EARLY YEARS & LINEAGE

0019 – Ma’s Christening in Leeds, 1921, and then Liverpool (as dictated by her)

In terms of the conditions at the time, my mother had a relatively privileged, albeit somewhat disjointed, upbringing. As told to me, when she was in her eighties, she thought she confused elements of her memory; but the bits she did recall were diamond sharp. Thus, she remembered a bundle of apparently unconnected events from her early childhood; much as I did a generation later. One of her earliest memories was of her christening in Leeds. She remembered it because, due to the war, it was postponed until she was six and a half years old - and she was the only one in the service who was not a baby! The memory was fixed in her mind, as much from the horror of the vicar lifting her up and kissing her. It was clear, though, that she did suffer some deprivations as a result of the war. Not least, because her brother (Sid) was very ill, he had to be given the best food. The result was that my mother was deprived of Vitamin C and developed rickets – leaving her with bow-legs; a common condition at the time, but unheard of now.

All she could remember about the rest of her time in Leeds, apart from Roundhey Park (she seemed to fixate on parks wherever she went!), was starting school at six years old; when she could remember playing under a table with a cloth thrown over it to make a play-house. She was the 'wife' and 'Tom' her cousin, who was the same age as her, was the man of the house. Tom and she kept up the friendship even after she moved to the Wirral. In those days, of course, extended families included cousins as well as brothers and sisters. Indeed, all the relatives in Leeds came to them for holidays, because Liverpool was near New Brighton which was, in those days, a great seaside resort. Much later my parents later lived on its outskirts, but by then it was well past its prime - indeed run down.

But my mother was at that school for only a short time. My grandfather had grown tired of being posted to different schools around Yorkshire; it was only in Scarborough that they stayed for any time - of which she only remembered (once more) the park there, Deephome Park. Accordingly, he got a job in Canada. He was dissuaded though from moving there, partly because he would have had to qualify all over again but mainly because my grandmother's relatives thought that - as something of a womaniser - she would never see him again! 

Accordingly, my grandfather moved to Liverpool; where my mother lived from the age of six until twelve. The Grafton Street School, a reformatory for boys where my grandfather taught and they also lived, was just a couple of streets away from the docks. In later life she would look back across the Mersey, from the shore at Eastham Woods, to see the 'Cast Iron Shore' near where she had lived. Again her memories were fragmentary, and the earliest one of Liverpool occurred just after they moved there. She got lost and was taken to the police station where they asked “Where do you come from?” She said Leeds, and that confused everybody; not least herself!

From her later time in Liverpool, she especially remembered the overhead railway which ran nearby, along the docks and then out to Southport. This was one of the features fondly remembered by most Liverpudlians, but it was wantonly pulled down in the 'modernisation' of the 1960s which cut the heart out of the city. In her memory it used to make a thundering noise in the distance as she was going to sleep.  

At the bottom Grafton Street, on the boundary of the docks, was a big brewery. From there she had to walk along the road to St. Margaret's, which was a relatively up-market school. A ‘nice school’ was how my mother described it, where her fellow pupils were the daughters of people such as city councillors.

By the brewery there was also a big yard where they stacked timber. In later years there was also a transport contractor, Booles, whose owners lived in the street and were very elite, with a sumptuous house. They gave dinner parties at their house. Also nearby was a factory which made jam, and as she lay in bed she would get the lovely smell of the jam being made. This interspersing of industry with high class housing was typical of this area of Liverpool at the time. 

The people she remembered included Mrs. White. She was the storyteller who fostered my mother’s love of reading. She told all the classical stories and used to take in the children who lived in the elite houses in street. Indeed, all the children used to go and listen to her. 

My mother’s closest friend, Audrey  (Maisie) Smith, lived in a house - also in Grafton Street - that was in part a dairy. Her family had their own cows in the yard behind the house, where there was a cowshed, or shippam as they called it. My mother used to go and get the milk straight from the cows and thought it was marvellous to have cows in the centre of a city; though this was quite usual in that period. Needless to say, she remembered Princes Park, the nearest big park to them.

The first school she went to, where she only remembered a fully tiled swimming pool in the basement, lasted a very short time. She brought her great new friend, My Lai, home to tea. In an age where colour bars were normal, even though my grandfather had been one of the early socialists, the next day my mother was moved to St. Margaret's. This was a bit of a nuisance, since it was three miles away and she had to walk there each day.

Her brother, Sidney, was sent to the Oulton Grammar School - since he was two and a half years older. Her memories of St. Margarets, at that age, are sketchy; though she could remember the priest taking his hat off and folding it to put in the sash at his waist.

As a teenager she seems to have behaved much like the rest of us have done since that time. For fun, she and the other girls would regularly catch the ferry across the Mersey to Birkenhead, and then hide in the toilets before they made their way back again. In this way they didn't have to pay, the pay kiosks were on the Birkenhead side only. One of them, Eva Rimmer, continued to visit my mother - eventually attending the local dances with her - when my mother moved to the Wirral. Of course, Ma also remembered the first Mersey Tunnel being built, and the stories about how they had to pump in so much concrete grout to seal the cracks that it eventually seeped out at the Cast Iron Shore miles away!

Indeed, despite the rigours of life at the time, life was not all that bleak. At home, in the reformatory school, when she used to have a party her older sister Ethel, along with her friends from the houses around, used to dress up as 'Nippys' - the waitresses who then served in the Lyons Corner Houses. The children, of my mother's age, attending the parties were most impressed with this. Normally, though, they had house-boys to do any rough work that her mother wanted.

The ‘Nippys’!

There were, of course, emotional entanglements. The boy who was stationed on the door of the schoolhouse, Carter, was the object of a bit of a crush by my mother; and, when her father discovered this, poor Carter was never allowed on the door again.

The house clearly was a large building, which offered many opportunities for play. She well remembered running up the fire escapes outside of the house 'like a monkey'. She was the pet of the matron in the school and the women staff. They used to make her dolls and she was always included in the parties they had at the school. Before these events they used to go in and look at the table where all the presents were but, despite trying to remember which was the one she wanted, she invariably got the wrong thing.

When she was twelve years old, she - along with the rest of the family - moved to Bromborough Pool on the Wirral. It was an event she remembered especially well, since she had to take care of the cat - Fluffy! The cat immediately jumped out of the upstairs window, since at Grafton Street the equivalent window led onto a fire escape which was the cat’s domain. Fortunately, despite the cat's shock at the resulting fall, it survived.

The main reason they moved to the Wirral was that the government was disbanding the home office schools. Equally, though, her sister who was seven and a half years older got entangled with one of the boys who had left but who (as a coach driver) regularly came down from Ripon  to meet her. My mother thought he was very nice, and covered for her sister's secret trysts by going round the shops when Ethel was supposed to be looking after her. But, when the family found out, there was a terrible row, since her parents wanted to break up this relationship.

On the other hand, although the boys in the reformatory were classed as problem children, it was mostly their parent's fault. That's how Charlie came to go to the Wirral with them, because he was a normal boy who – effectively abandoned by his prostitute mother - had been brought up by my grandfather and grandmother. They just couldn't leave him behind. He eventually got a job a Price's and had a good future ahead of him. That's why my grandfather took a tough line with him when he chose - at the age of eighteen - to leave all of this and go to find his mother, who was still a prostitute, in London. My grandfather was upset because Charlie was leaving a good job behind, and - as the boys and girls accepted him as one of them - he could have stayed with them. He came back not long after, and became a commissionaire at a cinema in Liverpool, he'd had enough of his mother, but - having made his choice - he was not accepted back into the family. The moral values of middle class families then were quite strictly bounded.

When my mother arrived on the Pool, my father - who was seven and a half years older than her - was already one of the eligible bachelors; who, she pointed out later, would not then have even looked at her! Later on they all used to have wonderful times, after all it was the nineteen twenties (and then thirties) when life was lived to the full! For New Year they always had a big dance at Hulme Hall in Port Sunlight, but the same crowd moved around various dances throughout the year. The band, run by my uncle Bill, played for these dances. According to my mother he was a very talented musician, who could play any instrument - though, as was often the case with band leaders in those days, he mainly played the saxophone. My aunt, my father's sister – Phyllis - later Bill's wife, used have lots of partners; she was lively and everybody thought the world of her. Eventually they became a foursome and went around together, even on holiday. 

They often returned home in the early hours and the cockerel on Manor Farm on Pool Lane (the road to the village) crowed so loudly, as they passed, that it eventually paid with its life. The farmer was so annoyed at being woken up so early by it!

Manor farm was a very old building, dating back to the middle ages, with a duck pond between it and the road. Local legend had it that a secret passage ran from it to either Birkenhead or Chester (12 miles away!). It was a historical landmark - though this did not stop it being demolished in the 1980s, to make way for an extension to the factory! Unilever always held great sway with the local planners. Some say Unilever was even able to influence the Germans who, during the war, managed to keep their bombs away from its factories in the area and even its dock nearby - in much the same way as the allied planes managed to avoid bombing its facilities in Germany!

[back] [home]

hits