Granny Smith

"I suppose in these days she would have been a social worker, and every set of streets had an old lady that people went to for help". L. Scarborough remembers Granny Smith of Gloucester Cottages.

Taken from the QueenSpark book Backyard Brighton.

Going up Gloucester Street a bit further, there was a dairy, and then Gloucester Cottages, which was very much like Gloucester Terrace, except where Gloucester Terrace ended in a blank wall, Gloucester Cottages had a house at the end. In this house lived a lady we used to call Granny Smith, I don't know if she was a widow or a spinster but she lived alone. I suppose in these days she would have been a so­cial worker, and every set of streets had an old lady that people went to for help.

In those days you didn't go to hospital to have a baby unless you were rich. You had your baby at home, with a midwife in attendance. You had to find somebody to look after the family, and large families were normal, many had a child every year. My mother finished up having nine by her second husband. It was also not uncommon for two or three to die before reaching school age.

Granny Smith would come in and look after the mother and any other children cook the dinner and do the washing for 6d a day and her dinner. When the father came in from work he was expected to take over, also on Sundays as Granny Smith only worked on Sunday if a baby was born that day. Some people were so poor that they didn't have any sheets on the bed and they were ashamed to let the midwife see they had no sheets, so Granny Smith would loan them a pair for 3d a week.

She would also lay people out if they died, everybody kept a starched white night-dress, or for a man a starched white nightshirt wrapped in paper for their funeral. Granny Smith would charge a shilling to lay the body out, as in those days the fu­neral parlour used to charge more. She would wash the body, close the eyes by putting pennies on the lids and dress them in their funeral clothes.

If anybody was ill you called Granny Smith in, as she had a lot of home made remedies. You had to be almost dying before you saw the Doctor as it cost a shil­ling. And if you were well enough to go to the surgery you weren't sick enough for the Doctor to visit. It cost two and sixpence and you had to pay him first before he would look at the person who was ill. Of course there was always the Parish Doctor, but you could only have him after they had been into what money you had coming in, what they call the means test. Even then you had to pay a bit towards the medicine. When Granny Smith wasn't working she would make lovely toffee apples, a halfpenny for one on a stick and a penny for two. She would also lend you money if you were hard up, she would lend you half a crown, then when you paid her back you would give her two shillings, eight and half pence, a penny in the shilling interest. There used to be a rumour going round that she had stacks of money in her cottage, whether she did or not I don't know but she never refused to help anybody, even if at the time they couldn't pay her. But it was a matter of prin­ciple to pay her later.