their very lowest limit. The well-to-do man sleeps in a quiet, airy room with sufficient and sanitary bedding. He has every facility for luxurious bathing and personal cleanliness. He has light and hygienic clothing; he has warmth in the winter and a change of air in the summer. He can rest when he is in; he has good cooking at his command, with a sufficiency of storage, utensils, and fuel. Above all, he can always stop living on 3d a day if it does not suit him, or if his family get anxious. When his daughter needs a pair of 6s 6d boots he does not have to arrange an overdraft with his banker in order to meet the crisis, as the poor man does with his pawnbroker. He does not feel that all his family, well or ill, warm or cold, overworked or not, are also bound to live on 3d a day, and are only too thankful if it does not drop to 2½d or 2d, or even less, should under-employment or unemployment come his way. It is impossible to compare the living on 3d a day of a person all of whose other requirements are amply and sufficiently satisfied, with the living of people whose every need is thwarted and starved.
    â€“ From Maud Pember Reeves,
Round About a Pound a Week
, a survey of working-class wives in Lambeth, by the Fabian Women’s Group, 1909–1913
    Inevitably, those in straitened circumstances made more of an impression on my great-grandma. Hunger presented a needier face at the shop door, often a woman with young children, like Florrie Stokes. Florrie’s daughter, Ethel, ran errands whenever she could, which brought in the odd ha’penny, but the only wage coming into the house was her husband’s and him too lippy to keep any job long: a short spell as a hewer, a stint of labouring here and there, some fetching and carrying, while Florrie struggled to raise a family of six. ‘You wouldn’t believe it, Mrs Nash,’ she said, ‘but my long hair,’ (now scrunched into a bun) ‘was once as bright as a new thrupenny bit.’
    Several neighbours had to fend for lodgers as well as husbands and sons: young men squeezing into rooms whose table could scarcely accommodate a growing family, let alone another pair of elbows. One lodger after another (and sometimes more than one at once); a nephew or other relative, perhaps; a stranger, quite often; someone sharing