She….
She was born in the coldest month of January, in England in 1880.
She was born the daughter of a shop salesman, the first child of eight.
Whooping cough, diphtheria, scarlet fever and typhoid were among the deceases that were claiming the lives of so many around that time.
She had a modest education, chalk and board she used to write on, as she sat at a wooden desk. She wore a white apron that must be kept clean over her clothes.
Strict Victorian teachers ruled the schools; she dare not speak out of line, or even be late for the risk of having a ruler swishing across her hand in view of the class.
A large bell that hung above the school would sound its chimes that declared the end of day, and she would walk home wearing her woolen coat and worn leather shoes.
Home, where there would be a coal fire if they were lucky, if not wood that her father would have gathered in nearby woods.
Her Mother cooked the food on a cast iron range, the steaming copper kettle whistled as it sat next to an Iron that was heating to press her father’s shirt for the following day..
Christmas gifts were oranges or maybe a sugar mouse from the sweet shop.
At the age of 14, she left school and began work in service, a kitchen maid. Employment was scarce; so many young girls left school to work for the rich.
Up at 5 am, cleaning the black stove, and then polishing it, the stove had to be spotlessly clean before cook came to make breakfast for ‘upstairs’.
Work stopped when she was told it had, exhausted she climbed the wooden stairs, candle in hand to the servants’ quarters.
She spoke when she was spoken to, and had strict instructions never to go upstairs.
With the pittance she was paid, she sent money home to her parents and had enough left to buy some new hair pins.
She fell in love, where she met him no-one knows, but she fell in love with a married man.
Too ashamed to fill in the census form in 1901, for fear of people knowing the terrible shame that came with living with a married man, she and her partner lived in sin.
By now she had a daughter, born in July of 1899, she named her Lillian.
Times were still hard, no state hand outs, the unions ran the work force and the labour exchange had long lines of men waiting to apply for any work they could get. Women were either shop workers, servants or factory workers, and the men either worked in factories or went down the mines.
To make ends meet, she took in laundry from nearby hotels. They supplied her with big round copper tubs, one was where she soaked them first, the second to wash them in hot steamy soapy water as she rubbed them hard against the wash board, then she put them through a wringer, in England at that time they called it a mangle.
After all this was done, she would iron the laundry with starch, and have them neatly folded to await the hotel’s porter to come and collect them.
Hundreds of sheets, pillow cases, table cloths, napkins, day in, day out.
I can only begin to imagine what it was like for her in that laundry room, the whole room smelling of soap and starch with steam billowing up from the copper vats and Lillian playing by her feet, as she wiped the sweat from her brow.
She went on to have three more children, Robert, Frederick and last of all Alice, born in April of 1906.
In the Second World War, she lost her son Frederick, the letter from the army confirmed, and she was still struggling in her life, but this time due to rations.
Alice had a family of her own now; a little girl named Ann, Ann would rush up to her as she sat warming by the fire. She loved to see the look of delight on Ann’s face as she presented her with a banana! When Alice asked her where she got such a rare thing from, she would just tap the side of her nose and smile.
She died in the spring of 1964, in a small room above a post office.
I met her once, I was only small,
She was my great grandmother.
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