Open Writing

Deference to one’s considered superiors. Adhering to the ways of one’s public standing. Knowing one’s station in society. Those were accepted standards by which one was judged in a not-too-distant past. Certainly within my memory.

Such conduct I found predominant amongst housewives, probably because I spent much of my early years in their company. At that time married women were expected to remain at home. It was a man’s duty to be the bread-winner. Consequently for such as myself, time not spent in school fell within a feminine controlled world, and their attitude towards social behaviour remains with me today.

Although such attitudes and comments may appear humorous now, at the time they were delivered in all seriousness from tongues ‘as sharp as a new causey edge’.

Let any working class woman be considered of adopting airs and graces, of copying their ‘betters’, and her neighbours were quick to comment. “Shoo’s gerrin’ aboon herself is yond.”

Even the presentation of Sunday School bun-fight sandwiches if cut triangular would attract comment on being posh and upper class.

Funerals were special functions, a source of revelation to the community. Any self-respecting mourner would ‘put their nearest and dearest away’ with two sorts of meat and a jelly trifle -- minus the sherry. That showed propriety and the wherewithal of a bit o’ brass.

For those unable to meet such outlay, the standard filling for sandwiches was potted meat and perhaps slices of brown bread and butter. ‘Best butter’, that is, home produced, not New Zealand or worse, ‘maggie’.

There was the story of one female funeral attender who ran the social gauntlet by appearing in a hat decorated with a veil. Not a familiar sight in her walk of life. When asked how she had coped with the appendage, her reply was that the only difficulty had been in getting the sandwiches through the holes at teatime!!

The earlier reference to ‘brass’ puts me in mind of a string of houses known as ‘Brass-handle Row’, a title self explanatory and one which illustrates local public attitude towards dwellings being regarded as upwardly superior for their area. Wrought iron door ‘snecks’ were probably the norm.

In the days of outside lavatories, earth or water, let any sport a toilet roll and that provided a talking point long after the roll was gone. What was wrong with newspaper?

Some housewives followed the practice of adorning their washing lines with an assortment of delicate feminine lingerie, a ploy creating the impression of higher social dressing being an everyday occurrence. In reality such flimsies were a façade. Indoors the heavy-duty regular underwear would be drying in front of the fire.

The weekly chore of ironing freshly laundered clothes was at one time performed by employing a flat-iron heated on the fire grate, a quick wipe on the carpet or rug to remove any trace of soot and on with the ironing. A second iron would be then heating to maintain a continuous process.

An aunt of mine owned a then modern iron, one heated by charcoal contained in the body of the iron. How the charcoal was warmed I never learned.

Both above-mentioned models were superseded by the gas iron, possession of which told all concerned two items of gossip. First, gas was available in the house, as were pennies to keep the iron fed via the gas meter. Possession of both items demonstrated the community standing of the household.

Pre 1939 let any housewife be seen leaving a frozen meat shop and reputation within her fraternity was down-graded. No self-respecting wife and mother bought frozen meat unless they were too poor to buy the fresh product.

Not long after that time, however, frozen meat became welcome throughout society in general because of rationing. Even so, there was still a lingering degradation attached to such products. To combat that, propaganda was used and the word ‘chilled’ introduced into the meat market. The term suggested a slight chilling had occurred, sufficient to preserve freshness and not for longevity in deep cold storage.

Regarding other foodstuffs, shop-bought bread was frowned upon since most housewives baked their own. Brown bread often provided at communal meals was considered acceptable, an up-market treat since few wives baked with it. Shop-bought bread was regarded as a source of idleness, as were tinned foods. One road with modern houses and new-fashioned householders was scathingly known as ‘Tin Can Alley’ because, it was said, the dustbins were laden with empty food tins.

There was also the fact that the modern house dwellers were white-collar workers and not of the labouring classes. As a teenager I was under the care of a guardian who maintained that to be a white-collar worker was to miss out on one of life’s pleasures. How, she asked, did such workers know when they were ‘dressed up’ because of the wearing of a collar and tie every working day?!!

Finally, there is the legend of a stranger visiting one area of toilers who enquired of a resident the whereabouts of another local inhabitant. The seeker was told, “You’ll ‘ev nooah trubble finding t’place. It’s t’wun wi’ t’mucky curtins!”