| Queenie
Mortimer
"What
people call a kitchen, number one London County Council didn't build
kitchens, they were sculleries because they had the copper in them,
and that's where you did the boiling and washing.
You
weren't allowed to paint anywhere, that was the Council's job that.
As regards flooring, well people didn't have carpets, they had mats
and rugs, but the lino had to be within 18 inches of the walls because
of the walls drying out properly.
The
living room now, was the kitchen then, because you had the grate
there and the oven above it, and it had to be black-leaded. That
kept the chimneybreast warm, and the house warm, well the front
bedroom anyway. This house has two bedrooms, scullery, bath, kitchen,
with a recess, and it takes five adults.
To
this day on the rent book it's five adults. The one bedroom upstairs
for the parents, the other bedroom for two children of the same
sex, and the recess for the third one, where there was a curtain
across. And it so happened there was the two of us girls and just
my brother. My brother slept down here in the recess in a bed chair,
an iron one, and he had an old orange box with a piece of curtain
round it, that was his little bedside cabinet."
|
