Shorne Woods Archaeology Group

Now back at the cottage our life with the Bennets and Morriss’ went on.

We had a huge walnut tree, it really belonged to Captain Bentley but it was our patch for the tap, which supplied all the water for the four houses, so in a way it was for all of us to share.  We used to get in first when they were still in the green  husks we would knock them down with old sticks or bricks, whatever we could get hold of but after the first frost they would fall in brown husks (saved our hands from the awful yellow stains).  We used to gather them up in our aprons and take off the hairs, we would put some of them in a stone jar then dig a big hole in the ground and dig them up for Christmas.  They used to keep really lovely.  Mum didn’t get them all, we would hide some away in the garden until mum was out of sight.  Ivy used to go indoors and get mum’s flat iron to break the shells, some were too hard for our teeth.  A man used to come to thrash the tree to get the nuts, (the ones we had left) for Captain Bentley, mind you when he was high up in tree we used to run out and pick them up from a big sheet he put on the ground to catch them as they fell.  He would shout ‘get off you little buggers’, but we knew he couldn’t reach us.  We all used to laugh our heads off.

Betty was the name of Bentley’s cook, she would often pop over to see mum and bring leftovers from their meals.  So that is how I was named Betty because mum was grateful for all the help she gave her.  We used to play in the stables that belonged to them, we would chalk all the walls white and then scrounge some odd bits of nets and curtains and then we would put on a play for our mum’s to come and see.  We would cadge a halfpenny to go up to Longfield to the shop.  He would let us have a small bag of cocktail and lemon crystals.  I think it was all the old sugar from the bottom of the sweet jars but it kept us happy.  We would put it in the biggest washstand jug we could find and add water so we could give it out at the interval of our play to our audience and to ourselves.   Mind you most of our families would come.  We would find a large plank of wood and set it on house bricks for them to sit on.  Fan Bennet would bring her own chair without a back because she was so fat.  We would all have a jolly good sing song and laugh.

In May we would all say ‘lets’ make Lena May Queen’, we would put net curtains all over and a crown of thorns, I mean may, then fill her train up with may and tie some round her wrists and feet.  She ‘arf’ look lovely, we told her.  She would keep moaning ‘it’s prickling me’ we used to say ‘shut up and start walking’ we would make her walk right round the  block then sing as loudly as we could ‘here we go gathering nuts in May’ and stamp our feet, lifting our legs as high as they would go.  I never could understand Lena, after all it was an honour to be chosen to be queen.  I never even minded!  Mind you if it was bath night we had soda in the water so that used to help all her scratches and thorns.

When we bathed it was a long tin bath with handles each end.  We would boil the copper, have a hand full of soda and a bar of soap with a lump of old towel for a flannel.  The eldest got in first and so on down the line, me being the last.  I used to say to Lena ‘don’t you dare piddle in it, (I am sure she did).  We would wash our hair in it with a bar of lifebuoy soap.   When we came out our face would be bright red, you would be afraid to smile, it felt like your face would crack, the soda was very strong and dried it out.  We used to be right in front of the open fire.  Mum used to put a house brick in the oven and wrap it in an old cloth to put in our bed to warm.  It nearly broke your toes if you caught them on it.   We would have a candle holder to give us light in the bedroom.  We were supposed to blow it out and get into bed but we used to leave it on and make shadows on the wall then the others had to guess what they were.  We would all get a clout the next day for not blowing it out.   Mum knew by the length of it how much we had burned.

Then Lena was very naughty, she pricked ‘L.K.’ on mum’s prize aspidistra plant that had pride of place in the sitting room on a round table and we were never even allowed in there apart from Christmas.  Poor Lena she said she didn’t do it but WHO ELSE  would have done it?

When it was bonfire night we would all make a huge fire, some of our better off friends would come and bring jumping jacks.  Mum would let us put large potatoes in the bottom of the fire, it was really great fun.  We would make a big old guy and our mums’ would be with us.  We all used to go to Longfield Hill Sunday School, mum would give us a ha’penny for collection but there was an old lady who used to sell us a sugar bag of red gooseberries for ha’penny so ‘sorry god’, ‘our need is greater than yours’.  We had to go to Sunday School because we used to get a text to take home so mum would know.  We were never allowed to play on Sundays we had our ‘best’ clothes on all day, mind you our shoes still had holes in the soles, we used to put cardboard in them. It was lovely when it rained hard!  We would turn our stockings round so the holes didn’t show.  We had navy blue knickers with fleece lining, nice and warm.  We would hang them on the brass knobs of the bed at night to give them an airing.  In the morning I would smell them to see which was mine, because mine didn’t smell!

Mum used to keep her kilner jars of pickled onions and fruit on a big shelf up the stairs, we would dare Ivy to get a jar down and get us some pickles, which she did.  We would push the jar right to the back when we had finished, if mum found out we all had a good clout.   Mum didn’t go out much she would sit and sew by lamplight.  One time when she did go out, Ivy got the hot curling tongs out, they were long handles and two blade things, she would put them in the red hot fire then get them put, try them on a piece of paper (which nearly always caught alight) then she would curl mine and Lena’s hair.  It would smoke and go all ginger with being burnt, when she finished our hair was so frizzy we couldn’t wear a hat. She used to say ‘you look just like Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth’.   We really felt like princesses, we kept touching it but it really did pong!  Mum nearly went made when she saw us – we really did look beautiful!  Ivy was so very kind, she didn’t even want us to do hers!

We used to pick two sticks from the hedge and take all the skin off to make knitting needles out of them.  Mum would give us a ball of twine to knit her some dish cloths.  It wasn’t half a job, it wasn’t half a job you couldn’t get the twine over the knots on the sticks but it used to keep our hands busy.  Mum would never let us just sit idle, she said the devil made work for idle hands.

Jobs to do

We all had our special jobs to do every day.  One of mine was to take a jug of water upstairs and a bucket to empty the ‘poes’ (that was one of the names for chamber pots of jerries). I hated it they would be so full, I had a job to lift then, you can imagine our room with six girls, three in each bed.  I very often spilt them but it was only lino on the floor, so I would wipe it up before mum knew.  The water and the cloth was to rinse them out and wipe them dry.  Mum would come and see if I had done a good job.  Well none of us were ever allowed in my mum’s bedroom.  After school we were given more jobs to do before we could go outside to play.

Sometimes mum would give us bread and jam sandwiches and a bottle of cold tea to go for a picnic.  We used to go down to Broadditch pond, we called it Braddidge.  Anyway as soon as we got there we would eat our food and down our tea, then off came our clothes, except for the knickers and in the pond we would go.   There were cows in it with us.  We had a wonderful time.  Mum would have killed us if she knew.  She told us there was a big whirlpool in there and once in that one would never come out but all the time the cows were in there we felt safe.  After a while it would feel cold so we would put our dresses back on, wring our knickers out and hang them on the fence to dry, then back off home.  Mum would say you’ve had your share of bread today so we didn’t get any more for tea.  We used to have bread with tea poured over it for breakfast, tea leaves as well.  Mum would give Dandy our dog the same except he didn’t get any sugar on his. We just thought everyone lived like we did.  Mind you we were not really hungry, just thought we were.

Broadditch Pond, Kent, today

When it was haymaking time we had a huge field just by our house, when the farmer cut it we had a great time in it, they just used to toss it in those days and pick it up loose so he never seemed to mind, or didn’t see us playing with it.  Roy Morris would help make a house out of it, we would make a big high mound of it and pretend it was our bed.  We would lie in the sun, the sky was blue not a cloud to be seen, we would just lay holding hands, listening to the sky larks.  He said I will marry you when I’m grown up, I quite believed him.

At night we had the most gorgeous sounding nightingale, it had the most lovely voice never heard anything like it, it would come every night.  Did you know that God made all the other birds very pretty but the poor nightingale if very dull and grey to look at, so God said to him I will give you the best voice of all the other birds to make up for not giving you pretty colours and he sure did.

We used to go looking for bird’s nests, only to look at them, mum told us if you touch a robin’s nest the next day all your hair will drop out. What happens?  When I go to school there is a girl there called Dolly  Hollands with a woolly hat on which she never took off, so one of the girls pulled it off.  WELL, she had most certainly touched a robin’s eggs.  She was a bald as a bladder of lard.  I never spoke to her, ever.  If Ivy found a nest all the chicks would be opening their mouths, so Ivy would spit in their mouths, she would say ‘the poor things are thirsty’.

We would go into the fields on our way home and pinch a cauliflower and sit and eat it, the taste was just like a walnut.

My brother Fred very often found a nest of chicken eggs.  Most people had them running loose those days.  He would go where the farmer was cooking potatoes in an old copper for his pigs then he would put the eggs in one of his socks and put them in the boiling water.   They were lovely, best meal of the day.  We would peel some spuds to have with them.

He found an old bike so he stuffed the tyres with old hay he thought he looked a right toff riding this rusty old thing.  Later in years he had a motor bike, a Norton it was called.

I had a teddy bear, Gert and Ack bought it for me when I was two. When I was old enough I called him ‘David Angus’.  I kept him and passed him on to my own children.  When he was bent over he had a big deep growl, real ‘dark brown growl’ we used to call it.  Lena had a doll it was double jointed she called it Lu Lu silly looking thing, glad it wasn’t mine.  She did let me play with it sometimes.  Ivy wasn’t interested she was always getting into bother.  She would do anything that we dared her to do she jumped out of the bedroom window and broke her arm three times.  She was really good fun.

We used to walk on treacle tins tied with string, with our hands and see who could walk the furthest without falling off.

Our garden was very pretty.  Mum made a big archway with laburnum and had lilac and orange blossom, roses and just about everything, it used to smell lovely.

We all seemed to be so happy being poor made no difference. Having no money saved a lot for mum in one way.  There was no worry about getting presents, Easter eggs and all that we just didn’t think about it.

Well no one can go through life being happy all the time, so it seems.  My mum used to say ‘life is what you make it’.  I said to her one day (thinking I was clever) ‘how can you say that when all the awful things have happened to you’.   She said it’s how you deal with it and that’s up to you.  So ‘life is what you make it’.

Family drama

Well one day something did happen.  We came home from school all happy and singing and Gert was at our house.  First thing we said to her, ‘where is our mum’.  She looked us straight in the eye and said ‘your mum has run away’.  That was the first time we didn’t want our bread and jam for tea.  We were never allowed to say anything to Gert, so off to bed we go to cry ourselves to sleep.  I kept thinking Ivy will think of something.  Gert was horrible to us, she hated looking after us, mind you since I have grown up, I suppose she had only been married a short time with a new baby, not many would have taken too kindly to taking us on.  One blessing Fred was still living with us.  We missed mum giving us a hug and kiss goodnight.  Gert most certainly wasn’t going to.  I used to lie in bed thinking mum wood be hiding in a wood.  We all thought she didn’t love us anymore.  We would talk, the three of us in bed, trying to think why and where was she.  Gert would never let us talk about her.  We used to kneel by our bed, we always thought God would hear us better if we were kneeling.  Gert made us work very hard, not that it hurt us.  This went on for about two years but we still said our prayers every night.  Gert had another baby boy, she used to say to me put Freddie in the pram and take him outside to get him to sleep.   I hated rocking that pram.  Then I had a bright idea, if I put him in the sun, he would have to shut his eyes so that’s what I did.  Gert used to say ‘is he asleep’.  ‘Yes Gert his eyes are shut’ and I would hope he would keep his mouth shut as well, poor Freddie.

One day Lena and I heard Gert talking to her husband Ack saying she was fed up with Ivy and thinking of having her put in a ‘home’.  Well we could not even think about it, so that night we waited for brother Fred to come home.  We waited at the corner of our road so that Gert didn’t see us.  It seemed forever waiting.  At last Fred came along, all pleased to see us there to greet him.  We both burst into tears and told him what we had heard.  We knew Gert would kill us if she found out but Fred told us not to worry he would sort it all out.  ‘Ivy will NOT go anywhere, you girls must always stay as one family, I will see you do’ he said.  He told us to stop crying and gave us some biscuits from his lunch box, which was a big treat, we never ever saw biscuits.  He went into the house and we stayed down the garden until Fred called us in.  When we saw Ivy we told her all about it, she said ‘don’t worry, I don’t care, Gert doesn’t love us anyway’.  We thought she was very brave.  Anyway Gert went back to her own house and Vi came to look after us.

Well as soon as Vi came she was very kind to us, we could talk about our mum. She told us mum did still love us but she had to go away but very soon if we prayed to God he would send mum back to us.  Vi would listen to us pray and she would say ‘Gentle Jesus’ prayer with us, it made life seem much happier.   Vi was the first to buy us an Easter egg.  I can see mine now, I couldn’t bear to eat it for days, I just used to lick it.  It had lovely blue violets all iced on it and was so very pretty.   I loved Vi to bits for it.   Nev, Vi’s husband had lived in Ceylon and his mother used to send him parcels.  They would have banana leaves all wrapped round them, ‘Arf citing’.  Not that they had much in for us.  Anyway after a while I was nine, Vi called us together and said, wait for it ‘how would you like to go and live with your mum’.  Well we couldn’t sit still.  Gert came back on the day of our going.   Mum wanted some of the furniture we were packed in the back of this old van.  It had a great big tarpaulin over the top, not that we cared, it was such an adventure. We had our hair cut very short because we had ‘fleas’.  We had coats down to our feet with holes in the bottoms.  We must have looked like three waifs and strays but it was so exciting.  We seemed to be in the van for ever.  I thought it must be the other side of the earth.  We did say a big thank you to God, we even blew him some kisses.

New house

As long last we came to mum’s house.  She came to the van to help us off but she didn’t seem to want us as she kept crying.  She gave us some food and then she tried to get rid of the ‘fleas’.  It was so lovely to see her again.  I was really scared she might go off again.   Then she said I’ve got a new dad for you all.  Well we didn’t want a new dad.  We didn’t know what happened to our own dad.  We just looked after each other.  Ivy said he will never be my dad and for sure I will never, never call him dad.

Mum was very cross with her.  Now I didn’t want to call him dad but I didn’t want mum to run away again, so Lena and I didn’t say anything.  When we went to bed, we said we won’t call him anything, so we would just say ‘he’.  Mum said to me ‘when you say God Bless to me at night, you should really say ‘God bless to your dad’, so after that I never again said God bless mum, it was better than having to say it to him.

Now for my life living in Wilmar (1930).  (This was not the sort of house that we were used to and we were only there because my mother acted as caretaker when the family were abroad.) I can only tell you what I remember. I was very young, most of my family called me ’Blue’.

It was the most gorgeous bungalow, not that I was impressed at my age, if my mum was with me that was all I cared.  Where my mum was that was my home.  It had lots of rooms, even a bathroom and a wonderful lavatory, you could just pull the chain from a big tank on top of the lav and it sent all this water down the pan, I thought it was magic.  There was also a very large kitchen with a huge big stove.  Mum would be cooking nearly all day, she would make a big pot of stew from old bones.  I often wondered where they came from.

When we were on our own the rest of ‘the mob’ were at school, it was lovely. I loved having mum to myself. She would say, ‘time for one ole, two ole’.  She called it this because it would be piping hot, it was two mugs of gravy taken from the stew pot to make room for the dumplings, being so hot I would say ‘whoop ole’ after each mouthful so mum forever after named it that (lot of nonsense).

We kept ducks, rabbits, pigeons a ferret, cats and one dog.  We used to eat pigeons eggs, they were like little golf balls. My greatest pet was a Rhode Island Red cockerel named Longshanks, he was the most beautiful bird you ever saw.  I had him from a chick and would carry him in my apron everywhere.  If I was sitting on the doorstep he would come and sit on my lap.  I can remember his body was always warm and when I stroked him he loved it and would make a funny noise in his throat.  I loved him even more because I thought hens laid eggs but he laid the bacon.  Anyway he grew really huge and such a handsome guy.  One day my gran came to stay with us, I think she was teasing him, she said he just flew for her and pecked her head.  She should have kept that stupid hat on.   Anyway she came into my mum with blood running down her face (made the most of it).   Mum did no more, grabbed Longshanks, took him to a big door in the shed and shut his neck in it and killed him.  I hated my mum, my gran and everyone else.  I cried and cried until we had him for dinner (he did taste lovely).

Fred my brother used to feed and clean all the animals.  We used to breed rabbits to eat, we still gave them all names.  We had a huge duck pond in the paddock it was all red tiles.   Fred had a big water tank on wheels so he used to clean it out every Sunday morning.  He would clean out the hutches and put lime in to keep them sweet.  One day a tramp called round, he used to give Fred a penny for wild rabbit skins and four pennies for a tame one.  On this particular day Fred used to hang them outside on the shed wall to dry out a bit, some of the tame skins were a pretty colour.  When Fred came out of the house the tramp had gathered them and put them all in a sack, he tried to ‘do’ Fred saying they were mostly wild skins.  Fred did no more than grabbed him by the throat and tipped the whole lot out and told him never to come back again ‘or I will give you a good hiding’.  I thought Fred was ever so brave he used to work so very hard.  I didn’t see much of my dad.

We had two large tennis courts and a very large round summer house.  We had a cob nut walk, asparagus beds and strawberries in the huge kitchen garden.  There was a long wide drive up to the bungalow, it had big white stones all the way up, we used to have to whiten then every so often, and mum was very fussy.

Mum always put hens under a sitting hen, it was lovely when they were running round with their mum, and there would be yellow, brown and even black ones.  If they were a bit sick mum would put them in a big cardboard box and put them under the stove on the hearth, I thought it odd because she would hard boil eggs and chop them up for them to eat.  They were really cute.  When mum wasn’t around we would take them out of the box to have a run around and hope the cat didn’t come in.   Some would get the ‘gapes’  keep opening their mouths and then mum would give them some salt water to drink.

Good times

We had some really good laughs at times.  Ivy used to get out of the bedroom window and bring some cobnuts back.   It was a job cracking them with our teeth.  Then we had to hide the shells, but Ivy would always find a way.

It was like the good apples, mum would say only have the ‘drops’ so we used to nick them from the tree and rub the stalk with dirt to show mum how it had all gone brown from being dropped.

Every Christmas mum would make a huge rabbit and sage pie, it was out of this world.   We would gather ivy and holly to put over the pictures on the wall.  Then get the gramophone with the horn out ready.  We would go out singing carols and might get a penny or two sometimes they gave us a Christmas pudding.   When we sang ‘We Three Kings’ we would start to giggle and point to ourselves seeing our surname was King.   Mum would take the money from us when we got home, then we would make a wish when we stirred the Christmas pudding, I wished I could have kept the money.

We used to be so excited going to bed, we only ever had a piece of coal, a walnut, one orange and a large pink comic which was out of date and someone in the ‘posh’ houses had given mum.  We still had a wonderful Christmas.   Mum would put a piece of holly on top of the pudding then she would set it alight with blue flames, it was sheer magic.  We would all hope to get a silver threepenny bit but only one ever went in.  Then after tea on went the music, we had five records which we played every year.  We, well not me, used to have a drink of mum’s homemade orange wine.  My brother Fred would sing like Paul Robeson, Gert would sing  ‘Only a Bird in a gilded cage’, Vi would sing like Gracie Fields, Red Sails in the Sunset, Lil used to yodel and her song was ‘I Started my Life as a Cobbler, I’m working from day until night with a torili torili addy I’m working with all my might’.   The rest of us would jig around and be very silly, until it was snap dragon time.  Mum would lay raisins out on a big dish and pour brandy over them and set them alight, they would glow such a pretty colour.  Mum would put a sheet around her to bring them in and put the lamp out, we were supposed to make a grab for them on the dish, I would be scared to even look, let alone touch them.  But there would be such laughter.  You would never believe how poor we really were.  Such lovely memories.

Off to school

Then came the time for me to go to school, I was five so off I trot with my sisters.  In those days you started school when you were five and stayed there until you were fourteen.  When I started my first day they wanted anyone who knew a poem. I put up my hand as I had seen the other kids do that.  So out the front I went, stood on a chair so everyone could see and hear me:

Three men went a hunting

Nothing they could find

But a little dog’s turd

And that they left behind

The teacher didn’t seem at all pleased with me so they told me to play with the plasticine, which I stuck on top of my head and couldn’t get it off.   Mum had to cut it off, I had a little brush on top of my head for ages.  I also knew another poem my dad had taught me before he left or whatever happened to him.  Three men went a hunting was the best one though as I thought it was rude:

Oh Barney oh Barney

No breeches to wear

We’ll buy a sheepskin

And make him a pair

Woolly side in, skinny side out

Oh Barney, oh Barney they’ll never wear out

Also a song:

God made little Robin in the days of spring

Please said little robin when am I going to sing

When am I to sing  ?

God then spoke to robin

You must always sing but your sweetest carols keep for wintery days

Keep on wintery days

We used to sing a lot at school, there was an old wind-up gramophone in the playground, which we used for country dancing, my favourite was call ‘rufty tufty’ Lena and I were always dancing to it at home.

Whilst were living in Wilmar bungalow the other girls Gert, Vi and Lil still used to sleep in the cottage, so when the time came for us to move back in all was well.  Gert got married when I was five years old and I was her bridesmaid , I wore a salmon pink dress and a ring thing on my head.  Soon after getting married we moved back into the cottage because Gert and Ack had the chance to move into a little bungalow called Briarash Lodge, it was nice what I can remember of it.  That is where Freddie her son was born.

Poor people seldom had the doctor, it was far too expensive and if they did call they were never too bothered.   We were all vaccinated when we were small they used to prick you three or four times on the arm.   I haven’t a clue what it was for but we used to wear a red ribbon arm band to let folk know we had been done. Made one feel quite important!

Mum faced very hard times she used to try to keep the smaller ones in bed a long time to keep them warm. She used to take in washing from ‘posh’ people to help out.  Gert and Fred would go out getting wood for fuel and take greens, turnips and potatoes from the farmer’s fields.  Mind you the farmers were very good they knew how poor the families were, they would turn a blind eye to it all.

After a while mum met a man named George King he said he was willing to marry her and take on her children.  I can never recall mum saying she loved him, when I asked her about it she would just say he was very kind to take her and the children on.  She moved from Yalding and came to live in Southfleet, a place called Westwood.  She had a little boy called Roland.  Mum said he had blue eyes and fair hair but he was sick with a dysentery bug she was told.  Anyway he was only six months old when he died.  Mum always said he was a little angel, God only lent him to her for a while.  I could never have seen it that way but I think it helped mum to think like that.

Then along came another blooming girl, Gladys Charlotte, not too exciting, then another girl Ivy.  Mum then moved into New Barn where Lena Beatrice was born and next, the best one of the lot ‘Betty’… Mrs Bennet our neighbour came to see me, my said the nurse told her it would be her last baby, the wall of her tummy had given up.  Mrs Bennet who was born a gypsy said ‘you can’t tell me this is the scraping of the pot’.  Mind you mum was forty three at that time.

By now my sister Gert was in service hoping to become head cook in the household.   Violet was in service training for a ladies maid.  Lil was in service doing whatever was needed.

I was born in New Barn Cottage, there were two cottages, Mum in one and Mrs Bennet in the other.   There were two bungalows opposite us with Roy Morris and family in one and his Gran in the other.  We had a tap for water right up at the top of the garden which was for all four dwellings.  The lavatory was a long way down the rest of the back garden, ours was joined to the Bennett’s one under a big old elderberry tree.  The Bennets were not fussy what they said, they helped me grow up a bit.   Theirs was a big family, Flo, Jacko, Bumper, Ivy, Appy, Tilly, Queenie, Harry, Bessie, Mary, Fanny and Doffie and their Mum and Dad.  Mrs Bennet had her right hand all curled up where as a child (being a gypsy) had crawled too near the fire on the grass outside the caravan and was very badly burned.

They were really dirty, they had a dog with mange and a big cat named Dripping.  I used to love to go into their house, the cat would be licking the dripping out of an old chipped cup, and Mrs Bennet would give me a thick slice of bread with this dripping if the cat left any.  I used to love it.  I never told mum I would get a clout for stepping inside the house.  They had a big cauldron, in the week it would be on the coal shed floor but Saturday it came out for her cooking, she would hang it from a big hook up the chimney.  When she made meat pudding she would put flour, fat, meat all in a bowl, it looked like spotted dick.  Anyhow greens, potatoes and pudding all went into the pot.  I wasn’t allowed to stay for dinner.

They had a big nanny goat outside tied to a tree on a big long rope.  We used to get a cabbage leaf and offer it to her we would then run fast as we could round the tree until at last it couldn’t move.  It was quite spiteful if it could get to you.  Bumper was always with Ivy, Lena and I, we used to play shops.  One day we got a load of elderberries, chewed them small and spit them in a jar, we told Bumper it was jam, her being dopey ate quite a lot of them, then it was time to go in for tea.  All of a sudden round came Fanny Bennet saying to our mum ‘poor Bumper is being sick and bringing up a lot of blood’, well no one could understand this, we certainly couldn’t, we didn’t say a word.  Mum said give her a good dose of syrup of figs that will get it through her.  We must have been wicked because we laughed ourselves to sleep.

One night Jack and Fanny Bennet, the Mum and Dad of them all went to the pub, right down to Betsham in Southfleet, called the Colliers Arms.  It was a hell of a long way, they trudged off in pouring rain with a new baby in a clapped out old pram.  They stayed until the last bell, then had to walk or rather stagger back home.  Baby was left in the pram outside of the pub while they were inside drinking.  When they at last arrived home Fanny had a job to get upstairs.  She was very fat as well as being drunk. They left the baby soaking wet in the pram all night downstairs.  The next day the poor little mite died.   Mum said it had been sick before they ever took it to the pub.  It was just another one to them, plenty more where they came from.

They were a real funny family.  My brother Fred was digging in the garden one day when this girl, who was cross eyed, came up our path with a large straw hat on elastic in her hand and said to Fred ‘I’m Tilly’s thister’ whilst saying this she swung the hat round and it cut underneath her nose so sharp it made it bleed.   Fred  told her to go to the Bennet’s and went over to do some more digging, with that she just made a grab at him just where he didn’t want grabbing, he came indoors until she was well and truly out of sight.  Mum said she wasn’t all there.

The rag and bone man came one day, we had kept all the old bones we had gathered from different places and he gave us a gold fish, we put it in a two pound jam jar. We used to go and dig ant eggs up from the garden to feed it but it gave up the ghost after three days.

Mind you it had a lovely funeral, we put it in a Swan Vesta match box and put grandfather’s beard in it so it was comfy, then we all, Bennet’s mob, Morris’s mob and us Kings, took it to a place of rest under the thorn hedge.  We made a lovely cross with wood and silver paper and a big R.I.P. on it then made a big hole and put lots of earth on top to make a mound, then we put a paste pot on top with wild violets and daisies.  We often dug it up to see if it was still there or if it had gone to heaven.  We all sang there is a green hill far away.  We were very sad.

We had a dog called Dandy who lived in a kennel outside, he never came in the house and was always on a chain.  He was only there to keep people away.  We had two cats, one was Minnie who was always having kittens and Topper.  Minnie had her kittens in one of Mr Bentley’s cars, he was Captain Bentley head of the car department, and he invented them.   Betty the cook came round to tell mum about the kittens.  Mum said ‘oh well she will bring them home when they are big enough’.  I never quite knew what happened to them we rarely saw them.

Mrs Morris was a nice lady, her husband worked on the siding at Longfield Hill.  The trains would come down from the big London hotels and dump all their waste on the spare ground, he used to bring loads of stuff home like posh knives and forks, plates, dishes, cups and saucers etc.  We had quite a lot in our house.  One morning Jack Morris was getting his boots on for work, he found a knot in one of his laces and got a dinner fork to undo it and it came up very quickly and went straight in his eye.  He went completely blind.

Their children were Hazel, Ron, Roy and Jean, they had an awful time.   One day my mum heard this awful screaming coming from the Morris house.  When mum arrived the baby girl two years old had crawled near the fire and pulled a large saucepan (it was an open cow grate fire) the pan had potatoes and cabbage in it which had stuck on top of the baby, she died almost straight away.   Mum said it was something she would never forget.  It was the worst thing mum had ever seen or heard the poor little ones cries.   I will tell you more later about living in the cottage.