Sources for the 'Join me in the 1900s' website
From the webmaster
There are three main sources for this website:
- The early-mid 20th century sources
- The mid-late 20th century sources
- Firsthand related contributions from interested individuals
The emphasis of all three is on what it was like for ordinary working class people to live in those times, supported with factual information and explanation for understanding, researched and edited by me, the webmaster. More details are below.
The early-mid 20th century sources
These sources consist of:
- The memoirs of my mother, Florence Edith Clarke (born Cole) 1906-2002 in which she recorded what she saw around her as a child in a working class family on a working class Victorian-style terraced housing estate. These consisted of the seven substantial and closely written volumes shown in the following photo.
- Recollections that my mother talked about but which she omitted from her memoirs.
- Old documents filed away by my father.
- Contributions from other family members and visitors to the website.
- Original research which has involved me in numerous visits to museums and re-enactments, studying books and records and informally interviewing older people.
- Editorial work by me, her daughter, which has been considerable.
The historical significance of the memoirs
I believe that the memoirs are of considerable historical importance, which is why I laboured long to transcribe them. Let me explain.
My mother, like most children of the time from similar working class estates, left school when she was 14 and received no formal education afterwards. Although her excellent powers of observation and memory are without doubt, as is her obvious enjoyment and satisfaction in writing her memoirs, her punctuation and spelling were not all that they might have been.
She also had the habit of taking her recollections off along sidetracks as thoughts occurred to her. So not only was I faced with transcribing volumes of the spidery writing of her generation and social class, I also had to identify recurring themes and edit them together into topics which I thought would be interesting as web pages.
The work took over a year, but I regarded it as worthwhile. You see, although quite a lot is known about life above and below stairs in the big houses of Victorian and Edwardian England, very little encapsulates so comprehensively the lives and emotions of the working classes who lived on Victorian and Edwardian housing estates without paid help. I am sure you agree that anyone with such knowledge would be an unlikely author.
That is why I believe that the memoirs are of considerable historical importance, why I laboured so long to transcribe them and why I set up this website to bring them to the wider public. But the significance goes further than that. The website has stimulated highly relevant contributions from others who have provided their own recollections and information on everyday life at the time. These have added to the historical value of the website.
The mid-late 20th century sources
These sources grew out of reactions from visitors to the first version of this website based on everyday life in the early 20th century (see above). Reactions were so positive with messages of thanks kept arriving from all over the world, that I succumbed to requests to extend the website with my own recollections of everyday life a generation later.
- I approached the task by asking myself what I am seeing around me now in the 21st Century that is different from what I saw and experienced in the 1940s, 50s and 60s - and accordingly what later generations might like to know more about. My emphasis has been on what living in these times was like, what people did, why they did it and how they felt about it.
- To set the context for everday life in those times, I have included some factual history on some pages. This has collected in numerous visits to museums, re-enactments, informal interviews and book and internet research.
- Various papers and receipts kept by my father have added realism to the pages.
- Additional information and photographs that have come in from numerous visitors to the website and my own family, many of whom lived through the same years as me or were reporting on what their parents or grandparents told them.
- A few pages are written in their entirety by volunteers sympathetic to the ethos of the site.
The Second World War
During the mid-late 20th century, six years stand out as particularly significant - and I lived through them with my own memories, as other constributors with own their firsthand recollections. Although I hope that you will dip into all the topics pages, I particular hope that you will pay attention to the pages on what ordinary people experienced and felt on the home front of the Second World War. They suffered and stayed undaunted.
| sources | webmaster | contact |
Text and images are copyright
If you can add anything to this page or provide a photo,
pleased contact me.