Nice people thread part 8 - worth the wait

LydiaJ

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Charming description, there!

My Dad's just over 6 foot, but narrow-framed and only has 7 1/2 to 8 sized feet. OH is 6 ft 1, and takes size 10.

Isaac is a size 13 (little size 13).

I'm 5'7" and wear size 6.5ish in shoes (can be size 6 or 7 depending on the shape). I have difficult feet to buy shoes for - wide at the toes and narrow at the heels.

LNE was 5'8" and wore size 10 shoes - so v big feet for his height. he had big hands too. I'm told that when he was born his grandfather took one look at him and said he had "hands like shovels and feet like a policeman's".

PasturesNew

Back then somebody had to pay your way if you couldn't.... and if nobody would, you were off to the workhouse to live. It wasn't a 'workhouse', just cheap rooms - people then went out to work/got jobs from there; it's not a slave camp with people in forced labour .... unless you couldn't get a job outside and improve your lot, then you had to do work in the workhouse.

If you weren't from round there, they'd ship you back where you came from. Locally you'd either get shoved in their workhouse, or get a few pennies to live on, depending what place you came from/how well known/liked you were. Lots of stories of the church paying for old people to pay rent because they'd always lived in a village and were 'good people'.

neverdespairgirl

LydiaJ wrote: »

Fascinating. Thanks for sharing that. I come from a long line of people who had both parents until long after they were grown-up.

.........

Fortunately for her, he remarried when she was 10, and Granny was much nicer to her than the aunts had been. She always said for the rest of her life that getting a stepmother had been the best thing that ever happened to her.

Were there other siblings as well? Either half or full, on your mother's part?

For them as might be interested, the story of my great-great-grandmother, Fannie Morecroft, who survived the sinking of the Lusitania (and went back to see afterwards, to continue her career!):

http://londongirl.hubpages.com/hub/The-sinking-of-the-Lusitania-A-survivors-story

Spirit_2

One of my paternal aunts was abandoned by her husband when he came to England to work and she was left at home in Dublin.

She was thought to have married well as his 'people' were quite well off and he worked for the family firm in the UK.

After he left her and their small son she was shunned by both his family and her own as she sought to have her marriage set aside (a huge disgrace in Ireland at that time).

She came to England where she worked to bring her son up, it took some time for my father to take them in (paternal aunt had been my mum's best friend at school and my mum would not see her homeless). Aunt was destitute though and told of time when living in London when she had sent her son out to collect 'pennies for the guy' and that bought them food.

Sadly my cousin died in his early thirties and his 'father' made contact to see what he could do, after a lifetime of no contact or support. It is hard to imagine what he was thinking.

My aunt had remarried when cousin was in his early teens to a funny, kind, hard working Mickey Rooney look-a-like who adored them both. He was not concerned about my aunts history...still a scandal in the early sixties...he worked as a Docker, was a truly great man and the one I asked to give me away when I married.

LydiaJ

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Were there other siblings as well? Either half or full, on your mother's part?

Yes. The half-sister's mother was too ill to have any further children, but my grandparents had two boys before my mum.

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

For them as might be interested, the story of my great-great-grandmother, Fannie Morecroft, who survived the sinking of the Lusitania (and went back to see afterwards, to continue her career!):

http://londongirl.hubpages.com/hub/The-sinking-of-the-Lusitania-A-survivors-story

Interesting read. Thank you.

chewmylegoff

PasturesNew wrote: »

When I was 15 my friend and I had a friend in the year above us, lovely girl (can't remember her name), but she was going out with one of the school "bad boys" - had orange hair, with short skinhead cut, tattoos, always in trouble/often in Borstal. She got pregnant by him and her parents stopped her seeing him, then she was "sent to her aunty's" and came back without the baby. Another of my friends at school had a younger sister who was really her niece as when the eldest had got pregnant she had it and the mother brought it up. Happened all the time, you either gave it away, or your mum brought it up.

My mum was one of those, as was her cousin; both brought up by granny after both granny's daughters disgraced themselves.

My mum was as well. I can't remember exactly how it worked but someone was indiscreet with an American solider during ww2 and she was the result. She was born in 1945, the solider never came back (no one knows if he died or just went back home) and she was brought up by her real mum's auntie I think - or something like that.

neverdespairgirl

PasturesNew wrote: »

It's 'funny' how much/not people know of their grandparents. When I was born I had 3 left and one G-granny who died when I was 2. My paternal grandmother died in 74, I'd met her once, when I was 2. I didn't have a maternal grandfather really as he's not (allegedly) mum's father; he was always ill, then died just after my 10th birthday.

My granny wasn't somebody I "knew". Used to go round 2-3x a year, but the adults spoke; us kids didn't speak, except to ask for a drink. It was "seen and not heard" years

I had 3 grandparents and a great-granny when I was born, too - my mother's parents, and my Dad's mother (his father died suddenly when my Dad was in his early 20s). The great-granny who was alive when I was born was the Caroline Morecroft, later Warwick, referred to in that article. She died when I was about 3, and I don't remember her. A jacket that Isaac wore when he was a baby was knitted by her for me when I was newborn, though.

I knew my maternal grandparents well - I was 10 when my Grandad died, so I remember him properly. Lily and Bruv were 2 and 3 when he died, so don't remember him, and my other sister was 8, so does.

We saw a lot of all our grandparents - until we started school, and after we started school, in holidays and half-terms, we went to my maternal grandparents' house every Thursday, and they came to our house every third Sunday, on average. Once Grandad died, my Granny came to stay with us for a couple of weeks at Christmas, the same at Easter, and the same in the summer, so she was in one of my parents' houses at least 6 weeks a year, and we also continued to visit her. When I was at university, I used to go and see her about once a fortnight.

My Nanna lived in Eastbourne, quite a lot further than my mother's parents, and we used to go and see her once a month or so, at the weekends, and more in the holidays.

We were the only grandchildren on both sides, the 4 of us, no first cousins.

My Granny talked about her family, and her husband's family - when she had her first baby, my uncle, her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother were all still alive, so my uncle had a great-great-grandmother until he was 4, not long before my mother was born.

And my parents also talk sometimes about their parents, their grandparents, and what those relatives said about older members of the family who died before my parents were born, too.

Isaac only knows two of his grandparents - my parents. OH's both died when I was pregnant. But he sees a fair bit of my parents - we go there for a long-ish stay at Christmas and Easter, a few days in the summer, and often at half-terms. My Dad only works 3/4 mile away from our flat, so he pops in for a cuppa and a chat once a week or so, and if my Mama comes up to London, she drops in, too. Isaac calls them "Mum" and "Dad", rather misleadingly. He calls us "Mummy" and "Abba".

LydiaJ

PasturesNew wrote: »

It's 'funny' how much/not people know of their grandparents. When I was born I had 3 left and one G-granny who died when I was 2. My paternal grandmother died in 74, I'd met her once, when I was 2. I didn't have a maternal grandfather really as he's not (allegedly) mum's father; he was always ill, then died just after my 10th birthday.

My granny wasn't somebody I "knew". Used to go round 2-3x a year, but the adults spoke; us kids didn't speak, except to ask for a drink. It was "seen and not heard" years I think she was overwhelmed with grandchildren though .... by the time I was 10 she had 13 of us and it was a boisterous and full/small room when we visited as it was usually her birthday or boxing day, so all of us were there + all the parents. Not even enough chairs, so the kids were sent packing.

I knew my maternal grandmother well when I was little - we kids used to go and stay with her without parents, sometimes, and she used to come to stay with us to look after us if we were ill, so Mum could keep the show on the road for the rest of the family who weren't ill. She got dementia when I was about 12, and deteriorated gradually, finally dying when I was 21 and she was 95.

My paternal grandmother we didn't see so often - she lived further from our home and was very deaf, and therefore much harder to get to know. She was very very old - 83 when I was born, and 103 when she died. She had a much better relationship with my cousins, who are all much older than me and so had the chance to get to know her before she went deaf.

Never had any grandfathers. They were both dead years before I came along. No great-grandparents either.

LydiaJ

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

My Nanna lived in Eastbourne, quite a lot further than my mother's parents, and we used to go and see her once a month or so, at the weekends, and more in the holidays.

We were the only grandchildren on both sides, the 4 of us, no first cousins.

My Granny talked about her family, and her husband's family - when she had her first baby, my uncle, her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother were all still alive, so my uncle had a great-great-grandmother until he was 4, not long before my mother was born.

And my parents also talk sometimes about their parents, their grandparents, and what those relatives said about older members of the family who died before my parents were born, too.

Isaac only knows two of his grandparents - my parents. OH's both died when I was pregnant. But he sees a fair bit of my parents - we go there for a long-ish stay at Christmas and Easter, a few days in the summer, and often at half-terms. My Dad only works 3/4 mile away from our flat, so he pops in for a cuppa and a chat once a week or so, and if my Mama comes up to London, she drops in, too. Isaac calls them "Mum" and "Dad", rather misleadingly. He calls us "Mummy" and "Abba".

Eastbourne! Well well well. My dad's mum lived in Worthing. I am the youngest of her 15 grandchildren.

My parents and grandparents talked about older members of the family too. Lots and lots of stories. My dad still does, when there's time.

PasturesNew

When they're alive, parents whitter on about stuff they did, who is related to who ... in one ear, out the other. Then they die and you wish you'd listened

Sometimes though my mum didn't know who was who, or how they were related as they all grew up together and it was a large/confusing family, and she wasn't very good at explaining who was who.

And/or, she'd simply say she didn't know. She did that a lot as she couldn't be bothered to think out the answer to most questions ever asked.