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Well, it was a nice little flat. Kit papered and painted and it did look nice. We were very pleased with it, but we soon realised that the man had been right, they were peculiar, the people upstairs.
When we had occasion to go up the yard to the toilet or for coal, the whole family upstairs ran to the window and stared at us, pointing their fingers and giggling. We felt like animals in the Zoo. Father, mother with the little boy in her arms and two teenage girls, all staring and giggling.
When we went out the front door we could hear them all running into their front room to stare at us from their front window. We put up with that for a few months, then one day when I came in I had the distinct feeling that someone had been in our flat while I’d been out. Nothing missing, nothing out of place, just the feeling of another presence.
So when I went out after that I took particular notice of the position of the doors. I would leave them partly open and note the distance. I would leave a drawer slightly open and thing like that. When I came back I would check all these things and frequently found that things were not always exactly as I’d left them – somebody did come into our home while we were out. It could only be the landlord from upstairs, he must have a key.
It began to get on my nerves. I couldn’t accuse him. I had no proof, nothing was missing, but it was nasty thinking that they went snooping round while we were out. I though they might have spy-holes bored through the ceiling, no sign of any, but we felt uneasy as if we were always under scrutiny. Then in the winter nights we began to get knocks at the front door. When we opened the door there was never anybody there, but we suspected the “cracker” upstairs. My dad knew this man, knew he was a bit unstable and he spoke to him about it, told him to leave us alone.
Well, things went on just the same but we just put up with it. Then, I knew I was pregnant again. Kit was out of work over the winter months and we had 22/- a week for Kit and I and 2/- a week for Betty. By this time she was needing two tins of Ostermilk a week at 2/- a tin. That left us with £1 for everything else, including the rent. The rent was 11/- and our hire purchase payments of 3/6d a week which left us the grand total of 5/6d a week for food, coal and gas. Things were hard. The few shillings Kit had managed to save were soon spent. If we had had no relations we would have starved. We had a meal at mum’s occasionally, a meal at Kit’s mother’s now and again. Mum and Effie would give me 2/- to buy a tin of food for Betty and so we got through the winter.
We had Christmas Day at Mum’s, New Year’s Day at Granny Emmett’s. We never missed the rent, but we did have to miss our hire purchase now and then, and it was a great worry to us. When Kit started work again, we got it paid up and when it was paid we were always too scared to get anything else on hire purchase.
When Betty was one year old, my dad had another haemorrhage and was once again in hospital. This time they decided to operate when he was fit again. So they nursed him, gave him injections to build up his blood count and after six weeks, when he was well enough, they operated. We went in to see him in hospital regularly, and mum took a fruit cake in for his birthday, which was 13th June. He looked fit and well on his birthday. His blood count was practically normal, and he was to have his operation in about ten days’ time. He had the operation about the 24th of June, and when mum went up to see him that day the doctor told her there was no hope. My dad was going to die, they could no nothing, the ulcers had eaten right through the wall of his stomach.
We couldn’t believe it; when we went to see him he was so cheerful. Mum was so brave, she never let him see how upset she was. I broke down and she sent me out of his room. When dad asked what was the matter with me, she made the excuse that I had come over faint because I was pregnant. She roasted me when we got outside. We must never let him know how ill he was. He lived a fortnight after the operation and died on the 8th July 1935. He was only 50 years old.
We were all shattered, we missed him so much. He was more like an older brother to us than our father, so full of fun and goodness. Whey did he have to die? Since then I’ve thought of him every day with love and gratitude. Glad and proud that we had him for a father. We were extremely lucky to have had such fine parents, always doing their best for us. In the weeks after his death I cried frequently, it was as well I had Betty to think about and Kit and the baby I was carrying. Life had to go on, no matter how sad I was.
The people upstairs went on as usual too, but now things began to worsen. They began to complain that we were noisy, smashing the place up etc. They pushed notes through the door and when we went to see them about these complaints, they wouldn’t answer their door. When I paid the rent at the weekends, it was the woman who took it, and when I asked her about them she would not speak. She just stared at me, took the money, marked the rent book, slammed the door. The next day more complaining notes through the letter box. What to do with nuts like these?
My baby was due in October, and at the beginning of the months mum suggested that we should go and stay at Belford Terrace and have the baby there as she couldn’t fact the running up and down to my place. So a few days before the baby was born, we went to mum’s. Very early in the morning of 14th October Kit had to wake mum and go for the nurse. Kit was working at the coast and all I was thinking about was whether the baby would be born before he had to leave the house at seven o’clock. He couldn’t afford time off work just because I was having a baby. We needed the money.
The nurse thought, - no, I wouldn’t get it over by seven o’clock, an all-day job she thought. Mum told me never mind about Kit, just get on with the job. The baby was born as the buzzers were blowing seven o’clock, she was born and Kit had time to see her before setting off to work. A big, beautiful,, bouncing baby girl, all 10½ lbs of her. My babies were not red and wrinkled like skinned rabbits. She was just beautiful.
When she was bathed and I made comfortable, mum brought Betty in to see her new sister. She promptly called her “Crumpy” because she was so plump. Betty talked very quickly, she was saying nursery rhymes at 12 months old. Granny Emmett used to sit her on her table and invite the neighbours in to hear her. So we called our new baby Crumpy amongst ourselves. She was christened Sylvia at Walker Parish Church a fortnight after.
We went back to our own home the day after the christening. I could not feed Sylvia, so she had to go on the bottle. She thrived mightily and was a very pretty little girl like Betty except she had silver hair where Betty’s was golden. I had plenty to do now, with two babies to look after. The crack pots upstairs resumed their silly complaints and their spying. When Sylvia was about four months old they put a note through the door saying we had to get out by the end of the week. I tried to see them to protest but they wouldn’t come to the door. I pushed notes through their door asking the reason. They replied with notes telling us to get out.
I went to the Town Hall and to the Member of Parliament asking if it was legal for the landlord to put us out like that for no reason. My rent was paid, no arrears, the house in perfect order, we had improved it, not destroyed it. They told me the landlord had a legal right to turn us out when he liked. It was his property, he could do what he liked with it. While they sympathised with us there was nothing they could do for us.
The landlords cannot do that sort of things nowadays but they could and did then. What were we to do? Put out on the street with two small children. I went all over the place looking for somewhere to move into that week, but there were no houses available. At the end of the week when I was just about desperate, mum said we could move in with her until we found somewhere.
It was a squeeze, good job we didn’t have much furniture. Anne and Mick were living with mum, my brother Harry had joined the Army. He had got fed up with the Merchant Navy so decided to have a bash at the Army. So there we all were squashed in together. We managed all right, and things were peaceful enough apart from one or two rows mum and I had which were inevitable when we got together.
She loved the bairns and took them for walks and for the shopping while I did the housework, so it worked out all right. We lived there about ten weeks before I got another flat. This one was in Morley Street, Byker, just off Shields Road, and was an upstairs flat of four rooms. We went to see it, it was fine, clean and in smashing condition, so we moved into it as soon as we could. Kit couldn’t take a day off to help me with the removal, so I asked his brother Herbert to come and help me. He hired a handcart and he and I moved our bits and pieces on that, walking and pushing all the way from Belford Terrace up to Byker. We had to make three or four journeys of it and it took us all day. We had to move on a handcart each time we made a move, we couldn’t afford the removal men. Thankfully we had left the crackers at Grace Street behind us, we didn’t know we were going to have another cracker to put up with in Morley Street.
MORLEY STREET
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