Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid's Memoir That Inspired "Upstairs, Downstairs" and "Downton Abbey"
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Margaret Powell
MARGARET POWELL was born in 1907 in Hove, and left school at the age of 13 to start working. At 14, she got a job in a hotel laundry room, and a year later went into service as a kitchen maid, eventually progressing to the position of cook, before marrying a milkman called Albert. In 1968 the first volume of her memoirs, Below Stairs, was published to instant success and turned her into a celebrity. She died in 1984.
Read more from Margaret Powell
Margaret Powell's Cookery Book: 500 Upstairs Recipes from Everyone's Favorite Downstairs Kitchen Maid and Cook Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Below Stairs
310 ratings41 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Funny and yet sad, this tells of a poor girl from the English countryside who was forced to go to work at a young age as a servant, even though she'd won a scholarship. Given her hatred and dislike of most domestic chores required of maids, she went to work in the kitchen as the lowest of the low, a kitchen maid. The author accepts her lot with humor and grace and strives and succeeds (Eventually) in many of her goals. The glimpses of life in a bygone era are priceless and the narrative is very easy to read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What a delightful book even though the subject of being a kitchen maid in a wealthy household was far from delightful. The author had a sense of humor that made the book fast paced, funny, and interesting.This book was the memoir of a "real" kitchen maid. It definitely was not a pleasant life, but the author kept the book light and factual. The household staff would work from sunup to sunset with no conveniences that we have today in the kitchen or for cleaning to a shine. The staff would have to fire up the coal stove early in the morning, cook and cleanup nonstop all day and with no appreciation from their employer. All food had to be made from scratch, but the food definitely was not healthy, though. Households used a lot of butter, eggs, and cream and other fat-filled ingredients.The author explained the drudgery and hardships of the maids and household staff in a wealthy household and how the majority of the staff were from poor families that couldn't keep their own young children in their household because they had no money and not enough food to feed them.It definitely was not a glamorous job, and there was even a class structure within the staff. I wonder if it is still like that today among household staff. I would guess yes. The author also talked about how she never had a good self esteem because of how early she had to begin work and how she was treated for the majority of her life.Despite the difficulty of this job and what it does to people's lives emotionally this is most definitely a book to read if you enjoy the lives of the English and any household that has a staff for their everyday living. I give this book a cleanly scrubbed and well cooked 5/5. ENJOY!!My son bought this book for me because he knows I enjoy learning about the lives of English household staff members. This is ONE of my Christmas presents for him.....he wanted me to read this by the end of the year. :) I am glad I did.Merry Christmas, Mark. :)
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5a different view of life in those big romantic looking houses.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is an amazing book to read if you like Upstairs/Downstairs or Downton Abbey. Learning about a servant's life is wonderful from a first-hand account. The author kept in both the heartbreaking and humorous sides of servant lives. One thing for sure, I'm glad we have dishwashers nowadays!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A non-fiction memoir that inspired the writer of Downton Abbey....her comments about how things were done "back then" are fascinating ,her comments about how they are done now a bit annoying (we get it!) and yet when she was describing the cooks, maids, butlers etc she worked with I kept hearing them speak i the voices of the actors from the show!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fascinating
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5If you're an Upstairs, Downstairs or Downton Abbey viewer you should read this. it's a quick read, nothing earth shaking, but interesting as to what life was *really like belowstairs in the 20s. Margaret has a tart tongue, this was first published in 68 , and there's much about "nowadays versus then" like you might expect. Most people realize that the scenes from the shows are nowhere near accurate as to how servants actually interacted with their employers. Worth it for any fans of the shows, but the rest could probably live without it. She comes across as fairly well read, which was probably also not the norm for a kitchen maid back then.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5It was okay. It was like listening to your grandmother tell you stories about the old days and how things were different back then, of course. She writes plainly and most of the chapters are unrelated to each other. She starts at the beginning and carries on chronologically until she gets up to the point where she decided to start writing her book. Maybe this would hit home more for people in the UK vs in the US.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Interesting historical fiction story set in 1920's Engkand of a young girl who goes into service, to help support her family.I really enjoyed reading this book, and learning of how the servants of a variety of grand families coped with the demands of living with people upstairs.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The jacket quote describes Powell's account as "feisty," and I would agree! "Downtown Abbey" may have made domestic service look civilized and somehow elegant but Powell is straight-ahead practical and bluntly honest as she relates her experiences as a kitchen maid and cook. If you're going through "Downton" withdrawal, pick this up for a colorful rendering of the past and get ready to laugh.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Margaret Powell’s memoirs, Below Stairs, are a description of her life in domestic service. She was born in 1907 in Hove in the United Kingdom and left school at the age of 13 to start working. At 14, she got a job in a hotel laundry room and a year later went into service as a kitchen maid. She eventually progressed to the position of cook, working various jobs until marrying her milkman husband and having three sons.Domestic service was not a job for the faint-hearted. I know that I wouldn’t last 10 minutes under the conditions that servants were subjected to then nor could I do the work that was required. Starting at 5:30 am and working until bed-time was the norm. As a kitchen maid she was to assist the cook, but in reality, there were many other chores she had to do as well, including polishing boots, and scrubbing both front porch and door. Realizing that only she could improve her situation, she passed herself off as a trained cook, going to temporary jobs until she felt ready to work as a permanent full-time cook.Mrs. Powell’s writing style is warm and chatty, like reading a letter from an old friend as she paints vivid descriptions of the great houses of the 1920s and the vanishing life styles that were soon to give way to modern life. Her stories of food to be prepared, mistresses to please and other servants to get along with are interesting, unsentimental and earthy. I found her an admirable person who after having three children, went back to school and passed her ‘O’ levels at age 58. Below Stairs is a charming inside account of what domestic service was actually like back in the early 20th century.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Best for:Those interested in learning about different livesIn a nutshell:Author Margaret Powell shares stories from her life working as a Kitchen Maid in England.Worth quoting:“I couldn’t help thinking of my poor father and mother at home, who never worked. I just couldn’t help thinking of the unfairness of life.”Why I chose it:I picked this up at a charity book sale at work just before lock down, then rescued it from my desk in September. It just looked interesting.Review:I was looking to learn something about a life that was different from mine, and boy did I find it here. The author starts out sharing what she and her siblings did for fun, but soon switches over to her work life. And it wasn’t just soon in the sense of the book, it was soon in the sense of her life. At 13 she earned a small scholarship and wanted to work to be a teacher, but that would have meant her parents would have had to continue paying for her schooling until she was 18, and that just wasn’t an option. So instead she went to work as a domestic worker in a house at the age of 13.THIRTEEN. Ack. That’s so young. She lived in the home where she worked with the other domestic workers, so she was not only working but living on her own at an age when I was still in middle school. And she was working HARD. She’d get 4-10pm off one weeknight and one weekend evening each week. Not even a full day off. She’d be up at 5:30 to do tasks, and not be done until 8 or 9 at night. And she was doing hard labour - lots of cleaning and polishing and washing, and this was the 1920s, so she was doing this without the vast majority of conveniences we use when doing similar work.In addition to the hard work, what she shared about the relationship between the staff and the families in the home was not unbelievable, but was so just … gross. Only one of the many families she worked for seemed to really treat the staff well. One yelled at her for handing the lady of the house something directly, with her hand, as opposed to using a tray to do it. As though the family member couldn’t bear to touch someone so low. I’d love to think times have changed, but considering how poorly people treat people who work in the service industry, I don’t think it’s that different. The location of the disdain has changed, but not the feelings of superiority.Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:Donate it.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Margaret Powell was a very self-aware person in domestic Service to the English rich. She was quite conscious of her need for a job, and the social structure she was subjecting herself to. An intelligent memoir with several flashes of acerbic wit.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Below Stairs is a memoir of a woman who entered into domestic service as a kitchen maid at 13 and who saw the injustice of her situation (and indeed of all those in servitude) at a time when conditions were on the peak of changing. At the beginning of the tale, Margaret Powell is at home with her family which is large (typical of the time) and poor (also typical of many families). She must leave home, school, and everything she is familiar with because there is not enough money to keep her. What she discovers at her first place of work in service is that the dichotomy between Them upstairs and the servants below stairs is extremely pronounced despite the whisper of changes on the horizon. As the lowest rung on the service ladder, the kitchen maid (in Margaret's opinion) is treated with the least amount of respect or common decency. The story goes on to describe not only the differences between the classes but also the differences between the sexes. Powell's views are modern and revolutionary for the time period and her wit is absolutely biting. I thought this was a very interesting and entertaining read and I can definitely see how Downton Abbey used this as a reference point (you'll recognize some plot points if you're a fan of the show). I recommend it for anyone who'd like a quick, fun read that's also chock full of history (and cooking!).
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I enjoyed this, both for her insights and descriptions of what being in domestic service meant, and for the fact that she never took to it blindly and subserviently-- the memoir emphasizes her having her own independent thoughts, and seeking out situations where she could be treated fairly. Also, several touches of wry humor. A great read!
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5It was an OK book, I guess, but not what I expected. The author is/was a very embittered person and consequently her stories are very negative. Perhaps life was that bad for everyone, I'm not in a position to know, but it's hard to believe that there weren't SOME experiences that were positive. She was negative about here marriage as well, with an opinion that her husband got "value for money" in housekeeping, etc., and sex. What a life.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Forget the frankly tedious and melodramatic Downton Abbey, this is the real deal. I recall interviews with Margaret Powell when she was an extremely feisty and funny old lady finally receiving some money and attention after this book became a bestseller. It is comical that one reviewer here gives the book 2 and a half stars because 'the author complains quite a bit about the plight of those in domestic service' - well, hey! believe it or not it was b******* hard work from the crack of dawn till way past bedtime, mostly for unappreciative nasty people who didn't pay a living wage. The average kitchen maid must have developed the muscles of a navvy to cope with all that hauling up and down stairs of coal, hot water etc. Powell was a natural raconteur - that's how she got the book contract, having been seen interviewed by the BBC about her life - and the b ook is well-written and enlightening. I'm glad it came out on Kindle as my paperback disintegrated, and also it may encourage more people to read it, and discover some of the hard realities of being part of the servant class.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As far as career accounts go, this was way above average. On top of engrossing descriptions of the food she prepared and the people she met, Margaret Powell is pretty sharp in her analysis of the relationship between servants and their employers and I really enjoyed her candid knowledge of the world. It's not a polished memoir in that it's very chatty and barely narrated and the end is quite abrupt but Powell's personality is endearing, she's a bold and fun woman and I really enjoyed the stories contained in this as they satisfied my curiosity. However, I would have liked a little more historical background - Powell keeps saying things were different from 'today' (which is 1968 when this book was published) but she doesn't linger on the topography of London or Hove, which I missed. I would have liked for her to give a broader account of her life, similar to how Jennifer Worth did in her memoirs as a midwife (but then that's comparing Below Stairs to what's in my opinion the best 'career account' book out there, which isn't fair).
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A fascinating recollection of her life in domestic service in the 1920s in England, Margaret Powell's novel is riveting. She describes her childhood in poverty, her brief education and how she started working. Her memories of her struggles "downstairs" and how she overcame many obstacles are absorbing. Powell's experiences of being in service provide more then just insight into the field of domestic service, they also provide a first hand account of the culture, environment and thought patterns of a bygone era.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Read for our nonfiction book club. Was thin on even anecdote. Luckily it was an incredibly fast read. The effort was made worthwhile by the story of the pervy 'master' who liked to fondle the servant girls' hair rollers though. Can't make stuff like that up. Overall, meh.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I just started the book, but it reminds me of my grandmother, who came to America at 22 and was a scullery maid. I appreciate that I can peer into her life as it mustve been like. Fascinating!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I can see how this book inspired the creators of both classic series. Powell tells good stories, with many details enriching the telling. Her 'this is way it was' tone and opinions of those days (and the days when she wrote the memoir) are really the book's best part, for me.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The basics: Below Stairs, originally published in 1968, has been reissued with the Downton Abbey craze and the new subtitle "The Classic Kitchen Maid's Memoir That Inspired Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey." There are glowing quotes from Julian Fellowes and Dame Eileen Atkins (co-creator of Upstairs, Downstairs) on the cover.My thoughts: From the first pages, it's clear Margaret Powell is not actually writing a conventional memoir. while she tells the story chronologically, it read more like a transcript than a memoir. It's clear she's dictating her life thoughts on her life, including many years in different kitchens. I did appreciate Powell's thoughts and candor, but despite being told so conversationally, if I had not watched Downton or already read Upstairs & Downstairs, I would not have understood as much of the power dynamics present. Powell throws around different names of servants without providing the context explaining the differences. Knowing the different role these servants played, it was interesting to compare the houses in which she worked.The verdict: While the story is interesting and I appreciated Powell's candor, the writing lacked finesse, which hindered my enjoyment of the tale. If you're looking for insight into the downstairs life in Edwardian times and don't mind conversational writing, then you'll likely enjoy Below Stairs and its authenticity. Below Stairs is a quick read, but it's far from a literary masterpiece.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A great book because of its true voice and honesty. It captures a time that has flown and made me appreciate all that I have.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You know the book-reviewing cliché: "reading this book is just like sitting down and having a cup of tea with your new best friend". Below Stairs really is like that. Margaret Powell depicts her life in domestic service in 1920s England in a breezy, conversational manner, although not without occasional moments of righteous indignation, and even, she admits, bitterness. Powell was born in 1907. Her working-class family had too many children and often, not enough to eat. Beginning in her early teens, she found work as a kitchen maid in the homes of the upper crust, eventually climbing up the staff hierarchy to the position of cook. It was a harsh life of strenuous labor, made even more difficult by her employers' habit of acting as though their servants were invisible.In her later years, after leaving domestic service, marrying and having children, Powell was finally able to complete her education and write this book. Powell depicts a way of life that no longer exists, but, as far as Powell is concerned, there's no reason to be nostalgic for working conditions that were only a few steps above those of actual slavery. She writes, "[The servants] weren't free in any way. So maybe that was the reason why the work and those that did it were looked down upon, because we were...bound to our employers." (p. 190).
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I started out with high hopes for this book. I've read a lot of great reviews on it and was hoping to count this review as a good one. Sadly, I was let down. The author complains quite a bit about the plight of those in domestic service. It wouldn't have been so bad had she just touched on this, but it weaved its way throughout the entire book. At the end the author even acknowledges that the book sounds bitter. There are some humorous moments, though, and it does give a good description of what life was like for those in service.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What a delightful book even though the subject of being a kitchen maid in a wealthy household was far from delightful. The author had a sense of humor that made the book fast paced, funny, and interesting.This book was the memoir of a "real" kitchen maid. It definitely was not a pleasant life, but the author kept the book light and factual. The household staff would work from sunup to sunset with no conveniences that we have today in the kitchen or for cleaning to a shine. The staff would have to fire up the coal stove early in the morning, cook and cleanup nonstop all day and with no appreciation from their employer. All food had to be made from scratch, but the food definitely was not healthy, though. Households used a lot of butter, eggs, and cream and other fat-filled ingredients.The author explained the drudgery and hardships of the maids and household staff in a wealthy household and how the majority of the staff were from poor families that couldn't keep their own young children in their household because they had no money and not enough food to feed them.It definitely was not a glamorous job, and there was even a class structure within the staff. I wonder if it is still like that today among household staff. I would guess yes. The author also talked about how she never had a good self esteem because of how early she had to begin work and how she was treated for the majority of her life.Despite the difficulty of this job and what it does to people's lives emotionally this is most definitely a book to read if you enjoy the lives of the English and any household that has a staff for their everyday living. I give this book a cleanly scrubbed and well cooked 5/5. ENJOY!!My son bought this book for me because he knows I enjoy learning about the lives of English household staff members. This is ONE of my Christmas presents for him.....he wanted me to read this by the end of the year. :) I am glad I did.Merry Christmas, Mark. :)
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was a lot of fun, it's the memoir of a woman who worked as a kitchen maid and cook in England. It's a quick read, and it jumps right into the down and dirty details of being in service. There were tons of interesting details about the households -- although in truth, I can't get enough of this and there could have been ten times as many details and I would have been absolutely fine with that. She's obviously quite intelligent (or was, I guess, she died in the 1970s) and conveys her reflections about class, labor, and society succinctly, thoughtfully, and without any hand-wringing. And she had a wry, understated sense of humor that was a pip. There were a few "WELL BACK IN MY DAY" comments that could have been annoying if they were preachy or whiny, but you truly got the sense she was arching an eyebrow and than moving right on. It makes me sad she died 40 years ago, because everything about this memoir made me want to go take her out for drinks.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Recently, I borrowed the first season of Downton Abbey from my public library. The contrast of the lives of the upper class gentry with their servants’ lives is fascinating, as are the attitudes each class holds for the other. When I saw this memoir, written by a woman who entered service as a lowly kitchen maid in the 1920’s, I knew wanted to read a first-hand account of this period in history. Margaret was born second out of seven children to a poor family, and while she enjoyed school and had the skill and desire to become a teacher, she knew her family needed her help. A couple extra years of school, even on scholarship, would be impossible. While her family loved her, they were unable to keep feeding her. At the age of 14, she went to work in a laundry, and a year later entered domestic service. She accepted this fate as her lot in life, yet was troubled by injustice. Seeing the amount of food wasted every day in the upper class households brought to mind her hungry parents and siblings. Her employers seemed to think their help were a different breed. It would always surprise them to find out that Margaret knew how to read, much less that she enjoyed learning. That is, if they ever found out. Margaret notes that to many of the upper class, the servants were “invisible”. Mr. Kite, an older butler who had been in service since the age of thirteen, comments on his days in a large country manor.“Well, they were so far above the servants that they literally didn’t see them. I remember one evening when I’d risen to be a footman, I was waiting at the dinner table after the ladies had retired and the port was being circulated, and the gentlemen were talking about a very scandalous rumour that involved royalty, and they were all adding their quota to the rumour. One of the guests remarked, ‘We must be careful that nobody overhears us,’ to which the host replied, ‘How could they overhear us? We’re alone here,’ and at that time there were three footmen in the room.”The mere fact that one was born to a particular social class clearly determined what they could become and how they should be treated. As time went on, it was obvious to Margaret that this social climate was beginning to change. War time changed things. The upper class had fewer possessions and money and some employers began to see their servants as fellow human beings. This book follows Margaret through these changes in attitude. To hear a first hand account of this time and place in history is intriguing.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I enjoyed reading this and other books like it after the return of the show Downton Abbey. This book had an awesome recommendation from the creator of Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes, also he starred in the series…Monarch of the Glenn. It wasn't a thriller book but enjoyable reading, I can't imagine being in service all my life, but interesting to get the perspective on below the stairs.
Book preview
Below Stairs - Margaret Powell
1
I WAS BORN in 1907 in Hove, the second child of a family of seven. My earliest recollection is that other children seemed to be better off than we were. But our parents cared so much for us. One particular thing that I always remember was that every Sunday morning my father used to bring us a comic and a bag of sweets. You used to be able to get a comic for a halfpenny plain and a penny coloured. Sometimes now when I look back at it, I wonder how he managed to do it when he was out of work and there was no money at all coming in.
My father was a painter and decorator. Sort of general odd-job man. He could do almost anything: repair roofs, or do a bit of plastering; but painting and paper-hanging were his main work. Yet in the neighbourhood where we lived, there was hardly any work in the winter. People didn’t want their houses done up then; they couldn’t be painted outside and they didn’t want the bother of having it all done up inside. So the winters were the hardest times.
My mother used to go out charring from about eight in the morning till six in the evening for two shillings a day. Sometimes she used to bring home little treasures: a basin of dripping, half a loaf of bread, a little bit of butter or a bowl of soup. She used to hate accepting anything. She hated charity. But we were so glad of them that, when she came home and we saw that she was carrying something, we used to make a dive to see what she’d got.
It seems funny today, I suppose, that there was this hatred of charity, but when my parents brought us up there was no unemployment money. Anything you got was a charity.
I remember my mother, when we only had one pair of shoes each and they all needed mending, she went down to the council to try to get more for us. She had to answer every question under the sun and she was made to feel that there was something distasteful about her because she hadn’t got enough money to live on.
It was very different getting somewhere to live in those days. You just walked through the streets, and there were notices up, ‘Rooms to let’. When we were extra hard up, we only had one room or two rooms in somebody else’s house. But when Dad was working, we would go around looking for half a house. We never had a house to ourselves. Not many people could afford a house in those days, not to themselves. As for buying a house, why, such things were never even dreamed of !
I know I used to wonder why, when things were so hard, Mum kept having babies, and I remember how angry she used to get when a couple of elderly spinsters at a house where she worked kept telling her not to have any more children, that she couldn’t afford to keep them. I remember saying to my mother, ‘Why do you have so many children? Is it hard to have children?’ And she said, ‘Oh, no. It’s as easy as falling off a log.’
You see that was the only pleasure poor people could afford. It cost nothing – at least at the time when you were actually making the children. The fact that it would cost you something later on, well, the working-class people never looked ahead in those days. They didn’t dare. It was enough to live for the present.
People didn’t think about regulating families. The whole idea was to have big families, a relic of Victorian times perhaps. The more children you had, in some ways, the more you were looked upon as fulfilling your duties as a Christian citizen. Not that the Church played much part in my mother’s and father’s lives. I don’t think they had much time for it or, perhaps it’s truer to say, they had time but no inclination. Some of us weren’t even christened. I wasn’t, and never have been. But we all had to go to Sunday School, not because my parents were religious, but because it kept us out of the way: Sunday afternoons were devoted to lovemaking because there was not much privacy in working-class families. When you lived in two or three rooms, you had to have some of the children in the same room with you. If you had any sense of decency, and my parents did because I never, during the whole time of my childhood, knew that they ever made love, you waited till they were fast asleep or out of the way. The fact is I never even saw them kissing each other because my father was a rather austere man outwardly, and I was amazed when only lately my mother told me what a passionate man he really was. So, you see, it was only when the children were out of the way that they could really let themselves go. So, Sunday afternoon, after a mighty big dinner (and everybody tried to have a big dinner on Sunday), was the time spent lying on the bed, making love and having a good old doze. Because, as my Mum said later, if you make love, you might as well do it in comfort. So that’s why Sunday School was so popular then.
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My early school days don’t stand out much in my mind. My brother and I began proper school together. They let you start at the age of four in those days. My mother sent me there as well because she had another baby coming along and she thought that would be two of us out of the way.
We had to come home for dinner. There were no such things as school meals and school milk. You took a piece of bread and butter with you, wrapped in a piece of paper, and gave it to the teacher to mind, because many of us children were so hungry that we used to nibble it during the course of the morning when we should have been doing whatever we did have to do. It was then doled out to us at eleven o’clock.
I always enjoyed going to school because I did pretty well there. I never found any of it hard except things like art, knitting, and needlework. Singing was hopeless, too. None of those things were any good to me at all. The needlework was my biggest hate. We had to make such ugly garments; chemises and bloomers – as they were called then. Both made of calico. The chemises were wide with sort of cap sleeves and they reached down to the knees. The bloomers did up at the back with buttons and were also voluminous. Whoever bought these awful garments when they were finished I really don’t know. I should imagine they were given to the workhouse because I certainly never brought any home.
But the great thing about school in those days was that we had to learn. I don’t think you can beat learning; how to read and write, and how to do arithmetic. Those are the three things that anyone who has got to work for a living needs. We were forced to learn and I think children need to be forced. I don’t believe in this business of ‘if they don’t want to do it, it won’t do them any good’. It will do them good. Our teacher used to come around and give us a mighty clump on the neck or box on the ears if she saw us wasting our time. Believe me, by the time we came out of school, we came out with something. We knew enough to get us through life. Not that any of us thought about what we were going to do. We all knew that when we left school we’d have to do something, but I don’t think we had any ambitions to do any particular type of work.
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It was when I got to the age of about seven that I, as it were, took my place in life. You see, with my mother going off early in the morning to do her charring and me being the eldest girl, I used to have to give the children their breakfast. Mind you, giving them their breakfast wasn’t a matter of cooking anything. We never had eggs or bacon, and things like cereals weren’t heard of. We had porridge in the winter, and just bread and margarine, and a scraping of jam, if Mum had any, in the summer. Three pieces were all we were allowed. Then I would make the tea, very weak tea known as sweepings – the cheapest that there was – clear away and wash up, and then get ready for school.
The two youngest I took along to the day nursery. It cost sixpence a day each and for that the children got a midday meal as well. I took them just before school time and collected them the moment I came out of school in the afternoon.
At midday, I would run home, get the potatoes and the greens on, lay up the dinner and do everything I could so that when my mother rushed over from work, she just had to serve the dinner.
Generally it was stews because they were the most filling. Sometimes Mother would make a meat pudding. It’s funny now when I look back on it, this meat pudding. I would go along to the butcher’s and ask for sixpennyworth of ‘Block ornaments’. Hygiene was nothing like it is now and butchers used to have big wooden slabs outside the shop with all the meat displayed for the public and the flies. As they cut up the joints, they always had odd lumps of meat left which they scattered around. These were known as ‘Block ornaments’. I used to get sixpennyworth of them and a pennyworth of suet. Then my mother would make the most marvellous meat pudding with it.
Directly after she’d eaten her dinner, she’d have to rush back to work because she was only allowed half an hour. So I had to do the washing-up before I went back to school again. Right after I came out of school in the afternoon, I would collect the two children from the day nursery, take them back home, and then set to and clear up the place and make the beds.
I never used to feel that I was suffering in any sense from ill-usage. It was just the thing. When you were the eldest girl in a working-class family, it was expected of you.
Of course, Mum took over in the evenings. She came back about six and got us our tea which was the same as breakfast – bread and margarine.
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Unlike so many people I’ve met, I didn’t really make any lasting friends in my school days. But, being a member of a family, I wasn’t worried and, you see, we had the town itself.
2
HOVE WAS a wonderful place, especially for children, and particularly for children with no money. It wasn’t built up as it is now. Every one of those lawns was free; there was nothing on them but grass and a shelter, and all around the lawns there were shrubs where you could have the most marvellous games of hide-and-seek. You could take your tea down there, spread it all over the clean grass. There were no park keepers to come and chivvy you.
And immediately behind the town was the country. We only had to walk a matter of minutes from where we lived and there was the country and the farms. The farmers were so friendly to you; they let you walk around; hang over the pigsty, scratch the pigs, cluck at the chickens and watch them milking the cows. Often the farmer’s wife would come out with a glass of lemonade for us. There were trees to climb, marvellous trees which seemed to have grown just for children.
Back on the beach, there were the seaside shows, the Pierrot shows. It was sixpence or a shilling to sit down in a deckchair and watch it, but, needless to say, we never had money like that. So we used to stand at the back. A soprano would come on and sing a soulful song about lost love, how she once had a lover and the lover had departed through some misunderstanding and she hoped with all her heart they would come together again. Half the audience were in tears, and so were we kids at the back. People believed in things like that then; dying for love, feeling soulful about it, regret, lost opportunities and all that kind of thing. None of this ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude. Then there was the baritone. He would sing songs about friendship, England, and ‘Hands Across the Sea’.
All this would be considered very small beer nowadays but we thought it was wonderful and so did the audience.
Then there were the donkeys, and the donkey man who looked after them. Now I’ve heard it said that people who have much to do with animals get like them both in appearance and mannerisms. So the donkey man resembled his charges. He was old, small, bowed down, grey, and very hairy. He didn’t exactly have a beard. Hair seemed to be sprouting out all over him. I thought to myself many a time, if he got down on all fours you could have got on his back and you wouldn’t have known you were not on a donkey.
What a poor sorry lot those donkeys were! I suppose they had enough to eat, but donkeys always look such pathetic creatures unless they are well looked after, and these presumably weren’t. But the well-to-do children never had to sit on the back of a donkey like the common children. Certainly not! They might get polluted. They sat in a little dogcart, all done up in red leather. It held two. These children with nannies to look after them used to come down in style in large prams.
Not only did the man who owned the dogcart have to walk along the one side, but the nanny had to walk along the other. Because no harm must come to those darlings. Though it didn’t matter about us jogging along on the back of the old donkeys getting saddle sores.
Wealthy children were never allowed to play with low-class children like us. They were never allowed to play with anyone but similarly wealthy children. They never went anywhere on their own without their nannies. Some of them had two, a nurse and an under-nurse. The lawns were open to everybody, and they couldn’t keep us away from them, but if any child wandered up to us, its nurse would say, ‘Come away! Come away this instant! Come over here.’ They’d never let them speak to us.
Mind you, we had a kind of contempt for them. They couldn’t do the things that we could do. They weren’t allowed to dirty their clothes like we were. They weren’t allowed to run in and out of the bushes. They weren’t allowed to climb all over the seats and walk along the very narrow tops of them. They weren’t allowed to do anything exciting. It wasn’t their fault.
So we never mixed, never. They played their dainty little games with large coloured balls. They pushed their dolls’ prams around and rode on their scooters. We had nothing except perhaps an old tennis ball, but still we used to have the most marvellous games with absolutely nothing at all. Although we lived by the sea a lot of our playing was done in the streets. The games were marvellous because not only did you have the pavement, you had the road as well. There wasn’t much traffic then. At Easter, for example, it was street skipping, another game was Buttons and then there was hopscotch; but, Marbles was the game everybody went mad about. You kicked a hole in the road about six or seven feet from the gutter. And you could then. The idea was to get the marbles into the hole. Another game was hoops. My aunt bought me the largest hoop you could have. It had an iron guide which you hooked on to the hoop and I ran all round the roads with it. You never had to worry about traffic. No child would last very long doing that