Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid

by Moran, Mollie

  It wasn’t until two officers came into Granny’s shop one day that I realized who they were.

  ‘Here you go, Esther, pigswill from our prisoners of war,’ said one, a Mr Lucks. ‘Reckon your pigs’ll love it.’

  Turns out the big house in the village had been commandeered by the army and housed German POWs.

  ‘Poor souls,’ muttered Granny darkly. ‘No older than schoolboys, they ain’t.’

  That was the only inkling I ever had that a war was going on. Until, that is, it ended and finally, in 1920, Father returned. Thanks to the war, he was a stranger to me. I don’t even remember his homecoming as such. Just that he was not a well man and I was under strict instructions not to trouble him.

  I’d heard the muttered whispers in darkened corridors between Granny and Mother, though.

  ‘He’s been gassed in Ypres, Mum,’ my mother had sobbed. ‘His lungs’ll never be the same.’

  Ypres, or ‘Wipers’ to the British troops, was under constant bombardment, and fighting between German and British troops was continuous for four years. The conditions there sound nothing short of hell. My father would have been packed cheek-by-jowl with his comrades in cold, waterlogged trenches. Trench foot – rotting of the skin caused by fungal infection – was common, as too were the millions of lice, which sucked off the rotting flesh of soldiers. There was little by way of sanitation, running water or hot food. But the real horrors began when the Germans unleashed a new and shattering weapon – poisonous gas. Gas as a silent enemy became more terrifying than the machine-gun fire that usually followed it, as German infantry attacked the vulnerable gassed soldiers.

  Chlorine gas, which is heavier than air, sank and settled in the trenches.

  My father never breathed a word about how he came to be gassed or what happened, but reading accounts of it later in life turned the blood in my veins to ice. Many accounts talk of a greenish cloud seeping into the trenches and of the soldiers choking and suffocating or running in all directions, blinded. The gas only lasted short periods until it dissipated and troops quickly learnt to use rags soaked in mud and water to breathe through, which absorbed the vapour. But many soldiers found it hard to resist removing the cloths and tried to gulp in air as they choked, which of course left them with no defence against the gas. Towards the end of the war the Germans also unleashed mustard gas, which seeped into the soil, remaining active for weeks and causing dreadful infections in burnt skin.

  Relatively few soldiers died of gas poisoning. Most, like my father, were condemned to a slow death after they returned home. Poor Father. No wonder he suffered and seemed withdrawn. They called him, and thousands like him, the ‘Lost Generation’ as they never really recovered from their experiences.

  Millions of boys died for their country during that dreadful war. Those poor young men – if they had known at the start what they would be facing, would they ever have signed up?

  Father never spoke about his role in the war. He was typical of the men of his era and kept his feelings locked away deep inside. His body betrayed him, though. The terrifying coughing fits that turned my mother’s face as white as flour were a dreadful legacy of his battle. Every now and again I’d wander into the kitchen to see him coughing so much that his face would turn purple. I’d stay rooted to the spot as he gasped for breath, his whole body shuddering with every gasp.

  ‘I feel a bit queer,’ he’d rasp and, with that, his body would convulse into more spasms of coughing.

  Mother would rush past me with rags and a bowl of hot water. Slowly the white rags would turn crimson red as Father gasped and coughed up blood.

  ‘Sit yerself forrards, my love,’ she’d smile, gently rubbing his back. ‘You’ll be right in no time.’ But I could tell by the way her bottom lip wobbled when she spoke that she didn’t really believe it.

  After each attack he’d disappear for a few days, off to a sanatorium in Hastings, where it was believed the fresh sea air would revive him back to health. His spells in the sanatorium never worked, though, and he’d return as fragile as he left.

  From 1930 onwards the government issued wooden huts for all ex-servicemen with failing health to sleep in. It was believed that sleeping out in the fresh air, away from coal fires, would be better for their lungs. Once you’ve been gassed, though, I don’t expect there’s much would help.

  Still, my father had his issued and it was duly set up in the back garden. The hut was on an iron swivel axis so it could be turned round to face away from the freezing Norfolk wind that whipped in off the fens or positioned to face the sun, depending on the weather. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it, him sleeping in a hut in the garden when he was so fragile, but that was the thinking of the day.

  ‘You need the fresh air, it’ll do ya lungs good,’ Mother would say, hustling him out to the garden.

  He weren’t the only one. Loads of men, poorly from the war, slept outside in huts to get their daily constitutional blast of country air.

  But despite this, and his failing health, my father was an optimistic man who never dwelt on his misfortune. ‘I’m the lucky one awight,’ he used to say. ‘Least I can still provide for my family.’

  And in many ways he was lucky. He had survived – unlike the countless other young men who’d had their brains spattered out and were left to rot in the thick mud around the trenches of France. Back here in the UK the countryside around Downham Market was littered with the ‘Lost Generation’. Them as fought and were left able came home and tried to pick up their lives, but if you weren’t able to work through illness, what was your destiny? There was no army pension or support. If you were lucky enough to survive you were out on your own.

  Injured officers were well cared for, but for non-commissioned soldiers it was more hit and miss. Many developed alcohol problems and mental illness and were left destitute, forced to sleep in barns or ditches and beg for food. Shell shock is now a recognized condition, but there was less sympathy for those with mental scars back then, they were just seen as sissies. It was an absolute scandal, it was.

  Often they would come knocking on our door for handouts.

  ‘Hot water, Miss, if you please,’ they’d croak.

  Mother, like most of the villagers, always took pity on them and would fill their cans with hot water or tea and give them what little bread we could spare.

  ‘They made a sacrifice for their country,’ she would say. ‘It’s our duty to help.’

  They were known as ‘tramps’ locally. Many would go off and do the rounds for months at a time, trudging from village to village for lodgings and food. They all wore the same haunted expression and often had missing hands or feet. Amputated limbs poked out from underneath the rags they wore. Others had faces that were a patchwork of scars. At times, when we walked into Downham Market, we’d see them selling matchsticks by the side of the road. They stared at me with black, soulless eyes and I wondered what hell those eyes had witnessed.

  ‘Don’t be giving them no sauce, Mollie,’ Mother would hiss in my ear, gripping my hand that bit tighter.

  She didn’t say it but we all thought it. It could so easily have been my father.

  In the winter, when it was too cold to sleep in the freezing ditches, many spent the night in the workhouse in Downham Market, where they chopped wood to earn their keep. The 250-bed workhouse was a dark place and we grew up in the shadow of this institution. I didn’t know much about what went on inside but I knew on pain of death you didn’t want to end up there. The fear of the workhouse and such poverty was only a heartbeat away for many.

  So I suppose, compared to them, Father was blessed. He eked out a living from our smallholding, which he rented off the local squire for ten shillings a week. No one, apart from the gentry, owned their own homes then. We kept chickens and a pig and grew fruit and vegetables on the few acres of land we had and we sold what produce we could to make a few shillings.

  Father’s two older brothers were postmen and when he was well enough he even helped
them out on their deliveries in exchange for a little money. And I knew Granny Esther helped us with handouts of cash. She was reasonably well off, what with her shop, and she had a real business head on her. She’d never see us short. Family was everything in them days and as long as ours had breath in their bodies they’d not see us destitute. The house was always full of aunts and uncles, dropping off a gift of a bit of dripping in exchange for some eggs. That’s the way it was in those days. You looked after your own.

  The only black sheep of the family was my granny’s brother, Horace. He’d been in the army, then had a broken love affair and lost his way. I never knew too much about Horace as he was never really spoken of, but I sensed it was always a big embarrassment that we had a tramp in the family. I’d hear dark mutterings from Mother that Uncle Horace was ‘on the road again’.

  Thankfully, fate had different ideas for us than it did for poor old Uncle Horace and we didn’t really want for anything. Mother made all our clothes and we grew our own fruit and vegetables to eat or sell. Father’s double-barrel shotgun stood by the fire in the kitchen and every now and again he’d go out and get us a rabbit or pigeon for tea. If we were really lucky we’d have pheasant. Everyone knew you could be prosecuted if you killed and ate the local squire’s pheasants, but if one happened to stray on to our land, well then, it was fair game, wasn’t it? All the same, Father would pluck it outside by a fire in an old outhouse so any stray feathers would be burnt to cinders, leaving no trace of his harmless crime.

  ‘Don’t you be talking of this to no one, Mollie,’ he’d order if he caught me watching him plucking fast and steadily in the dark.

  And if I ever dared touch that gun, I’d get a savage cut across the backside faster than you can say ‘’ands orf’.

  Father must have been well enough on occasion though, as when I turned six my younger brother, James William Browne, made an appearance. It was a dark, stormy night just before fireworks night, and the birth was no less explosive.

  I remember lying huddled in the dark in my bedroom, hearing Mother’s wretched screams ring round the cottage. Her cries were at times pitiful, pleading, then at other times so ferocious in their intensity they were almost feral.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I cried, alarmed, to my father.

  ‘Go to sleep, child,’ he ordered.

  I covered my ears with the sheets, but still I could hear her bloodcurdling cries. My father slept in with me, well out of the way, as the local doctor thumped up and down the stairs, helped by the neighbours. In 1922 there was no such thing as hospital care and the NHS was twenty-six years away from its conception. Women always gave birth at home with the help of a doctor or midwife if they were lucky, and what friends and neighbours were around. The Midwives Act had only become law twenty years prior to that, in 1902, after a group of visionary women fought to have midwifery recognized as a profession. Before that, anyone, and I mean anyone, could deliver a baby. Most of the time it was whoever happened to be around and, in some drastic cases, prostitutes paid in gin could act as midwives. Fortunately the Act became law, the Royal College of Midwives was born and birthing standards improved.

  The next morning I crept into the bedroom where Mother would have the customary two-week lying-in period. It was then that I saw the reason for her blood-curdling screams. She lay back against the pillow, her face ashen with exhaustion. In her arms lay a healthy little baby boy, but her legs were tied roughly together with rope!

  Poor Mother had had a breech birth. James had come out feet first. In those days, breech births were complicated, painful and – without modern medicine – a major cause of death in mother and baby. They were incredibly lucky to have survived, but so torn and damaged was she internally, the doctor had bound her legs together to stop her moving and encourage her body to heal.

  A rope! Can you ever imagine such a thing today?

  ‘Meet your baby brother,’ she said, smiling weakly.

  But my mother was nothing if not tough and within two weeks she insisted the rope was untied and she was back scrubbing the kitchen, blackleading the stove, baking, washing and completing the countless other tasks that consumed her life.

  As James grew up I longed to have a little boisterous playmate to get into scrapes with, but it soon became obvious that he was a quiet child who preferred to sit by my mother’s side. ‘You’re the boy and he’s the girl all right,’ Mother used to cackle as we grew older and the differences in our personalities became obvious.

  She was right. Tide nor time could pin me down as I roamed the land looking for adventures and trying to avoid the clutches of PC Risebrough.

  The countryside was beyond beautiful. The hedgerows, trees and dykes were alive with kingfishers, yellowhammers and blue tits and on a summer day you could catch the tantalizing whiff of salt in the air off the Wash. I’m sure that today there just aren’t the same number of birds about. Back then the skies were black with birds and the noise of ’em all going off during the dawn chorus could deafen you. I loved it though, it made me feel glad just to be alive.

  In the summer months the grass verges were filled with rows of old brightly painted caravans belonging to the Romany gypsies who came to hawk their wares in town. I’d gaze, intrigued, at the older ladies, with their waist-length silver hair and faces as wrinkled as walnut shells. They wandered door to door selling hazel-wood clothes pegs. I’d sit on my bike and spy on them through the bushes. Gypsy folk fascinated me. Where had they come from and where would they go to next? They washed up like tides on the River Great Ouse and the next morning they’d be gone on the winds.

  Father never liked them and always locked up his chickens when they were in the area, but I had no problem with them. They belonged in the countryside as much as any of us.

  In and amongst all this rural splendour, me and my friends, Jack and Bernard, ran wild. While my mother busied herself with the endless washing, cooking, baking and cleaning that keeping house involved in the days before modern appliances, I had incredible freedom. Every day was filled with magic, promise and excitement. Because our time wasn’t taken up with computers and televisions, we learnt to use our imagination. The Norfolk fields were one giant adventure playground. If there was a tree to climb or a ditch to poke around in, you could bet I’d be in the thick of it, spattered with mud, my face stained purple from gorging on blackberries and my pockets stuffed with nuts, birds’ eggs and feathers. And if the ever-present PC Risebrough happened to catch us, well, that just added to the adventure.

  We played rounders, hopscotch and skipping races in the summer. Come winter, when temperatures plunged and the Norfolk ponds froze over, we tied blades to our boots with string and skated over the ice. It was ever so deep and dangerous but what did we care? Often we’d land, helpless with laughter, in an icy scrummage of arms and legs. Only the promise of bread and dripping by the fire would have us limping for home with aching limbs and grazed knees. Actually, in my whole childhood, I don’t ever remember a time when my knees weren’t grazed!

  The only two rules my mother would ever issue before I ran to the door of a morning? ‘Don’t cheek the tramps, Mollie Browne, that mouth of yours’ll get you in trouble one of these days,’ and ‘Stay away from the sluice. People have drowned swimming there.’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ I’d promise.

  Denver Sluice, one mile out of Downham on the River Great Ouse, was built to drain the vast wetlands of the fens and create fertile farmland. But to us kids it was like a magnet and the perfect place to take a cooling dip on a hot summer’s day. Mother’s words would be lost on the wind as I pedalled like crazy to the sluice with my dress tucked into my knickers.

  What did she know? I was twelve, I knew better.

  But a mother’s wisdom should always be observed, as I was about to find out, to my great peril …

  Tips from a 1930s Kitchen

  …

  MOLLIE’S FAMOUS SAUSAGE ROLLS

  I used to run wild through the Norfolk countrys
ide as a child, but nothing had me haring for home faster than the smell of my mother’s home-baked sausage rolls drifting out over the fields. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know how to bake them.

  8 oz (225 g) self-raising flour

  4 oz (110 g) butter

  8 oz (225 g) sausage meat

  1 egg for glazing

  Rub the flour and butter together, adding a few drops of water, until it forms the consistency of a firm dough. Roll it out on a floured pastry board until it’s a quarter of an inch (6 mm) thick. Cut the pastry into four-inch (10 cm) squares. Wet them round the edges with a dab of water. Add a teaspoon of sausage meat in the middle and then fold the pastry over the top and nip the edges to close it together. Brush the tops with beaten egg and bake for half an hour at 180 degrees or until golden brown.

  HOUSEHOLD TIP

  If your fridge or kitchen is full of overpowering cooking smells, simply slice an onion, pop it in a bowl of water and leave it on the table or in the fridge, and all nasty niffs vanish.

  2

  London Calling

  Every woman is a rebel.

  Oscar Wilde

  ‘Dare you to jump in from there,’ said Jack, pointing to the highest bank of the sluice. A slippery wall of crumbly soil was all that stood between me and the dark swirling waters below.

  ‘All right then,’ I said, rising to the challenge.

  Everyone that knew me knew I couldn’t resist a dare. Too competitive by half, that was my problem. Even blacking out after choking on a hot-cross bun during the hot-cross bun races at school sports day hadn’t curbed my ferociously competitive edge.