Читать книгу Lost Voices of the Edwardians: 1901–1910 in Their Own Words - Max Arthur, Max Arthur - Страница 59

I was born in Bacup, Lancashire, on 21 December 1891. It was a traditional valley mill town and cotton was still king. It was a world of cloth-capped men and women in shawls who wore wooden clogs with irons on the heels that clattered and sparked on the cobbled streets.

I was the first of thirteen children. Only six of us survived childhood. My mother, Maggie, was a short, stout woman – five feet tall and eighteen stone – of Scots and Irish descent. She had many friends among the neighbours, the doors of our house were always open and anyone in need always found solace from Maggie, either in money to lend, goods to pawn, or hunger and thirst to quench. It was there for the asking without any question.

At eight years of age I would look after my brothers and sisters whenever my parents went out. When they became ill, I often rocked them to sleep in the cradle through the long winter nights. They might have measles, scarlet fever or whooping cough. My mum and dad would stoke up the fire with coal and slack and make me comfortable in a large rocking chair, giving me instructions to wake them should my brothers or sisters get worse during the night. They then locked the doors and went to bed. As soon as they left I would tremble with fear – what frightened me was the expectation of a ghost coming from the dark passage near the stairway to the bedroom. Our house was built on the hillside underneath another building and the stairway, which was wet and dark, ran up behind the dining-room wall like a railway tunnel.

I shall never forget the sight of my twin brother and sister, James and Sarah, suffering with the croup. My mother got some stiff brown paper and covered it with goose grease, then heated it before the fire and placed it on their chests and necks, but they screamed more and more, and looked as if they were choking. When morning came, she sent me for the priest – she had more faith in his treatment than the doctor. Anyway, prayers or medicine, it made no difference, my brother and sister died just the same.

Six of my siblings died before they could walk – somebody seemed to come or die at our house every year when I was a boy. I was eleven when I first learned where babies came from. My mother was preparing to bake our weekly 20 lb of dough, when she started to scream for me to run and ‘fetch Mary O'Donnell and tell her I am sick’. Mary lived a few doors away. She was not a certified midwife, but all the children around knew that she brought babies from somewhere. They loved her and thought she was an angel.

When she heard my message, she ran to my mother, and I followed. My mother lay on some papers spread out on the floor, which seemed to be covered with messy blood, and Mary was pulling a baby from her belly. She told me to go out and play for a while. I was reluctant – I thought my mother might die. However, I returned soon after and Mary had cleaned my mother up and put her in bed with the baby. She told me to put more coal on the fire and make the house warmer. She said, ‘Your mother is asleep, and she has brought you another little sister.’