Alice's Stories recorded on tape
Growing Up around Kirk Merrington, Spennymoor, Durham Circa 1910
updated 3 February 2007
Photo of Alice Stevens, nee Coulthard
Alice Coulthard was born in 1898 in Hamsterley, Durham, and the youngest daughter of Sarah nee Clark and Christopher Coulthard.. Her sister was Violet who was a few years older. Their father was a "Coal Miner" most of his life. Alice went into Domestic Service, when she was about 14 and Violet was the local postwoman. Alice, eventually left Durham, to go into Service in London, as the pay was better.
Just a few of the Stories transcribed from Tape, recorded by Alice in 1978; the stories are not "polished" - I wanted to keep them as near to how they were transcribed.. Despite, the fact that Alice, lived most of her life in London, she always kept her wonderful Northern Accent..
School memories
The teacher, she was from Middlestone. Instead of giving the class the cane, when she was cross, she would hit the children over the back of their heads. She used to give them such a crack on the head. So one day when Alice went home, she told her mother who wanted to know why Alice had been crying. Her mother marched up to the School Master and told him! So, one day, the teacher was just going to crack a girl on the head, who was seated next to Alice, when all of a sudden the school master walked in. He took the teacher into another room and "hadn’t half told her off!"
She never hit anyone on the head anymore. Alice’s mother went up and told him, she was smacking the children on their heads. Mother didn’t like it!
Alice didn’t mind the teacher putting her on top of the needlework bench when she was naughty. But Alice used to have to stand on one leg and then when the teacher wasn’t looking, Alice changed over to the other leg. So, one day, the teacher came and had a look at Alice standing in the corner of the classroom. She made Alice get back on the other leg that she’d put her on! Alice had to stand there on one leg on the needle work case. It was a big case of course, a big wooden case. By, was Alice glad when the teacher said she could go back to her seat.
Oh school days were happy days but all the children got a punishing. Sometimes the teacher would get fed up with caning and send the class to the headmaster. Some times he caned, but sometimes he didn’t. And when he didn’t, probably because he had done enough caning for one day, would tell the children to go back to their class, to their seats. He’d already broken the cane once!
Long walk to School
Alice had a long way to walk to go to school. In the bad weather the school children had to take their lunch and have it in the schoolroom. Sit round the stove, with a big screen round it and have their lunch. If they went out to play and wet their stockings, they used to go back in the classroom and take them off and get them dried and put them back on their feet before the class started.
Mr Stott the School Master was very good. He didn’t like the children having wet stockings, so they had to dry them.
Miss Danielle the schoolteacher was good. If the children went to school without any lunch, on a snowy cold day, they sent them off to the schoolhouse and the housekeeper had to give the children something to eat. It was too far to go home to where Alice lived, down that bank and coming up again, it was breathless.
(From the tape recording - he could have been called Mr Scott)
Alice’s friend Eva and her family
Eva was a grammar school girl; and she became a schoolteacher. She was Alice’s friend. Eva's mother died and her father used to work down the mines.[coal miner] But he was up all night baking the bread and doing the work for his 2 daughters and son. The son went in the Navy. Anyway, he never came back. His ship went down.
Olive married a Policeman and Eva married – Her man was very, well off. And the parents - he was their only son- bought them a lovely big house for a wedding present!. And you had to go through the gate – up the drive – and there was all pretty flowers each side. Eva used to go to Saint John’s Church on Sunday mornings in a car – his parents had bought him. She used to step out of that car and had a chauffeur – But she always said Hello to Alice. Cos Eva and Alice used to play together. At school Alice would have tapes in her pinafore and Eva had safety pins in hers – See, she had no mother. Her mother died, but she did well, and when Eva was married, she had a nursery for the baby and she had a maid to do the work. She was right on top of the hill – it was beautiful. She did no housework; she had a servant do it…
His parents were very well off and he was the only son and that was their wedding present to their son…the house!
Olive, Eva’s sister married a policeman and Billy, the brother, went down in the Navy and never came back. Ship was sunk – Germans did it.
(Eva’s brother must have died at sea during the First World War)
I am sure that you will have discovered that domestic service was often the only option for young girls/Women from 12/14 onwards, in those days, and they used to send money home to help their parents.
The photograph taken, would have been when Alice was in Service in London, around the time she met her husband, who incidentally, was a Chaufeur, for the Big House where Alice was employed..
