The Middy - May 27 1999

The good old  days when times were rough

Girls born at the beginning of the century came into a world dominated by disease, ill health and death.

Mortality was high with a woman's life expectancy set at 50.

Complications in childbirth were second only to TB as a cause of death; infant and child mortality was a shocking 151 to 1000 live births and 15% of infants died before their first birthday.

From the 16th to the early 20th century a quarter to a third of people could expect to live under the shadow of the Poor Laws which made grudging provision for paupers by means of medical treatment, poorhouses, almshouses and workhouses.

The 1870 Education Act enabled schools to be set up in villages for the first time.

Wivelsfield’s Board School opened in 1876; boys and girls were reading history, nature study and geography of the British Isles and her colonies.

Needlework covered everything young girls would need when the time came to dress their own children; they learned darning, patching and making garments by sewing and knitting.

Recitations were learned by heart – many folk still remember them.

When Doss Wadey left Wivelsfield Village School in 1931 she went into service at the Vicarage.

Out of her meagre wage she was told to put 6d each Sunday into the collection; she and other domestic staff had to leave the service early to prepare lunch at the vicarage.

With World War I carrying off one eligible man in every seven and seriously injuring another, the anti-heroic mood in the county encouraged women to favour a common sense and no fuss attitude; a female version of the stiff upper lip.

Girls growing up after World War I would have seen men, glamorous in soldiers uniforms telling tales of heroism – later damaged, wounded figures with a painful struggle to come to terms with war experiences.

One describes rushing in and seeing her mother bathing her father: “one side of him we should've been flesh there was - nothing. You could see the bone. How could mother bear to touch him?"

In her stories of childhood in Edwardian Sussex, Margaret Hutchinson writes about the routines of running a home: "Dinner knives had to be sharpened using a flat stone and a paste made up of Fullers Earth.

“The kettle was always black: you sewed a kettle holder with cross stitch so you can pick it up.

"The iron – made of iron – was black too. You heated it on the range, spat on it to check it was hot.”

Margaret also remembers the doctor coming and asking for the dining table to be cleared.

Her mother fetched the basin; he pushed a probe into my throat.

I retched horribly; he poked something else down and pulled out some nasty bloody stuff then said: now then there's her tonsils out.”

Margaret's childhood had its more pleasant moments.

“The blacksmith made a hoop which I trundled round the garden. All the milk, butter, bacon and eggs we ate were our own.  

“I remember, splosh, splosh went the cream handle; I watched the lamps in the milk coalesce to make butter; we’d take it out, put it between two but a patch then shape with a piece of ridged wood."

The cows were brought in to be milked and she'd use a stool and pale.

Fruit was bottled every autumn; sealed with a layer of fat.

Seville oranges made days busy on the long evenings after Christmas.

Vegetable pairings, roughings and pieces of meat for boiled in the meat boiler in the pig shed, mash down and fed to the house pigs in a huge wooden trough.

Most families had vegetable gardens or allotments.

Housewives had to be less squeamish than they are today; every woman would have known how to kill, pluck and draw a chicken, clean a sheep’s head and skin a rabbit.

During living memory, the pattern of the days gave the week shape and comfort.

Monday was washing day and the family ate cold cuts from the joint with potatoes and vegetables.

The copper used to be filled with water and a fire lit under it.

According to Lillian Rogers in yesterday remembered all cotton garments were soaked, coloured and whites were kept separate after which they would be washed and water that had to be heated.

After rinsing, the whites were transferred to the copper. The colours had a rinse, sometimes two and the same for the whites, retrieved from the copper with a copper stick after their boiling.

To ring the water from them all, the mangle wheel was turned and the clothes fed into wooden rollers.

Now all could go on the garden clothes line but not before starch was used for some articles.

For the white garments in the last rinse a Reckitts blue bag was used for a whiter than white finish.

Finally the copper would be emptied and the clearing up done.

Bedrooms were cleaned on Fridays, the downstairs cleaning on Saturdays.

The flue of the kitchener was swept, black lead applied to the stove and polished till it shone; brass was cleaned, the hearth and front doorstep whitened with hearthstone, floors were washed.

Haywards Heath born Lillian describes how the phrase; “it might be useful one day” applied.

Her mother unpicked knots in string, reused wrapping paper, grated soap with a food grater, polished shoes with the inside of a banana skin and used little metal discs to preserve the life of aluminium pans.

She cut felt insoles from the brims of old hats for shoes and fingerstalls from old kid gloves.

She said "had she been married to a millionaire I believe she would have been the same.”

Acknowledgement; picture from Lillian Rogers book, 'yesterday remembered'.