Jellied Eels and Zeppelins (4 page)

We had a copper in our little kitchenette and we used to boil that up for the bungalow bath. Once a week we did that for our bath on a Friday night. We called it Amami Night, ‘cos we used Amami shampoo. Most people did. Our flat was lit by oil lamps. There was a tap in the kitchenette and a big black range. We could only have a roast dinner in the winter when we had a coal fire. We had an oil stove for cooking and a Primus stove. We used to boil all the kettles on the Primus or the oil stove for the washing and the washing-up. When Mum did a very big wash, she used to boil up the copper in the other little room where the sink was.

My Mum used to blacklead the range. It had one oven and by it was a plate. We had an old tabby tom-cat, which used to sit on the plate by the oven and, when it turned round, I used to have to put its tail out! It used to catch alight!

That was when you could buy cats’ food on a stick. In the market was a shop and they used to sell it. There was a big glass case in the window with a horse carcass in it for cats’ food. You got three lumps of meat on a skewer. You had to order it and they used to bring it round and stick it through your letter-box. It cost a penny. I always remember that. The cats used to love it - the raw horsemeat. They used to know when it was coming round and would grab it as they put it in the letter-box. Funny, that was. We used to call our cat Tommy. I can still see that cat.

We had a dog called Laddie at one time too. He was an elk-hound and used to worship our family, especially us girls. When Dad shut him out of the home and wouldn’t feed him for 24 hours, ‘cos he bit him, it broke our hearts. He gave him water and he didn’t hit the dog, just shut him out.

On Fridays, Mum used to go along to the fishmonger’s to buy a cod’s head. She would boil it up to make a jelly, which she would strain to remove the bones. We would then spread it on our bread and eat it. It used to be lovely.

After cooking tea for us when we came home from school, Mum would treat herself every other Friday to fish ‘n’ chips from Methven’s fish shop. They cost threepence and she was known as Mrs Threepence because of that.

She used to go up to the market on a Friday, shopping. Once a fortnight she would have jellies (jellied eels) and mash for sixpence from Manze’s Eel and Pie Shop and the next Friday, she would go to the fish shop… so she had a variation. That was her dinner. My Cousin Flo always knew when she had jellied eels. She used to say ‘Aunt Flo - you’ve got a bit on yer blouse’ (‘cos Mum was a stout woman in her chest, you know). She always used to catch Mum going down the High Street. ‘I know where you’ve been Aunt!’ she would say.

Ethel’s cousin Flo

Mum loved jellied eels. Dad didn’t and I couldn’t eat eels if you gave me a shilling… yet they’re marvellously good for you. Cousin Flo used to love ‘em. She always had them when she went down to the seaside.

Joe (
Ethel’s husband
) used to go and catch eels at Walton-on-the-Naze, when he went to visit his friend in his cottage. He brought a big one home one day and it slipped down the sink and out into the drain and he caught it. His brother used to love ‘em. I remember at the beginning of the Second World War, I saw some live eels in Manze’s, so I went in and said ‘I’d like a couple of those for my mother-in-law, ‘cos she’s got a bad leg.’ But the shop assistant gave them to me all wriggling. I said ‘I can’t take them like that, can’t you chop ‘em up?’ But he didn’t, so I sat on the bus with the paper bag screwed up tight at the top in case they got out in the bus!

Another thing we used to have at home when I was a girl: we used to take a jug into the butcher’s shop and get it filled with pease-puddin’ and faggots - used to be lovely. That was only about threepence or something, ever so cheap. And we used to dip our fingers in the pease-puddin’ and, by the time we got home, it used to be nearly all gone! We used to eat it goin’ along. That was in the market again.

Mum used to make gorgeous soups for us - that’s what kept us going. She would burn some sugar on a spoon and stir it into the soup to thicken and brown it. I also liked Edwards Desiccated Soups. Mum would also make some delicious stews in a huge cast iron cooking pot, which would be simmering on the stove for two days. She would make them with the two penn’orth of pieces (oddments of meat) that she bought on most Saturday nights after 10 o’clock from the butcher’s; she sometimes used to use bacon rind and pearl barley too. We couldn’t afford to waste a thing - ‘Waste Not, Want Not’ was the motto of the time.

We used to go up to Parade Bakery in St. James’ Street, Walthamstow, for bread sometimes two or three times a week. They weighed every loaf that came off the counter and, if it was under weight, they used to give you what they called a ‘makeweight’ - that’s a piece of cake or bread that was kept on the side. They would cut off a piece to make the weight up. Mum used to say ‘Don’t eat the makeweight!’ but, by the time we got out onto Coppermill Lane, my sister and I had eaten it, ‘cos it was nice and fresh. ‘Have you eaten the makeweight?’ Mum would ask. And we would say ‘No, Mum’ and she used to laugh and say ‘No, I know you didn’t!’ But she knew we had, ‘cos we always did. Sometimes, you used to have a nice big bit. (
Makeweights were also used when buying other commodities like beer and ice cream
).

And I can also remember ‘The Toffee Shop’, where they used to make their own cough candy twist and peppermint rock, and you could buy a slab of toffee - separate toffees were more expensive. You could buy Milk Tray loose too - I bought Mum a quarter once for her birthday.

Before the First World War, when we were quite young, it was Florrie’s and my job to make up the fire on Christmas morning with newspaper, coal and wood, which Dad used to put in our stockings. As for presents, sometimes we just got an orange, but one year, Florrie and I received a stuffed rag doll. On another occasion, when our father was working for Lonco when I was about nine (after World War I), Florrie got a solid chocolate lion and I got a chocolate elephant - they were delicious. Dad used to say ‘Your Christmas dinner is your gift.’ He would say that later to Florrie and her husband, Alf, too when they came to dinner.

We never had a Christmas tree, but hung up paper chains that we’d made ourselves. For Christmas dinner, we’d eat a cockerel or have a joint of beef if we were lucky. We used to go to a pantomime at the Walthamstow Palace of Varieties, towards the top of the High Street. They used to have lovely pantomimes. We would sit ‘up in the Gods’ and throw our apple cores down whenever there was any cheering. We never went to any Old Time Music Hall - we couldn’t afford it - though Mum used to talk about stars such as Nellie Wallace, Marie Lloyd and Vesta Tilley.

I loved to go to the market at Christmas time. Mum used to take us when I was about six or seven. I remember seeing the stalls all lit by gas lamps and helping a dwarf shake papers off the oranges on the fruit and veg stall. He used to earn himself some money by helping out. Loveable fella, he was. He had an extra large head, which he said he wanted to sell for research when he died. I believe that he did.’

Ethel remembers Marks and Spencer in its early days (the company was founded in 1887):

‘When you went into the shop, it was all open in the front, no proper shop-front or anything. There were counters all the way round and it was called Penny Bazaar.

That’s how Marks and Spencer started. You used to walk in and pick up anything, and everything was a penny; elastic, everything.

As you walked into a wide front - it used to go narrow at the top - there were all tiles, and then, in the middle… there was… as big as my table… all done in different coloured tiles… an old fashioned penny. That was Marks and Spencer when I was a little tot.

My Dad worked at Lipton’s for donkeys’ years before the First World War. He used to do parcel deliveries. He used to sit in the kitchen with Tommy Lipton and have a meal. They used to treat him very well. I remember that Dad used to go up to Old Street Station, London, to pick up his van. Then he used to go to the East India Docks mostly, to load up. He would grumble about the dockers. They packed up at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. He used to have to line-up in the queue. Sometimes, when he got to the front to be loaded, they packed up and went home and he would have to wait until the next day. He used to wait for two hours sometimes. Mum would say ‘Your Dad’s come home in a bad mood, be careful what you say!’ He would leave home at 6 o’clock in the morning. He used to be up at 5 o’clock and he often used to work part-time in the evenings too when we were very young.’

Edwin Turner (2nd from right, front row) with other military police colleagues

The Great War of 1914-18 was the first in which civilians were threatened with the fear of air raids. Ethel was just six when she saw the hydrogen-filled airship, the Zeppelin:

‘I can still see that Zeppelin. It was massive and I’ll never forget the droning it made. I remember seeing an airship coming down in flames at Cuffley, Hertfordshire - even though it was miles away, it lit up the sky. I was about five or six then and was holding Dad’s hand when I saw it coming down.

We was all together when another Zeppelin, came over. Cousin Flo, she was very comical. She had a loud voice and she used to take-off Nellie Wallace, an old music-hall star. She used to have a flower in her hat and she used to dance, Nellie Wallace did. A woman at the biscuit stall in the market used to take her off too - singing and dancing.

Flo was just turned 14 then and she said ‘Come on you kids, I’m going to dance for you.’ And she pulled out the kitchen table and stood on it and took-off Nellie Wallace and made us kids laugh, to take our minds off it. Afterwards, I remember opening her bag and saying ‘What have you got in there Flo?’ and she gave us all a doughnut to keep us quiet!

Mum and Dad never actually told us that we were at war. We never had no radios or anything like that and Dad wouldn’t let us read the newspapers.’

On June 28th 1914, the Austrian Crown Prince, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Princess Sophia, were assassinated by a Serb while visiting the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. This was the spark that ignited the conflict leading to World War I.

‘My Mum told me about the Archduke and his wife being shot and Dad thought that there would be a war.’

At the start of World War I, Britain’s army consisted solely of volunteers. When the government realised that the war was not going to end quickly, a massive recruitment campaign took place, led by Lord Kitchener.

Ethel’s father, Edwin, rejoined the army in 1916 after having left to work at Lipton’s shortly after he married.

‘Dad didn’t mind being called up, because he said ‘Someone has got to fight this war,’ and I think that he rather liked army life.’

Ethel still possesses Edwin’s Army Service Corps (ASC) badges and ‘The Soldiers’ Pocket Testament’ he was given with its inscription reading:

‘I pray that God’s
Blessing may rest
On the Reader and
The Reading of this
Little book. November 1914.’

‘I’ve also got my father’s baton, which he used when he was a military policeman stationed in Guernsey. It has a leather strap and grooves on the handle, so your hand doesn’t slip. Once he caught three Irish soldiers escaping from barracks after curfew. There was a struggle and Dad hit one of them with his baton. The soldier had to go to hospital, but Dad got away with cuts and bruises.’

Edwin’s duties also included bringing horses over by boat from Weymouth to the Channel Island, where he and his colleagues trained them before they were shipped off to France to take part in the war. The horses were used to drag equipment and supplies including artillery to the front-line and records show that, by the end of the war, more than eight million horses had been killed in the conflict.

‘The horses came over with red tapes in their tails. Dad used to go and sit with them, ‘cos the crossing was so rough. He said that some of them used to jump about a lot because they got frightened when the sea was rough, especially when the boats passed through The Casquets, where the tides met. It was always very choppy there and the horses used to get sick. I remember Dad telling me that he used to come out on deck sometimes, to get a bit of fresh air and then went back down again for fear of getting washed overboard. He had the horses on the island for so many months, then the officers used to come over and get ‘em and they’d be taken off to France.