Jean Court: Home and Family (Part 1)
‘Then father had a stroke on hot summer day whilst painting the outside of a house and died; exactly on my fourth …
Nora Isabel Adnams (B. 1901): An Introduction
MY MEMOIRS OF DR. BARNARDO’S HOME, BARKINGSIDE, ESSEX 1904 to June 1911 By Nora Isabel Adnams, nee Brazier. ‘We were placed in …
Nora Isabel Adnams: Reading and Writing
‘If wet in the afternoon and we had to stay in, we would have word-making, letters cut out in cardboard, but we …
Bessie Wallis (b. 1904) Education & Schooling
‘In a few months I would be thirteen years and that would mean leaving school. I dreaded it’. Schooling is oftentaken for …
Wilfred Middlebrook (b.1899): Home and Family
Wilfred Middlebrook opens up the story of his life by introducing us to his father, Rufus. His father was born in 1878 …
Jean Court: Home and Family (Part 2)
Jean’s mother seems to work hard throughout her childhood in the 1920s to provide a consistently clean home and daily meals. ‘All …
Pat O’Mara (1901-1983) Purpose and Audience
There is no denying that Pat found pleasure in his writing. Before the publication of The Autobiography of a Liverpool Slummy, he had …
Mrs W.E. Palmer (b.1908): Life and Labour
Memories of Long Ago, is a nostalgic account of some of Mrs W.E. Palmer’s childhood years which she spent living at Harting …
Winifred Till: Researching Writing Lives
Researching my author’s life and writing has taught me how valuable working class writing/memoirs are in understanding and learning about social …
Introducing Jean Court (b.1923)
‘Mary my sister was a dainty neat child but I was just the opposite, a real scruff.’ (‘Living in the Lane’, p. …