Edith Hepper & Joseph Walker (my great x2 grandparents)
Mother met my Father in Chapel where they were both in the Choir, and against her stepfathers wishes they were married at the Bull Ring Methodist Chapel in Lower Wortley. So after making her own wedding dress, and Father’s wedding suit, she was a fully experienced tailoress and they were married on the 1st of October 1901. They rented a very nice little house in Coldon, in the new Blackpool part of the village of Wortley.
Father worked in the railway and got 15 shillings per week, so Mother looked after her nice little house and did outside work for the same family – that is, she brought home dozens of suits and overcoats to sew at home, so she could be at home to look after Dad as well, as he was on shift-work – a cleaner of engines at that time.
Leslie (1903)
After being married for two years my brother Leslie was born, on the 16th of February 1903. About this time, Mother began to get restless. She felt she wasn’t getting anywhere and she didn’t just want to be a housewife all her life. She was ambitious and very intelligent. In fact, she worked and saved as much as she could, and even bought a brand new piano; which caused quite a stir amongst their friends. They were big Chapelgoer’s – both Mother and Dad sang in the Choir. Eventually a small shop became empty in Wortley village proper near the Tram Terminus (by this time they were power driven). So Mother, Dad and Leslie moved into this old house and shop. Everyone told Mother it was a wrong move; but she wanted a business of her own.
She opened her little shop at Whitsuntide, Saturday 1905, with ribbons and lace and cottons, needles and pins. She made pretty baby dresses and petticoats, long gowns and Christening robes; as in Whitsuntide all parents tried to dress up their children in new frocks and clothes and pretty ribbons for the Whit Sunday walk (or Pentecost Sunday – the seventh Sunday after Easter). This was when all the children would set off from the Chapel, the Methodists, hundreds of them; and walk up to Western Flatts Park. There, the Choir and a band played Whitsuntide hymns that they had been learning for weeks. On Whitsuntide Sunday everyone met in a big meadow by the river and there were sports and stalls. All the ladies brought cakes, buns, sandwiches and fruit. It was a great day, and everyone joined in with races: sack races, egg and spoon races and tug-of-war for the men. That is all gone now – the Government saw fit to do away with Whitsuntide completely and have altered the date to call it spring holidays now.
Anyway, Mother took 25 shillings in her little shop on that Whit Sunday, and she was so proud and pleased. She got a Joiner to come and put up lots of shelves and a new shop window – a large one as the other was only a house window, and not very big.
Then she sewed and sewed day and night. She made everything she sold in the shop – from men’s suits’ and overcoats to ladies dresses and costumes, to sheets and pillowcases. Everything one could think of, she made on an old Singer jumbo Treadle machine – a great big ugly thing, it was part of all our lives. Oh I hated it, from the time I was old enough to understand what it was all about. It just dominated everything, but Mother was established and everyone called her little Mrs. Walker. She wasn’t very tall, and she was only comfortable sewing and looking after her shop, owing to her disfigured face.
Phyllis (1907)
In 1907 I was born, and Christened Phyllis Walker. It was on Christmas day – a cold and snowy day, and the Chapel Choir had come round to sing Christmas Carols outside the house. They were invited in for cake and ginger wine, but Mother was in the throes of labour and Dad had to ask them all to go away. I arrived about 3pm. Of course everyone was delighted I was a girl.
About his time also, my poor Auntie Violet found herself pregnant, and her little boy was born on the 5th of November 1904. She never did say who the father was, a fact which upset my mother dreadfully as poor Violet was definitely taken advantage of; although, in later years it turned out a good thing as he took care of her until she died. He was then 32, and not till then did he marry – he was a very good lad, and worked hard in the building trade, eventually becoming a master builder.
My earliest recollections were when I attended kindergarten school – I must have been only three, because I remember being given a coronation mug by our teacher on the occasion of George the Fifth’s accession to the throne in 1910. I also remember having chicken pox when I was about five years old. It was as my Father was going to work, he kissed my Mother goodbye and I ran to him for a kiss also, but he said, “I can’t kiss you – I don’t want any spots”. I was quite upset, and don’t remember his ever kissing me again.
She would be cutting out some garment or other on the table, and humming a I was about seven or eight when my mother used to tell me little bits about my Grandparents and other members of the family tune to herself. She was always very happy when she was sewing or making something, and the tune was a popular music hall ditty, Two Little Girls in Blue. I would stand there watching and I had only to ask a question regarding the family and she was away talking – more to herself than to me, but it was all very interesting. One story was about how, when she was a small girl, any man who wouldn’t work or was a wife basher would be caught – the men in the village would lie in wait, and grab him. Then they’d tar and feather him, and wheel him in a wheelbarrow all round the village, while the people pelted him with rotten fruit and other things. It cured the chap of wife beating at least – it’s a pity it isn’t done today. In lots of cases the victim used to go into the Army to take the Kings shillings.
Stanley & Cyril (1911)
In 1911, four years after me, my twin brothers were born – Stanley and Cyril. They were both very sickly babies and didn’t thrive as well as Leslie and I. They were two years old before they could even walk. I had to wheel them out in the pram – a high boat-shaped thing with large wheels, which took quite a bit of steering. Of course I upset it, and both babies ended up on the pavement. Someone flew to tell my Mother. Fortunately they must have been quite tough – they were all right, but I got a good belting. Needless to say I wasn’t trusted with them anymore.
About this time I suppose Mother realized she couldn’t manage to look after the business, sew, cook, and look after two babies besides Leslie and me, so she employed a maid; Mary Stockell. She was a good-natured person of about 30 I should say, and things were a bit easier; but Mother still sewed and journeyed to Leeds every Tuesday afternoon to the warehouses to buy bolts of cloth, linen, flannelette, cotton, yards of lace and ribbons for trimmings. It used to be very exciting opening all the parcels. Every piece of brown paper and string had to be saved so they could be used again in the shop.
When I was 10 my mother taught me how to bake. She used to put a stone of flour in a big earthenware crock, with yeast and lard. I had to knead and knead until it was nice dough – just the right consistency. I really loved the baking days. It smelled so lovely; newly baked bread done in a big old-fashioned range. There were six 2-pound loaves and three flat oven cakes, which Mother used to wrap in a tea towel and put on the doorstep to cool by the time we came home from school. I can tell you, nothing was ever so marvellous as the taste of that fresh oven cake spread with nice butter and golden syrup.
I haven’t said much about my Father’s parents. They lived quite a long way from us, so we didn’t see them very often. My father was one of five boys and three girls. Dad’s mother died at an early age, and Grandfather remarried. She wasn’t thought much of by my Father and Mother, so I suppose that’s why we didn’t visit. Father’s brothers were very nice though. They all worked on the railway and all became drivers. There weren’t many other types of work in our village, except the Pit, which employed a lot of the men although it was poorly paid and dangerous, or to go into the spinning or weaving sheds at the Mill.
I used to lie in bed and hear the women clattering past our house at six in the morning, calling out to each other. They all wore big, black, heavy shawls to keep out the cold and wooden clogs. We would snuggle back under the bed-cloths until it was time to go to school. The women would trudge back again at six in the evening, too tired to talk. It was a very hard life – there didn’t seem to be much joy for them, what with having children and slaving in the Mill. It was called Nussey Mill.
Everyone came to Mother for clothes and household linens. She used to have clubs where the customers paid as much as they could each week – some as low as sixpence – but they were very honest, even the poor, and Mother was always very fair. She often gave them little gifts if they paid without missing.
Father had risen from cleaner foreman to driver by this time, and got two pounds a week; but there was always trouble on the Railways over the wages. In fact, in every type of work – the coal miners were giving a lot of trouble, for which I don’t blame them; they had to work in such appalling conditions. Even the men who used to go round and knock up the workers who were on shift work. They used to go round to all the houses and tap with a long stick on the bedroom windows to wake up the one who was on early shift – they shouted to my Father, “Come on Joe!” it would be two-o-clock and fine, or pouring as the day may be, and Dad got up quietly without a grumble. But we liked him to get up in the early morning because he always had a lovely fire burning for us to come down to, and the kettle boiling on the hob. That was a real treat. On other mornings we would come down shivering until Mary had got things moving.
Dad worked on the railway, as did his three brothers. The youngest one died at 18. Altogether there were five boys and one girl. Their father died and their mother remarried, having a further three children. They lived quite a way off so we didn’t see much of them. The brothers all seemed to have large families – in fact one of them, Arthur and his wife Violet had 14 children, all still alive. He was a lovely man, small but very funny, always laughing and full of jokes. He had a wonderful sense of humour – I guess he would have, with 14 kids. He was very much like Stanley, our Cyril’s twin, who was just the same in his younger days.
All four of us went to Lower Wortley Board School. Leslie took piano lessons, but I didn’t do much – either at piano, or at school. I couldn’t take it in, and I hated Arithmetic. I liked History and Geography and Reading. Mother taught me to sew – another thing I hated, but had to do. I sewed all the straight seams on sheets and pillowcases, and side seams on men’s shirts.
How I loathed that machine! The only time it was covered was on Sunday when we all went to Chapel, and on lovely warm days in the Summer when we would go for walks across the fields to Farnley, or to Bramley to a cousin of Mother’s, cousin Clara. She was a singer and sang in the musicals at such Chapel’s like the Brunswick in Leeds. Mother always looked so smart on the occasions, wearing a nice dress and a huge hat that covered her face, and a feather boa slung round her neck.
I loved to dress up in her hat and boa – I fancied myself – but if I was caught I was in trouble. In fact I was always in trouble; I must have been quite a trial I think.
I always wanted to go out and play, or wanted to read. But Mother didn’t believe in idling about, and Leslie and I had to clean all the brasses – the brass fender, tongs, shovel, poker and brass dogs. We were very pleased when they were sold as they became old-fashioned, when nickel silver was all the rage.
When the twins were seven, Cyril caught double pneumonia, and was very ill. For weeks he was near death, and Mother stayed up every night poulticing him. The doctor had given up on him days ago, when Mother decided to use an old remedy given to her by an old wife; it was to heat up goose grease in the oven. She made a chest protection of flannel and soaked it in the goose grease and placed one on his chest and one on his back. Eventually Cyril started to breathe again. This whole house reeked of this fat, it was awful but Mother saved his life. The doctor was amazed when he came again; he fully expected to find a dead boy. It was two years before Cyril could walk properly – we used to have to wheel him around in a pushchair. One lung was gone, and he walked with one shoulder down for a long time.
Anyway, Mother took us all on holiday to Brighton. Father would get three free passes a year with working on the railway, so we generally had a holiday once a year. We went to Great Yarmouth, Bridlington, St Leonard’s, and Brighten, but mostly we went to Bridlington; and once we went to Blackpool where I got lost and was taken to the Police Station. When Mother and Father came to collect me I was eating a slice of bread and jam, and telling them I lived near Granny Lane. Evidently, the Police were highly amused, but I was only very young. After that I always had a tag pinned to my dress to say where I lived.
Sometimes we went on picnics Sunday afternoon. We used to go to Lockersdale Woods – a beauty spot near us. One Sunday, mother decided it would be nice to take a little train ride to a lovely little village called Arthington. It was a lovely train ride and of course we were all delighted to set off for the Station, but some how Dad got mixed up with the trains, and we arrived at Seacroft, another little village, but nowhere near Arthington. Poor Dad, he was never allowed to forget it – that he worked on the railway and couldn’t find his way to Arthington. Mother was very strong-willed and took the lead in everything. Maybe it was a good thing she did, as Father always took the easy way out.
MY ANCESTOR PHOTOS 