Daughter of the Manse

INTRODUCTION

by Rex Needle

In the summer of 1890, the Rev Thomas Hughes Parker arrived in Bourne to become minister of the Congregational Church in Eastgate at a stipend of £110 a year and moved with his wife, Emma Hester Parker, into a house provided by the church at No 2 Springfield Villas, North Road. Five years later, Mrs Parker gave birth to a daughter, also Emma Hester, but sadly died three weeks later, most probably from puerperal fever, a condition known at the time as childbed fever. She was 29.

It was a traumatic time for the family and Mrs Parker was buried in the town cemetery on 4th July 1895 where a headstone marks her grave. Baby Emma, usually called Emmie, was cared for by her father’s sister, known as Auntie Maggie, until he was married for a second time to Miss Ethel Green Branston who was one of his congregation and a member of a well known Bourne family but the relationship with her stepmother was not good although it improved in later years. The family moved to other houses provided by the church until 1908 when Mr Parker was offered the pastorate of the New Chapel at Horwich, near Bolton, Lancashire, and the family moved north.

After schooling, Emma went Homerton College, Cambridge, for teacher training before marrying John Taylor, who worked in the weaving trade, and they had six children, four girls and two boys. Emma returned to Bourne several times, once on a day trip while on a seaside holiday to Hunstanton, Norfolk, after her father’s funeral in 1946, and again when she was invited to open a bazaar at the Congregational Church in Eastgate, a gesture in memory of her father’s time there.

In 1974, then aged 78, she decided to write down her memories of Bourne for the
benefit of her children and she died at Bolton two years later in March 1976, aged 80.
The 60-page manuscript, neatly hand written on A4 lined paper, has been in the
possession of family members ever since but unknown to some of them and in 2007, her son Ken Taylor, then aged 89, was given a copy to read for the first time. He realised that it would be of interest to the people of Bourne and, through several intermediaries, it was passed to me. I have spent some time researching and editing the manuscript but have remained faithful to the original, making only minor changes to make it easily accessible to the modern reader, correcting some names from my own extensive records of the town and adding explanatory notes (in square brackets) to increase our understanding of the period. My archive of old photographs has been particularly valuable in illustrating the Bourne that Emma knew and writes about with such love and affection.

My photograph of the Congregational Church in Eastgate also shows some of the familiar places referred to, Queen’s Bridge, Hinson’s bread and sweet shop and Notley’s Mill which can just be seen on the left, and who knows, perhaps one of the little girls wearing a pinafore and standing on the bank is quite likely to be Emma because this picture was taken around 1905. Photographs from the family album show Emma and her father in later life.

Mr Parker remained as minister at Horwich for 15 years, retiring in March 1923 to West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, where he died on 20th August 1946, aged 82, although Ethel survived him by 13 years and died on 10th February 1959, aged 83. They are buried beside each other in a double grave at the town cemetery in South Road, Bourne. Emma remained at Horwich where she died on 8th March 1976 and is buried in the graveyard adjoining New Chapel which contains a memorial plaque recording her life.

I am grateful to Malcolm Knapp, of Grantham, Lincolnshire, for his original contact, to Amelia Jenkinson of Great Somerby, for passing on the manuscript, to Emma’s son, Ken Taylor, for his assistance with dates and providing family photographs, to his son Patrick for sending them on by email, and particularly to my wife, Elke, who patiently transcribed the written manuscript and proof read the final draft. This is a remarkable record of life in Bourne during the late Victorian and Edwardian era and will provide an insight into the way things were for those who read it.

Bourne
September 2007

I was born at Bourne in Lincolnshire on 11th June 1895, a town that is so different from anywhere that you have lived that I thought I would begin by giving you some description of it. It is a little market town in the centre of farmland and although its population was only about 3,000, it was looked on as quite an important place because it was the centre of all the little villages round about. You might be interested in some of their names: Thurlby, Morton, Hanthorpe, Bowthorpe, Toft, Edenham (a beautiful village), and it adjoined the hamlet of Grimsthorpe where was situated Grimsthorpe Castle and park, the seat of the Earl of Ancaster, who owned a lot of the land round about.

Every Thursday was market day when the farmers from round about used to bring their produce and sell it on stalls set up in the market place. Of course they came by horse and trap. Many of their wives came with them and sold their homemade butter, eggs and cream in the butter market, a covered place under the Town Hall and next to the fire station.

Twice a year, in May and October, the [Statute Fairs] were held, the May one being the more important. On this day, the farm maids and the farm labourers would come into the market place and be hired by the farmers for a year. It they were single, which most of the girls and many of the young men were, then they would live in the farmhouse. There would in most cases be a separate staircase for them as that their part of the house was separate from where the farmer and his family lived.

They would have their meals in the big farm kitchen. They got very poor wages but as a rule were very well fed. The married farm labourers would live in tied cottages and usually got an allowance of milk each day and often eggs from the farm and most of them grew their own vegetables and kept a pig. There was only one hill in the whole district, up the West Road in Bourne. I don’t suppose it was more than 150 ft high but it was looked on as a great climb and from the top on a clear day one could see Boston Stump, a great landmark. It was the tower of St Botolph’s Church at Boston from where some of the Pilgrim Fathers sailed for the New World. Bourne is quite an historic town and in the Wellhead Field one can see the remains of the moat and the raised ground on which one of Hereward the Wake’s castles was built. Near the station was the old Red Hall, where Sir Everard Digby, one of the Guy Fawkes plotters lived [this has since been disproved].

In the market place is the Bull Inn [now the Burghley Arms] where Elizabeth Ist’s great Lord Cecil was born. He later became Lord Burghley and built Burghley House at Stamford. Tennyson has a poem about his romantic marriage to a village girl which I knew as a girl - the poem I mean. Then Charles Worth, who became one of the great fashion couturiers in Paris, was born in Bourne, but I cannot tell you where [it was Wake House].

One of the great beauties of Bourne was the woods which stretched for a long way [west] and north from the top of Stamford Hill. In the spring they were carpeted with primroses, wild violets and wild anemones and in the summer, the nightingales used to sing and there were hazel nuts in the autumn and beautiful autumn colours. It was originally part of Sherwood Forest [in fact Brunswald, later Kesteven Forest].

We had all natural spring water piped to the houses from the 26 springs in the Wellhead [seven springs in fact] and nearby were the watercress beds. The workhouse was a large gaunt building in a field adjoining the Wellhead Field. Hundreds of years ago there used to be an abbey but I do not know when it was destroyed although the beautiful old church is still called the Abbey Church and behind it, running down the right hand side, is a long field which is called the Abbey Lawn where many important events take place.

Running down the right hand side of South Street is a small river [the Bourne Eau] which must go underground somewhere because it comes out parallel with Coggles Causeway and further on falls several feet which works the water wheel for grinding the corn [at Notley‘s Mill, now demolished]. I do not know if it still works but you will hear about it in my reminiscences. Well up the North Road there was a windmill [Wherry’s mill] which also ground corn but has since been pulled down.

Since I have been married, I once went to Bourne to open a Congregational Church bazaar which was held in the Corn Exchange and in 1938, my Auntie Joyce and I went for the day from Hunstanton and it had not altered much then. But a few weeks ago, Franklin Engelman did a Down Your Way [a popular BBC radio programme] at Bourne and he said that where the station used to be is now a thriving dried pea factory because there is no railway line there now.

I was born in a villa on the right hand side going up North Road. I suppose today it would be called semi-detached, although very different from the semi-detached houses of today. A bathroom in such a house was unheard of. Possibly there would be a cold water tap in the scullery or washhouse. In this line of villas there were two on the north end then a little lane which ran round the back of the house so that carts could get round the back to empty the ash pits and earth closets.

There were then eight semi-detached villas below the entrance to the lane of which ours was the one nearest to the entrance to this lane. Below those was a large house where the two Misses Butterfield lived and this is now the cottage hospital [bequeathed to the town by their late father Joseph Butterfield].

I was born on June 11th and my mother died on July 1st. My mother had a great friend called Miss West who I always called Auntie West. She used to tell me that when I was a fortnight old she came one day and found me crying in my cradle. She presumed I was cold as they had taken every blanket to cover my mother. My father only got £120 a year [his stipend would have been increased to £130 by this time] and they had to set up house so I suppose they had no money for spare blankets. She picked me up and took me on her knee, turned up her long skirt (all ladies wore skirts to cover their ankles) and wrapped me in it. While she was seated like this the doctor came and how embarrassed she was that a man should see her with her skirts up although she would have at least two long petticoats underneath it.

My Grandma Curry [Mrs Parker’s mother] came to Bourne and took me back to Hartlepool with her. Then I suppose there was a discussion as to what should be done with me and who should look after my father and me. My father and mother had been very much in love and she had been a great help to him in his work so I suppose he was absolutely shattered.

He and his youngest sister, my Auntie Maggie, had always been great friends so she took me back to Bourne. I suppose really she intended to stay for a little time because she was only 24 and was engaged to be married but later on, felt she could not leave us and she broke off her engagement. I am afraid I shall never be able to give you a true impression of what Auntie Maggie and Auntie West did for me. We lived in this house up the North Road until I was two and I have no recollection of leaving it or of going to the fresh house which was at the other end of the town but I have two vivid recollections of it.

One was of running across the back lane and into the garden which was across the lane to my father who was gardening and wearing a straw “cooly” hat. There was rhubarb growing at the bottom of the garden and a wooden fence which was green with moss. I also remember running into my father’s study one morning and being taken aback by the darkness as there must have been a dark green or dark blue blind which had not been pulled up from the night before.

Do you know what a straw cady is? [a boater]. If you have seen Maurice Chevalier on the TV or a picture of him, he always wore one. They had a flat straw brim with a
flat crown with a ribbon round. They were just coming into fashion and were very modern. Young ladies wore them, only they called them sailor hats, especially if they were very forward young ladies who wore bloomers for cycling.

I cannot remember the name of the little bit of road, where our next house was but it was next to a farm which was at the bottom of Coggles Causeway. Our house was
opposite to the little river that had just come from the place where it worked the water mill. This house was really too big for us and we had not enough furniture for all the rooms. It faced right on to the street and we had two front rooms but only one furnished, so sometimes we used one and sometimes another. At the back was my father’s study which was a very pleasant room with a bay window looking onto the garden.

Then there was a back hall, a large pantry, a kitchen and a coal house cum wash house. In the kitchen we had a little corner cupboard on the floor which did not fit right to the wall so sometimes if Auntie and I were sitting in the kitchen in the evening we would sit very quiet and a mouse would run from behind the cupboard. We got a lot of mice with being next to the farm so we always had to have a cat. Oh, I forgot to tell you that when we lived at our first house I had measles and just at that time we got a cat so they named it Measles and Auntie said that if she used to say “Measles, baby is crying” it would come running to where I was in my cradle. I do not know what happened to Measles, because I do not remember it.

Kitchens in those days used to have a big open fire with a boiler on either side which had to be kept filled with water because it was the only means of getting water heated, except in the kettle. I think we must have had a cold water tap in the wash house but outside we had a big tub for catching the rainwater. This water was used for washing up and for having a bath. We used to have a bath in a zinc tub in front of the fire. Washing day was a great occasion. It took place once a month and Auntie had to be up early to fill the copper with water and light the fire under it ready for Mrs Stubley coming to do the washing. As far as I can remember, Mrs Stubley came to wash for us until we left Bourne. For this she got 1s. 6d. a day [7½p in today’s money].

Also outside we had a closet which I can tell you got rather niffy before the men came to empty it. It was not very polite to say: “I am going to the closet”. One said: “I am going up the yard”. We had quite a big back garden with a path up the middle. On one side, opposite the study window, was a small lawn with some fir trees at the back and behind was a vegetable garden where we generally grew potatoes. On the other side of the path was a flower garden where my father grew roses and other flowers and those I remember most clearly were evening primroses. They grew about as high as a rose tree and the flower was about the size of a Flanders poppy but a beautiful pale yellow. They went to sleep in the day and opened out in the evening. At the bottom of the path was a summer house with no door and the sides of the front were lattice work.

When we first went there I had a safety swing in the doorway, one with sides to it, and later an ordinary swing. When I was a little bit older, Auntie and I papered the summerhouse with pictures cut from papers and books. The summer house had seats all round and my friends and I used to play there. One of my main friends at this time was Ethel Bloodworth whose father [Henry Bloodworth] was the manager of the gas works [in Victoria Place] and their house was in Gas Yard.

She was born on February 29th and only had a real birthday once in four years and so when she was four and eight and twelve she had an extra special party. The gasometer was in a high walled garden with great big gates and sometimes when her father was going to examine it he would take us with him as a treat and we felt very important because nobody else was allowed in this garden.

Then there was Daisy Hinson who lived at the bakery [in Victoria Place]. She was a
bit older than I was. They had a shop where they sold bread and buns or tea cakes. We used to go in the bakehouse where Mr [Thomas] Hinson and his sons kneaded the dough in great big bins and there was a huge oven and they used to take the loaves out with a great long shovel. Sometimes I went with Daisy to take the bread round in a big basket. Mr Hinson used to make us a little cob each which we ate while it was still hot, without butter, but my word, we did enjoy it. We used to go to see a Mrs Patrick, a widow, who used to give us a big piece of home made fruit cake. I was very shocked when I heard that Mrs Patrick had hanged herself. It seemed terrible.

Along by our house was a row of cottages, quite modern for those days, then there was a very narrow lane where there were some old cottages. None of the cottages had water laid on so at the beginning of the lane was the public tap. The children round about used to turn the tap on, put their mouths under and have a good drink. I thought this was a great idea, but was forbidden to do it and I got many a lecture if Auntie or Daddy caught me at it.

One of the horrid things I remember was that because I was constipated I had to take Gregory’s Mixture [a purgative invented by Scottish physician James Gregory], which consisted mostly of turkey rhubarb [a natural laxative]. Sometimes it made me sick and then I had to have another dose. It certainly did me good and I must have been a bit unkind because I gave it at least to the four eldest of my children although I had to hold my nose while I mixed it because it still made me feel sick.

I am afraid these notes are rather disjointed because I write them down as I think of them but I try to keep them in order as much as possible.

After the cottages and the public tap and opposite the bridge [Queen’s Bridge] that went across the river to Hinson’s was Branston’s shop [at the corner of Eastgate and Willoughby Road]. On one side they sold materials and clothes and on the other side groceries and sweets. I used to spend my Saturday halfpenny there very often. Two of the favourites were gold nuggets [bubblegum] and coconut chips because they weighed light. Sometimes I bought lemon crystals to make fizzy drinks but that was not looked on with favour at home because it was not supposed to be good for you.

Very occasionally as a very special treat Auntie bought me half a bar of Fry’s cream chocolate which also cost a ½d. Auntie only had fifteen shillings [75p in today’s money] a week for housekeeping. Sometimes we went down to the strawberry gardens to buy a few for tea and the lady always gave me a few extra in a rhubarb leaf.

During the season, by buying a basket you could get them for 2d. a pound to make jam. Usually for tea we had bread and butter and home made jam and home made cake. Sometimes we had muffins or pikelets [crumpets] or toasted teacakes but if we did we each had one and that was our tea. If I had been poorly I had a one penny sponge cake and some warm milk.

I must tell you more about the Branston family because when I was ten, Ethel Branston became my stepmother. The eldest was Annie who had married Mr [William] Castledine and they kept the water mill. She was really a very good lady, very religious and taught in the Sunday School from when she was 14 until she died at 84. At one period she taught me and she was very good. I can remember going to Cissie’s wedding (she was the next one) she married Bernard Webb. They were a jolly pair. He was the choirmaster at the chapel and she was the organist. Branston’s had a small kitchen cum living room behind the shop and then at the side a long drawing room which was later incorporated into the shop and two houses were built [in 1900], one for Mr [John] and Mrs [Sarah] Branston and one for their son Tom and his wife. I will tell you more about them later.

I can remember Mrs Webb standing in the drawing room when she came back from her wedding and I said: “You don’t look any different Mrs Webb than when you were Miss,” which caused hoots of laughter. Ethel was the youngest and she was quite artistic. She used to have an easel in the drawing room where she painted and later did beautiful needlework. I have a fire screen which she embroidered long after she was married to my Daddy which was shown in an exhibition at Nottingham. Mrs Branston was a very stately old lady and used to serve in the sweet shop. Mr Branston was a builder and was a nice fatherly old man.

In our house down the Eastgate we had gaslight in some of the downstairs rooms but Daddy always used an oil lamp in his study and we always had to take a candle to go to bed. I often used to wake up at night and cry with bad earache and of course Auntie would get up straight away. I slept in a double bed with her. Daddy always heard us when we were up and he put warm olive oil in my ear but one night he put it in too hot and you can imagine how I screamed but he was so upset that he cried too.

[Because of her mother’s premature death, the two most important people in Emma’s early life were her Auntie Maggie, who cared for her with love and affection, and her father.]

One of my very vivid memories is of the relief of Mafeking and I think it was about 1900. Everyone went mad and the gay young men of the town lighted bonfires, one on Stamford Hill and one in the Market Place and they rolled lighted tar barrels down the streets. A new superintendent of police had just come to the town [Herbert Bailey] and he arrested about twenty of them and the whole town was up in arms because they were not hooligans, just the decent young men of the town. As the day of the trial came, excitement grew. They all decided to wear straw cadies and as they came down the Town Hall steps the crowd which had gathered cheered them and then waited for the superintendent to appear. He came down the steps and started to walk to his house which was next to the police station and the whole crowd, including Auntie West and I, marched behind him hissing and booing. When he got to his front door he just turned round and faced the crowd standing stiffly to attention and then went in. I suppose really he was to be admired in a way but he was never popular and was moved somewhere else after a short time so you see demonstrations are not just a modern phenomenon and I took part in one at quite an early age and quite enjoyed all the excitement. [This incident actually occurred in June 1902 when Bourne was celebrating the end of the Boer War and there were 29 arrests].

While I was little, before I started going to school my Daddy was very poorly for three weeks with a bad bout of influenza. Mrs [John] Rylands, who founded the Rylands [University] Library in Manchester, had a convalescent home in the Isle of Wight for Congregational ministers who had been ill so Daddy went there for a fortnight. When a minister had been in her home she always sent them a good parcel the following Christmas. In our parcel there was a lovely navy blue frock smocked in white which was my Sunday dress for quite a long time and I had my photograph taken in it but there was also a blue reefer coat with brass buttons and I hated it so I used to make a fuss and sometimes even cried when I had to put it on. I think it was eventually given away.

The market place and Town Hall in 1905

Well, I have not told you about Auntie West and really she was part of our lives. Aunty Aggie and I saw her practically every day of our lives. She was left an orphan when very young and was brought up by a Mr and Mrs Thomson who lived at Horncastle. They had a son [Thomas Robert Thomson] who was a practical watchmaker and jeweller. He came to Bourne and opened a shop [in North Street] and I can see him now sitting near the window in his shop with an eyeglass in his eye mending watches. The shop was fascinating because the walls were covered with all kinds of clocks ticking away all with a different tick.

When I was little, I could not say Mr Thomson so I called him Tommien and Tommien he was to his dying day. He had a little shelf in his shop on which he always kept a box of Fry’s cream chocolates and you do not see any like them now. Of course he always gave me one when we went through the shop. He and Auntie West, who was his housekeeper, were very good to me and they used to give me a golden half sovereign at Christmas which was a lot of money in those days.

It was while we lived at this house that I started to go to the school run by Miss [Charlotte] Layton. She was a little old lady, very strict and very religious. The school was at the back of the house [in West Street] and we went up some wooden steps into the cloakroom. The schoolroom was off this and the school consisted of three classes all in one room, an oblong table at each end and Miss Layton’s class at a square table in the middle. We did not have the lessons that you do now but my word we knew our tables, we could spell and we knew our bibles.

We learnt history off by heart out of some little blue books. The reign of each king was told in about 1½ pages. I suppose Henry VIII must have taken more pages to tell all about his wives. We knew all the dates off by heart. Miss Cox was the main assistant teacher and she was bad tempered. We used to have sewing and scripture with Miss Layton. I was alright at scripture because we had to learn psalms and the ten commandments and the beatitudes. I had a good memory so this did not bother me but we had to learn the catechism and I did not like that, so I have forgotten it. But sewing, good gracious, it was awful. We had to hem stiff linen tea towels and we had to take two threads at the top and two at the bottom and I had not started to wear glasses then, so I generally had to unpick mine, and also had my hand caned in the bargain, so I think this turned me against sewing.

Soon after I started school I fell up two steps going into Daddy’s bedroom. It hurt but we did not know I had a greenstick fracture in my arm. I was a bad writer then, as you will see I still am, although I am writing this in bed to keep warm as the electricity has gone off, so it is extra bad. In order to improve my writing, one of the older girls who was a good writer was deputed to guide my hand and with this fracture it hurt very much so I started to cry. Miss Cox was very cross and said I was soft as this girl said she had done nothing to hurt me. Because of this Daddy took me to the doctor who was called Dr Golightly [Dr John Galletly] and he said I had broken my arm. I mention his name because a few weeks ago when the “Down Your Way” programme was in Bourne, Franklin Engelmann talked to a Dr Golightly at the cottage hospital as it must have been his son or grandson [it was his son, also John Galletly]. I know his son was a doctor but he would be nearly as old as I am.

However my arm did not get any better so Daddy decided to take me to a bonesetter in Spalding who was very much talked about. It was the famous Mr Barker who worked in London for years and made the well known Barker shoes. When we got there he had already gone to London and another man had taken his place. He gave me a whiff of ether, broke the arm and set it properly. I had it in splints for three weeks and then had to have it bathed in vinegar every day for quite a time but it got quite better. After we came from the bonesetter, we saw a lovely little dolls’ rocking chair, costing 2s. 11d. [about 15p in today’s money] so I persuaded Daddy to buy it and I had it for years, but poor dear I bet he had to go without something to buy it.

Auntie was a darling and kindness itself but she had one fault - she was a poor getter-up in the morning so I often had to run all the way to school. Sometimes I was late and was so bothered that I walked into the schoolroom with my hat on and all the children burst out laughing. Oh, I did feel embarrassed.

The station master at Bourne was called Mr [Herbert] Brader and when I was small they lived at the old Red Hall and they had a son Cyril who was just my age so I went to play with him a lot. Mrs Brader was such a kind jolly person and used to have luxuries which we didn’t often have. One was lemonade which she made from some crystals out of a bottle and if I called at dinner time on my way home from school she would always give me some and I would stay and play with Cyril so I would be late home for dinner and Daddy and Auntie would get uneasy about this.

I was therefore told I must not call at dinner time and one morning I got special instructions that I had not to call but come straight home but the lure of the lemonade was too much and I went. Mrs Brader said: “Emmie, does your Auntie know you have called” and I said “Yes”. “Are you sure?” “Yes,” I said again and stayed so long that Daddy turned up to look for me and Mrs Brader said she would have sent me home but I said that Auntie knew I was there. What a lecture I got on my way home for telling untruths, how wicked it was and so on. I can see myself now walking down Coggles Causeway crying my eyes out. Auntie could not bear to see me cry and I am afraid she fussed me up on the quiet and comforted me.

While I am on about the Braders, I will tell you a bit about the Red Hall. It was a big mansion and they only lived in half of it. It had been the home of the Digbys and Sir Everard Digby was supposed to be one of the Guy Fawkes plotters [since proved to be untrue]. At the back on the top floor was a big room that ran the length of the house and it had mullioned windows almost covered with ivy. It was supposed to be haunted and very occasionally we were allowed to play up there. I don’t know which affected me most, the joy at being able to do something special or the fear of the ghost [known locally as the Grey Lady].

The Red Hall in 1905 with washing on the line

One day, when Cyril had a girl cousin staying with him, we were playing up there we all got frightened and went rushing downstairs and the girl cousin, I cannot remember her name, fell and broke her leg. It was summer time and she had to stay on for a few weeks and she used to lie in the garden on a lounge chair under a yew tree, which was hundreds of years old.

The Red Hall was next to the station but in the old days this was all parkland and there were still iron gateways of the park, one of them was at the entrance to the station yard and here there was one of the original turreted gate houses. The district nurse lived in it and if she saw me passing she would take me in and give me red jelly.

At the Congregational chapel there was a very big Sunday School with 320 children and one of the great events of the year was the Sunday School anniversary which was held on the second Sunday in July. It was in a way like the “Sermons” but a much bigger affair. The stage at the Sunday School was built up in tiers, the choir sat at the top then all the Sunday School children in classes, the infants at the bottom. We had all special hymns which we used to practice for weeks beforehand. The infants always sang a special hymn morning and afternoon but they did not go on the platform at night. The Sunday School was packed at all the three services.

The day after we always had the Sunday School treat with buttered buns, plain cake, fruit cake and tea. We had this about 4 o’clock then we lined up in front of the school with a band playing and marched through the town. In the Market Place, we stopped and sang a hymn and then marched to the sports field where there were swings and rowing boats and we had races and competitions. It is a funny thing I never remember it being wet on treat day.

About 1900, it was decided to build a new Sunday School with classrooms all round the side and a special infants room. [The opening of the new Sunday School in 1900 was one of the main events during Thomas Parker’s ministry although fund raising had begun two years earlier]. We had a lot of efforts to raise money and one was a concert when we did a play cum cantata. I cannot remember what it was all about but it was something to do with flowers and I was a Golden Rod and had to say: “A sceptre worthy of a Queen, the stately Golden Rod is seen; which comes when autumn’s purple haze proclaims the end of summer days.”

On May Day (May 1st), children used to go round to houses with garlands covered with a cloth and it was a penny to look at the garland. That year, I had one to raise money for the Sunday School. Auntie fastened two hoops together, one threaded through the other, then trimmed them with greenery and wild flowers. I had a doll’s swing which was fastened in the middle with my best doll in it and it was carried by a stick threaded through it. Daisy Hinson and somebody else carried it and I carried the box for the money. We also had a big bazaar for it and Auntie West was on the cake and apron stall and wore a big white apron. She was a good cake maker and she taught me how to make cakes and pastry. There was a lovely flower stall run by Miss Hinson, Daisy Hinson’s Auntie. Ethel Branston was on the fancy work stall. Auntie helped with the teas which were in the new infants room.

Down one side was a big refreshment stall where they sold jellies and custards in little glasses and other things of course. Two ladies who were on this stall, Mrs Wall and Mrs Andrews, who always wore lace caps like my Grandma Curry. We had a concert party from Nottingham who gave concerts in the chapel and one lady played tunes on bells. I thought this was grand. The men ran all sorts of funny competitions and they had an Alley Sloper, which was a cardboard man and you had to try to throw things in his mouth [after Alley Sloper, Victorian slang for a dubious character likely to abscond when the landlord calls for the rent].

When I was about six, the Braders left the Red Hall and went to live in a house at the top of Coggles Causeway and they had a big back yard, where they used to have a bonfire and fireworks on November 5th. At the bottom of the yard ran the river which worked the water mill and went past our house. There was a gate which we could open and dabble our feet in the river. It was too deep to paddle in.

They had a magic lantern and they put a white bed sheet on the wall and we sat on the kitchen table and watched the slides. They had three lots of slides, one set of animals fleeing before a forest fire, one lot of “There was a frog who would be wooing go” and I cannot remember the other one. We had seen them dozens of times but there was always great excitement whenever Mrs Brader put them on.

Afterwards, we had cream crackers with jam on and lemonade. I had forgotten to tell you that Cyril now had a brother called Frank who was about four and another boy called Raymond Eason used to come. Mrs Brader had a sister called Miss Burroughs who lived with her mother at Boston. Sometimes she came to stay at the Braders and she was jolly like Mrs Brader. Her mother died and Auntie and I went to stay with her at Boston and I did enjoy it. There was a river that ran into the Wash and I saw St Botolph’s Church which we had only seen from the top of Stamford Hill before. Auntie and Miss B used to talk in mysterious tones about Miss B’s mother’s death and I have thought since that she must have committed suicide.

I cannot remember just when it happened but one day while we lived at this house there was an awful thunderstorm, and I could tell that even Auntie was nervous. Suddenly there was a terrific crack and bang. We went nervously upstairs to see if all was well, which it was, but there had been a thunderbolt and a tree was struck in the field behind us. For a long time we had a piece of this tree standing in the corner of the sitting room. [On Tuesday 31st May 1904, a thunderstorm of unusual ferocity caused considerable flooding and damage in the Eastgate area where trees were toppled and houses struck by lightning.]

You would be amused to know what little girls wore then. First a vest, then a chemise, a liberty bodice and knickers, a flannel petticoat, then a fancy white petticoat, a frock of course, then a pinafore, with a special one for Sundays. Long black stockings and buttoned boots, the more buttons the smarter we were. We always had a Sunday frock, hat and coat and gloves. We had a buttonhook for our boots and gloves.

I have told you about Auntie West’s shop but not about the house. It was approached down an arched passage at the side of the shop then through a gate into the first part of the yard. Opposite the yard gate was the side door which we did not often use but went further along the back door into the kitchen. Behind the shop was the dining room where we had meals on a Sunday or if anyone came. Then we went through a passage, off which was the pantry and the stairs and then there was the kitchen. It was on a shelf in this kitchen where she kept an old tea caddy.

They had no water in the house but just outside the back door to the left was a square yard where there was a pump which they shared with the people next door who were called Horn and kept a gentlemen’s outfitters. They had a boy called Cyril who I played with. In the book on Bourne [the Town Guide for 1970] you will see an advert for [E B] Horn, Gentlemens’ Outfitters. This must either be Cyril’s younger brother or his son.

When I went to Bourne after my father’s funeral [in 1946] they had moved to a much bigger shop across the market place. I would like to have called but hadn’t the time. To continue about Auntie West, the kitchen window overlooked the pump. To wash up etc one had to fill the fire boiler from the pump to heat the water and wash up in a bowl on a bench under the window. If instead of turning right to the pump you kept straight on there was a wash house on the right where there was a tap but on wash day the water had to be heated in the copper like at our house.

A bit further on was a little patch where she grew mint and parsley, then there was the closet which had a big one for adults and a little one for children. I felt very grown up when I could use the big one. The seats were always scrubbed spotlessly white and unless you were well off you used newspaper cut into neat pieces, not toilet paper. If you wanted to perform in the night you had to use the [chamber] pot and it was emptied in the morning. I tell you, women don’t know they are born today. Then there were always the grates to be black-leaded. The sitting room was upstairs. Near the window was an iron stand containing an aspidistra, a castor oil plant, a golden lily and ferns and on each end of the mantelpiece were lustres [a Victorian sitting room ornament of dangling cut glass prisms] which I loved but they had to be dusted very carefully for fear of breaking them.

They had a picture which I am sure would be valuable today. Tommien’s mother had done them when she was a girl in the finest black silk on white. The stitches were so fine that you could not distinguish one from the other. The largest one was of Grimsthorpe Castle and was about the size of the picture by Sam[uel] Towers [English artist specialising in rural scenes 1862-1943] which [we once had in the family]. I wonder what has happened to them?

Flooding in Eastgate with Branston’s shop behind

They had three bedrooms and all the houses then had sash windows and Auntie West thought she had very advanced ideas because she opened her bedroom windows about three inches every day. They had to be closed at sunset because of the damp night air. One of my joys at Auntie West’s was to be taken up in the garret (attic). I wasn’t allowed to go alone for fear I fell down the stairs. She used to have apples laid on the floor and all sorts of treasures up there and it had a lovely smell all of its own.

Auntie West had a friend called Miss Lovell who used to come and stay. One day when she was there she and Auntie Maggie went to an auction of furniture at the Corn Exchange which lasted all day. I think they went for the entertainment because I am sure they did not want to buy anything. [A two-day sale of antique and modern furniture and effects belonging to the late Robert Mason Mills, a wealthy businessman and collector who had recently died, was held at the Corn Exchange on 17th-18th May 1904, exciting great interest in the town and the hall was packed with buyers and interested spectators.]

I stayed for the day at Auntie West’s and they came there for dinner which we had in the dining room. Auntie West had another friend called Miss Fancourt who went away in the summer for about a month and Auntie West used to take me with her about twice a week to water the plants and open the windows and we used to go in the garden and pick red and black currants and raspberries. She lived next door but one to the house where I was born.

When I was about three, Auntie took me to the chapel for the first time and when Daddy went into the pulpit, I stood up and shouted: “I want to go up those steps to my Daddy”. Auntie and I sat with Auntie West three seats from the back and a Mr Cox who sat behind always passed me sweets during the sermon. I went to Sunday School and chapel in the morning and to Sunday School in the afternoon. On Sunday, Daddy wore a top hat and a frock coat.

Another thing that happened while we were at this house was that Queen Victoria died [in January 1901]. Daddy was talking to me about it one day when we were walking through the woods and I said that I thought the Prince of Wales (Edward VII) would be glad that she had died because now he would be King and that would be very fine. (I have changed my mind now because I think that to be a good King or Queen is one of the hardest things in the world).

Pulpit and church interior in 1900

But Grandpa explained that she was his mother but I couldn’t quite see this. I should think in one way he was glad because she had been such an old martinet with him and although he was a middle aged man he had never been allowed to have any power. When he did become King, he did all he could to promote peace but he was a one for the ladies and had several lady friends but he had a beautiful, patient wife, Queen Alexandra, who had been a Danish Princess.

When he was dying [in 1910], she let his special lady friend, Mrs Knolleys [this should be Mrs Alice Keppel], come to see him before he died. Queen Alexandra went very deaf. She started Alexandra Rose Day to raise money for disabled soldiers. One thing I asked Daddy about Queen Victoria was: “If they bury her body what do they do with her head and arms and legs?” I thought by body he meant just the trunk part.

When all the fuss about the funeral had died down, the preparations for the coronation began. There was to be a big affair on the Abbey Lawn, with tea and games and bands and a coronation mug for every child and fireworks at night. Then two or three days before the coronation the King had to have an operation for appendicitis. No one had heard of appendicitis before it used to be called inflammation of the bowels and it was looked on as quite a big operation. However, he got over it alright. There was a big to do as the whether we should have the celebrations but as everything was prepared it was decided to go on with them [on Thursday 16th August 1902].

When I was small, when my Daddy and I were going for walks, he used to teach me poetry, only simple things like We are Seven [William Wordsworth], and The Wreck of the Hesperus by [Henry Wadsworth] Longfellow. This started me on learning poetry. I learned Horatius at the Bridge (72 stanzas) by [Thomas] Macaulay, In the Children’s Hospital, The Revenge and a great part of In Memoriam by [Lord Alfred] Tennyson.

As I grew older, I memorised parts of Milton, Shelley and Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge. I loved the beautiful language of Shelley and Keats and still do. I think they are word music. I am afraid I have not bothered to read and learn modern poetry. What I have read I have not appreciated except some of Dylan Thomas. Someone bought me a book of [John] Betjeman’s poems and I thought they were just doggerel.

Daddy also always encouraged me to read. When I was ten, he bought me Uncle Tom’s Cabin [by Harriet Beecher Stowe]. I read a chapter and thought it was very dry, so he said: “If you will read a chapter a day until you have read ten chapters and then you do not like it you can leave it” but of course, I was very interested. I began to read when I was quite young. I think the first book I remember was Hans [Christian] Andersen’s Fairy Tales and I read them over and over again.

I read all kinds of books and always have done. When the family were young, I had not a lot of time but I manage to read all sorts of things now, history and adventure, biography and novels. Some of the books when I was young were very sentimental. There was one about Rosalie, a little fairground girl, and it was called [A Peep] Behind the Scenes but I cannot remember the author [it was O F Walton] and The Wide, Wide World [by Elizabeth Wetherell]. I read them over and over again and wept bucketsful over them. Also Little Women [by Louisa May Alcott] and the Katy series [by Susan Coolidge] that are still read today.

When I was about seven, we left this house and went to live up the road, again at Springfield Villas. By this time, Miss Layton had given up her school on West Street and just had about 20 pupils at the house of one of her old maids. We all sat round the same table. She used to say: “If you see a pin in the street and pick it up that is stealing.” I know it was narrow and a bit ridiculous but a bit of her old fashioned morality might not do any harm today.

About this time I began to learn the piano and Miss Darnes used to come to the house to give me lessons. We started by learning the spaces F A C E and lines E G B D F and playing five finger exercises. One night, when I had finished my lesson, Miss Darnes and I want into the kitchen where Auntie had been making toffee and she was pouring it from a pan into a tin. I put my hand under to catch some to eat and of course the boiling toffee stuck to my hand. I was away from school for a fortnight but Miss Layton said I need not have stayed away because I could have read and someone could have written my sums down. She was very strict but a fine old lady and my father had a great respect for her. A little later that year, I had my tonsils out on the dining room table. Our own doctor did it and the other local doctor gave the anaesthetic. There wasn’t much fuss about germs then. The death rate amongst babies was very high.

After about a year, Miss Layton gave up her school altogether. I had new friends now we lived at this end of the town. Next door lived the Hassocks, who had a grown up son and daughter Horace and Alice, and Winnie, who was about my age and was my special friend. She had a swing and we had a way cut from our garden into theirs as I spent a lot of time there. Mr [George] Hassock was an engine driver and very religious. Mrs Hassock was very, very deaf and used to lip read what we said and very occasionally we had to get right up to her ear and shout at the top of our voices.

Other girls we played with were Madge Atkins who was adopted and lived on the other side of the Hassocks, Eva Wall, who had a brother and young twin sisters and lived in Elm Terrace, and Marjorie Carvath, daughter of the Baptist minister [the Rev James Carvath], who lived further up North Road, but they were none of them as nice as Winnie Hassock. She and I used to fall out with them sometimes, especially Eva Wall. Her father [John Wall] and uncles and grandfather were drapers [at Nos 34-36 North Street] and were important people at the Congregational church.

North Road in 1905

After Miss Layton gave up her school, I went to Miss [Elizabeth] Burrows’ school [at Austerby House] which had not been opened long. Why I did not go to Misses Smythe and Chamberlain’s school [at Stamford House, 75 West Street], which was an old established school, I don’t know. Miss Burrows must have been a good teacher because I certainly learned a lot while I was there. We were quite advanced in history, English and arithmetic for our age but she was a real old snob. She used to have At Homes in her drawing room once a month when those of us who were having music had to play. One month, none of us played well and she was furious with the music teacher in front of us all. She was called Miss Edie Butler and was the daughter of a Congregational minister. She was lovely, little and dainty and had lovely brown eyes. I adored her but I don’t think she was much good as a music teacher. I took my lower division [examination] and she had to take me to Stamford where I failed and was very upset.

While we were at Stamford, we met a bank manager who knew her and he took us to his house to lunch and I was so nervous because it was a grand house and they had a parlour maid who waited on at table. I was glad Miss Butler was served first because I would not have known what to do when she handed the vegetable dishes to me. After lunch, we met Miss Butler’s young man, Mr Joyce, and we walked up to Burghley Park. I never felt so much in the way. I heard him whisper to her: “Can’t you get rid of her”. Poor things, I am sure they wanted to have some kissing and cuddling but altogether I had a rather unhappy day.

Miss Burrows was a farmer’s daughter and a true blue Tory. One day she gave us a talk about the Corn Laws and advocated Protection and said to me: “Then why are you a Liberal?” My father was most annoyed and went to see her and said I wasn’t sent to school to be taught party politics which rather quietened her down. One day, we had a sum to do which was a bit difficult and one poor girl, Dreda Pettifor, who was the daughter of the Vicar of Thurlby [the Rev John Pettifor], couldn’t get the answer and Miss B stood ever her and stormed and of course Dreda got more and more nervous. At last, Miss B had to go out of the room for something and said no one had to tell Dreda the answer. One girl, Cora March, told her the answer and when Miss B came and asked who had told the answer Cora said :“I did and you had no right to treat her like that”. I think this was the beginning of women’s lib and I did admire her. She was a boarder and was sent to her room in disgrace but she managed to slip a letter to her parents to me to post at dinner time. They came and took her away so I was in trouble for posting the letter.

Raymond Mays started to come to this school. I expect you have heard of him. He was a well-known racing motorist and started making the BRM and still runs the works at Bourne although he must be at least 70. His father came to our chapel. He was a tanner and was one of the “Upper Ten” [families] of Bourne. While I was at that school, I had another friend Katie Andrew. Her father [Charles Andrew] was a big farmer and their house and stockyard were next to the school and what fun we used to have playing on the stacks when part of them had been cut away. Katie and I used to play duets together. Her father had other farms and some Saturday mornings he took Katie and me on his horse and trap to visit them. Mr Brader also sometimes took Cyril and me on the train to pay the wages at the little stations and one great thing was we travelled first class.

When I was eight, Auntie West and Auntie prepared a great secret for me. On my birthday afternoon, we went to Auntie West’s and she was in the upstairs sitting in a big white apron and as I thought nursing a baby and I was so upset to think Auntie West had a baby and wouldn’t want me that I ran out of the room sobbing and it was some time before they persuaded me to look at it. It was a beautiful doll for me which Auntie West had dressed for me in long clothes just like babies wore them. It had a knitted vest, a flannel barra [shawl], a nappy, a lovely long white underskirt and one of the robes I wore when I was a baby. She had made it a cream delaine [muslin] cloak and a bonnet with a lace veil. Of course, when I really realised the truth I was delighted and it became my great treasure.

There were some farmers called Elvidge [Charles Elvidge] who lived in a tiny village called Hanthorpe and used to come to our church. They had two sons called Henry and Frank and a daughter called Mabel. They used to come to church on Sunday and to market on Thursday in their horse and trap so they invited me to go and stay with them and so we went after church on Sunday night. It was quite exciting riding in the trap in the dark with the lights of the trap shining on the road and wrapped up in rugs to keep warm. Of course there weren’t any motors, only Mr [Thomas] Mays had a motor in Bourne. [In fact, Dr John Gilpin also had one]. We played in the barn and the granary and the fields and when Mrs Elvidge made butter she let me turn the churn which was like a big wooden barrel with a tiny round window in it so you could see when the butter had “come”. Then Mrs Elvidge used to put it on a big stone slab in the kitchen and add salt and bang it, turn it and pat it until it was right. Then she used to shape it into oblong round squares.

One thing I didn’t like was that they had the pudding on their meat and potato plates. When Mrs Elvidge saw I didn’t like this she gave me a clean plate for my pudding. She was ever so kind but I didn’t like Mabel much, perhaps she did not like me. I went to stay with them twice and when I got home she second time Auntie had let Winnie Hassock and Madge Atkins play with my precious doll and they had broken it.

One great friend I had from being very small was Grandpa [Hugh] Hobson. He was a dear old man and used to take me on his knee and tell me stories. He died [on 21st November 1904, aged 88] when I was about eight and I can remember being taken to see him [at his home in North Street] shortly before and he was as sweet as ever. His niece, Annie Ingram, kept house for him and she was a great friend of Auntie’s and we often went for tea. They had a garden up a little lane next to [Dr Gallety’s] and in the summer we took the tea up into this garden. In the autumn, Annie Ingram, Auntie West, Auntie and I used to go blackberrying armed with baskets, hooked sticks to pull the top branches down and thick gloves to keep our hands from getting scratched. We also gathered crab apples and Auntie made blackberry and crab apple jelly.

In the spring, we went to the woods to gather primroses. We tied them into bunches with wool and always sent a shoe box full to Grandma and Auntie Kate. The woods were lovely, full of wild flowers and all sorts of birds. Sometimes we had picnics there. The roads through them were called ridings. We were not supposed to light a fire but we tried to find a clearing and dodge the keeper. I suppose it was dangerous if you were not careful.

Dr [Galletly] had a big garden and we were told be brought babies in his little black bag. I can remember Eva Wall and I standing at his front gate to see if we could hear the babies crying under his big front lawn. We thought he must have a place where he kept them under the lawn.

After about two years, Miss Burrows bought a boarding school somewhere in Somerset and she was very anxious that I should go, so much so that she offered to take me at a cheaper rate. Without bragging, I think I was one of her star pupils. Of course, Grandpa could not afford it. ”Why,” said Auntie, “you would need all sorts of things. You would even have a dressing gown,” an unthinkable luxury. I am sure I should have hated the place. Before she left, we had a cantata in the Corn Exchange. This was about flowers choosing a Queen. Five of us wore poppies and at the end of the first act we had to sing the others to sleep and then fall asleep ourselves. Of course, the Rose was chosen as the Queen. [An operetta The Flower Queen by G F Root was presented at the Corn Exchange as part of a concert given by pupils of the school on Friday 10th November 1905 when Emma also played the piano].

There was one girl at this school called Muriel Berry. She was adopted by her aunt and uncle who were very kind people. There was another girl called Queenie Brown who we all liked to walk home with and one day when the three of us were walking home together Muriel Berry said to me: “You get off the pavement, you can’t walk with us”. I suppose my clothes weren’t as posh as hers. Another time, she had a birthday party and invited all the class but me so they were all allowed out of school early. Their house came right on the road and when I was walking home from school I saw them all sitting round the fire in their party frocks. I was so hurt by these two incidents that I have never forgotten them. I felt such an outsider.

Miss Burrows went and at last I went to the school run by Miss [Elizabeth] Smythe and Miss [Mary] Chamberlain [in West Street]. Miss Smythe was a tall stately lady who took the top class. Then there was the main governess, Miss Butler, and a young governess, but they kept changing. Miss Chamberlain took music so now I learned from her. She was small and dumpy and she used to cane your fingers if you made a mistake but I liked that school.

There was a different atmosphere from Miss Burrows. They had boarders who all slept in a room about the size of our dining room. The beds were close together and at one end they had washbasins with jugs and at the other end small dressing tables with a mirror. Over a wooden partition was the room where Miss Butler and the other governess slept. These rooms were approached by an old wooden staircase. They would have been a death trap if there had been a fire and I am sure they would not be allowed today.

Stamford House School in West Street is on the left

I got some new friends at this school, especially Madge Crane, twins Edith and Ethel Bloodworth and Annie Cooke. They were all boarders. Soon after I went to this school things seemed to be different at home. Daddy, Auntie and I went to supper with Mrs Castledine, Mrs Webb and Mrs Tom Branston and each time Ethel Branston was always there sitting next to my father. Auntie and Auntie West used to have mysterious talks then one Sunday afternoon Auntie said: “How would you like to have a new mother?” I was so taken aback. “Well,” I said, “it would be alright if you were here” and I flung my arms round her neck feeling I would never let her go.

Sometimes before this I used to have awful nightmares. I dreamt that some horrible tall thin men came and tied Auntie up in a brown paper parcel and they only left her face uncovered and I could see her crying because they were going to take her away. I can see those men in my mind’s eye to this day. I dreamt this time after time and I felt around to make sure she was still there beside me in bed. I played a funny game to myself when I went to bed at night which I called Moses and Aaron. I stuck the bed clothes up with my knee or my foot to make a tent. Sometimes I was Moses and sometimes I was Aaron, but I cannot remember what they did. Then I pretended Jesus came so I should not dream about these men coming to take Auntie away.

Two things I have forgotten to tell you. When we lived down the Eastgate, I had some pet rabbits but we all got fed up with them. My cousins, Bert and James Coulson, came to stay. They were only young boys then so Daddy got someone to kill and skin the rabbits and Auntie cooked them but when dinnertime came none of us could eat them although I suppose they were better than wild rabbits because they had been well fed. After we went to Springfield Villas and I was at Miss Burrows’ school, Grandma Parker, Auntie Kate and Kitty, Auntie Eliza and Jennie were coming [from Hartlepool] to stay with us and I was so excited. Auntie and I were going to sleep on a mattress on the attic floor while the others were to sleep in our bedroom and the spare bedroom.

They were to arrive shortly after four o’clock just as I got home from school and I could hardly live for the time. However, the day they came Miss Burrows kept me in because of my bad writing and I had to write an exercise over again. I don’t think the writing would be very good then because I could hardly see for tears. When she did let me out I ran nearly all the way home but they had nearly finished tea when I got home. (I should think that if she saw this writing she would keep me in for two hours, but I expect the old girl is dead long ago).

The games we played then were different from those played today. We had wooden hoops which we bowled along with a stick on the pathway but sometimes they went on the road but it didn’t matter much because there were no motors. Girls had wooden hoops but boys had iron ones which they trundled along with an iron with a hook on the end so they were easier to control. In the spring, we played whip and top. You had to spin the top a certain way to get it started before you could whip it along. Then there was marbles, which was more of a boys’ game. I wasn’t very good at it because my eyesight was poor. Then there was hop scotch. You marked the pavement in squares and had to hop from one to the other and the one who got it the furthest without putting her other foot down was the winner.

When I was about nine, it was decided I must see an eye specialist so Daddy took me to Peterborough to see a Dr Walker and he said if I did not have glasses I should be blind before I was thirty so I have worn glasses ever since. While we were there we went to see the cathedral which is very beautiful and we also went to see Mrs Sawyer, Annie Ingram’s sister. That reminds me.

Once when we were on our way to Hartlepool when I was about six Daddy and I broke our journey at York and we went so see the minster but I do not remember anything about it. He said: “You must see it because who knows you may never go in it again”, and I never have. Grandpa and I have passed through but he was always in such a hurry to get to his destination that we could not stop to look at it.

Well, I seem to have digressed from what Auntie told me that Sunday afternoon but there were little things I had forgotten to mention. From that Sunday afternoon, life seemed to alter. As I have said in my family notes, Daddy and Auntie were such great friends but now they often had quarrels and sometimes poor Auntie would weep. I suppose she realised she would have to leave us and she must have wondered what would happen to her.

At last the wedding day, 5th April 1905, arrived. Auntie and Daisy and Rene Branston, two of Ethel’s nieces, were bridesmaids and I had a new white silk dress with a hanging pocket, quite the latest fashion, and a leghorn hat [made from a dried and bleached straw]. I looked on the wedding as quite a party. Grandma Parker and Auntie Eliza came for it. The day after, when Dad and Ma had gone on their honeymoon, the truth began to dawn on me that in a week my dear, darling Auntie would be gone.

The day before they came back, Grandma Parker, Auntie Eliza and Auntie went. You can imagine what it was like. Auntie West took me to the station to see them off. She had given me a silver thimble to give to Auntie but we were all so distressed that I nearly forgot to give it to her. We clung together almost until the train went and then she was gone.

Mr Webb had come to the station to see her off. Mrs Brader, Cyril and Frank were going to Boston to see Mrs Brader’s sister so Auntie West took me across the platform to see them off. Frank was only about four or five but I shall never forget that just as their train started to move, he put his head out of the carriage window and said: “Don’t cry any more today, Emmie”. What I should have done without Auntie West I don’t know. I stayed the night with her. That was the end of my very happy childhood when I had been surrounded with all the love and care it was possible to have.

The night after Auntie went, I stayed with Auntie West and the next day my Daddy and my stepmother came back from their honeymoon and I went home. I had grown up with love so I had no thought of not loving her and of her not loving me. I must be fair, I suppose I had been spoilt to a certain extent. She was the youngest of a family and was rather artistic so she had been used to a lot of fuss. I think she idolized her mother who was certainly a fine old lady and her father, who was a builder, was a quiet, kindly man. I called her Mamma at first and later Ma.

The day but one after Auntie went, I had a letter from Auntie. I read it and read it until I knew it off by heart. Very often in the evening Ma went down to see her mother. I was now sleeping in the spare bedroom which was fitted up with new furniture. I can remember a few nights after they came back, when Ma had gone to her mother, I sobbed my heart out for Auntie and Daddy came up to comfort me and he said: “You have got your mamma now” but I think I already knew that it was not the same.

For several months after they were married, we still lived at Springfield Villas. Mr Branston was building two semi detached villas [in Eastgate], one for his eldest daughter, Mrs Castledine, whom I now called Auntie Annie, and the other as a wedding present for Ma, but they were not finished for several months.

There was Ma’s other sister, Mrs Webb, who I called Auntie Sis, and her husband Uncle Bernard. They were quite a jolly couple different from Ma and from Mr and Mrs Castledine. Then there was Ma’s brother, Uncle Tom and his wife Auntie Nellie, who then had two girls, Marie and Nellie. Marie was a lovely girl but Nellie was a problem and still is. They had another little girl who we called Winsome Marguerite but she died when she was six weeks old. Uncle Tom and Auntie Nellie were quite different from the rest of the family, quite gay, and they were very kind to me. Auntie made no secret of the fact that she thought Ma did not treat me properly.

I am afraid the marriage was not a happy one for some time. My bedroom was over the study and I heard them having awful quarrels and Ma crying. Auntie West said that Dad told her that when he asked Ethel to marry him he told her he would never love anyone like he had loved my mother. Auntie West said he only married her because she ran after him so that he could do no other. I really think Auntie West was very fond of him and would have married him if he had asked her. Auntie West had loved my mother and loved me and always looked after my interest. Then Daddy always showed his love for me so Ma was jealous, and so altogether it was rather a tangled situation.

Every Sunday, I went to Auntie West’s for tea because I did not go to chapel at night. We sat up in the upstairs sitting room and when it was light we watched the people go to church all dressed up in their Sunday best clothes. The bank manager’s wife who lived opposite was a plump little person very smart and she wore a feather boa. She was one of the swells of Bourne. Then there was Major [Cecil] Bell and his sister [Annie], a chemist and his wife called [Thomas] Baxter and a lawyer, [Stephen] Andrews, who always said “Good Morning” to people, even in the afternoon, so that people would know he had a late dinner, and of course the vicar [the Rev Hugh Mansfield] and his wife. All these people went to the parish church. There was the Mays family who came to our chapel. Although they were considered part of the “Upper Ten“, they were different somehow, not as snobby.

Well after Auntie West and I had watched the people go to church, we walked up to our house and she saw me to bed and stayed until Dad and Ma came back from chapel. One Sunday, when we were walking home, we saw smoke pouring from under the eaves of a house. A widow and her daughter lived there and we knew they always went for a walk up the West Road on a Sunday evening.

Bourne was a small place and it was surprising what we knew about each other’s habits. Anyway, Auntie West drew the attention of some men to the smoke and one of them ran off to ring the fire bell [on a rope pull outside the Town Hall]. The upstairs of the house was nearly burned out and when I went to school the next morning there were pillows and feathers and clothes strewn all over the front lawn of the house.

Soon after this, my Grandma Curry died and Daddy went to Hartlepool to the funeral and he insisted that I had a black dress. My Grandfather Curry had died when I was quite small. I can just remember that he always wore a black skull cap. Daddy said he was the best read man he knew.

The first year after the wedding, Daddy said I had to go with him and Ma on their holidays to Lowestoft. It was not a great success. I do not remember much about it. I had a tooth out and one day we went for a trip up the Norfolk Broads. The highlight of the holiday was that we went to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream given by amateurs in the Sparrow’s Nest Park. I was enchanted and just longed for the time when I should be old enough to be an actress. I cannot remember exactly but I think I must have gone afterwards to see Auntie because I cannot think I did not see her until the next summer.

On Sundays, I had special Sunday gloves which I was supposed to put in the drawer of the hall stand. I suppose I was careless and sometimes forgot so Ma used to be very cross with me. One Sunday night, Auntie West said: “Now look, Emmie, I am putting your gloves in the drawer so you need not worry. You know they will be there next Sunday morning”. When I went to look for them next Sunday morning they were not there.

Ma started on her usual scolding next Sunday morning and made me hunt all over for them for about a quarter of an hour. I said: “I know they were put in the drawer”. She said I was telling a lie and brought them out of her bedroom. Auntie West tackled her about it at night and said she had put the gloves away herself so that she (Ma) must have taken them out. She didn’t deny it.

One day she told me I had never to ask for a second helping of anything because I didn’t need it and I must never have a second piece of cake. We only had bread and butter, jam and cake for tea and she used to cut nice thin bread for herself with plenty of butter on and she cut thick bread with a scraping of butter on for me. We had a maid called Kate Needham who was only about fourteen and she got 2s. 6d. a week in wages [12½p]. She was a nice girl. If for any reason Daddy was out for tea, I had my tea in the kitchen with Kate and if I asked could we have a piece of cake Ma said: “No”. However, Auntie West used to put me a piece of cake or something in a piece of paper on the shop counter and I used to pop in for it on my way to school. As often as I could, I went to Auntie West’s for tea and sometimes if I called on my way from school at dinnertime she would have some fried potatoes waiting for me.

After a few months, we moved into the new house and now we lived next door to Mrs Castledine [in Eastgate] and we had a way [through] from our garden to theirs. Mr Castledine had a lovely orchard and he let me play in it and take a friend. He was a kind man. On the other side of our house there was another orchard and in the summer there were nightingales in the trees. They were lovely. They would sing in the middle of the night and I used to listen to them as I lay in bed.

Another trouble arose between Ma and me. She would only allow me to have one clean blouse and two clean handkerchiefs a week and this went on until I went to college. When I got older, I wanted to wash and iron extra ones myself but she would not let me because I would use the gas to iron. We only had a gas iron. Another thing, I wore black woollen stockings and I was only allowed to have one clean pair a month and my feet got sore.

Of course, I told Auntie West and she told Daddy. Ma said she changed them once a fortnight but she did not because if I forgot when the month ended she got very cross. Daddy said I was very naughty telling a lie because I had made Ma very unhappy. I said it was not a lie. I think he believed me but he said he did not want to hear any more about it. I daresay you think all this is very paltry but when you are between ten and twelve all these things seem very large and I think what made me unhappy was the feeling of antagonism towards me. Of course I am sure she was unhappy herself, poor thing.

In the November, my Auntie Lizzie Henderson, one of my mother’s sisters became very ill and Auntie Maggie went to look after her. She was the wife of Rev Donald Henderson who was the Congregational minister at Pudsey in Yorkshire. They had three children, Jessie, who was about 19 and at college, Douglas, who was about 15, and Christine (Kitty) who was 12. After about a month, Auntie Lizzie died and Auntie Maggie stayed to keep house and look after them.

The following summer, when I was eleven, I went for my summer holidays to Pudsey because Maggie was there. I got on very well with Kitty and we had a good time together. There was a young lady who went to uncle’s church who ran a Christian Endeavour movement [a non-denominational evangelical organisation for young people]. Kitty and I were very fond of her but I cannot remember her name. While I was at Pudsey, there was a fair and Christian Endeavour ran a refreshment tent. Kitty and I went to help, although I do not know if we were much help and we also went round the fair. Auntie helped in the tent. Of course, the idea was for people to get refreshments without having to go into a public house. Uncle Donald was a sincerely religious man. He used to take Kitty and me into his study and pray over us. I must say this and the Christian Endeavour lady made a great impression on me but more about this later.

I had not been at Pudsey very long when Auntie noticed that I was scratching my head. She looked in my hair, and I am sorry to say it was alive with nits and lice. She was so upset that she cried but she was also furious that I had been neglected so she immediately wrote to Dad and Ma. She small tooth-combed my head until it was sore and rubbed some ointment in that was supposed to kill the nits. She tried to rub it in so it would not show and washed my hair every two or three days but she could not get it quite clear before I went home. When I got back Ma rubbed this ointment on but she did it so that it showed and my hair looked a sight and I felt awful.

Kitty came back with me from Pudsey and we used to play in the orchard. The two of us and Winnie Hassock got up a concert for the Missionary Society [one of the various mission organisations devoted to spreading the gospel in foreign parts]. Mrs Castledine, Mrs Webb, Ma and the mothers of the other girls came so we collected a few shillings in the missionary box. Inspired by Uncle Donald and the lady from Christian Endeavour, when Kitty had gone back I asked Daddy if he thought we could start a Junior Christian Endeavour. He took me to see Mrs Cappitt who was a widow [of John Cappitt, farmer] and a great worker for the church. She already ran the Band of Hope, a temperance society for young people.

We had meetings one night a week and we all signed the pledge, promising never to drink alcohol. I kept it until after I was married but then I am afraid I broke it but even now although I occasionally have some sherry or something like that but I cannot say I like it. Mrs Cappitt said she would organise and run the Junior C E which had quite a lot of members and she encouraged us to give little talks ourselves. I can remember giving one on prayer. Then we had a text searching competition which a boy called Willie Hemsell and I tied for first place. About ten months ago, one of Ma’s nieces sent me a Lincolnshire Life and it contained a letter in by his sister, Hilda, so I wrote to her and I had a long letter back telling me that when Willie grew up he became secretary of the Sunday School, but he is dead now.

About this time somebody told me where babies came from and how they were made. I was terribly shocked and said I did not think it was true because I was sure Mr Hassock would not know anything about it. I have been amused to myself many times since that it did not enter my head that my father did not know anything about it.

We had a cantata in the Corn Exchange from the school. I cannot remember much about it but I was an Indian girl and Ma made me a long yellow dress out of thin muslin. She was very good at making things. I had only one pair of house shoes and the heel had come off one. I begged for a new pair but she said I could not have any (I suppose she had not much money) so I felt dreadful on the stage because when we were dancing the nails under my heel kept sticking in the floor and I thought every one would notice it.

I had a very special friend at this school called Madge Crane and on my eleventh birthday she was coming for tea. It was the custom when it was your birthday to be let out of school at three o’clock so I thought I would go home and put my Sunday frock on. I asked Ma if I could and she said: “Certainly not”. I was disappointed. Sometimes Auntie West would have Madge Crane, Annie Cook and me for tea and she would make lovely teas, perhaps with home made potted meat and jelly and two or three kinds of cake.

The marriage of Dad and Ma did not seem to improve and I think they were both unhappy. My Daddy had been very much loved and respected in the church at Bourne and throughout Lincolnshire. He had been chairman of the Lincolnshire Congregational Union and he was often asked to preach at anniversaries, both in Lincolnshire and adjacent counties. However, it is a great mistake for a minister to marry a girl from his own church unless he intended to leave and so things were not as harmonious as they had been and there was a lot of jealousy.

The Branstons had a person called Mrs Allum to work for them for over 40 years and she died. The three sisters went to her funeral and as I was on holiday Ma took me with her. I had never been to a funeral before. I am sure Ma and her sisters were genuinely grieved at Allum’s death. They called her Allum, not Mrs Allum. One Saturday morning, Dad had gone away for the weekend to preach. I was practising my piano when I saw Griffin, a young man who worked at Branston’s shop, going past the window. I at once though it was bad news and rushed to the back door and said “Grandma Branston?” and he said: “Yes, she’s dead”. Ma was upstairs and I ran up and without any preliminaries said: “Grandma Branston’s dead”. Poor Ma, she idolised her mother and it was a terrible shock to her and she sat on the stairs sobbing and saying: “Oh Mam, Mam”.

As I have said earlier, Mrs Branston suffered from angina and when the help had gone up to fetch her breakfast tray down she found her dead. Mrs Castledine lived next door to us and Griffin had just told her that her mother was ill. She set off on her bike and had to pass Mrs Webb’s house. It was the custom in those days to draw all the window blinds when anyone in the family died. Mrs Webb lived near her mother’s and when she had gone home for something she had drawn the blinds. When Mrs Castledine saw this, she realised her mother was dead and nearly fell off her bike. A day or two after Ma took me to see her mother’s body. She was a fine looking old lady so she looked very beautiful as she lay there. Ma said I could kiss her if I liked and I was quite shocked when I did because of course she was as cold as marble. I do not think I went to the funeral. I cannot remember going and so I expect I was at school.

One Sunday night soon after midnight, when Auntie West and I had gone up home, I suddenly had a great desire to laugh and I started to laugh and cry. In fact, I had violent hysterics. Poor Auntie West, she kept waiting for Dad and Ma to come but they had gone for a walk before they came home and the longer she waited the worse I became. At last, they came home and Dad went for the doctor who came and I suppose he must have given me something to calm me down and he said it was because I was going to start with my periods. Anyway, I was alright the next morning and I have never had hysterics from that day to this.

One Saturday during the last winter we were at Bourne, Ma sent me with a message to Mrs Stubley and to get some meat. She said I must not call at Miss West’s because she was waiting for the meat but I could go afterwards if I wanted to. There was a sloping path up to Mrs Stubley’s cottage with a step at the bottom. The weather had been very cold and the path was frozen and when I got to the bottom I fell full length and banged my head on the step. I got up and somehow got as far as Auntie West’s. As soon as she saw me she said: “Emmie, whatever is the matter”? I told her I had fallen but I could not stay as I had to go home with the meat but she would not let me go and she got pillows and blankets and wrapped me up on the dining room sofa and sent Tommien for Daddy. Poor Tommien had a poisoned foot so could not walk very well. Coming back, my Daddy nearly ran as Tommien had to come more slowly. There was a door between the shop and the dining room which was glass at the top and in my mind’s eye I can still see my Daddy’s worried face through this glass door. After he had seen me he went for our own doctor but he had gone to one of the villages to a confinement. He would have gone on his bike or by horse and trap because only Mr Mays had a car at this time and hardly anyone had a telephone.

As Dr [Galletly] was out, he went for Dr [John] Gilpin who came and said I had slight concussion and I stayed on Auntie West’s sofa until evening. I would like to have stayed all night but Daddy got a cab and took me home. Tommien’s brother, who was a vet, died the same day at Horncastle. It was usual if you had shutters to your shop window to put up two sections to show that someone had died. Tommien did this so it was said all round town that Emmie Parker had had an accident and had died at Miss West’s. How tales do grow!

Next morning I was much better although rather shaky so when Dad and Ma had gone to chapel I got up and got dressed and I can remember putting my best Sunday pinafore on. Before Dad and Ma came back from chapel, the Wesleyan minister, [the Rev Joseph] Watkinson, called. When I opened the door you should have seen the look of consternation on his face and he at last stammered out: “I thought you were very ill”. I think really he had heard I was dead and had come to offer his sympathy which is why he was dumbfounded when he saw me. Rumour could not kill me off and although I have twice nearly died since here I am nearly 78 and still going strong. If like a cat I have nine lives, I have a few to go yet.

One thing I have forgotten to mention and that is the great interest my Daddy took in politics. I seem to have grown up with Liberalism. The Jesuits say: “Give me a child until it is seven and you can do what you like with it afterwards”. I think this applied to me in regard to Liberalism. I heard it talked about so much that I have never been anything but a Liberal. I remember the great excitement in the 1906 election when the Liberals swept the country.

The elections were not all held on one day so that they lasted about three weeks. Day after day, as the results came out, my father’s excitement grew. Ours was a very Tory constituency but Daddy even began to think a Liberal would get in there. When the result came out, the Tory was in by 86, usually it was thousands. A lot of the labourers, especially those who worked on the Earl of Ancaster’s estate, dare not vote anything but Tory because if he suspected they had voted Liberal they would have been sacked.

There was only a sprinkling of Labour candidates then. If a person had property in more than one constituency they had a vote in each of constituencies so as the Tories were mainly the property owners they had an advantage. The Liberals put a stop to plural voting by passing a bill for one man, one vote and they also put all the elections on one day. I think it was in 1902 that Mr Balfour’s Education Act was passed which subsidised denominational schools. In Lincolnshire, this really meant Church of England schools. My father and the Baptist minister, [the Rev James] Carvath, refused to pay their education rate. People who did this were called passive resisters and every time the rate was due they were fined for not paying it but then they refused to pay the fine so the police [were empowered to confiscate] their goods. My daddy always gave them a silver communion service plate and Mr Carvath gave a very good study chair but Mr [William] Wherry, a well to do Baptist, always bought them and gave them back to them.

In those days, there were boards of guardians who administered the Poor Law and the workhouses. They were elected. One time my father and Mr Carvath stood for election amongst several others. This election was not on political grounds but was more of a personal matter. My Daddy was top of the poll and Mr Carvath was second. I was very proud of him.

Shortly after my accident, my Daddy started to go to Horwich to preach. The minister at New Chapel was leaving and he and Mr Lloyd-Jones, who had both been at college with Daddy, recommended him so after hearing him preach two or three times, the people at New Chapel asked him to be their minister. He accepted the call and it was agreed that he was to start his new ministry the first Sunday in June 1908. The people at the church at Bourne bought him a beautiful desk and I think they bought Ma a tea service but I am not sure about that. When they were married the people had bought them a clock.

I was thirteen when the time came for us to leave Bourne. The furniture was sent by road and Daddy left the day after to be at Horwich when it arrived. The day after that, Ma and I left and I can remember us both walking across the Market Place with tears streaming down our faces, she very sad at leaving her family and her native place and me sad at leaving Auntie West and Tommien and my friends. We had to change trains a time or two and Daddy met us in Manchester. What a change to see factories and chimneys and smoke after a beautiful little country town and what a change from the flat fenland to the hills around Horwich. I thought they were beautiful but what a muddy lane New Chapel Lane was then. We had a cab from Horwich station and I wondered what we were coming to when we turned down the lane.

When we got out of the cab at the manse, I shall always remember Mrs Crankshaw who lived next door coming smiling across the lawn with both hands stretched out saying: “Welcome to New Chapel”. Mrs Crankshaw was the mother of Mrs Taylor who came to tea with me a few weeks ago and is now 91. She still lives in the same house where she lived with her mother and father then.

Well, this was the beginning of a new chapter in my life. In case I do not write any more in fairness to my stepmother I must say that as time went on she made my father a very good wife. I think she was genuinely fond of him and when he was old and ill she nursed him most devotedly.

See also the     United Reformed Church     The Branston family