FIFTEEN CHILDREN, FOUR LIVING. FATHER AN IRON MOULDER.
The family is not connected with the Women’s Co-operative Guild.
(Reproduced by kind permission of the Medical Officer of Health for Liverpool.)
86. “Not Much Strength Left.”
I am afraid I cannot tell you very much, because I worked too hard to think about how we lived. When my second baby came, I did not know how I was going to keep it. When the last one came, I had to do my own washing and baking before the week-end. Before three weeks I had to go out working, washing, and cleaning, and so lost my milk and began with the bottle. Twice I worked to within two or three days of my confinement. I was a particularly strong woman when I married. There is not much strength left. But, thanks be to God, I have not lost one. I have two girls and three boys, every one strong and healthy.
The firm my husband worked for failed; then for the most times he did not work; but I can truly say that for the most part of twenty-five years 17s. per week was the most I received from him.
Wife’s allowance 17s.; five children.
87. Struggles of a Miner’s Wife.
I dare say I could write a book on my early struggles with my seven children, and a miner’s home to contend with; and many a week my husband has not had a penny of wage to bring home, besides the experience of three big strikes and many small ones.
I may say we were married nineteen years before we lost one, and then I lost my baby first, a grand little girl of two. Then, a year and a half after, I lost a fine lad of fourteen in the fever hospital, of scarlet fever and diphtheria. Two years after that we lost a girl of twelve from tubercular disease of the kidneys from cow’s milk. The doctor was treating her for eight years for Bright’s disease of the kidneys. I brought them up breast-fed, so she must have contracted it after she was weaned. Such a clever child she was. So you will see we have had our troubles.