1931
The grimy streets of Lambeth, nestled beside the river Thames, had changed little since the days of Charles Dickens, when the poorest working classes lived cheek-by-jowl with thieves and drunkards. Women living there took in piece-work such as laundry or fur-pulling to help make ends meet, just as their mothers and grandmothers had done before them. Their husbands worked long hours, either in the factories as labourers, as costermongers or down at the docks. And that was if they were lucky enough to have their men in work. Families were large – five or six children, or more – and diseases including scarlet fever and diphtheria were fatal and much-feared. The threat of poverty was ever present but the temptation for husbands to drown their sorrows in one of the many local pubs could lead to the whole family being thrown out into the street when the rent- and tallyman came knocking for their dues.
These little rows of two-up, two-downs were tight-knit communities where scores were sometimes settled with fists. The police would only venture down there in pairs and rarely after nightfall when the dim glow of gaslight did little to illuminate pea-souper fogs. Yet for those growing up in this corner of Lambeth, the cobbled streets, the stench of the river, the shouts of the factory workers, the nosy neighbours and the rumble of the trains over at Waterloo meant one thing – home.
This is the story of three sisters growing up in one such street, Howley Terrace, in the years between the wars. It is the story of their hopes and dreams and struggles for a better life when the odds were stacked against them.
This is the story of the Lambeth girls, Peggy, Kathleen and Eva, who learned to keep each other’s secrets in a bond of sisterhood, which even dire poverty, violence and war could not break.