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

the same shift as husband or son (and complicating matters even further, if not). There was talk of lodgers breaking up families – and probably some did – but a boarder whose inky bathwater you threw across the yard and whose chamber pot you emptied soon took the shine off temptation.
    December 7, 1910
Rent (of which 2s is back
Left for food 11s 6d
payment) 10s 0d
20 Loaves 4s 2d
Boot club 6d
Meat 2s 10½d
Burial Insurance 7d
2 Tins of milk 6d
Mangling 2d
Sugar 4d
Coal 1s 4d
Margarine 1s
Gas 9d
Potatoes 9d
Wood 1d
Tea 8d
Soap, soda 4d
Fish 4 ½d
Linseed meal 1d
Vegetables 6d
Pinafore and bonnet 8d
Pepper, salt 1d
Total 14s 6d
Jam 3d
    Example of Mrs E’s weekly household budget. Mrs E had no idea what her husband earned. She received 22s a week in summertime and what he could give in winter; never less than 20s when in work. Her eldest daughter had just started work in a soda-water factory and was allowing 4s a week. Owing to a period of almost entire unemployment in the previous winter, £3 4s was owed in rent when the Fabian Group’s visits began. There were seven children alive; three dead. One son had left home.
    â€“ From Maud Pember Reeves,
Round About a Pound a Week
, a survey of working-class wives in Lambeth, London, by the Fabian Women’s Group, 1909–1913
    Some of Betsy’s customers accomplished their near-impossible feats of hard household labour while living in part-houses, their landlord having divided the property into two. Other households comprised several generations, widows (or, less often, widowers) sharing their home with married daughters or sons. With this shifting mix of family, lodgers and shared houses, plus neighbours moving to find new employment, better accommodation or cheaper rent, as my great-grandparents had done until now, the population of Wheeldon Mill was, in part, itinerant. There were frequent comings and goings, all of which Betsy had to be aware of, along with people’s names: corner-shopkeepers needed to know their customers (and who might be tempted to do a moonlight flit).
    Not everyone in the vicinity used the corner shop. The little knot of houses comprising Wheeldon Mill was its mainstay; those living higher up Station Road had grocers of their own, though many of them called in occasionally. There were Sunday strollers too, rounding off canalside walks with a drink in the Great Central Hotel and some cigarettes from the shop; plus passing trade from those using the railway station, or cutting along the towpath from Newbridge Lane. Larger properties in the neighbourhood, further up the social scale as well as higher up the hill, moved in a different sphere and had their groceries delivered, though the Brimington House slavey was partial to an ounce of pear drops on her half day.
    The room behind the shop was known as the house, an appropriately all-encompassing word, as everything bar sleep went on there. Its black-leaded range provided all heat and hot water – there was no hot tap in the house: water for cooking or the weekly bath came from the one cold tap and was heated in a saucepan or kettle.Clothes were boiled in a gas-fired copper concealed beneath a cloth when not in use. Gas mantles cast a subdued light across all rooms (and shop); Wee-Willie-Winkie candlesticks or candles on saucers were on hand for trips to the privy. Rugs overlaid the floors, several overlapping rag rugs made from oddments and cast-off clothing. As the years went by and fashions changed, these became more colourful, but when Betsy made her first rugs for the house, their fronds were mostly brown or black.
    Though separated by a different class of rug (older versus new), kitchen sink and sofa were merely yards apart. The sink had plates and tea cups on shelves rising above it, whereas framed photographs hung from the picture rail above the horsehair sofa, emphasising their distinct roles. The pictures were a veritable family gallery: Betsy’s father