Looking back to his childhood in Yeadon, near Leeds, during the 1920s, M.F. Harrison remembers domestic life in their terraced family home, and on the streets close to the local mill:

‘ There was a pattern to life in a milltown that only varied at holidays and Christmas. Every week was the same. People rose at the 6.30 buzzer and went to work for seven o’clock, returning home for breakfast at 8.30 – if they lived near the mill – and being back at work for nine. If they were five minutes late they were ‘pennied’, which meant that a penny was knocked off the wage at the weekend.’

‘Dinner time extended from 12.30 to 1.30 and work finished at 5.15, or 11.30am on Saturday. There was a routine at home. Washing clothes on Monday took all day; we were possing [pounding], scrubbing, boiling, blueing and starching, dampening and folding, then ironing. The children had to help. We did so many posses each, and helped to empty tubs and to fold sheets. On washing days we had cold meat and fried-up potatoes and cabbage for dinner.’

Image: Yorkshirereporter.co.uk

‘Wednesday was bread-baking day at our house. My mother baked a stone of flour every week, and from the age of twelve I had to knead it for her. Big crusty loaves and a large flatcake gave a lovely smell to greet us as we arrived home from school at four o’clock. It was always warm flatcake and jam for tea on Wednesdays.’

‘Friday saw great activity in the streets. The living room and kitchen were given a good clean, the prodded rugs were shaken and spread outside until the scrubbed floors were dry. Women chatted as they washed the windows with their long brushes. Most women put on a clean apron as they waited for the husband to bring his wage home.’

‘Friday night was the shopping night. Shops remained open until nine o’clock. After the lengthy shopping, which was an opportunity to meet people and gossip, my two aunts came to our house for a ‘call’, as it was called, and to have a plate of my mother’s stew. My father wasn’t a ‘fish and chip man’, so on Friday dinnertime I was sent to Ramsden’s [local butcher] for a parcel of meat and bones which my mother put in a large earthenware stewpot in the fire oven. There it gently stewed all afternoon.’

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Source: Dalesman, ‘ Life at Home in 1920’, March, 1979, pp. 1009-1011.