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Thursday, December 24, 2009

Alice Ellen Cottingham: Early Life 1909 - 1927 (in her own words)













MEMORIES OF ALICE ELLEN COTTINGHAM (Keith's Aunty 'Phyl')

I am Alice Johnson, 85 years old, and this is April 25, 1995. I was born in 1909 in the City of London, within the sound of Bow Bells in Shoreditch. My father and mother were James Cottingham and Alice Packham. My father was born in Hull and my mother in Peckham. I had two brothers James and Lionel, and a sister Beatrice.

When I was a little girl, we moved to a flat in Lewisham. It was a downstairs flat with no bathroom and an outside toilet. We had two bedrooms, a large sitting room and a large kitchen diner. In the diner was a range, a coal fire that we did all our cooking on. When we wanted a bath we had to fill the copper up with water, get the hot water on the range and fill the tin bath.

The coal man used to deliver the coal at the door at a hundredweight per week. He delivered by horse and cart. We had many delivery people with horse and cart but some delivery mean used to pull a barrow with their merchandise. They sold oil for lamps, nuts and toffee apples, dried meat for cats, milk, muffins, winkles and shrimps etc. The meat man used to put the meat on a skewer and drop it through the letter box for the cat and pick up his payment next time.

Down the road from us lived a couple who had ten children who had only one pair of shoes between them. If they had to go to the hospital or to see the doctor, they had to wear the communal shoes. For the little ones, the shoes were far too big. For the older, they were far too small. They used to play out in the road without shoes. They were a strong and healthy family. Their flat had shelves set up the walls as bunks. The father was a printer who earned good money but there were too many children.

My brother Jim used to play with the boy next door in the street. One day Ginger had Jim on his shoulders and fell. Jim smashed his face on the ground and that is why his teeth are crooked.

We did have it tough in our younger years but mother was very good and we were mainly happy.

For dinners we always had a good homemade soup with everything in it. Afterwards we always had a pudding - apple pudding, raisin pudding or rice pudding. On a Sunday, my mother always cooked a roast dinner. We were well fed as my mother, during the First World War, worked in the Arsenal in the kitchens. When they were finished in the kitchen, the food was brought home for us. In the evening, we would amuse ourselves by reading, playing board games and sitting around the kitchen table and talking. The boys had plenty of homework.

Life is so different today. We used to go to church three times on a Sunday dressed in our Sunday-best that we did not wear all week. As we were not allowed out very much, we did not mind going out to church. When my mother wanted some fresh mint leaves for cooking, we go on a Sunday, all dressed up to see the lady, who would pull up some fresh mint.This lady always made a great fuss of us children and gave us sweets. We could eat so many sweets that we would not want any dinner.

The school that I went to was Loampit Vale. It was a nice little school. We only had one teacher to take all the classes. I used to play Netball when I could. I could not stand up long or I fainted. The class used to leave the classroom for prayers but I used to stay behind and do some sewing for the teacher. When I was fourteen I had a sewing machine – that is what I have done all my life.

We used to play hopscotch, hide and seek, hoop and stick that we played along the road. My parents would not allow us to play in the road. All the other children in the road used to go out to play.

My father was in the Marines. As a young man, he joined up and he was a Marine in the First World War in 1914, when I was 5 years old. He got rheumatic fever in the First World War and had to leave the Marines – and was too old for the Second World War that came in 1939. My father travelled everywhere and he was fond of Japan – he had Geisha Ladies tattooed on his arms.

When I was about 8 years old, I was run over by an automobile. It was during the First World War and my father came home on leave and sent me out to buy some cigarettes. He said to me here is a shilling, buy a packet of 20 cigarettes for 11 pence halfpenny – and they used to put the halfpenny change from the shilling in the packet.

In those days there were not many cars on the road. I was standing behind the Baker’s horse and cart when I stepped in the road and a car came around the corner and knocked me right over the top and under the car, which dragged me to the Clock Tower in Lewisham (about ¾ mile).

The couple in the car had just got married – he was a Naval Officer and they were off on their honeymoon.

When they got me from under the car, the people got the bride out and told the man to drive me to Miller Hospital in Greenwich, which is now pulled down. I spent about three years going back and forwards to that place. I had my head split open, I was nearly scalped and the scar still shows. I had a broken nose and all sorts of things wrong with me. I lost a lot of blood.

It took me years and years before I made up the loss of blood, till I was 18 years old. I had to drink a lot of milk and used to take it to school in a tin can that had a lid – it was horrible. I was also sent down to Lee Green where there was a butcher’s slaughter house to drink a cup of ox blood twice a week from the freshly slaughtered ox. I also had to eat raw liver. I did everything to make my blood up. They did not have blood transfusions in those days.

I began to feel better when I was 18 and then I met a couple of lads who used to cycle. One of them asked me to tandem with him and we went all over the place – around the Cotswolds and everywhere. That was the making of me with the fresh air and exercise. It was marvellous.

We had moved from Lewisham to Bellingham when I was in my teens. There, I started an apprenticeship as a milliner and eventually ended up in town designing hats in a factory. The first year of my apprenticeship I did not earn any money. The second I was paid enough to buy my pins and the third was very little. When I was an ‘improver’, I earned 7s 6d per week. That was a lot of money in those days. When I left work at 29 years old, I was earning four pounds a week – that was more than my husband earned!

The factory was in City Road, which runs through North London, and it was situated next to some buildings called Peabody Buildings. They were built for old people. The rats used to come up from the water, climb the walls and, if the old people hung a leg of lamb out of a window on string to keep it fresh, the rats would bite the string – and the string and the lamb and the rat would fall after it and then the rats would feast.

In the factory, they had a lot of straw to make the hats. If the hats were left in a cupboard overnight the rats would eat the hats. The rat man in the basement, who used to do the blocking, would come a couple of evenings a week with a shot gun and shoot the rats as they moved around the beams in the workroom.

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