Mrs Grabiner

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If you would like to listen to a short section of the interview as you read, please press the play button on the right. If you would like to read the whole interview transcript please follow the download link at the bottom.

EXCERPT:

Title on Tape: Interview with Mrs Grabiner 1

Sara:    This is Mrs Grabiner speaking – well it’s Sara here but I am talking to Mrs Grabiner. Right so if we start with your memory of your parents.

Mrs Grabiner: Yes, I can start from the First World War.  And we lived in Preston in the north of England, where my father was the insurance inspector for the whole of the north of England and there was five daughters, I was the youngest of five.  When the war finished my father decided to come back to London because there was only a very, very small Jewish community in Preston and the girls were growing up and he wouldn’t have like us to mix with anybody but the Jewish families at that time.  He asked for a transfer but didn’t get it – he’d worked for this particular insurance company for nearly twenty years – however he got another very, very good position…

S             You said that you had come back to the south of England?

G            Yes before we went to Preston we had always lived in London. He’d worked in London with that particular insurance company yes, and then before the war was transferred to the north of England, and we stayed there right through the First World War. And then couldn’t get a transfer back because his figures were very good, he was very good at his job. However he found another very good job with another life  insurance company and we came back to London, just for the reason because there were very few Jewish families in Preston.

Being after the war there weren’t a lot of houses to choose from, we managed to get rented accommodation for the time being. Two of my sisters were working at that time three of us still at school. We hadn’t been back very long, maybe perhaps six months, when my father became ill and in the course of the next two years had both legs amputated, well above the knee.

S             So when you came back to London you were living in rented accommodation, do you remember where that was ?

Mrs G   Yes, in Hackney.

S             Do you remember the road?

Mrs G   Yes, it was called (273) crescent in Hackney.

S             And were there lots of Jewish people living around there?

Mrs G   Round and about yes. Things were very difficult indeed.  There was no sick benefit, there was no unemployment benefit, there was absolutely nothing.

S             So your father had only been working for that firm for…

Mrs G   Only six months, they were very good to him, they kept him for six months on full pay, did their utmost, but of course after a time it really was impossible… he had to resign because there was nothing he could do.

S             So what happened when he became ill? Did a doctor come round to the house?

Mrs G He used to Guys Hospital and they were very kind because at that time you had to pay for medical attention, but they never ever sent him a bill.  They had the finest specialists from everywhere, but they could do nothing. It was a sort of illness that now I suppose… a circulation problem, now you hear about it much more, but then they just had to amputate and that was the only thing, and they had to amputate well above the knee because there was no circulation lower down to the heel.

My mother did everything for him, she was the most wonderful woman, I never heard voices raised voices in anger or…. there were never any quarrels, he just took it, she did what she could, there was absolutely no money coming in, only from my two oldest sisters that were working, things were very difficult indeed.

S             So if you would have had to have paid for medical…

Mrs G   Oh it would have been absolutely impossible.

S             So you just had enough to pay for rent and to feed the family

Mr G     Yes and that it was just very, very difficult.

S             What kind of things did you eat then?

Mrs G   My mother was the most wonderful manager, she would buy at that time from the butcher.  If you bought bones, they weren’t like bones that you can buy today, they had meat on them and … she would take the meat off them and mince it and we’d have soup.  We had a coal range in those days … a range with an oven and a coke fire and the saucepans used to go on the top of it so all day long there were these bones boiling with barley or whatever.  So there was always soup and she used to do what she could with the meat, the little tiny bits of meat that we had … if she would have bought a boiling chicken … she would have the liver that she would chop, the neck that she would stuff, the chicken itself.  So there was a whole meal for all of us.

S             Then she would make the soup from the bones?

Mrs G   Yes. There was a meal for all of us, she really was a wonderful manager. There was always a good meal; there was always a hot soup.  In those days there were no fridges and the shopping had to be done everyday, things were very hard.

S             And what about the house? What was the house like that you were renting?

Mrs G   The landlady was a very sweet lady and we had two upper room and two lower rooms, there was one very large upper room that held two double beds and one single bed and all five of us girls were in that one room, with a large wardrobe.  There was no bathroom but everything else was… there was an indoor toilet, which was quite something in those days.

S             You had an indoor toilet?

Mrs G   Oh yes, because most people had an outside toilet. And there was a small garden. And my parents had the other bedroom. Then downstairs we had a kitchen and sitting room, those years they used to call it the parlour.  Sundays we used to turn it in to a washroom you see.

S             Sunday was a washday?

G            Sunday … because everybody was at home and we all helped.  Because washday then was very difficult, everything was done by hand.

S             so what happened on washday from when you got up?

Mrs G  On one wall… it looked like a cupboard, there was a flap that used to turn it up… and when you turned it up there was a copper.  So that used to be filled and lit with coal, paper, wood and that used to heat the water- so the washing was done there in the kitchen.  Very difficult, because there was only soap powder in those days, you know Hudson’s Powder, a block of soap and a rubbing board.

S             and how much would the soap powder cost? Can you remember at all?

Mrs G     In those days a double bar of soap was perhaps four pence or five pence.

S             And would it take you a whole block of soap to do your washing?

Mrs G   No, and Hudson’s powder mostly.  With delicate things like underwear they’d use Lux flakes.  But they were expensive so most things were done with Hudson’s powder, and soda as a water softener.

S             And then you had a board?

Mrs G   Yes and rubbed on the board

This page was researched by University of Greenwich Student Sufyan Hanif, as part of the 2nd Year HIS1078 History in Practice work placement.