Peggy, October 1932
There was more of a crowd outside the corner shop these days. Peggy noticed that men milled about, chatting, early on a Monday morning. They were waiting for news of casual work, any work. Their clothes grew shabbier with every passing week, their faces more gaunt and their eyes downcast. She hurried past, clutching her father’s best blue serge suit. Mother sent her off before school to pawn it on Mondays and she went back on Friday, which was payday, to buy it back before her father noticed it was missing. It was just another way of supplementing their meagre income.
Mum warned her not to dawdle or listen to any of the silly chit-chat that went on in the pawnbroker’s. Peggy had tried not to, of course, but she couldn’t help but overhear some of the smutty jokes that the women told to the young male assistant. As they unwrapped their bundles, they would josh around with him and tease him about his good looks, or what he had got up to at the weekend, in the hope of making him blush. ‘Ooh, he’s blushing, see!’ they would cackle to each other. It was all done to befuddle him into giving them the price they wanted for their goods. Usually it worked and he gave them their asking price without too much bother, just so he could be rid of them.
Peggy simply handed over the suit, mutely, looking at the floor because the assistant was quite handsome and that gave her a feeling like butterflies in her stomach. She mumbled her thanks as he gave her some coins and was turning to go when she bumped into her teacher, Miss Price. Peggy was dumbstruck. There was no shame in pawning things but she hadn’t expected to see Miss Price in there. The teacher was holding a gold locket in her hand, which Peggy knew must be a treasured heirloom of some sort. Miss Price blushed beetroot.
‘Good morning, Peggy,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect to find you here.’
‘No, miss,’ was all she could manage.
‘Well, I would be most grateful if we could forget all about our little encounter.’
‘Yes, miss.’
And Peggy ran off home. It was a bitterly cold day, her fingers were freezing, but she now noticed that her hands were shaking too. She realized that it had nothing to do with the icy wind which was whipping through her thin coat. It was as if one of the main pillars supporting her whole world had collapsed. Miss Price was her teacher, she lived in a nice house, she wasn’t poor and she couldn’t have money troubles, could she? She was clever and she worked hard, so she couldn’t be hard up.
Miss Price had been the person Peggy wanted to be most like when she grew up, ever since she put Peggy forward to try for a scholarship so she could go to the grammar school. It had come to nothing because Dad had refused, saying they would need her to start earning when she was fifteen, and so she stayed put, along with the other girls from the neighbourhood, whose only dreams seemed to be to work in the Hartley’s jam factory. The plan was for Peggy to get a good job, as a trainee clerk perhaps, in the Post Office.
‘That will mean more to this family than staying on at school till sixteen,’ her dad told Miss Price. ‘And it will be a proper career, not factory work.’ Peggy understood her father’s thinking but she still put Miss Price on a pedestal for believing that she was clever enough to try for a scholarship in the first place.
When Dad got home from work that evening, Peggy brought him his paper as usual and then struck up a conversation with him about wage cuts. She remembered reading about that.
‘Yes, Peg,’ he said, chewing on a bit of bread. ‘Ten per cent across the board for all those in public services.’
That would include teachers. So, perhaps Miss Price was struggling, after all.
He shook open his newspaper. The main story was Hunger Marches coming to London from the most deprived areas of the North, with people protesting against the Means Test. That was a phrase Peggy had overheard up at the corner shop, usually followed by a stream of profanities, including some words she didn’t know the meaning of. From what she understood, it was the job of the Poor Law authorities to go and check out whether the people on unemployment benefits were claiming too much money, according a new set of rules which were much hated by everyone in the street.
‘A hundred thousand people went to welcome the marchers at Hyde Park yesterday, Peg,’ said Dad. ‘And the police made them pay for it. And don’t believe the nonsense the politicians spout about the marchers being sent by Moscow. It’s not all about Communism; people are starving.’
‘Shush, James,’ Mum said, snatching the paper away from him. ‘She’s too young to hear about all that.’
Peggy was about to protest that she wasn’t too young, at fourteen, but there was a loud knock on the door. She went to answer it and found the dishevelled man from over the road who spoke with a funny accent. She knew his name was Joe and he had come up from the West Country a few months ago. He was one of the lucky few who still had work down at the docks.
‘It’s my wife,’ he said, wringing his hands. ‘The baby’s coming. Please get your mother. I need her help. We don’t know what to do.’
Help was organized almost before he had finished his sentence. Mrs Avens, who had been standing on her doorstep, ran inside to get hot water and some towels; Mum rolled her sleeves up and walked briskly across the road with Joe and Peggy trailing in her wake.
Mrs Davies was doing a great job of trumpeting the impending arrival to anyone who would listen and had drawn quite a crowd at the other end of the street. Eva was sent to get Nanny Day, who was the neighbourhood’s unofficial midwife. Peggy entered the house with her mother and was almost overcome by the stench. A pile of rabbit skins and tails lay in a basket in the corner of the front room and there was fluff all over the floor.
‘Haven’t had time to clean up,’ said Joe, shrugging his shoulders by way of apology. ‘The wife’s been doing some fur-pulling to help us make ends meet.’ Peggy had seen the work before, as so many women did it to earn a little something, but it was back-breaking and soul-destroying, rubbing the down off the skins of those little beasts with a blunt knife until your fingers bled and the fluff getting up your nose and in your mouth. And then the furriers only paid pennies. Peggy’s mum had tried it when she was younger but said she preferred to have her hands red raw from cleaning than deal with the awful smell and the fluff of those rabbits.
A loud scream came from upstairs.
‘What is your wife’s name, Joe?’
‘It’s Mary,’ he said, the colour draining from his face.
Mary was lying on an old mattress on the floor of the upstairs bedroom. There were no curtains at the windows, just an old sheet pinned up to give some privacy. There were no bedclothes either. She just lay on top of her husband’s coat. A crate in the corner served as a chair for Joe, who sat, helplessly, wringing his hands as his wife’s face contorted with the pain.
‘Hello, Mary,’ said Peggy’s mum. ‘I’m Margaret, from across the road.’
‘Help me!’ she said. ‘I’m dying.’
Margaret knelt down beside her and stroked her hair, which was matted with sweat. Peggy moved to take her hand. Mary didn’t look much older than her, and Peggy sent up a silent, selfish prayer that she wouldn’t end up giving birth in such penury.
‘Oh, Mary, you silly girl, you aren’t dying. You are going to have a beautiful baby,’ Mum said.
Without waiting to be invited in, Mrs Avens charged upstairs and plonked a basin of hot water and some towels down on the floor.
‘Oh, you poor dear,’ she said, looking around the room, ‘You have barely anything to your name.’ Tact was never her strong point. Mum shot her a glance.
‘I’m so ashamed,’ wailed Mary. ‘I have no linen!’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Mum, ‘We will all spare you something.’ And she sent Mrs Avens off, with a flea in her ear, to collect something from all the other women in the street.
Nanny Day arrived to take charge of the situation, just as the baby’s head was appearing.
‘The pain!’ screamed Mary. ‘Make it stop!’
‘Now,’ said Nanny Day, as Peggy held on to the girl’s hand. ‘When I tell you to push, push down, hard.’
Peggy tried not to look, honest she did, but she couldn’t help but notice that something small, bloody and slippery was emerging from between Mary’s legs.
Joe turned his face away, unable to watch. He shouldn’t be here. This was women’s work, something he knew nothing about and, frankly, you could see he didn’t want to know, in any case. A split second later, there was a loud cry and he turned around to see the face of his first child. It was scrunched up and covered in blood. Mary lay back, exhausted, smiling at last. Nanny Day held the baby up, still attached by the cord to his mother. ‘It’s a boy!’ she cooed. ‘A beautiful baby boy!’
Joe knelt down beside Mary and kissed her forehead.
Mum whispered in his ear, ‘There is a bit more work to do, Joe. Maybe you should wait outside.’
He didn’t need to be asked twice. He’d seen enough blood and guts for one day. Word had spread like wildfire and as he stepped outside for some fresh air, a loud cheer went up from the men and women, his neighbours. He was slapped on the back, offered a smoke and whisked away to the pub for a celebratory pint before he knew what was happening.
Mrs Avens returned with a pile of sheets, a pillow, some towels and muslin cloths, as well as a drawer for the baby to sleep in. ‘That is from my best sideboard,’ she told Mary, who was feeding the baby and stroking his little face. ‘I will need it back eventually, but you take your time, love.’
Over the coming weeks, the whole street kept an eye out for Mary and the baby. Eva was a frequent visitor, taking a few buns from her early-morning expeditions up to the bakery in Covent Garden, and everyone was amazed by the generosity of the greengrocer up at the Cut, who – Eva said – regularly donated an apple or an orange for the new mother.
‘Funny that, because he never spares me as much as an extra pip from one of his apples, even with my bad legs,’ grumbled Mrs Avens.
Peggy noticed that the atmosphere around the corner shop on pay-day, which was Friday, had become tense, with men airing their grievances about the Means Test and Mr Pemberton from the Poor Law Authority in particular. It was the Poor Law’s job to work out whether people qualified for any financial help under the new rules laid down by the Government, using the Means Test. Put simply, most people found they couldn’t get as much help as they used to, even if they were on the breadline already. Meanwhile, the Poor Law also encouraged men who were out of work to make good use of their time. The latest outrage centred on some work schemes for the unemployed on the local allotments, as well as boot-mending and rag-rug making. ‘It’s little more than slave labour because they ain’t going to pay us a penny. It’s just keeping us busy,’ said one man, spitting on the ground to signal his disgust.
Another added, ‘In Bermondsey, the Poor Law are trying to work out how to give people an extra shilling, not take it away. That Pemberton wants to be taught a lesson.’ According to Peggy’s father, the authorities in Bermondsey were a radical lot who refused to axe people’s benefits and were trying to find ways of bending the rules to give the needy an extra bit of help.
The next evening, Peggy spotted a notice in the shop window about a forthcoming meeting in the pub down the road, with speakers from the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, to discuss the Means Test. She made a mental note to tell her father about it. As she walked home along Howley Terrace in the failing light of dusk and smog, she spotted Mary coming out of her little terraced house, with her baby in her arms. Drawing near, she saw that Mary was wearing a hessian sack as a dress. Peggy waved at her but Mary just put her head down and scurried off.
When Peggy asked her mum why Mary was dressed like that, she sighed. ‘She’s pawned her clothes to make ends meet and now she feels she can’t go out in the daylight because of the shame of it. There’s a lot of folks worse off than we are.’
James put his newspaper down and announced that he was going to the pub for a quick pint, which was not like him because he rarely drank. It wasn’t that Margaret begrudged him anything but they could barely afford it. Besides, she didn’t want him coming home full of beer because, well, they already had five kids and she didn’t want any more. She knew only too well how easily a little accident could happen in drink and nine months later there would be the patter of tiny feet and another mouth to feed. Like so many women in the street, her endless round of mending late into the evening seemed to have put paid to any further children but once the man of the house was three sheets to the wind . . .
‘Don’t be too late,’ she said, to his departing back.
When James returned from the pub, she had pulled the blankets right up to her neck and was feigning sleep. ‘It’s all right, Margaret,’ he breathed in her ear as he clambered in beside her. ‘I’ve only had a pint. We were talking business, me and some of the other fellas from Tenison Street. Pemberton is coming to see that young couple from the West Country tomorrow and I’m going to be there to put their case.’
Some of the men jokingly called Joe ‘the country bumpkin’ because he was so naive and trusting. The whole street knew they didn’t have two brass farthings to rub together but the worry was that the Poor Law would run rings around them both, even though they were a deserving case.
‘Don’t you go getting into any bother,’ said Margaret, turning to face him. ‘I know you are trying to help but we can’t be fighting other people’s battles. We’re all trying to do what we can to support them.’
‘They just need someone to speak up for them,’ said James. ‘There’s a meeting tomorrow night about how they are doing things in Bermondsey with the Poor Law. It doesn’t make sense that the likes of Pemberton are penny-pinching when there are ways to help those who really need it.’
Margaret sighed. There was no point arguing with him. Everyone in the street looked up to him and she knew he wouldn’t get involved unless he really felt it was necessary. He put his arms around her waist and hugged her and she felt safe in his arms, lying together there in the dark.
Mrs Davies from number 16 was loitering on her doorstep when James came home early from the cricket bat factory the next day.
‘Clocked off early?’ she ventured. When he didn’t reply, she shouted after him, barely disguising the note of triumph in her voice. ‘Mr Pemberton is already in there. You’re probably too late because he turned up a full half-hour early!’
James scowled and quickened his pace.
When he got to Joe’s door, it was already open and Mr Pemberton was about to leave. James could hear Mary sobbing in the scullery.
‘Wait,’ said James, blocking his path. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Nothing more to be said,’ said Mr Pemberton, flicking imaginary dust off his bowler hat as he crossed the threshold. His little moustache twitched with pleasure as he spoke. ‘The matter is settled.’
‘I have come to speak for them,’ said James, catching sight of Joe sitting at the foot of the stairs, with his head in his hands. ‘They need someone to help put their case.’
‘Rules are rules,’ said Mr Pemberton, popping his hat onto his head and buttoning his coat right up to the collar with deft little fingers. ‘The Poor Law cannot make exceptions.’
‘But they can and they do in Bermondsey, and well you know it,’ said James.
Mr Pemberton, who wasn’t used to people arguing with his decisions, for fear of losing an extra penny from their benefits, raised an eyebrow.
‘Ah, yes, Red Bermondsey, the borough of comrades,’ he spat. ‘Well, it’s a pity our country friends here don’t live in Bermondsey, isn’t it? They live in Lambeth.’
James moved alarmingly close to Mr Pemberton. ‘How, in the name of God, are these people not deserving?’ he said, seizing him by the collar and knocking his hat to the floor in the process.
‘Take your hands off me!’ cried Mr Pemberton. ‘Or it will be the worse for you! I have witnesses, see?’ He pointed to the women and children standing open-mouthed in their doorways. James Fraser had his hands around the throat of the Poor Law! Mr Pemberton had barely finished his sentence before the women pulled their children inside, slamming their front doors and leaving the street deserted.
‘I don’t think so,’ said James, moving his face closer to that of Mr Pemberton, which had now gone puce with rage.
‘You will regret this, you will all regret this,’ shouted Mr Pemberton, stooping to retrieve his hat from the gutter. ‘I shall be informing the constables about the behaviour of this street!’ And, with that, he plonked his bowler hat back on top of his balding head and stalked off, to do more good.
James Fraser’s besting of the Poor Law was the chief topic of conversation that night in the Waterman’s Arms. Quite a crowd had gathered there for the meeting about the Means Test and the Poor Law, which the landlord was delighted about because wage cuts meant he wasn’t pulling as many pints as he would like these days. Peggy had waited for her father to go to the meeting and her mother to pop out to Nanny Day’s to collect some ironing before sneaking downstairs and out of the house, to go and take a look for herself. She pressed a ha’penny – her most precious gift from Old Uncle Dennis – into Eva’s palm before she left the bedroom, warning her: ‘Don’t you dare tell!’
A thick fog hung in the night air. As she scurried along the greasy cobbles to her destination, she felt it creep down her throat and into her lungs. She knew she would get into terrible trouble if she was found out but the desire to hear the union leaders talk was overwhelming. She couldn’t actually go into the pub, of course, but she planned to sneak a peek at what was going on through the doors or press her ear to the frosted glass.
A ruddy-faced man stood on a chair and shouted at the crowd, to call the meeting to order. There were a few cheers as he identified himself as a union leader from Bermondsey. Men stopped chattering and listened intently as he outlined the outrageous cuts imposed on the poor by the hated Means Test: ‘Twenty-five shillings cut to six shillings, sixteen shillings reduced to ten shillings and sixpence. The worst case I know of was up North, where they cut it from twenty-six shillings to nothing.’
‘Someone should lynch that bastard Pemberton!’ came a voice from the darkest recesses of the pub.
‘Brothers,’ said the union leader, ‘that is not the way. We will negotiate. We will protest. But it will be lawful.’
Peggy didn’t hear the responses to that because she was distracted by someone pulling at her sleeve. She turned and saw that little pipsqueak Georgie Harwood from Kathleen’s class.
‘Get off me!’ she said, brushing his arm aside.
‘What are they saying?’ he said, craning his neck to peer above the frosted glass.
‘Get down!’ said Peggy, reddening with annoyance. ‘You are going to spoil everything. I am serious about this.’
‘So am I,’ said George, pushing himself so far forward that he threatened to tumble through the pub door. ‘My dad is in there, you know. He will be speaking next.’
Peggy didn’t reply but afforded him a bit more elbow room. It was only fair, as his dad was a trade union man. They listened to the list of areas where the Poor Law authorities were bending the rules to try to help those in need, much to the annoyance of the Government. Their eavesdropping was brought to an abrupt end by a voice booming in their ears: ‘Well, well, what do we have here, then?’
They spun around and came face-to-face with a burly policeman. ‘This is no place for children,’ he said. ‘Run along home.’
‘But my dad is in there,’ said George, earning himself a clip around the ear.
‘Listen, sonny, I don’t care if the King himself is in there, I am telling you to hop it, so I suggest you do just that. Now, hop it!’
Peggy grabbed George by the hand and started to pull him away. As she did so, she noticed more policemen, walking briskly, in pairs, coming down Belvedere Road. George was still protesting as she dragged him around the corner into Tenison Street, where they stopped under the dim glow of the street gas-lamp and kept watch on the pub.
Ten policemen gathered outside and then rushed through the doors, with their truncheons raised. There were shouts and the sound of breaking glass. Men spilt out into the street, fists flying, as the policemen battered them. In seconds, the crowd had surrounded Peggy and George at the top of Tenison Street.
‘There’s kids here!’ one of the men shouted to a policeman. ‘Back off!’
He was silenced by a blow to the side of his head from a passing officer: ‘Take that back to Moscow, you red scum!’
Instinctively, Peggy grabbed George by the hand and started to run down Tenison Street but she hadn’t gone more than ten yards before she heard the clatter of horses’ hooves. She froze as the huge shapes loomed out of the darkness towards her. Policemen came cantering up the road on horses as big as anything she had seen pulling the brewer’s cart. They rode straight into the retreating crowd of men, who were being beaten back by a line of policemen from the other end of the street.
‘We’re trapped!’ said George breathlessly, as he flung himself out of the way and landed against a front door. Peggy didn’t have time to react. She screamed as the flank of a passing horse struck her shoulder and knocked her to the floor. She tasted blood in her mouth as she lay on the cobbles and could now only see a tangle of legs and hear the shouts, as men brawled with each other in the dim gaslight. As she started to cry, she felt a pair of arms around her, pulling her to the safety of the doorstep. It was George.
He hammered on the front door, shouting, ‘Please, let us in!’ and it swung open.
A woman pulled them both inside and then barred the door with a chair, before shooing them into the scullery.
‘What in God’s name were you two doing out there?’ she cried. ‘Your mother will be livid!’
Peggy started to sob.
‘It’s all right, love,’ said the woman, realizing that Peggy was hurt. ‘I will get that cut cleaned up for you and we will get you home when this is all over. Aren’t you Margaret’s girl?’
‘Yes,’ she said, as her eyes darted about the room, taking in the clothes drying on an airer above the range, the half-eaten loaf on the table and little dog curled up on the floor, snoozing. It was a home much like her own. She put her fingers to her mouth. Her lip had swelled so much she felt like a circus clown. George held her hand as she rinsed her mouth out with salty water. It stung like hell.
It was a good hour before the street lay silent. Peggy was bundled up in a shawl and George and the woman walked her home.
Margaret screamed when she opened the door and saw Peggy’s face. She hadn’t even noticed she was missing because Eva had carefully stuffed pillows down the bed next to her and kept her promise not to tell. That would earn her little sister a belting, Peggy knew. Her father sat, ashen-faced, at the kitchen table. He was too angry and too shocked to speak. He nursed a cut on his forehead and a bruise was already blackening on his cheek.
‘Get to bed, Peggy. We will deal with this in the morning,’ he said.
He could have punished her there and then and she wouldn’t have fought him. But her father hadn’t laid a finger on her for over a year. It was as if he felt she was too old for that now. Instead, he would refuse to speak to her for a week or ban her from reading the paper, which she found worse than being strapped, to be honest.
Only one person seemed to be in good spirits as the night drew to a close. George Harwood whistled his way back to Roupell Street in the dark. In his hand he carried a blue ribbon which had fallen from Peggy’s hair as he rescued her from the battle of Tenison Street. He felt its softness between his fingers and vowed never to give it back until she kissed him.