I was looking for inspiration for my blog when I saw something that caught my eye. So many people don’t know how to find their way around a map, which made me think of my mum and school in the 1900’s
Did you know that one in three people who were polled cannot find France on a map of the world? Half didn’t know where Japan and India are, with 76% not having a clue where Austria is.
Where in the World is Devon?
Forty seven percent out of 2,000 people also couldn’t find Devon.
It really made me smile, as it reminded me of my mum who hadn’t got a clue what England looked like, or where it is on a world map. She hadn’t the first foggy idea, but as she was born in 1913 I suppose she can be excused.
She went to school in the 1900’s in a typical stone built Victorian school which were the norm back then. They had a typical classroom, but with a fire in the corner of the room. There was no central heating in those days. It seems they stayed in that one classroom until they left at the ripe old age of 14, the poor things.
School in the 1900’s
Now my mum wasn’t the brightest button in the box when it came down to it. Probably because she wasn’t interested if I knew her, although she was the teachers pet, as she was so fond of telling me.
We have a class photo (below) taken in about 1918, one of the good old fashioned black and white ones. It always made me laugh as they look like a right set of tykes of the time. A bit scruffy and unkempt as there was no money in those days to get what we expect today.
She always made us laugh when we talked about her school days and the things she got up to. But I always remember her talking about cleaning the tables and desks down.
Apparently the teacher always said ‘scwub the way the gwains go girls’ which meant she was short tongued and couldn’t pronounce it properly. Do you know, I still trot that phrase out to this day. She was right too, as it works to go with the grain of the wood.
After School in the 1900’s…
As I said, she left school at 14 and in those days, most of the children were sent into ‘service’ as it was known.
Usually this involved moving away from your area and being what I like to call a live in slave. They cleaned houses and cooked for the owners for very little money. My Grandma was sent to work as a cook in a grand house at Cawthorne, a pretty picture-postcard village outside Barnsley. She learned how to cook and feed the farming family.
Of course, my mum decided that she wanted to go to work as her sisters were all doing different things. She was the baby of eight children with one other boy dying when he was young. So my grandma doted on her and told her not to go away to a job.
But no, my mum knew best, so she pestered my gran to go into service. A position was found and off she went on a train to Cleethorpes, clutching her little suitcase to live in as a housemaid.
A Sheltered Life…
The trouble was, being a sheltered little poppet, she had no idea what she was letting herself in for.
The same evening that she arrived, the family went out. Once she settled into her room she was told to go downstairs and keep watch in this particular room.
The owners of the house were very prim and proper (as they were in those days) which must have been a right shock to a 14 year old just away from home.
Especially when she went into the allotted room and found out that they were leaving her to look after a coffin with the lid off. And the man inside staring back at her!
Aaaarrrrggghhhh!!!
She says she screamed the house down. She didn’t expect to be on guard with a body at night in a gloomy house! We’ve had many a laugh about this when she told us about it. But it wasn’t funny to her at that time. I mean she was a young naïve girl who would never have even seen a body.
What did she do, she wrote to my gran and begged her for the train fare home. She left the house as soon as possible, with the knowledge that she would never ever pester her mum again to leave home! I bet that pleased my gran too!
My grandad was killed in the First World War, not long after my mum was born, so as the youngest baby my gran thought the world of her.
Another sister went to work in the mills at Bradford and ended up living there after meeting her husband in the mills. Other brothers and sisters did various things after leaving school in the 1900’s.
And they say the good old days. It must have been awful to be sent away from home to be a skivvy to strangers at such a young age. Can you imagine children today? Wow the balloon would well and truly go up!
While you’re here…
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