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 was a holiday there was no
money for that.
No one got to go off to Benidorm for two weeks in the sun
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 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.
They worked hard for three weeks every September picking the
hop flowers and filling bushel baskets
My grandmother used the money to buy winter clothes for
the kids and hopefully have enough left over to save a bob or two for Christmas
