Tommy was a coal man, in charge of a horse-drawn dray. One day, for some reason, he brought the horse home for a visit. I remember it was a ‘cart’ horse, it was all black, and it was big. Boy, was it big. Within the confines of the Hewitts’ the Froggats’ out-shot, and the row of closets, it barely had room to turn round. It could easily have eaten from the Froggats’ kitchen roof, and of course, the narrow confines made it look even bigger.
In fine weather, Tommy would leave Nora to sleep alone, in bed, while he, fully clothed even to his flat cap, would sleep out in the yard. He would sit on the stone flags, back to the house wall, his head on his arms, folded across his drawn up knees. There was no mystery. It was merely an idiosyncrasy. Tommy Hewitt liked to sleep under the stars. In later years, when I took my dog out in the garden, last thing at night, to bend liver and limb, I would often look up at a clear sky, and quietly say- ‘You’re welcome, Tommy, if you’ve a mind to’.
To the right of our house was the covered passage, or entry, from street to yard, and at the other side of the entry, was the home of the Wilde family.
The mother, May, was a contemporary of Jane, and her bosom pal. Next to them lived a family called Scholey, but in ’47 when Joseph married Emily, the Scholeys left, and Joseph and Emily moved in.
One day, Joseph found me, and a few friends sheltering from the rain, in the entry. After greeting us as ‘the Black Hand Gang’, a name which we adopted, and nurtured afterwards, he asked-
“Haven’t you got anywhere to play?”
“No!” we chorused, mournfully.
“You can come and play in our cellar, if you want. Come on!”
So in we tramped- me, Roger Wake, Barry Gilchrist, John Groom, and the two Samuels brothers, past Emily, sitting by the fire. Joseph just said-
“I’ve told the lads they can play in our cellar, as its wet out”. Emily never turned a hair. She just nodded, and smiled at us, as we filed round the back of her chair, then disappeared through the cellar door, and down the steps. She was used to her husband, by now. They later had two girls, Marilyn and Jennifer, who were (and remain) among the sweetest and gentlest mannered of creatures.
Beyond Joseph and Emily, in the corner, lived another Hewitt couple- no relation. Frank Hewitt kept pigs, during the war, and exhorted everyone to save their food refuse for pigs’ swill. So most houses had a swill bin, outside, which Frank would carry down to the street, every day, and empty into large tubs, on his horse-drawn dray. Then he carted it all off to be boiled up into pigs’ swill, in an old wash copper, set in brickwork, the like of which was built into every house, between the Yorkshire range, sole source of heat and cooking, and the stone sink which boasted one cold tap, in its corner, next to the window. The copper wasn’t copper at all, but wrought iron. It had inherited the name from when they were made of copper, before being replaced by iron, which wasn’t as good a conductor of heat, and was subject to rust, but it was cheaper. No contest. So the name changed to ‘set pot’ because it was set in a block of brickwork, with its own little fire box under it, the flue running off sideways, and up into the main chimney.
The set pot had neither tap nor drain, so had to be filled, and emptied by hand. The finer points of this laundry system were, and still are, a mystery to me, but I assume only the whites were boiled up, in this way. I know other laundry was done in an unheated wash tub, a sort of zinc-plated dust bin with a broad brim for hauling back and forth. The laundry was loaded in with hot, soapy water, and agitated with, either a dolly, which was like a little, three legged stool, with a broom handle growing out of the top, or with a posher, which was like an inverted, double skinned, copper colander, again mounted on a broom handle. The aim was to give the laundry the maximum movement with the minimum effort. Both were somewhat awkward to use, which is possibly the origin of the term ‘dolly-posh’ for left-handed. Or possibly, it isn’t.
After rinsing with more hot water, the laundry was squeezed dry by winding it through the wooden rollers of a mangle. Now this beast was a triumph of Victorian engineering- a fascinating creature. The business half was all ‘in the air’ so to speak. The rollers, one above the other, the drip tray below them, the side-mounted flywheel and handle, and the bar of the tension spring, above the rollers, all this was required to present itself from tabletop height upwards, so that the laundry could be fed directly between the rollers from the lip of the wash tub. The support legs and frame, the undercarriage, as it were, took up the space of a small chest of drawers, but did nothing, other than lift the mangle 3ft off the floor. Until, the mangling was done.
Then the whole top half folded down into the leg space, at the same time presenting a tabletop of wood, in the manner of a folding sewing machine. The mangle had disappeared under a usable flat surface, so the fastidious could even put a little skirt round it, or throw a large, plush tablecloth over it, and make it presentable in genteel and fashionable society.
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| Mangle, Posher, and Dolly |
If you are of a mechanical bent, you will no doubt be asking why the sticky-out handle on the flywheel didn’t obstruct the folding action. Because the handle did a brisk, fold-up and twist action, which left it lying between the spokes and within the depth of the flywheel, is why.
Not all mangles were of the super- sophisticated, folding-down pedigree. The other, lesser bred, fixed upright models were usually consigned to a life outside the door, in the yard, which entailed a simple but vital, two point maintenance plan.
One- Keep the cogs greased just enough to prevent rust- too much would find its way onto the clothes. And Two- Padlock the flywheel to the main roller frame. For why? Because the flywheel had a natural predator- the flying Ragman.
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| “Any Old Rags” |
Meanwhile, wondering what’s kept us, Frank Hewitt is back at the pig sty, slaving over a hot set pot, where the swill is boiling up nicely. I can smell it, now. It's not unlike the brewery smell, on a mash day- quite overpowering. Frank used to boil up the slops with a grain mash mixture, adding water, the amount being determined by the amount of liquid already present in the original slops- enough to maintain a just pour-able consistency.
I can’t remember where the pigsty was, but I do remember that the horse was stabled in the yard of the “Vine” pub, a Wards house, across the street, at the opposite end from the school. The Vine was the scene of my first brush with the Law.
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