Visionary Women and Visible Children, England 1900-1920

Childhood and the Women's Movement

Berry Mayall

• Editorial: Palgrave Macmillan
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783319612072
• Categoría: Education
• Categoría: Early Childhood Education

This book addresses the inter-linked lives and fortunes of children and women in the first two decades of the twentieth century in England. This was a time of shifts in thinking and practice about children's and women's status, lived lives and experiences. The book provides a detailed explanation of how children experienced home, neighbourhood and elementary school; as well as discussing the impact of the women's movement, namely its suffrage and socialist work. These two concerns are linked by the work women did about and for children. Essentially, the book explores childhood and womanhood; generation and gender; and socialism and feminism. Using existing studies on women's work, and autobiographies and interviews about childhood, Mayall argues that women played a large part in re-thinking childhood as a special period in life, and children as participants in learning and in politics. This book will appeal to students and researchers in the fields of history, education and sociology, particularly those interested in the women's movement, and the history of childhood.

Appendix A

Here I give some details about the sources of information used in the book.

Section One: Autobiographies and Interviews

Listed here are the main sources of information provided by people who were children in the early years of the twentieth century. I refer to these autobiographies and interviews as ‘memoirs’.

Autobiographies

These fourteen accounts are given in published books. All the children were born in the early twentieth century and went to elementary school before 1920. Some went on to secondary school.

• H. J. Bennett (John) . I was a Walworth Boy. Born 1902, Walworth, south London. Father unskilled, range of jobs, sometimes unemployed, a drunkard. Children qualified for free meals. To central school and worked part-time in a shop while at school. Left school at 15 for job as clerk and attended evening classes to qualify for civil service post. Became a civil servant, cycling enthusiast and socialist.
• Catherine Cookson . Our Kate . Born 1906 Jarrow, Tyneside. Hard-working, alcoholic mother. Very hard childhood, loved books, RC elementary schooling. Left school at 13 or 14 and went ‘into service’. Best-selling novelist of working-class life.
• Kathleen Dayus . Her People. Born 1903, Birmingham. Youngest of six children, slum housing in central area. Poverty-stricken family, on outdoor relief. Left school at 14 for paid work, first in clothing industry and then trained in enamel trade.
• Edward Ezard . Battersea Boy . Born c. 1901, Battersea, south London. Father dead, mother worked as housekeeper in West End. Failed exam for grammar school, but went to secondary school. Very detailed account of family and local life, school, holiday in Kent/working on a farm. London offered wide range of experiences. Left school for clerical work. Joined the army.
• Elizabeth Flint . Hot Bread and Chips . Born c. 1906. London E1 off Commercial Rd. Very poor family. Father in wholesale vegetable trade. Took up scholarship to grammar school.
• Grace Foakes . My Part of the River . Born 1901 Wapping, East London. Father a docker. Detailed account of school and local social life. Went on to central school. Mother had 13 children, seven died.
• S. Jasper (Jan) . A Hoxton Childhood : Born c. 1905, Hackney, London. Father casual labourer and violent drunkard; mother did dressmaking to keep family going; boy worked as mother’s helper, also did paid jobs, Left school at 14 for carpentry/cabinet-making training and work.
• Laurie Lee . Cider with Rosie. Born 1914. Village childhood, Gloucestershire. Father deserted the family, seven siblings. To central school at 12 and left at 15. Office work. Walked in Spain. Writer.
• Bernard Riddleston . Hoffy. Born 1906. Father an agricultural labourer, rural Suffolk. Left elementary school at 14, worked as agricultural labourer for five years, then joined police force and rose to be superintendent in Lowestoft.
• Robert Roberts . The Classic Slum and A Ragged Schooling. Born 1905 Salford. Poor but literate parents. Academic ambitions, but failed scholarship exam and left school at 14 for job in engineering works. Became writer and teacher.
• Rolph, C. H. (Cecil at home). London Particulars. Born 1901. Lived Finsbury and later south London. Father a policeman. Mother invalid, died when Rolph was 8. To central school for commercial training. Journalist.
• A. L. Rowse (Leslie) . A Cornish Childhood. Born 1903 in village north of St Austell. Parents barely literate, ran local shop. Scholarship to grammar school, and proceeded to Oxford University, also on scholarships. Historian.
• Dorothy Scannell . Mother Knew Best. Born 1909 Poplar, East London. Family qualified for country holidays. Detail on her school, and social life locally. Accepted for central school but parents refused. Left school at 14. Did secretarial work.
• Ralph Wightman . Take Life Easy. Born 1901 Dorset village. Family had smallholding and ran a butchers shop. To grammar school on scholarship and then to university to study agriculture. Became radio commentator on rural and gardening topics.

Two unpublished undated book-length autobiographies (Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre, Theobald’s Road Library, London WC1).

• Marjorie Cook . Born 1912 Camden Town, North London. Moved to Kentish Town. Father a chauffeur, then joined army. Very little on school but clear memories of neighbourhood. (ref. no. LB Camden 75.1 COO).
• Evelyn Shelley . Born 1896 West Hampstead, London. Life centred on church and school. To ‘senior mixed school’. (ref. no. LB Camden 75.1 Shelley).

Other Important Memoirs

• Melanie McGrath . Silvertown. A memoir of three generations of her family in and about the East End of London, focusing especially on her grandmother, Jennie, born 1903.
• Hannah Mitchell . The Hard Way Up . Born 1871 Lancashire. Two weeks’ schooling, left home at 12. Earned living in dressmaking. Education through work as Poor Law Guardian on school boards and through socialist groups. Suffragette in Manchester and Lancashire.
• Kathleen Woodward . Jipping Street. A fictionalised account of women’s lives in Bermondsey, south-east London, before the First World War.
• Storm Jameson . Journey from the North. Born 1891 Whitby. Detailed account of Whitby life. Privately educated but ...