I've just returned from a couple of days visiting my mother, and took the opportunity to 'interview' my grandmother for the first time in my life.
My grandmother will be 101 in August (all being well!). Physically a little frail (but it doesn't stop her getting out and about with her family, when she isn't 'otherwise engaged' at her day centre, three times a week), she has remarkably good command of her faculties.
What a wonderful experience! Armed with information from censuses and bmd certs, I was able to get her views of people who were born in the 1850's - who she remamebers as a child.
She remembers looking at the remnants of a Zeppelin that was brought down in the north east in the first world war - she was twelve years old at the time. At the age of 21, she had acute appendicitis, and had to be transported 12 miles by horse and trap to the 'local' hospital. Fortunately, she survived both the journey and the operation!
Apart from the fascinating insights into the individuals in my tree, she recalled a couple of episodes which said a lot about the role of women in the 1930's.
Her husband was a miner, and liked a drink. When miners got their weekly wages, they were expected to 'tip up' all of it to their wife. She would then dole out his pocket money for the week. By the odd wager at the bookies, husbands would accumulate tidy sums that they might hide from their wives. She once found a whole pile of half crowns hidden in the rolled up cuffs of his dress shirt!
A friend of hers went one better - she found pound notes carefully hidden by her husband in cabbages at the bottom of the garden. She later discovered that her husband regularly bribed a workmate who earned less than him with a pint of beer to swap his pay packet, so that he could take home an unopened packet to his wife. He, of course, would keep the difference.
I was enthralled listening to all of this. It really puts the flesh on the bones of family history!
best wishes
Paul
