From Christine Bate’s document titled Henry & Amelia Porter AW.doc
HENRY PORTER AND AMELIA OXFORD
Henry (Harry) Porter, my paternal grandfather, was the illegitimate child of a Miss Porter who went to live with an uncle on his farm somewhere in the Carlisle area when she became pregnant. Little is known about his history except that when Mother’s brother Joe met the family, he was the signalman at Dalston and lived in one of a row of railway worker’s houses. Dalston was on the Carlisle to Maryport railway line, only a few miles out of Carlisle. He died in 1930 (I know it was after Sheila was born, I think when she was two years old) of pernicious anaemia, the year before a cure for the disease was discovered. I believe he was about 56 years old. He was said to be of a very cheerful disposition and his approach was heralded by his whistling. As he became less well, he whistled less according to mother.
Amelia Oxford married Henry Porter and their children were Lizzie, William, Jean and Harold. She was a tailoress and employed household help while she sewed. Amelia was known as Millie and told her daughter-in-law, Sadie, that the only thing she regretted about her marriage was changing her name from Oxford to Porter. As far as I remember, there were two aunties; Sally in Newcastle and Annie in London. I remember visiting Aunt Sally one time and also I remember being at 45 Graham street once when Aunt Annie visited. She was treated as an honoured guest, sweeping in from London in a fur coat. There was some talk about her children but all I can remember is that she had a son.
When grandfather Porter died, Nana had to leave the house at Dalston and bought the house at 45 Graham Street. Mother used to say that it was by no means the best house she was shown, but it had a flower bed in the backyard that swayed Nana to buy the house. For much of the time that I remember, a lady, Miss Oliver, lived in the front room and had a little gas ring that she cooked on. The house was a row house with a front room, a living room with a large coal fire range and a back kitchen or scullery with little other than some shelves, a sink and a gas cooker in it downstairs. There was a storage cupboard under the stairs but Auntie Jean, who lived with Nana after her marriage, kept her clothes in it. I well remember the odour of her perfume in the cupboard. Upstairs were three bedrooms. I slept in all three at different times. The bed in the large front room, the guest room, had a trunk placed strategically on the floor under the middle of the bed to support the sagging springs, so that if you took a carefree flying leap into bed you had a hard landing. Uncle Stan, Auntie Jean and Eric slept in the larger back bedroom, Eric in an alcove with a bed reminiscent of a large cradle with fabric draped at each end. One time, I slept in Eric’s bed. Nana slept in the small bedroom and I remember sleeping heads to tails with her in a single bed. To my mortification, one day she showed the bruises I had made on her legs when I kicked in my sleep. In the back yard behind the kitchen but reached from a door in the yard, was the wash house with a stone floor, a copper and a sink. One time, Eric’s goldfish went down the kitchen sink but to my surprise, showed up in the wash house. I never really believed that it happened and yet I saw the fish.
Nana was very religious. She was a chapel person and Father used to say that every time the chapel doors opened, they were in there. At the time I remember, Nana went mainly to a Railwayman’s Mission on a small street along the side of Carlisle Castle. If you coughed, she always had a sweet in her handbag. One time the service was a baptism with total immersion in a tank revealed by taking up some of the floor boards. I was fascinated. On Sundays you were not allowed to do any work such as knitting, but reading (with no inspection of the reading matter) was allowed. Father talked about Dalston chapel. He played the organ there, and when he left he was given a clock with his name engraved on a brass plate. It used to stand on top of the cupboard beside his chair and I don’t know what happened to it. I was told that Nana’s father had been an alcoholic and this is what made her such a fervent chapel person. She asked her sons to sign “The Pledge”, a document saying that alcohol would never pass your lips. Father refused and this caused some difficulty between them, but Uncle Harold signed and then was reported to go into pubs through the back door. Carlisle was a small town and not much about one’s behavior went unobserved and commented on.
Nana always wore her hat indoors because she had “iritis” , which at that time I interpreted as “eye rightis”. She had a large mole very near her lip. She sat in a chair by the window and knitted without looking at what she was doing most of the time. Many times, she knitted socks and I remember her knitting comfort items for the troops in World War Two, including seaboot stockings of wool with all the lanolin left in it to make it somewhat waterproof. It was thick and difficult to knit because it didn’t slide along the needles. Nana had a weak heart and got up late in the morning to spare her heart, although she always stayed up late at night. Early in the morning as the parrot across the street did his imitation of the milkman’s whistle, Nana would shout downstairs, “Jean, did you bring the milk in?” and Jean would answer patiently, “Yes, Ma.”
Biscuits were very popular. In the large living room there was a tall, solid chest of drawers where Uncle Stan kept his clothes folded up, including his natty double breasted waistcoats. On top of the chest, one at each end, were two large tin boxes with oriental decorations very like our tea caddy at home. In it were pappy Rich Tea biscuits that I thought were delicious. On the table was a vase of artificial chrysanthemums made from wood. The catering was rather limited, with meat that did not always taste fresh, but the highlights were Auntie Jean’s treacle pudding and the rum butter from the shop. This was puzzling because it tasted authentic and yet Nana was an abstainer. It seems that her father was an alcoholic and spent the family income on drink. She asked her sons to sign the pledge. Harold signed and used the back doors of pubs and William would not sign because he could not do so with a clear conscience.
Today is Friday and we had sausage, eggs and sugar snap peas from the garden for dinner. As I stood at the stove I had a picture in my mind of Auntie Lizzie unpacking Rita’s “tea” from a brown paper bag preparatory to cooking that delicious-looking meal. Rita worked at Hudson-Scotts where my maternal grandfather also worked. More about him later. Rita came to Graham Street in Denton Holme straight from work every Friday and ate her tea at Nana’s, then the family spent the evening together. It was a little fry-up consisting of some bacon, a link of sausage, an egg and I think a tomato, with bread and butter.
Rita was one of Lizzie and Gal’s twins. Gal’s real name was George and I have no idea where his nickname came from. Gal worked at Carlisle railway station and was the leader of a team that was responsible for track safety and maintenance. I think his title was a ganger. He had a border terrier and grew red and yellow tomatoes. The twins were born shortly before the end of World War I, and the boy, Willie, was named after my father who had just been called up into the army at the age of eighteen. This was insurance that there would still be a William if Father did not come back. As a child I used to hear this story and think what a pessimistic family he came from, but now I realize that unless the war had ended when it did, there was a good chance that he would have been killed. Rita’s real name was Harriet, after Harry Porter, my grandfather whom I never knew. She was a large, comfortable and very cheerful person. The fascinating thing about her was that part of one finger was missing, from an accident at Hudson-Scott’s where they made metal boxes. Indeed, it is now called the Metal Box Company. Rita was an accomplished pianist when it came to playing popular songs from memory. She was good at “vamping”, called faking in the U.S. She had a sad life in spite of her good nature. She was engaged to a young man who gave her an impressive engagement ring. He was going out to India and Rita broke off the engagement on Auntie Lizzie’s advice because India was so far away and she didn’t want her to go to a strange place away from her family. Rita never married.
Auntie Lizzie was notable in my mind because she used Izal toilet paper, the kind with a card in it that had revised versions of nursery rhymes advertising the product. At one visit, I was in trouble because I unrolled the greater part of a roll of that stiff, shiny, disinfectant-impregnated paper to get at the card near the end of the roll. I obviously did a poor job of rewinding the roll because I was found out.
Visits to Buchanan Road always began with a visit to a nearby park, a walk around the park, then the big event! We rented a rowing boat to go out on Hammond’s Pond and had a glorious time until the inevitable “Come in number sixteen” echoed across the water. To me, almost as exciting was going past some monkeys in cages just inside the gates to the park. I could have stayed all day watching them but was puzzled that Mother always moved on well before I was ready. On reflection I have decided that she was embarrassed and uncomfortable because they were the kind of monkeys with big red bottoms.
Tea at Auntie Lizzie’s was as good as any “spread” for teatime when visitors were invited. My favourite was a plate of buttered cream crackers, a benign indulgence, but the plate was removed out of my reach when it was noticed that I was helping myself too much. At the end of the evening that had overtones of Dylan Thomas’ poem “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”, we walked home first along nearby streets and over a bridge, then along a footpath that followed the river Caldew for much of the way back to the end of Graham Street and Nana’s house. How I loved those walks in the dark, carried on Father’s shoulders and surrounded by an extended family, Uncle Stan, Auntie Jean and Eric, something that we never experienced at home in Yorkshire.
Scarlet Fever for the Second Time.
Scarlet fever affected by life twice. The first time was when I developed scarlet fever in Carlisle and the second time was when Mother caught scarlet fever in 1936? ///look at the photos?////. There was a strange sequence of events that as far as I know was not explained to Sheila and me. It may be that she was told more because she was three years older than me. My recollection of something unusual happening was being in Mrs. Belcher’s front room with Sheila and I think it was Sunday afternoon. We looked out of the window and I am not sure whether I imagine seeing the “Fever Van” at our house. In any case, Mother was taken to Swallownest Isolation Hospital in the ambulance. Swallow nest is a village about four miles from Brinsworth. The next day, a man with a small attache case came to the house and fumigated the bedroom Mother had been in. I think it involved some disinfectant spray but we were shooed away. I was terrified because the next time I went upstairs, the door was sealed with paper tape.
I remember that Auntie Jean came to stay and look after us. She was always my favourite auntie and I was quite happy to have her around. Two incidents stay in my mind. The first is that I trapped my little finger in the front door, the finger that is still a little crooked. The other is that one day Auntie Jean went into the scullery and closed the door, telling me not to look. Of course I wondered why and pushed the door open. She was getting washed and was wearing blue bloomer-type knickers. She was very cross. There is a gap in my memories at this point but I vaguely remember Grandma Steel being at the house but have no recollection of her taking Sheila and me up to Carlisle and depositing us at Nana’s house. The story from Mother is that Grandma says she received a letter from Edgar and had to return to Carlisle to look after him.She wrote a note to mother in Swallownest Isolation Hospital, Mother opened it and read it then burst into tears. She must have collapsed because she remembered the doctor and nurses at her bedside and a discussion of what could have happened. Anyway, I stayed with Nana and Auntie Jean and Sheila stayed with Auntie Lizzie.
During the time I was there, I adored Uncle Stan of the double-breasted waistcoats and played with Eric in the dirt in the back garden, often it involved using water to make slap-dash, always a favourite pastime for me. We played with his old pram and I remember tipping him out. One day I ran from the kitchen into the living room where the range was and met Nana coming out with the hot kettle just off the fire in her hand. It was sooty and I remember feeling it touch me. It burned my eyelashes and Auntie Jean invited me to climb the ladder to look over the wall and show the lady next door a few days later.
And to think that now when someone has scarlet fever, they are given antibiotics and are cured at home in a few days.
To come: My stay with Nana etc. when Mother had scarlet fever. What was her address? 58 Buchanan Drive, Upperby. Was it “Drive”?