Author Archives: Val Hewson

On the Centenary of the Armistice

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Privates John Charles Hobson and John Sydney Abey have lain in the soil of northern France for over a hundred years. Of the 5,000 men Sheffield lost in the First World War, they are the only library workers, and their names appear on the Sheffield Libraries Roll of Honour.

John Abey

Before the war John Abey was the junior assistant in the branch library in Highfield, just outside the city centre.

Highfield Branch Library

This was a good job for a young man – white collar, secure and with the prospect of progression – but John would have earned his money. The hours were long: 09.00-13.30 and 17.30-21.00 in the week, with a half-day on Thursday, and all day Saturday, with staff working shifts. The library operated the physically demanding ‘closed access’ system, with books shelved on steep racks behind a counter and staff climbing up ladders to retrieve borrowers’ choices. Highfield was one of Sheffield’s first branch libraries, state of the art when it opened in 1876, in a building designed by a leading local architect, Edward Mitchell Gibbs.[i] But by the war years, the library service was neglected and Highfield was described by one employee as ‘very gloomy’. Before he joined up, John was probably one of two assistants to the branch librarian, and there would have been several boys employed in the evenings to help shelve books. The library may well have been gloomy, but there was also fun. ‘We often used to have a kickabout with a small ball behind the indicator,’ said the same employee, ‘the librarian never bothered.’ (The ‘Cotgreave indicator’ was 19th century technology: a huge wooden screen showing whether books were available or on loan.)

32 Witney Street, Highfield today. The Abey family lived here.

St Barnabas Church, Highfield today. John Abey and his family worshipped here.

The Highfield area seems to have been the centre of John Abey’s life. Not only did he work there but he lived at 32 Witney Street, near the library, with his parents, his elder sister, Ethel, and younger brothers, Arnold and Stanley. The family attended St Barnabas Church next to the library, and John sang in the choir. His mother Margaret is mentioned in newspaper reports as helping at church fetes, and her children joined in:

Oriental Bazaar at Heeley

The successful Oriental bazaar held in conjunction with Wesley Chapel, Heeley, was reopened for the last time yesterday by a band of 45 prettily-attired children of the Sunday School. There was a large and interested audience to witness the ceremony. … (Sheffield Independent, 24 April 1908)

The ‘prettily-attired’ children are all carefully named, including ‘Miss Ethel Mary Abey’ and ‘Master Jack Sydney Abey’.

John – Jack – was killed, seven months before the Armistice, on 15 April 1918. His regiment was the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (1/4th Battalion, a volunteer contingent) and he had the exposed job of signaller, responsible for unit communications. Between 13 and 15 April 1918, the battalion took part in the Battle of Bailleul, and its war diary notes intense shelling and the Germans managing to penetrate the frontline on occasion. The battalion was relieved and sent to rest on 15 April, but this came too late for Signaller Abey. On 20 April the Sheffield Independent reported that he had ‘died in hospital at Boulogne, having been wounded the same morning’. His war gratuity of £10 11s 11d was paid to his father, Herbert, and his record notes the usual award of the British War and Victory Medals. Jack is buried in Boulogne Eastern Cemetery (VIII. I. 196). He was 19 years old.

John Hobson

Percy, John and Horace Hobson

John Hobson grins out at the camera, his cap at a cheeky angle. His younger brothers, Percy on the left and Horace on the right, look more guarded. We don’t know when this photo was taken, or by whom, but it was printed in the Sheffield Telegraph on 24 July 1916.

Three weeks earlier, Percy had been killed, one of 19,000 to die on 1 July, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, for three square miles of territory. His body was never recovered, and his name is incised on the Thiepval Memorial along with 72,000 others with no known grave. John and Horace were both ‘severely wounded’, says the newspaper. Within the year, John too would be dead. Horace alone survived the war.

Before the war, John Hobson had worked at Hillsborough Branch Library, in a job similar to John Abey’s on the other side of the city.[ii] Hillsborough was a large and busy suburb, and the branch library seems to have been well used. It opened in 1906, in a converted, 18th century gentleman’s residence, which must have brought problems as well as charms.

Hillsborough Library

John was born in 1892, between Hillsborough and Upperthorpe, the eldest of three brothers and a sister. His father, John Henry, was a greengrocer and then a ‘car conductor’ on the city trams. John’s middle name, Charles, probably came from his paternal grandfather, Charles Hobson (1845-1923), a prominent union leader. Charles was elected to the town council, and prospered until 1903 when he was convicted of corruption. He served three months in prison. Despite this, he remained popular and influential, making speeches and writing for the papers.

It was perhaps inevitable that John and his brothers would volunteer as their grandfather was a member of the Territorial Force Council. He said in 1909:

I am essentially a man of peace. At the same time I disagree with those who preach ‘Peace at any price.’ I would never provoke a fight, and would suffer wrong rather than resort to extreme measures. Nevertheless, circumstances might arise when to remain passive, or inactive, would prove one either imbecile, coward, or void of all manly instincts. (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 13 February 1909)

The three brothers joined the Sheffield City Battalion, the 12th battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment. Its men were ‘pals’ – brothers, friends, workmates, schoolfellows etc who enlisted together, to stay together and to fight together. This gave the soldiers loyalty and fellow-feeling, but meant that in a major engagement a village, say, might lose most of its young men all at once. This happened to the Sheffield Pals at the Somme on 1 July 1916, when half the battalion were cut down by relentless machine gun fire and 250 men, including Percy Hobson, died.

John and Horace were invalided back to England, to recover from their wounds, and John was well enough to return to France in January 1917. He was wounded again and died at a casualty clearing station at Bethune on 19 April 1917. He is buried in Bethune Town Cemetery (VI. D. 39), about 50 miles from where John Abey lies. His war gratuity of £8 10s was paid to his wife, Mary, whom he had married in 1915.

A letter home from John’s brother, Percy, was published in the Sheffield Telegraph when he died in July 1916. It perhaps speaks not just for Percy but for his brothers too:

We are having a fairly good time here considering everything … Tons of work; in fact, more work out of the trenches than we get in – though sometimes this does not hold good. All the chaps are in excellent spirits. In the hearts of our men lurks the feeling that with foresight this war could have been prevented. We try not to look at the dull side of things. We are in one of the finest battalions in the present army, and I am proud to be a member of it. I should like to tell you many things about the battalion, but we are not allowed to. I had another fortunate escape on my birthday night. I was the only survivor of a small company. The trench was levelled to the ground—but it was Hobson’s choice—they would not kill me.

——

Sheffield Libraries Roll of Honour

The Libraries Roll, bright with flags, bells and laurel leaves, marks the service of 20 men who survived as well as John Abey and John Hobson. At least seven of them returned to libraries in Sheffield after the war: Benjamin Belch, Arthur Cressey, James Gomersall (Park Branch), H Valentine (Highfield Branch), F Broadhurst (Walkley Branch), F Kellington (Highfield Branch) and H W Marr (Central Library).

John Abey and John Hobson are also remembered, along with 140 other librarians, on the national Library Association Great War Memorial, now mounted in the staff entrance at the British Library in London.

Library Association memorial at the British Library

 

If anyone reading this is related to anyone listed on the Roll of Honour, we would like to hear from you. Please leave a comment below. 

 

[i]  Highfield is still a library, run by the City Council. The building is Grade II-listed, which the Pevsner Architectural Guide for Sheffield (Yale University Press, 2004) describes as ‘Florentine Renaissance’.

[ii]  Like Highfield, Hillsborough remains a Council-run branch library.

 

Hints and Wrinkles – and More

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…then when my mother-in-law died, we’d only been married a year, I found a cookbook and I kept that. And my daughter rang and she said, have you still got that recipe for Granny’s … I’ve forgotten the name. Well, I had to hunt for it but I found the nearest one I could. I went through loads of cookbooks. And she said, oh, yes, I managed, ‘cos Granny Gomer’s was half an egg, ‘cos it was a wartime one you see. (Margaret G, b. 1924)

Mother, really, she did more crocheting but she loved to write. She loved recipes. I’ve got some of her books that she wrote recipes and poems in, didn’t she? She was always doing something like that, but Father loved reading. (Jean Mercer, b. 1925)

I wasn’t planning to return to books about running a home, like the Hints and Wrinkles volume given away by the Daily Herald in 1939. But since the original post, I’ve come across more domestic volumes on Sheffield’s bookshelves. Some have been bought new or second-hand, for interest, while others were given as presents to young people leaving home, and others still have been passed down in families, as the memories from our readers show. Firmly rooted in their own time, these domestic books show better than many how everyday life changes. Attitudes, habits and aspirations are all visible through them.

Here are a few, drawn at random, from the collection of one friend.

Starting with the more recent, we find cookery books by Jamie (Penguin/Michael Joseph, 2014) and Delia (BBC, 1995), Jane Grigson (Penguin, 1974) and Rose Elliott (Fontana, 1983). Delia and Jamie are celebrity cooks who can set the fashion. Rose Elliot, who published her first book in 1967, is perhaps the first popular vegetarian cookery writer, well remembered by me at least from student days. And Jane Grigson was not only a highly respected cook but also a prose stylist:

The artichoke above all is the vegetable expression of civilised living, of the long view, of increasing delight by anticipation and crescendo. No wonder it was once regarded as an aphrodisiac. It had no place in the troll’s world of instant gratification. It makes no appeal to the meat-and-two-veg mentality.

Food and related businesses have long sponsored domestic advice as part of their marketing. Sainsbury published a handsome, apron-pocket-sized cookery series in the 1980s. This one, from in 1985, was written by Anne Willan, the English founder of the French La Varenne cookery school.

And there’s the Radiation New World Cookery Book, published by the manufacturers to teach people how to use their gas stoves. It first appeared in 1927, but had staying power. This updated edition is from 1963.

Here is New World’s recipe for Savoy Pudding. (Does anyone still eat this?)

Regulo Mark 5

Time: Pudding – 30 minutes, Meringue – 20 minutes

Short crust pastry, using 6oz flour. 2 oz butter or margarine. 2oz caster sugar. Whites of 2 eggs. Yolks of 2 eggs. 3 oz sponge cake crumbs. 1/3 pint milk. 2 oz chopped candied peel. Ratafia essence. 1 tablespoonful caster sugar.

Method: Line a greased pie-dish with the pastry and decorate the edges according to taste. Cream the fat and sugar together, beat in the egg yolks and cake crumbs and add the milk gradually with the chopped peel and ratafia essence. Put this into the prepared dish and bake for 30 minutes with the Regulo set at Mark 5. Whisk the egg whites until stiff, fold in 1 tablespoonful caster sugar and pile it onto the pudding. Put on the bottom of the oven for 20 minutes to set and brown the meringue.

This is the recipe for the same pudding from Cassell’s Shilling Cookery Book (1903 edition). (Puddings were clearly important at the turn of the 20th century. Cassell provides 74 pages of them.)

Rub six ounces of stale savoy cake to crumbs, and pour upon these a quarter of a pint of boiling milk. Let them soak for half an hour, then beat the mixture with a fork until smooth, and add four ounces of fresh butter, four ounces of finely-shred candied peel, the well-beaten yolks of four eggs, two tablespoonfuls of sugar, and two tablespoonfuls of brandy. Beat the mixture for some minutes, put it into a cool place for an hour, and beat it up again. Put it into a buttered dish and bake in a brisk oven. Whisk the whites of the eggs till firm, sweeten them and flavour them pleasantly. Put them on the pudding, and place this in the oven a few minutes longer, but do not let it get brown. When the eggs are set the pudding is ready for serving. Time to bake the pudding, half an hour. Sufficient for four or five persons.

The results must be similar, but the 1903 pudding looks much richer, and the instructions are less precise. Just how hot is a ‘brisk oven’ and how do you flavour something ‘pleasantly’?[1]

The Shilling Cookery Book was first published in 1888, compiled by Arthur Gay Payne who, unusually, combined cookery writing and sports journalism. It was one of a modestly-priced series, aimed perhaps at the lower middle or skilled working classes. Loath to miss any opportunities, Cassell used its pages to advertise:

  • their other publications such as their Home Handbooks (which, interestingly for 1903, includes Vegetarian Cookery) and the ‘Famous Sixpenny Novels’, with once popular, now largely forgotten authors like E W Hornung, Anthony Hope, Warwick Deeping and Marie Connor Leighton
  • food and related products. My favourites are Bongola tea, which ‘has no equal’, and Lemco, ‘pure beef – the primest beef the world produces’.

Our next books, The Constance Spry Cookery Book (Dent & Sons, 1956) and Mrs Beeton’s Cookery and Household Management (Ward, Lock & Co, 1960 edition) are by the great authorities of their day.

Constance Spry (1886-1960), who has rather faded from notice today, was renowned for her flower arrangements (she ‘did’ the Coronation and the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor). She also ran a very successful domestic science school at Winkfield Place, Berkshire. Her cookery book is comprehensive, but am I alone in finding the illustration above too garish?

Mrs Beeton (1836-1865) died young but is still remembered. ‘I must frankly own, that if I had known, beforehand, that this book would have cost me the labour which it has, I should never have been courageous enough to commence it,’ she writes in the first edition (1861). A hundred years later, her book has been updated and includes modern colour schemes and a fish dish to make you blench.

Here, in case anyone is still wearing them, is Mrs Beeton’s advice on caring for corsets and girdles:

These should be washed as often as other ‘next the skin’ garments. Washing should be done quickly in cool suds, rubbing any very dirty parts with a soft nail brush. Several rinses should be given, and the garments should then be squeezed gently between the folds of a towel to remove surplus moisture. They should be dried in a cool airy place away from any direct heat.

Finally, there is Elizabeth Craig’s Needlecraft (Collins, 1941). Craig (1883-1980) was a Scottish home economist and journalist. Her main interest was cookery and she produced many recipe books in a career lasting over 60 years. She also wrote about housekeeping, gardening and needlework. From 1937, Collins published the various volumes of her Household Library: Cookery, Housekeeping, Gardening, 1,000 Household Hints and Needlecraft. These books were promoted as ‘An Extra Pair of hands, always ready’: and are a forerunner of the Daily Herald’s Home Library. Needlework is full of useful projects like covering a wicker storage basket for a nursery and making your own lingerie.

Nine books written and updated over about 150 years. Between them, they reflect the changing priorities and expectations of our society, particularly of course as they affect the lives of women.

 

[1] The owner of the books thinks a brisk oven is about 200° and suggests orange or lemon rind to taste for ‘pleasant’ flavouring. She also wonders if the pastry in the New World recipe is baked blind.

Sheffield Reading History: Unitarians, Book Societies and some Extraordinary Women

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A talk by Sue Roe and Loveday Herridge

Reading Sheffield members Sue Roe and Loveday Herridge gave a talk on 9 September as part of the Heritage Open Days (HODs) Festival 2018. You can read the talk, in two parts, here.

Loveday and Sue have researched the history of Sheffield’s first libraries for Reading Sheffield. The focus of their talk was four book organisations which flourished in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: the Sheffield Subscription Library, the Vestry Library, the Sheffield Book Society and the Sheffield Book Club.

Nofolk Street today – Upper Chapel

The venue – the Unitarian Upper Chapel in Norfolk Street – was a perfect choice. Unitarians had long held education and reading in high regard for both men and women, and there were strong connections between the Chapel’s ministers and congregations and the various book groups.

Upper Chapel, Sheffield

Loveday and Sue looked at the origins of the four organisations, their membership, their choice of books and the roles they played in Sheffield. Picking up the HODs theme for 2018, Extraordinary Women, they explored in particular the lives and work of well-known female Unitarian writers, such as Anna Laetitia Barbauld and Elizabeth Gaskell, whose books were bought by the libraries.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Elizabeth Gaskell

Sue’s and Loveday’s extensive research is published in Before the Public Library: Reading, Community, and Identity in the Atlantic World, 1650-1850, edited by Mark Towsey, University of Liverpool, and Kyle B. Roberts, Loyola University Chicago (Leiden, Brill, 2017). The book, with contributions from eighteen experts, explores the emergence of community-based lending libraries in the Atlantic World in the two centuries before the public library movement of the mid-nineteenth century.

Before the Public Library

Running Up Eyre Street: Sheffield Reading and the Second World War

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On 21 September 2018, Reading Sheffield’s chair, Mary Grover, gave a paper by her and Val Hewson at The Leeds Library’s conference to celebrate its 250th anniversary. Here is a summary of the paper, which you can read in full on our Research page.

 

The war impinged on the reading experiences of our interviewees in ways that often seem contradictory.

Access to books generally was limited by paper shortages, the lack of funds to buy new books, petrol rationing and the scarcity of new titles. In Sheffield too, children faced an extra barrier when, as a safety measure, the Council closed their libraries and moved the junior stock to suburban centres. Those away from home on active service were often forced to rely on the limited choice available through the NAAFI, described by our interviewee Peter as ‘all sorts of, what shall we say, blue books and very blue books’.

But in many ways the war enabled access to books previously unexplored and above all, sharpened intellectual curiosity as readers sought to understand the world that was breaking in upon them.

Take the case of Mary, aged 18 when the war started. Her record of all the books she read between 1936 and 1942 allows us to map both the transition from teenage to adult reading but also from reading for pleasure to a wider reading, often shaped by war. In 1936 and 1937, Mary indulged in P. G. Wodehouse, Beverley Nichols, Ian Hay and Edgar Wallace. By 1939, like many others, she is clearly reading to inform herself about the world beyond Sheffield and the war. Non-fiction like Deslisle Burns’ Democracy, its defects and advantages (1929) dominates her list.

For Mary and indeed most of our readers the quality and availability of public libraries were critical to their access to books. It was their good fortune that Sheffield Libraries were then in the guardianship of a remarkably gifted librarian. In wartime Joseph Lamb oversaw the opening of one branch library and 12 suburban ‘library centres’, and was able to acquire publishers’ stocks at nominal prices. His libraries supported not only the serious interest of borrowers like Mary in the war and the world beyond, but also the general need of Sheffield’s residents for distraction and entertainment in the home, with novels like Gone with the Wind and special guides on handicrafts and games. By the end of the war borrowing had risen to unprecedented heights.

The war seems to have isolated our readers but simultaneously to have increased their passion for books and the value they set upon their reading. As our reader Judith said:

I remember running up Eyre Street with Sheila Thompson so she could join the library. They gave you a little round ticket which you kept and slotted the book’s name … and my mother played pop with me because she didn’t know where we were.

The Book of Hints and Wrinkles (1939)

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In Domestic Goddess, 1930s Style, I wrote about housewives of the 1920s and ‘30s, based on a snippet in Sheffield Libraries’ magazine about books on domestic management. This week, I bought one such book from a charity shop in Broomhill, Sheffield for 99p, so it seems a good time to revisit the topic.

The Book of Hints and Wrinkles is the sort of book that a mother or aunt might have given, in the Thirties or Forties, to a young woman getting married and setting up a home. You can imagine turning to it rather gratefully, as its 300+ closely-printed pages and many clear illustrations cover everything from budgeting and taxes, through laundry, to unblocking drains. How to arrange your kitchen? Pages 165 to 168, with handy floorplans. The right way to iron? Page 126. Mange in pets? (Both types.) Page 283. And of course a long section on having babies and bringing up children. The title is self-deprecating, given how much information is included.

Here is the recommended daily routine for looking after a three-room flat and a year-old baby (and there are more pages reproduced below):

6.45 am Lift and give orange-juice to baby; get tea for self and husband.
7.30 am Light your boiler; set breakfast table.
8.00 am Wash, and dress baby.
8.15 am Baby’s breakfast.
8.30 am Baby put in pram on veranda; prepare breakfast and serve.
9.00 am Wash dishes; sweep and dust dining-room, passage, bathroom, kitchen and lavatory; strip and make beds; sweep bedroom; prepare baby’s broth, etc.
10.30 am Special work(fortnightly turnings-out).
Midday Baby’s lunch; prepare own lunch and as much as possible of evening meal.
1.00 pm Own lunch; wash up; rest and change.
3.00 pm Take baby out in pram, do shopping for next day.
4.30 pm Own tea.
5.00 pm Baby’s tea; wash up; set supper table; play with baby.
6.00 pm Put baby to bed; ironing; cleaning silver; finishing touches to supper.
7.00 pm Supper.
7.30 pm Wash up.

Notice that the husband hardly features, his role being breadwinner. Elsewhere in Hints and Wrinkles, the woman is urged not to exclude her husband from the baby’s care, and in a section that comes after the care of pets is given advice on a man’s wardrobe as ‘few men take much notice of their clothes’.

Hints and Wrinkles is clearly meant for women, and married women at that, although there are references to young men and women living alone, which was much less common then than it is today. Thumbing through the book shows how much work a house entailed in the days before most of the machines and technology we rely on. Running a home was generally a full-time job, done almost always by women (although of course some women did go out to work, and some had hired help).

Our readers’ experiences generally reflect this.

Florence Cowood (b. 1923): … but I got married in 1946 … I did go on reading, but it doesn’t… I was occupied other ways then, you know, with cooking and all the rest of it you do when you’re married. … And then I left [work], of course, when I got married. … They wanted me to stay on, but my husband was an old-fashioned type.  He believed in his wife not working.

Doreen Gill (b. 1934): … as long as I was doing homework me [sic] mum was all right. But if I picked a book up to read she’d say, “Put that down and come and help me do so-and-so. You’re wasting your time and my time”. You know. So she’d always find me a job to do.

Mary Robertson (b. 1923): Mum didn’t work. They did a bit of genteel voluntary work but in my mother’s day ladies didn’t go out to work. … What a boring life. You raised your children and that was it.

Barbara Green (b. 1944): I automatically stopped work because I earned less than Jim. We were in rented accommodation. I had two children in quick succession, nought to twenty months. I was expected to keep the house clean, I was expected to have a meal ready for my husband. I was expected to look after the children. Men didn’t push prams or …

Hints and Wrinkles was published by Odhams Press. Now part of TI Media, Odhams had form in the domestic market, owning both the popular Woman and upmarket Ideal Home titles. There is no date in my copy, but a search in the British Newspaper Archive suggests that it was published as a marketing ploy. (This was not unusual. Many people remember, or have inherited, sets of Dickens, encyclopedias etc given away through newspapers.) A rousing advert in the People of 7 May 1939 invites readers to place an order for at least three months for the Daily Herald, then one of the world’s best-selling newspapers. As a reward they would get, for free, an ‘entirely new 6-volume home library’, with ‘nearly 2,000 pages, 735,000 words, just on 1,000 illustrations’.

… The value of SIX SUCH SUPERB VOLUMES is amazing. Yet, they come to you PRACTICALLY AS A GlFT … this Library is SOMETHING ENTIRELY NEW – ABSOLUTELY DIFFERENT from anything ever offered to readers of The People! … a lifetime library of invaluable information and really practical everyday usefulness. … The Volumes are priceless for the information they contain – no home can afford to be without them! … Every word is AUTHORITATIVE – specially written by experts and set out in simple, everyday language that everyone can understand.

The six volumes are:

  • Practical Information for All
  • Secrets of Successful Gardening
  • The Practical Way to Keep Fit
  • How to Write, Think and Speak Correctly
  • The Home Entertainer, and
  • The Book of Hints and Wrinkles.

Both the People and the Daily Herald were owned by Odhams. (The People is still in print as the Sunday People. The Daily Herald ceased publication in 1964, and was reconstituted as the Sun.)

The ‘home library’ is clearly aspirational. The People and Daily Herald were largely read by the working class, but Hints and Wrinkles includes advice on topics beyond the reach of many: buying a house; labour-saving gadgets like fridges, mechanical washing tubs, hot plates and toasters; the care of fur coats and ‘pieces’; and even the possibility of individual bed-sitting rooms for older children (at a time when many children shared beds). That said, there are also plenty of ideas for making money go further, and repairing clothes and household linens and equipment is taken for granted.

Another indicator of aspiration is the style of the book. The six ‘presentation volumes’, the People advert says, are bound in ‘rich, dark blue Morocco-grained cloth’ and on the spines are ‘nine library bands with the title ornamentally embossed in real 22-carat gold’. As the illustration shows, my copy is in good condition, with the gold still impressively bright, over 75 years later.

Aspirational or not, there is a very long tradition of advice for the homemaker (I use the gender-neutral word advisedly, although the target is almost exclusively female). Books, magazines and domestic science / home economics courses prepared women for their responsibilities. The approach may have developed, but the advice continues today. Alongside books etc, there are blogs on every aspect of the home, and television programmes abound. Businesses run helplines and online forums. And Mumsnet is always there for questions.

I am now on the look-out for the other five volumes, to make up the home library set.

 

Further Extracts

A. Specimen Budget for an Income of £3 per week

Two adults, and three children

% £    s   d
Shelter. Rent, rates and taxes.   20      12   0
Food.   40 1     4   0
Household expenses. Light, heat, replacements.   10        6   0
Clothing and personal allowances. Fares, postage etc.   12        7   2
Savings, including insurances, clubs etc.   15        9   0
Development. Entertainment, holidays etc.     3        1   9
100 3     0   0

B. Make your Kitchen Attractive

It must be borne in mind that the housewife who does most of her own work spends at least three to four hours of her day in the kitchen. Therefore, in addition to its practical efficiency, an attractive appearance is an advantage, and plenty of light and air a necessity. Do not under-estimate the importance of any one of the above points; boredom in the kitchen results in slackly cooked meals and imperfect hygiene, and a host of other troubles which may even culminate in the breaking up of a home. The old drudgery of the kitchen can, thanks to modern ingenuity, be considerably lightened and naturally this applies equally whether the housewife is doing the work herself or whether she can afford to employ a servant or servants.

C. Hints on the Wardrobe: Is Violet a Good Colour?

It is not a good idea to mix derivatives of the colour with the foundation shade. In other words, avoid brown and café au lait, black and grey, and such combinations unless you have a special reason for the choice.

Recently there has been a great vogue for violet. Such a choice is very limiting for other colours, and if it has to be carried on for two or three seasons, becomes monotonous. Dyeing will transform it, of course, to a deeper shade, or to black, but all the etceteras have to follow suit, and the change over will thus, in all probability, become too expensive for the average housewife.

D. Suggested Timetable for Washing Day

Let us assume breakfast is over by 8.30. Immediately set the boiler going, and let the clothes boil while you do the most urgent household tasks (clearing away breakfast things, tidying room, opening beds, getting clothes lines ready).

9-9.15 am. Start washing boiled clothes, rinse, blue and get them on the line as quickly as possible; sheets and bath towels first, smaller articles after. By 11 o’clock at the latest, if you are reasonably experienced, all whites should be on the line.

11-12 am. Wash, rinse, mangle and hand woollens, then coloured articles.

12.12.30. Wash silks.

From time to time check up on how the drying is progressing and remove from the lines those clothes ready for mangling or ironing.

12.30-2 pm. Lunch interval. Make beds and tidy bedrooms.

2 pm. Starching.

2.30 pm. Start ironing or mangling articles which are dry.

Thus by the early evening, everything connected with the home laundry should be out of the way.

E. Home-made Cleaning Materials, including:

Scrubbing Mixture: Soft soap, 1lb. Silver sand, 1lb. Coarse whitening, 1lb. Water, 1 quart. Put all the ingredients in an old pan large enough to allow them to rise when boiling and stir over the fire until the mixture boils. The, stirring it occasionally, allow it to simmer until it is a creamy consistency; finally, pour it into old jam jars and cool.

Furniture Cream: Yellow wax, 4 oz. Household ammonia, 1 ½ tsp. Turpentine, ½ pt. Water, 2 gills. Put the yellow wax into a pan with the water and heat over the fire until the wax has melted. Remove the pan from the fire, add the turpentine and ammonia, and stir until the mixture is cool. If too thick, add water until the right consistency is obtained.

The Tuesday Club at Upperthorpe

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Libraries have long been about more than books.

Upperthorpe Library

In 1992 Helen* wrote to the staff of Upperthorpe Library in Sheffield about one of their activities, a group called the Tuesday Club. She described herself as a ‘great library visitor’ who felt ‘comfortable and at home’ there, and was writing to say how much she appreciated what the club had to offer her.

Helen said that she was ‘not by nature a joiner’. She had expected to ‘go once or twice and then drop it’. But she had become a regular, finding that the club ‘filled a need’ that she hadn’t realised she felt – that is, ‘to meet new people’.

Helen enjoyed the chance to learn new things that the club gave her. She remembered talks about the war years, transport and Sheffield cinemas.

I love knowing things and have learned a lot which I pass on to my friends and daughter.

But Helen also enjoyed the way the club brought people together and gave them the chance to talk and share on an equal basis. The meetings were:

living history, related by the ordinary people who experienced it, and not told years later in the context of great events and important people.

‘We can talk,’ she wrote, ‘and be sure that we are being listened to, which doesn’t happen so often as you grow older.’

Upperthorpe Library

Helen concluded her letter:

I can’t say the Tuesday Club has changed me into a different person, but it has certainly broadened my outlook and made me friendlier.

 

* Not her real name. We have not been able to trace the writer of the letter, but would be happy to acknowledge her, if she were to come forward.

The Five Find-Outers by Enid Blyton

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By Sue Roe

I remember as a child, on my visits to Park Library on Duke Street, Sheffield, being captivated by child detectives – Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and the Famous Five and Secret Seven of Enid Blyton (1897-1968). Yet I have yet to meet anyone who remembers the other group of child detectives: the Five Find-Outers and a Dog. They were led initially by Larry but from the third book by ‘Fatty’: Frederick Algernon Trotteville, an only child with very relaxed parents and lots of pocket money for cakes and other treats which he shares with the others in the group. These are: Larry, his sister Daisy, Pip and his younger sister Bets, and Buster, Fatty’s Scottie dog, who eats biscuits with potted meat and nips the ankles of the local plodding policeman, Mr Goon.

All except Bets attend boarding school so the adventures happen in the school holidays. The children hunt for clues (or ‘glues’ as Bets calls them) and talk to witnesses. Fatty specialises in disguises: he has wigs, grease paints, false teeth, cheek pads which he uses to gain information and to outwit Mr Goon. The books very much reflect a particular mid-twentieth century village society with cooks, maids and valets, tramps, gypsies and fairground folk. There is an undercurrent of class difference: Fatty’s mother plays golf and bridge; Mr Goon’s nephew, Ern, who becomes an unofficial member of the group, eats with the cook, not with the other children.

The stories were set in the fictitious village of Peterswood, based on Bourne End, near Marlow in Buckinghamshire. At the start of the series Larry was 13; Fatty, Daisy and  Pip were 12, and Bets was eight. There were 15 adventures in total, published between 1943 and 1961, with titles like The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage (1943), The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat (1944) and The Mystery of the Vanished Prince (1951).

I remember being fascinated by their adventures and especially by Fatty’s exploits – the  disguises and deductions, his ability to ‘throw his voice’ at crucial points in the plot! He makes the series special and, for me, more interesting than Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, whose adventures had the advantage of more exciting venues like Kirrin Island and Smuggler’s Top.

I would be very interested to know if anyone else is familiar with them. Please leave a comment if you remember Fatty and his friends.

 

You can read more of Sue’s reading journey here.

‘Books. This will be good.’

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Kath Kay told us here about a Christmas play put on for the children of Walkley and Woodhouse Libraries in 1949 and 1950. Now she shares further memories of libraries in Sheffield, Kent and London. Kath was born at home in Crookes, a suburb of Sheffield in 1931.

It’s been an interesting career. I’ve worked as a school, public, government and university librarian. Working in libraries all my life has given me great curiosity to find things out. Now I’m constantly using my iPad. It’s all part of the information process.

Kath Kay in a school play (Kath, wearing a hat, is in the third row, second from the right)

Kath Hunt, as she was then, left Notre Dame High School in 1947. She was 16 and had no clear idea of what she wanted to do. Stay on at school? Or go to the Commercial College? Then she got a job in the first-floor book department at Boots on Fargate in the centre of Sheffield. The staff ‘had to pencil a very small letter B, near the spine, on page 17 of every book’, Kath says, the idea being that it would help track books if they were stolen.

Edith Sitwell, by Rex Whistler (1929)

One of the bookshop customers was Dame Edith Sitwell, whose family home, Renishaw, is near Sheffield. In the Renishaw museum, there are memories from Boots staff: ‘I was fascinated by a one inch square ring she wore. I wondered how she could wear a glove over it.’ And another said, ‘…she would shake hands with us and we all bobbed a tiny curtsey. … A wonderful fairy-tale experience.’ Kath has her memory too. ‘Long red nails, long hands, lots of rings, very grand,’ she says instantly, nearly 70 years later.

The job in Boots set the course of Kath’s life. ‘Books. This will be good,’ she thought. ‘Perhaps I’d like to work in a library.’

Walkley Library

At first, there were no vacancies in Sheffield Libraries, but then Jack Walker, the Deputy City Librarian, said, ‘You can start next week.’ On 2 January 1948, Kath joined the staff at Walkley Library, a Carnegie library and one of the busiest branches in the city. By coincidence, the young woman who lived next door to Kath started the same day. In the fashion of the time, she wore her hair in a ‘peekaboo’ (that is, falling over one eye). When the formidable City Librarian, J P Lamb, came on a visit, he greeted her by saying ‘Ah, I see we have Veronica Lake with us today.’ (For younger readers, Veronica Lake was a Hollywood star famous for the peekaboo. It was so popular that, during World War II, the US government asked Lake to change her hair, as the impractical style was thought to cause accidents in factories.)

Veronica Lake, with her trademark hairstyle, and Joel McCrea in Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

Kath liked Walkley and her job. She remembers with affection the librarian, Mr Broadhurst, known to his staff as ‘Broady’, who used to throw Christmas parties at his home in nearby Northfield Road. There was also her friend, Olive Phillips, the Children’s Librarian, with whom Kath wrote and produced the play, The Magic Story Book, in 1949. ‘We loved it. We were young. We just did it.’ By 1950 Kath had been posted to Woodhouse Library, where she put the play on again, and was chronicled in the local newspaper. After Woodhouse came a job in the children’s library at Hillsborough. Kath remembers that staff were often transferred without warning from one branch to another and that all her professional training took place on the job.

Kath left the library service in 1952 when she got married.

I didn’t have to leave but my parents had opened a general store and I went to help out. We lived with my parents.

By 1954, Kath and her husband were established enough to sign the contract for a house. Kath returned to Sheffield Libraries, but

the only job was in Central Lending, and meant sometimes sitting on the enquiry desk which wasn’t a good experience. I’ve never been so frightened in my life.

She asked for a transfer and was sent as a Senior Assistant at Attercliffe Library, which turned out to be much better.

Tommy Osborne was the librarian. He had a tied cottage at Chatsworth, and told us that in the awful winter of 1947 he couldn’t get to work for eight weeks. But he used to invite us out there in the summer.

Tommy Osborne, his wife and some of the staff from Attercliffe Library at Chatsworth (photo by Kath Kay)

Some of the Attercliffe Library staff, at Tommy Osborne’s cottage at Chatsworth (photo by Kath Kay)

At Christmas 1958, ‘the Attercliffe children’s librarian made a model of Sputnik’, the satellite the Russians had put into space the year before, and suspended it from the library ceiling.

There was one ritual Kath recalls which applied no matter the library. Every Friday afternoon, someone from each branch made the journey, long or short, to the ‘Bin Room’, as it was called, at the Central Library. The purpose was to ‘collect the cleaners’ wages and clean tea towels’, but the occasion turned into an informal staff meeting, where you ‘met and chatted with everyone from the other libraries’.

In 1958 Kath became pregnant with her son, Chris, and left the library again. A couple of years later, the family moved to London, where Kath’s husband, a Customs & Excise official, had been posted. Kath got a job, mostly part-time, in a school in Kent for about eight years, where in the few hours a week she worked, she had to:

devise a system for a library of 20,000 books and choose new books with the teachers. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was there for years. It was convenient for looking after my own children. The library was on the top floor of a new 6th Form block.

In time this job led to another – library assistant in the science and engineering library at the Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster). ‘I got the job,’ Kath says, ‘because I had worked with 6th formers.’ Kath also looked after quite a few graduates doing a year’s work experience before doing their Masters course in Librarianship.

Upperthorpe Branch Library

In 1987, after 27 years in the south, Kath returned to Sheffield. She worked in the Health and Safety Executive library for a year and, in 1989, returned to Sheffield Libraries for the third and last time. Her job was at Upperthorpe, a grand Victorian building and the oldest branch library in the network. Someone had the idea of running some classes and said: ‘You’re interested in sewing and things. You could pass on some skills.’ The classes didn’t quite materialise, but a discussion group, the Tuesday Club. did. One member wrote:

I found [the Tuesday Club] filled a need in my life that until then I hadn’t realised I had. To meet new people who were not already sharing my hobbies and pursuits. … I had not realised how diffident I had become over the years, I didn’t want to meet new people and avoided even casual conversations on the bus or in the shops, in fact I had built a nice comfortable shell around my life and resented any intrusions. … I can’t say the Tuesday Club has changed me into a different person, but it has certainly broadened my outlook and made me friendlier, and I have found a lot of the confidence I had lost over the years.

You can read the letter in full here.

Kath retired in 1992, at the age of 61, but she was on the standby list until she was 65, working when she was needed, at Stannington and Walkley, where she had started all those years before. And librarianship remains a family profession. Kath’s daughter became a university librarian. And Kath enjoys her retirement.

The Secret Garden is still one of my favourite books to read, and I have a first edition now.

The Magic Story Book (1949 and 1950)

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Bobby: (turning aside wistfully). Do you really think Father Christmas will bring me my engine, Betty?

Betty: Yes, I should think so. I am feeling rather worried about my doll and pram. Do you think it was too much to ask for both?

Bobby: I don’t see why you shouldn’t get them, as you want them so much. Besides, Cousin Mary asked for lots and lots of things last year, and got them all.

Betty: Yes, so she did. Well, anyway, we usually get more things than we ask for, so I don’t think he will mind my asking for two things.

In autumn 1949, the staff at Walkley Library were already planning for Christmas. What festivities could they lay on for the children who ‘regularly attended the Reading Circle’? Olive Phillips, the children’s librarian, and Kath Hunt, then a ‘humble library assistant’, decided to produce a  play. ‘We loved it. We were young. We just did it.’ Here are Kath’s memories.  

Carnegie library at Walkley

The Reading Circle was held four evenings a week, starting at 6.30pm. The children were told a story and then a book – maybe the latest Enid Blyton – was read as a serial. (Remember this was when Enid Blyton was accepted as a popular children’s author.)

Olive Phillips and I had the idea of producing a play for Christmas, rehearsing during the Reading Circle time. We looked at some plays but royalties were required to perform these to the public so we then thought of writing our own play. We did this with the encouragement of the librarian, Mr Broadhurst, or ‘Broady’ as he was thought of by us!

The Magic Story Book tells how Bobby and Betty Brown creep downstairs on Christmas Eve, hoping to see Father Christmas. They want proof of his existence, to convince their sceptical cousins Mary and Robert. But they fall asleep, and are found by Wee Willie Winkie and his friends from Nursery Rhyme Land. They decide to test the children’s knowledge of nursery rhymes. Who, for example, is this?

I come from far across the sea,

My magic lamp I’ve brought with me,

I’ll rub it once, and then again,

Now, can you tell me who I am?

Father Christmas appears and is angry that they are not asleep, but he forgives them when he hears about Mary and Robert. ‘Now rub your lamp, Aladdin,’ he says. ‘Then I will get on with my rounds or I shall never get finished before daybreak.’ The next day, Betty and Bobby tell their adventure to Mary and Robert and their friends, but to no avail. ‘There is no Father Christmas. You’re making it all up,’ says Mary. They summon Aladdin who carries Betty, Bobby and Mary off to Nursery Rhyme Land. Their friends who are left behind pass the time making up rhymes:

Something has happened, it’s very weird;

Betty and Bobby have disappeared,

Taking Mary with them too;

Oh, whatever shall we do?

When Betty, Bobby and Mary return, they tell their story:

Mary: We’ve been to Nursery Rhyme Land. It’s been such fun and we saw Father Christmas’ toy shop. He was asleep in his cottage, but we peeped through the window and saw him. I’ll never disbelieve again. Mary Mary quite contrary gave me these flowers from her garden, and the Queen of Hearts made some tarts for us.

And the play ends with carols. You can read the play here.

Olive and I were very enthusiastic, even rehearsing on Thursdays, our day off. We had much support from the Branch Libraries Supervisor, Mr Harry Marr and the Deputy City Librarian, Mr Jack Walker. They arranged for copies of the play to be duplicated (no photocopies in those days). They even lent us a platform to use as a stage in the old reading room where the play was to be performed. As the platform was not high enough, we had to balance it on four dustbins to make sure that the audience would be able to see all the children. Would we have got away with this today? Perhaps not, but it was most important as the audience were mainly parents, brothers and sisters and grandparents of the participating children. They had to have a good view.

Unfortunately there is no record of that performance but it was judged a great success. The following Christmas, 1950, when Olive had moved to Firth Park Library and I was working in the children’s library at Woodhouse, I produced the play again. This time the event was reported, with a photo, by the South Yorkshire Times and Woodhouse Express:

Woodhouse children in The Magic Story Book (1950)

Library Play

Woodhouse Debut Before Child Audience

An audience of about 100 children on Thursday saw a play. ‘The Magic Story Book,’ presented in Woodhouse Library by members of the children’s reading circle. The play was written by Miss Kathleen Hunt (19) and Miss Olive Phillips (20), of 39, Bishop Hill, Woodhouse, junior librarian at Firth Park Library, Sheffield.

The play was presented at the Walkley Library, where Miss Phillips and Miss Hunt were employed last year. Parents could not be accommodated in the Woodhouse Library.

About 30 children were in the play, which concerns the attempts of two children to convince their cousin that there is a Father Christmas.

Taking part were: Maureen Fox, Barbara Grant, Kathleen Crossland, Carol Macintyre, Carol Macvinnie, Maureen, Eileen and Barbara May, Carol Pickeridge, Auriol Wheeler, Marlene Grice, Barbara Simons, Rita Hall, Pauline Cardwell, Carol Gummer, Eileen Price, Ann and Pat Roebuck, Lynne Hartley, Sandra Taylor, Joseph Firth and Stanley Rodgers.

Kath remembers the whole experience of the play very well, and now thinks back about her friend and co-author with some sadness. Olive Phillips married and moved to the Birmingham area, and died in her early fifties, in the 1980s.

If anyone recognises the names of the Woodhouse children, or remembers the Walkley performance, please leave a comment.

Old Jack Frost comes round at night;

Fingers and toes he tries to bite,

I hide myself beneath the clothes,

And then he cannot bite my nose.

 

More of Kath’s memories will be posted soon.

Peter B’s Reading Journey

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By Sue Roe

Peter was born in 1930 in the Ecclesall Bierlow area of Sheffield. His father was a musician and engineer, who came to Sheffield to play in a colliery band, and his mother was a homemaker. He gained a scholarship to King Edward VII School and, at 17, won an Exhibition to Oxford, studying Jurisprudence. Before taking up his place at Exeter College Oxford, he did National Service, based initially in Palestine and then, as Liaison Officer to the Americans, moving around several bases in Europe. After his degree he worked in Canada for two years and then moved back to Sheffield where new Assizes were opening. He practised as a barrister, became a QC and a judge. Though retired, he still works part time (2012). He is married with three children.

My life, let me put it this way, my life would have been different and I would have been different if I’d hadn’t had the ability and the privilege to have had access to a lot of printed stuff.

Peter’s reading journey began with his mother who read to him:

Usually bedtime stories… none that I recall now but they would be the usual child books.

He was a fairly precocious reader – he could read very readily by the time he was five:

{By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29925217)

Winnie the Pooh and then I got, by the time I was sort of seven or eight -Richmal Crompton’s Just William. It sounds dreadful now but … they were reasonably well written and grammatical.

He was also influenced by two older girl cousins who lived at Greenhill:

And they had books – they were, sort of, I suppose, girl-slanted, but the one I can remember most clearly was Little Women, is that Louisa May Alcott? And I also, I read some sort of  boys, pretty basic, Robin Hoods and Hereward the Wake, and you know, sort of quasi-history stories.

Hereward the Wake fighting Normans

Peter acquired his books from a variety of places:

They were bought for me by my parents or I borrowed them from my cousins or friends or what have you. I wasn’t into going into bookshops then – I was too young for Blackwells.

When he was older, he did frequent second hand bookshops:

… There was a lovely second bookshop on Division St called Applebaums and I used to go in there and …I used [to] browse as well as buy in there.

As a young adult he read widely:

By then I was reading pretty broadly – Dickens, and you know, the sort of easily accessible classics that you read. And – very difficult now to recall the specific impression from a specific book but I read a lot and I enjoyed it.

His studies did influence his reading:

One did various books, for instance School Certificate and High School Certificate – can’t remember oh now – Tale of Two Cities was one of the set books and also, at the time, it was very avant-garde, James Joyce, Ulysses.

He was busy, he recalls:

…bear in mind that by the time I was 16, I was studying fairly hard. I got a history Exhibition to Oxford & that involved a fair amount of reading so there wasn’t a lot of [time]…  and what with that, I was also engaged in music – I played a lot of piano at that time.

Peter was always interested in history:

I liked history – I’ve always slightly thought that novels are a waste of time … I suppose, indirectly, you learn things but … I got more out of biographies and history books … Elizabeth by Neale – that was the classic one then … and there was Peter the Great – [by] HAL Fisher

He gives one reason why he was very interested in history:

When I was very young, my father was a musician and we travelled around and lived in a number of places and I would be taken to stately homes.

Libraries played an important part in Peter’s reading journey: as a child he used to take the tram to Highfields Library but also:

King Edward’s, and City Libraries. I used to spend as time got on … Sheffield Libraries were very good – either the Reference Library which was upstairs at Surrey Street and then the Science & Technology Library, which a lot of the History stuff was in downstairs, so I read it there.

He singled out one particular library:

The Codrington Library (by Farradane, Creative Commons)

I was very lucky at Oxford because, apart from the Bodleian, which is lovely, my tutor was a fellow of All Souls as well as my college; and in All Souls was a library called Codrington. Codringtons were people who founded All Souls. It was all built from money from slaves and sugar. That’s where their money came from.[i] But the Codrington Library is a long Georgian library, exquisitely furnished – sort of astrolabes and things like that – and I found that more conducive to learning and studying than any place I’d ever been.

The quality of writing has always been very important to Peter:

Yes, I do like Bennett. I think Bennett is beautifully written… Of course Wodehouse writes beautifully.

Arnold Bennett (Project_Gutenberg_etext_13635.jpg)

And he is a great fan of Raymond Chandler for the same reason:

Humphrey Bogart reading The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

I think I’ve read everything he’s ever written and seen most of his film scripts… he writes brilliantly – and he can create an atmosphere.

He is interested in crime fiction:

Having spent a lifetime – not in crime – mine was civil law but concerning courts and it’s interesting when you read to see if the one who is writing knows anything about it or not.  It’s readily apparent when they don’t.

He is not a fan of science fiction:

Science fiction as a whole drives me up the wall. I cannot do with it particularly on the tele. I loathe and abhor and would run a mile to avoid War of the Worlds – I don’t mean HG Wells’ War of the Worlds  but I mean the spaceships, zipping to and fro. ‘Beam me aboard, Scottie.’

Peter had read Lady Chatterley’s Lover ‘even before copies were generally available’ – and he felt that Lawrence ‘…advanced literature in the sense that it was the first time that sort of thoughts had been attributed to the working class’.

He has some early editions of Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler,

…which are interesting both as to me as a fisherman – hence the shirt – and also from the historical context, and of course there are strong local connections … Charles Cotton lived [in] Beresford Dale in Derbyshire, and the little fishing temple that he and Izaak Walton used is still there.

Peter has always seemed to find time to read:

I’ve always been – not so much lately – but I was always  an early morning person – I found both at school, and at university, army, everywhere – if you get up early in the morning, particularly light mornings we have in spring and summer, you are not interrupted.

He still reads widely, though mainly history and biographies, and he has hundreds of books,

I try and give them away but the trouble is, as soon as I give some away, that creates a space, and I get some more!

Something we all can relate to!

Peter’s full interview is here.

[i] In fact, All Souls was founded in 1438 by Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, and King Henry VI, who was co-opted by the Archbishop as the College’s co-founder. In the 18th century, the College library received a substantial donation from Christopher Codrington, who did indeed make his money through slavery, and became known as the Codrington Library.