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I was interested in your latest post to Derbysgen, maybe you would be
interested in the following:
My mother was born in Middleton by Wirksworth in 1924, a third child to
William Franklin & Mary Annie Hallows. They lived in a house in Middleton
with one room down stairs and one room upstairs. All together there were
6 children in the house. The upstairs room was divided by a curtain, the
parents slept in one side and the children in the other. There were 3 boys
& 3 girls, as the boys grew older, they were moved to makeshift beds in
the downstairs room. There was a scullery attached to the back of the
house with a cold water tap and all hot water heated on the fire. An
outside lavatory was shared by 2 families. My grandfather William Franklin
worked on the railway as a porter and earned a pound a week. He gave 19
shillings to his wife, the children got a penny each and the few pence
left went towards his cigarettes. By 1938 he had decided to move to Derby
where he got one of the mid Victorian houses owned by the railway in
Midland Place near the station. Three bedrooms, a front parlour, back
kitchen but still an outside lavatory and no bathroom and he thought it
was luxury. In reality it was still a terrible house with rats & cockroaches
swarming in the cellar and all hot water heated on a kitchen range. There
were no improvements made until after his death in 1971 when all the houses
in Midland Place were bought by the council, gentrified and sold off.
The worst thing was that Mary Annie Hallows's parents Samuel and Sarah Ann
Hallows were renting the Old Manse in Coldwell Street in Wirksworth where
there were more rooms than you could count but because of a family fall
out, they never offered any better accommodation to their daughter and the
growing family. Such is family life sometimes !!
Best wishes
Jean Durbin
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Hi John...I imagine all of those 9 people must have been at home on the
night or do you think they might have been "double booked"!
I bought a tiny little cottage here in Penzance in 1977. It had 2 bedrooms,
one about 10'6" x 10'6" and the other was only 8'6" x 5'6". There was a
lounge that was 7'6" x 10'6" (the fireplace accounted for the extra 3' in
most places) and there was a kitchen under the little bedroom. The stairs
went up from the kitchen, there were only 8 stairs so the roofs were low too
(Cornishmen are known for being no more than 5'6"! so they could get down
the mines! Now, in the 1940s and even the 1950s we were told there was a
family of 10 children - surname HARVEY - living their with their parents and
grannie!!!!! How do you work that one out? Oh, and there was a privvy at
the end of the yard which was a very short yard.
In the lounge as you came through the front door straight off the street, on
the left running the whole length of the 10'6" wall was a bench, this is
where the children sat when they were at home. Grannie slept in a chair in
the lounge. Now, of the 10 children they were, I believe, fairly evenly
split between girls and boys...the boys, like their father were fishing
usually from a very young age so most of the time they were at sea. The
girls had gone into service and only returned home on Sundays. So, that's
why I'm wondering if all those people were at home that night or whether
some of them might have worked day shifts and others nights?
It's not been easy to identify this house and the neighbouring houses on the
censuses because ours, in 1977, was referred to as 4 Carnes Buildings, Queen
Street...There are 3 number 4s in this street! Carne was one of the local
bankers (Batten, Carne & Carne) who went bankrupt and they owned numerous
properties in the town which were then sold off. The numbering has never
been updated...which is ridiculous. Opposite is Coulsons Buildings...and
they have a No.4 and then there is No.4 Queen Street...leave off the section
about "Buildings" and the postman is lost. We immediately gave our little
cottage the name "Carnes Cottage" and after that there were no
problems...except everyone in the town thought we were Mr & Mrs Carne and
addressed us as such!
Sorry that's not related to Wirksworth but it shows how 13 people could
"live" in a tiny space!
Cheers
LIZ
www.btinternet.com/~e.newbery
OPC for Street, Somerset
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An interesting analysis John. I am particularly surprised by the farmer &
family, not only because of the ages of the children but because it breaks a
pre-conception that farm houses are usually a little larger than their
neighbours. It will be interesting to see if Disley, a medium sized
village, has similar over crowding.
best wishes
Marjorie Ward
Derbyshire, UK
Hollingworth ONS www.hollingworths.net
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Hi John
Some time ago I checked both my house and the house my husband previously
lived in; on the 1901 census.
Our home now has two bedrooms, but in 1901 would have had two bedrooms and
an attic (one of the bedrooms is now a bathroom and the attic a dormer
bedroom) in 1901 there would have been an outside privy (not sure if one for
each house or shared). There were 11 people occupying the house on the 1901
census - a family and some lodgers and it is now occupied by just the two of
us.
My husband came from a huge six bedroom house which was presumably 4 beds
and attic in 1901 and I seem to remember there was a gentleman with two
servants living there in 1901.
We are in West Yorks rather than Derbyshire but I suspect it was much the
same the country over, the larger properties being owned by the people who
could afford servants and the smaller properties occupied by families who
overcrowded themselves with lodgers to make ends meet.
Kind regards
Liz
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Actually the second time. This information also appeared in 1891. I used it
to compare houses which appear to have been extended between 1891 and 1901.
In my village, it seemed to be about 12%. Of course, this is only small
houses with less than 5 rooms.
Jon
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