My mum’s family were born and bred in Bermondsey,
East London, at a time when poor really meant poor and there was no Welfare
State safety net.
In those days you worked, or you went without
and even if you did work you didn’t earn a lot and there was nothing left for
luxuries, for example you didn’t have a holiday as there was no money for that.
No one got to go off to Skegness for two weeks
by the sea at the taxpayers’ expense like those on benefits today.
The closest thing the East Londoners got to a
holiday was the three weeks in September spent in the Kent countryside picking
hops.
Apart from the working men folk, the whole
family migrated to the Kent hop fields using whatever means of transport suited
their pocket, my Great Aunty Kay couldn’t afford the train or bus, so she
walked.
It took her three days to walk and she would
sleep in the hedgerows or woods along the route and she would work extra hard
so she could afford the train home otherwise she walked back to Stepney as
well.
While in Kent they worked hard for three weeks
every September picking the hop flowers and filling bushel baskets and earned
every penny.
My grandmother used the money to buy shoes and
winter clothes for the kids and if she was careful, she had enough left over to
save a bob or two for Christmas.
