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Q. My mother was telling me the other day
that you used to take care of the class sometimes?
A. Yes. It was when these cards first came out. I can remember
they used to take them out to old Meyers, who would say, ‘Go
and ask Bill, go and ask Bill. Go and ask Bill.’ Yes the last
year I was at school I did more teaching than I did learning.
But as I say when you got advantages over the other children,
we’d always had a good breakfast inside of us before we came
away, we was always got dry socks and shoes and nice warm under
clothes, and when we went home at 12.00 there was a nice hot
dinner waiting for us, when we went home at 4.00 there was tea
ready for us shortly, and then when bedtime came we had supper
afore we went to bed. We’d got a belly full of food and we was
warm and dry. Not only that, we’d got writing books, we’d
got books to read, and slates, as I say 9 out of 10 of the other
children hadn’t got those advantages. I expect |
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when they got home of a night they was tucked
off to bed, the same as they were getting all the way up to
Idley, when they got home about 6.00, they was given something,
shoved into bed.
Q. What sort of entertainment did you have in those days?
A. We used to make our own. We used to have the place up
Threeways. We used to play cricket. Dad used to buy us bats and
balls and that. A lot of other boys used to come up there with
us, and I notice now there was some of them used to come up
there and when we went into tea they never went home to get any
tea and mother used to send out a big plate of cakes or
something for them. Well they knew it was no good them going
home to tea. They wouldn’t get no tea not ‘til they had got
to go to bed when their fathers got in from work, you see. |