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This is the story of the rise and fall of children's outdoor games in 20th century Britain. | 0:00:03 | 0:00:11 | |
It's a journey into a secret world of adventure and imagination that | 0:00:11 | 0:00:15 | |
blossomed in the nation's streets, back alleys and playgrounds. | 0:00:15 | 0:00:18 | |
Playing on the streets was the defining feature of a working-class childhood. | 0:00:18 | 0:00:24 | |
But the freedom they enjoyed meant they often got into trouble, none more so than the tribal | 0:00:24 | 0:00:30 | |
gangs of boys who named themselves after the places where they lived. | 0:00:30 | 0:00:34 | |
# We are the King's Cross boys | 0:00:34 | 0:00:37 | |
# We know our manners We spend our tanners | 0:00:37 | 0:00:42 | |
# We are respected wherever we go | 0:00:42 | 0:00:46 | |
# I tiddly, I-tie, eat brown bread, Ever seen a donkey fall down dead? | 0:00:46 | 0:00:50 | |
# We are the King's Cross boys. # | 0:00:50 | 0:00:54 | |
CHILDREN CHANT | 0:00:54 | 0:00:57 | |
# When I call your birthday, please jump in, January, February, March | 0:00:57 | 0:01:04 | |
# April, May, June, July... # | 0:01:04 | 0:01:08 | |
Children enjoyed a huge repertoire of games and songs, all still fondly remembered today. | 0:01:08 | 0:01:15 | |
# I'm looking for my ogo pogo My funny little ogo pogo | 0:01:15 | 0:01:20 | |
# His mother was an earwig His father was a whale | 0:01:20 | 0:01:25 | |
# Let's put a little bit of salt On his tail. # | 0:01:25 | 0:01:27 | |
Aw, soppy songs. | 0:01:27 | 0:01:29 | |
This is the story of a lost world of outdoor children's play | 0:01:33 | 0:01:38 | |
that survived into the 1950s before changing forever. | 0:01:38 | 0:01:43 | |
100 years ago, folklorists began documenting the extraordinary | 0:01:50 | 0:01:54 | |
kaleidoscope of children's games that flourished in the city streets. | 0:01:54 | 0:01:58 | |
In working-class London, they collected more than | 0:01:58 | 0:02:01 | |
1,000 different children's games from street football to leapfrog. | 0:02:01 | 0:02:06 | |
But what struck them most of all was their spirit of defiance, expressed most vividly in their songs. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:11 | |
There was quite a big repertoire of street songs that all kids knew that they learnt from other kids. | 0:02:11 | 0:02:19 | |
They weren't nursery rhymes. They weren't the sort of songs | 0:02:19 | 0:02:23 | |
you learnt at school, although some of them were parodies of things you learnt at school. | 0:02:23 | 0:02:28 | |
As a child in the 1920s, Charles Chilton sang these | 0:02:28 | 0:02:32 | |
songs and later collected them as a folklorist and writer. | 0:02:32 | 0:02:36 | |
He was one of that generation of schoolchildren who celebrated Empire Day every 24th May, | 0:02:36 | 0:02:42 | |
for which they were taught patriotic hymns designed to instil national pride and duty. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:48 | |
I want to tell you, children, that you are each one of you a member of the Empire | 0:02:48 | 0:02:56 | |
and when you sing that you are proud of the empire, I want you to feel you are proud of yourselves. | 0:02:56 | 0:03:03 | |
# Land of hope and glory... # | 0:03:03 | 0:03:09 | |
But the stark contrast between the rhetoric of empire and the poverty | 0:03:09 | 0:03:13 | |
of much working-class life was not lost on children like Charles. | 0:03:13 | 0:03:17 | |
This is what they sang. | 0:03:17 | 0:03:20 | |
# Land of soap and water | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
# Mother, wash my feet | 0:03:24 | 0:03:28 | |
# Father, pick my toe nails | 0:03:28 | 0:03:32 | |
# Whilst I eat my meat. # | 0:03:32 | 0:03:35 | |
We were supposed to be very proud that Britain had the largest empire in the world. | 0:03:39 | 0:03:45 | |
Most of us, of course, had no soles to our shoes and some of us | 0:03:45 | 0:03:50 | |
didn't have shirts to our backs but we were very proud of being British. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:54 | |
However, there were some customs where | 0:03:55 | 0:03:58 | |
poor children were truly grateful for the gifts they received. | 0:03:58 | 0:04:01 | |
On highdays and holidays, there was often fun and games on the streets as children scrambled for food | 0:04:01 | 0:04:07 | |
and money, ritually dispensed to them by the better-off. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:11 | |
In the Norfolk village of Chedworth, children eagerly looked forward to the 14th February. | 0:04:11 | 0:04:16 | |
St Valentine's Day was the best day of the year for Ed Mitchell. | 0:04:16 | 0:04:20 | |
We congregated down the bottom of our road, and we'd go to where the posh people lived | 0:04:20 | 0:04:27 | |
and we would sing, | 0:04:27 | 0:04:29 | |
# Old mother Valentine Draw up your window blind | 0:04:29 | 0:04:34 | |
# You be the giver I'll be the taker... # | 0:04:34 | 0:04:37 | |
Then we would jazz it up, | 0:04:37 | 0:04:39 | |
# Old mother Valentine Draw up your window blind | 0:04:39 | 0:04:42 | |
# You be the giver I'll be the taker... # | 0:04:42 | 0:04:45 | |
Quicker and quicker and quicker, Then they would heat up halfpennies on a shovel over a coal fire | 0:04:45 | 0:04:50 | |
and throw them in the road and us kids would scramble for them cos they were red hot. As soon as you put | 0:04:50 | 0:04:55 | |
your hands and fingers on them they burnt your fingers so you had to drop them, which caused a big laugh. | 0:04:55 | 0:05:00 | |
Then we would go down the road to the shops where we would sing it, Old Mother Valentine. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:05 | |
Then out of the shop would come old Alborn, the shop keeper, and he'd | 0:05:05 | 0:05:09 | |
chuck us all the old sweets he had since Christmas. | 0:05:09 | 0:05:11 | |
And we'd be scraping about on the floor for these and it was a very | 0:05:11 | 0:05:15 | |
big day in our lives, more important than Christmas cos we were getting something for nothing, you see. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:22 | |
Another popular custom in the children's calendar was | 0:05:22 | 0:05:25 | |
Bonfire Night on the 5th November, when almost every street ritually burned an effigy of Guy Fawkes. | 0:05:25 | 0:05:32 | |
This fascination with bogeymen and folk devils ran deep | 0:05:32 | 0:05:37 | |
and surfaced in children's games throughout the year. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:40 | |
John Salinas grew up in Liverpool in the 1920s and '30s. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:45 | |
There was one game we played, "Old witch, old witch, what are you looking for?" | 0:05:45 | 0:05:50 | |
One of us would bend over like an old women and then the rest of us | 0:05:50 | 0:05:55 | |
would group around whilst she hobbled along and we would say, | 0:05:55 | 0:06:00 | |
Old witch, old witch, what are you looking for? | 0:06:00 | 0:06:03 | |
And she would say "pins and needles". | 0:06:03 | 0:06:07 | |
"Old witch, old witch, what are the pins and needles for?" | 0:06:07 | 0:06:11 | |
"To sew buttons on clothes." | 0:06:11 | 0:06:14 | |
Now, everybody knew what was coming next | 0:06:15 | 0:06:21 | |
and the fear was anticipated. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:24 | |
"Old witch, old witch, what are you looking for?" | 0:06:24 | 0:06:27 | |
"Knives and forks." | 0:06:27 | 0:06:30 | |
"Old witch, old witch, what are the knives and forks for?" | 0:06:30 | 0:06:33 | |
And at this she would straighten up and fling her arms wide, "To eat little boys and girls like you!" | 0:06:33 | 0:06:40 | |
By which time everybody had scattered. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:42 | |
The street was a fairly safe place where children could act out | 0:06:46 | 0:06:49 | |
their fears and fantasies, free from adult control. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:53 | |
Mothers and neighbours often kept a watchful eye on the young ones | 0:06:53 | 0:06:57 | |
but it was the children who decided what they wanted to play. | 0:06:57 | 0:07:00 | |
For girls, skipping was a perennial favourite and in London's East End | 0:07:00 | 0:07:05 | |
girls like Joan Risley had a large repertoire of skipping games. | 0:07:05 | 0:07:09 | |
That was one of our everyday games, you couldn't | 0:07:09 | 0:07:12 | |
go out without a skipping rope or you would always try and find someone who had a skipping rope. | 0:07:12 | 0:07:18 | |
Sometimes there was a crowd of us or sometimes we skipped on our own. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:26 | |
And we used to sing a little song to it. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:30 | |
# There's somebody under the bed I don't know who it is | 0:07:30 | 0:07:34 | |
# I feel so shocking frightened I'll call Marjorie in | 0:07:34 | 0:07:38 | |
# Marjorie lights the candle Marjorie lights the gas | 0:07:38 | 0:07:42 | |
# Run out, run out There's somebody under the bed. # | 0:07:42 | 0:07:46 | |
But children's play wasn't always as good natured as this. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:54 | |
Some boys and girls were routinely left out and picked on for being different. | 0:07:54 | 0:07:58 | |
Any sign of weakness or inferiority might be cruelly seized upon. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:03 | |
Eileen Cook remembers how one boy's life was made a misery | 0:08:03 | 0:08:07 | |
in the Lancashire mill town of Colne in the 1930s. | 0:08:07 | 0:08:10 | |
One of the lads, he started wearing glasses | 0:08:10 | 0:08:14 | |
and they were little tin rim things, | 0:08:14 | 0:08:19 | |
not much bigger than a shilling. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:21 | |
Well we were fascinated with them. It used to be | 0:08:21 | 0:08:25 | |
who could smash his glasses, or let's try them on. | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
We used to take them off him and twist, twist the thing that went round his ear and break them. | 0:08:30 | 0:08:36 | |
His mother stopped him playing out with them in the end because she was having to go back to clinic for fresh | 0:08:36 | 0:08:41 | |
glasses cos as soon as he came out we'd all try them on and twist and break his blooming glasses. | 0:08:41 | 0:08:49 | |
The children played mostly with other children who lived in their street. | 0:09:01 | 0:09:04 | |
This was their territory and there was a pecking order based on age and strength. | 0:09:04 | 0:09:09 | |
Though any footballing prowess always helped boost a boy's popularity. | 0:09:09 | 0:09:14 | |
Despite the fact that every game had its own rules, foul play meant it could soon all end in tears. | 0:09:14 | 0:09:21 | |
Boys quickly settled most disputes by fighting, | 0:09:21 | 0:09:24 | |
but long running rivalries between gangs from neighbouring areas could flare up at any time. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:30 | |
Children always had to be prepared for a surprise visit from their street fighting, poorer neighbours. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:36 | |
We were pretty low down where we were, | 0:09:36 | 0:09:40 | |
but there were children who didn't wear boots or shoes and walked around in bare feet. | 0:09:40 | 0:09:47 | |
We used to call them Buckhoes. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:50 | |
And if we saw a crowd of Buckhoes coming towards us we would take a quick side turning | 0:09:50 | 0:09:57 | |
to get out of the way. | 0:09:57 | 0:09:59 | |
But John's street had their tried and tested methods to fend off the intruders. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:05 | |
One of our secret weapons, in the street there were two | 0:10:05 | 0:10:09 | |
deaf and dumb boys and one of them, they didn't play with us much, | 0:10:09 | 0:10:15 | |
but when we were attacked by another gang, threatened | 0:10:15 | 0:10:20 | |
not attacked, attacked is a strong word, someone would say "Get the dummy!" | 0:10:20 | 0:10:25 | |
Get the dummy, how cruel. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:29 | |
But "get the dummy", and out would come | 0:10:29 | 0:10:31 | |
the dummy and he was twice our size and he would make these awful noises | 0:10:31 | 0:10:37 | |
and as soon as they saw the dummy and he made his noises and waved his arms they were away. | 0:10:37 | 0:10:43 | |
You never were pretty, were ya? | 0:10:43 | 0:10:46 | |
Come on then, here. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:47 | |
You're hurting me. | 0:10:47 | 0:10:49 | |
That don't matter. You never was pretty, was ya? Come here, you. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:52 | |
What's the matter with you? | 0:10:52 | 0:10:55 | |
-I don't want my face done. -You gotta have yours done. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:57 | |
-What's the matter with you? -Every street had its own leader of the | 0:10:57 | 0:11:00 | |
pack and although the adults tried to stop bullying and anti-social behaviour, it often flared up. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:07 | |
Donald Bayley grew up in Birmingham in the '30s. | 0:11:07 | 0:11:11 | |
No other kid was going to push me about. | 0:11:11 | 0:11:15 | |
If I wanted something | 0:11:15 | 0:11:17 | |
and there was no adult there to secure it for someone else, then I | 0:11:17 | 0:11:22 | |
would take it, I would have it, even if it meant I had to fight for it. | 0:11:22 | 0:11:28 | |
Then of course once you establish yourself as the one who will use | 0:11:28 | 0:11:31 | |
his fists most of the other kids wouldn't even face up to you. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:35 | |
In our street, in Copper Street, nobody ever | 0:11:35 | 0:11:39 | |
came to me and really, really opposed me. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:44 | |
I think you get a reputation. | 0:11:44 | 0:11:47 | |
Kids talk as much as anyone else and you don't mess with him type of thing. | 0:11:47 | 0:11:51 | |
In the leafy suburbs, middle-class families enjoyed a much more private, genteel lifestyle. | 0:11:53 | 0:12:00 | |
They wanted to protect their sons and daughters | 0:12:00 | 0:12:02 | |
from the bad influence of rough children who played on the streets. | 0:12:02 | 0:12:06 | |
Educational and improving home-based play was strongly encouraged by parents who had more time and money | 0:12:06 | 0:12:13 | |
to spend on their children's personal development. | 0:12:13 | 0:12:15 | |
For them the back garden was the best playground for their children, | 0:12:15 | 0:12:19 | |
a place where they could safely let off steam. | 0:12:19 | 0:12:22 | |
To play in the street was common and strictly out of bounds for grammar school boys like Warwick Taylor. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:30 | |
In those days there were a lot of rules of play, | 0:12:30 | 0:12:32 | |
but you weren't allowed to go around and play in the street, | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
especially not on a Sunday. | 0:12:35 | 0:12:37 | |
I think it was a sort of | 0:12:37 | 0:12:39 | |
snobbish thing between neighbours. | 0:12:39 | 0:12:41 | |
"My child doesn't go out and play in the street." "Neither does mine," | 0:12:41 | 0:12:45 | |
I mean it was silly really because there were two boys | 0:12:45 | 0:12:48 | |
living next to me and we used to shout over the fence but we mustn't go outside to the front at all. | 0:12:48 | 0:12:54 | |
The imagination of middle-class children was captured by the fast | 0:12:54 | 0:12:57 | |
growing toy industry which created games to be bought by parents as birthday and Christmas presents. | 0:12:57 | 0:13:03 | |
Most popular of all was the Hornby OO train set, | 0:13:03 | 0:13:07 | |
the dream of a generation of schoolboys whose biggest fantasy was to run Britain's railways. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:13 | |
Each year, I would get something to add to this, some points, | 0:13:13 | 0:13:17 | |
crossovers, more track, a railway station, a signal box, | 0:13:17 | 0:13:22 | |
trucks, carriages | 0:13:22 | 0:13:25 | |
and gradually and gradually it would build up. | 0:13:25 | 0:13:28 | |
All this represented to me was a really live running railway, | 0:13:28 | 0:13:32 | |
so I would have imaginary timetables and imaginary destinations. | 0:13:32 | 0:13:37 | |
My station wasn't really a main line station, it was what we called a through station, on route somewhere. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:42 | |
So I used to watch the clock and say right that will be the 9.30 going to Wigan or Liverpool. | 0:13:42 | 0:13:47 | |
It was a fantasy world, it really was, and it was absolutely wonderful, I loved it. | 0:13:49 | 0:13:54 | |
The toys bought for working-class children, mostly at Christmas, were much more modest. | 0:13:56 | 0:14:01 | |
They were purchased on the street and often played with on the street too. | 0:14:01 | 0:14:05 | |
But these toys didn't always bring the happiness that they promised. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:09 | |
In an atmosphere of scarcity they could fuel bitter rivalries | 0:14:09 | 0:14:12 | |
between siblings who didn't want the toy they'd been given. | 0:14:12 | 0:14:16 | |
On Christmas Day 1938, there was only one present Donald Bayley | 0:14:20 | 0:14:24 | |
really wanted from his mum and dad. A toy penknife. | 0:14:24 | 0:14:29 | |
Geoff, who was four years older than me, was given this lovely penknife. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:42 | |
So I wanted a penknife | 0:14:42 | 0:14:44 | |
and they said, "There's your ball." | 0:14:44 | 0:14:47 | |
And I said, "I don't want a ball, I want a penknife." | 0:14:47 | 0:14:50 | |
"But you've got to have a ball." | 0:14:50 | 0:14:51 | |
I said, "You can keep your bloody ball," and threw it back at them. | 0:14:51 | 0:14:56 | |
And that's how I felt that I was not being treated the same as Geoff. | 0:14:56 | 0:15:02 | |
Although I was four years younger, I couldn't see that there was any difference between me and Geoff. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:07 | |
The present to die for was a new bike. | 0:15:10 | 0:15:14 | |
They were rare in working- class neighbourhoods and if one was bought it was usually given | 0:15:14 | 0:15:18 | |
to the eldest boy and would then be passed on down through the family. | 0:15:18 | 0:15:22 | |
But this wasn't going to stop Eileen Cook from getting the birthday present of her dreams. | 0:15:22 | 0:15:27 | |
I wanted a bike and it was coming up to my birthday | 0:15:27 | 0:15:31 | |
and I moidered and moidered about suggesting about this bike, but my dad wouldn't buy it. | 0:15:31 | 0:15:36 | |
So we were having a meal one day and me mother had put it on the table. And I asked, "Can I have a bike?" | 0:15:36 | 0:15:41 | |
And me dad says, "Don't mention that bike again, you're not having one." | 0:15:41 | 0:15:46 | |
I said, "Well, I won't eat another thing. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:48 | |
"I'll starve to death till I get a bike." | 0:15:48 | 0:15:51 | |
He said, "Right, leave the table, go in the living room, that's end of story." | 0:15:51 | 0:15:56 | |
I thought I'll be dead by the time they finish dinner, this can't happen, | 0:15:56 | 0:16:01 | |
he'll give way, but he didn't, no, no, he didn't. | 0:16:01 | 0:16:05 | |
Eileen then decided to take the matter into her own hands. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:09 | |
She collected the bike she wanted from the owner of the local bike shop, a close friend of her father, | 0:16:09 | 0:16:14 | |
on the grounds that he'd agreed to the sale and would settle up on Friday. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:19 | |
I took the bike, rode round on it and all me friends we all rode all round on it. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:25 | |
Then I said to me friend, "Oh, me dad said | 0:16:25 | 0:16:29 | |
"you have a shed, where your dad keeps his bike, can I put ours in because we haven't got a shed?" | 0:16:29 | 0:16:36 | |
And she said, "Yeah, yeah, all right." | 0:16:36 | 0:16:38 | |
However, by Friday evening Eileen knew her game would be up. | 0:16:38 | 0:16:43 | |
Me dad came home and he went ballistic but the man wouldn't take it back | 0:16:43 | 0:16:48 | |
because we'd been playing out on it all week and he couldn't take it back, so me dad had to pay for it! | 0:16:48 | 0:16:53 | |
Country children had few toys or presents, but they at least had | 0:16:55 | 0:16:59 | |
the vast adventure playground that nature provided on their doorstep. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:02 | |
Birds nesting was popular with many schoolchildren | 0:17:02 | 0:17:06 | |
but it inevitably brought them into conflict with authority. | 0:17:06 | 0:17:10 | |
Cos every boy in them days, out in the country had | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
a collection of birds eggs in a box, and we used to go round birds' nests, thrushes, blackbirds, hedge sparrows, | 0:17:13 | 0:17:21 | |
spinks, yellow hammers and all that sort of thing, you see. | 0:17:21 | 0:17:25 | |
But we wouldn't take more than one egg out of a nest because the | 0:17:25 | 0:17:29 | |
bird wouldn't come back and lay another one if we took the lot out. | 0:17:29 | 0:17:33 | |
All us boys had caps in them days, peaked caps, and we use to get | 0:17:33 | 0:17:39 | |
the eggs before they were blonde and put them behind our caps, you see, to carry them. They were safe there. | 0:17:39 | 0:17:46 | |
But when, if we were caught by old Amos | 0:17:46 | 0:17:50 | |
coming back from the common or from the river bank, who was | 0:17:50 | 0:17:54 | |
the gamekeeper, he'd know we'd been bird nesting. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:57 | |
And he'd say, "Hello, where you all been?" | 0:17:57 | 0:18:00 | |
And we'd say, "We been for a walk down the common." | 0:18:00 | 0:18:03 | |
"Oh, well, come here then." | 0:18:03 | 0:18:06 | |
And he'd smack our caps on the top like this and if we had any birds eggs in them all the | 0:18:06 | 0:18:12 | |
shell and yoke would run down our face and he'd say, "Right, go on, I know where you been now, don't I?" | 0:18:12 | 0:18:18 | |
Also growing up close to the countryside, in hundreds of private boarding and public schools, | 0:18:27 | 0:18:32 | |
were the children of well-to-do middle- and upper-class parents. | 0:18:32 | 0:18:35 | |
Their schools, mostly built in Victorian and Edwardian times, were often set in a semi-rural idyll. | 0:18:35 | 0:18:43 | |
Here they could learn and play in a structured environment far away from | 0:18:43 | 0:18:47 | |
the temptations of the city and the corrupting influence of working-class children. | 0:18:47 | 0:18:53 | |
But entering this closed world could be a shock for young boys leaving home for the first time, | 0:18:53 | 0:18:59 | |
like Alec Gunn, who at the age of eight travelled | 0:18:59 | 0:19:02 | |
to Oxford with his mother to begin his first term at the Dragon School. | 0:19:02 | 0:19:07 | |
On the day I left for the Dragon School we went to Paddington, that was the train to Oxford. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:12 | |
And my mother came with me, | 0:19:12 | 0:19:14 | |
and we got to the school | 0:19:14 | 0:19:17 | |
and we had tea with Mrs Lynam, who was the headmaster's wife. | 0:19:17 | 0:19:22 | |
And then I was sort of handed over and my mother was near tears | 0:19:22 | 0:19:28 | |
and I was near tears, and I had this little rubber duck which my mother gave me | 0:19:28 | 0:19:33 | |
and I arrived clutching this in the dormitory on my first night there. | 0:19:33 | 0:19:37 | |
And a kindly boy who was a year senior to me came up and said, | 0:19:37 | 0:19:43 | |
"Put that way, you'll have an awful time if anyone sees you with that." | 0:19:43 | 0:19:47 | |
So I did, it was very good advice. | 0:19:47 | 0:19:50 | |
Alec was lucky. | 0:19:50 | 0:19:52 | |
In an era when many public schools were obsessed with physical contact | 0:19:52 | 0:19:55 | |
sports, he'd landed in a place with a much more enlightened attitude to healthy exercise and outdoor games. | 0:19:55 | 0:20:03 | |
The ethos at the Dragon School, in sport was mainly fitness, it wasn't so much toughening one up | 0:20:03 | 0:20:11 | |
to be a leader of empire or anything like that. For instance, | 0:20:11 | 0:20:15 | |
we were offered a reward if we bathed in the Charwell every morning | 0:20:15 | 0:20:20 | |
before breakfast, | 0:20:20 | 0:20:21 | |
including Sundays. | 0:20:21 | 0:20:23 | |
And you had to swim across the river and back every day of term. | 0:20:23 | 0:20:28 | |
There was a thing of adventure about it and there was the competitive thing to think, you know, | 0:20:29 | 0:20:35 | |
marking off the days, | 0:20:35 | 0:20:37 | |
I only have a week to do till the end of term. | 0:20:37 | 0:20:40 | |
And everyone was clapping and the headmaster came around and dished out half crowns. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:44 | |
Working-class children enjoyed outdoor swimming too, | 0:20:46 | 0:20:50 | |
in the new lidos or in their local streams and rivers. | 0:20:50 | 0:20:54 | |
With no schoolteachers in charge, and sometimes no costumes on, | 0:20:54 | 0:20:57 | |
swimming for them involved much larking about. | 0:20:57 | 0:21:01 | |
But the fun and games would often be brought to an abrupt end with the arrival of the bobby on his beat. | 0:21:01 | 0:21:07 | |
Round by us we had to swim in the River Chet and we went in, | 0:21:07 | 0:21:12 | |
we didn't have no clothes on, couldn't afford a costume, | 0:21:12 | 0:21:16 | |
until you got about 14. | 0:21:16 | 0:21:18 | |
Then old PC Hall, the village slop, he used to come down there | 0:21:18 | 0:21:21 | |
and hide in the nettles cos the nettles grew about 5ft high. | 0:21:21 | 0:21:25 | |
And his job was to catch any boy over the age of about 13 or 14 swimming down there. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:31 | |
And of course if you were over 14, he'd book you | 0:21:31 | 0:21:35 | |
and you'd be up Larden town hall and get fined five bob for that, or your mother and father had to pay. | 0:21:35 | 0:21:41 | |
If there was one thing children did that was guaranteed to antagonise | 0:21:43 | 0:21:47 | |
those in authority over them, it was to take their clothes off in public. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:52 | |
But to be caught exposing your private parts in the school playground was to break every rule | 0:21:52 | 0:21:57 | |
in the book, as 12-year-old Bolton boy Harry Dibnah discovered to his cost in 1936. | 0:21:57 | 0:22:03 | |
You always knew the teachers were watching you from the classroom windows above, always. | 0:22:04 | 0:22:11 | |
I once got a hell of a hammering. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:13 | |
There were six of us and we were measuring our penises | 0:22:13 | 0:22:17 | |
and we didn't know the headmaster was watching us. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:21 | |
When we got back to the classroom he said, | 0:22:21 | 0:22:25 | |
"Dibnah out, Ball out, Carr out, Holding out." | 0:22:25 | 0:22:32 | |
We were all looking round, "Wh-What's going on?" | 0:22:32 | 0:22:36 | |
"Now, gentlemen," | 0:22:36 | 0:22:38 | |
to all the classroom, | 0:22:38 | 0:22:40 | |
"these are the products of the English men, who will hold our empire together. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:47 | |
"These are the men who are going to work and keep their families together, | 0:22:47 | 0:22:52 | |
"and do you know what I found them doing?" | 0:22:52 | 0:22:55 | |
"No, sir. No, sir." | 0:22:57 | 0:22:59 | |
"Measuring their penises." | 0:22:59 | 0:23:01 | |
Well, the classroom erupted. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:07 | |
And now he said, "We'll see what kind of English men they are." | 0:23:07 | 0:23:11 | |
So he went to his cupboard and we knew what was coming. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:14 | |
Now he said, "Gentlemen, one at a time, put your hands up." | 0:23:14 | 0:23:19 | |
And when he brought that cane down, man, you went down with that cane to the floor. | 0:23:19 | 0:23:25 | |
When you got up you dared not whimper. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:28 | |
There was a blue mark across each hand. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:31 | |
SIREN SOUNDS | 0:23:31 | 0:23:32 | |
In September 1939, the Second World War began and it turned children's lives upside down. | 0:23:34 | 0:23:41 | |
With impending German air attacks the city streets where children had once played suddenly became | 0:23:41 | 0:23:46 | |
THE most dangerous place to be and were emptied at the sound of every air raid siren. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:52 | |
To begin with the authorities predicted that poison gas would be dropped. | 0:23:52 | 0:23:57 | |
-INFORMATION FILM: -This hand rattle means gas. | 0:23:57 | 0:24:01 | |
Put on your gas masks. | 0:24:01 | 0:24:03 | |
And keep it on. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:07 | |
44 million gas masks were issued to protect the lives of every man, woman and child. | 0:24:07 | 0:24:13 | |
One of the children who wore them was Odette Buchanan from Harrow. | 0:24:13 | 0:24:17 | |
They were made of black rubber and you had to fix them over your face, | 0:24:17 | 0:24:23 | |
and once they were on you got a piece of Perspex for the eyes to see out | 0:24:23 | 0:24:28 | |
and then you got this funnel with the grid at the end of if it | 0:24:28 | 0:24:31 | |
that you breathed through. | 0:24:31 | 0:24:33 | |
And it fixed over the back of your head with a strap and... | 0:24:33 | 0:24:39 | |
it stuck onto your face, and the smell was absolutely disguising. | 0:24:39 | 0:24:44 | |
I still can't stand the smell of rubber, It was just totally revolting and the thing was we never used them. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:50 | |
There were no gas attacks, and to begin with, no bombing raids either. | 0:24:50 | 0:24:55 | |
The war was seen by some children as a new adventure where even the gas mask could inspire new street games. | 0:24:55 | 0:25:03 | |
We discovered that they made brilliant weapons, so you know, | 0:25:03 | 0:25:07 | |
I was one part of a gang and the other gang had their weapons as well and we used to charge. | 0:25:07 | 0:25:13 | |
Our school was on a hill and we used to have to go downhill to get home, | 0:25:13 | 0:25:18 | |
and we used to go hurtling down the hill swinging these gas masks over your shoulder | 0:25:18 | 0:25:22 | |
and when you caught up with someone, whack! | 0:25:22 | 0:25:25 | |
Official films were insistent | 0:25:25 | 0:25:27 | |
that everyone should carry their gas masks at all times - | 0:25:27 | 0:25:31 | |
a message that was taken seriously by children far and wide, | 0:25:31 | 0:25:35 | |
especially by Lancashire girl Eileen Cook. | 0:25:35 | 0:25:38 | |
We were all issued with a gas mask and they were in like a brown cardboard box with a string on | 0:25:38 | 0:25:45 | |
and you never went through the door without your gas mask. | 0:25:45 | 0:25:49 | |
And at one time we had like little luggage labels with name and address on your coat. | 0:25:49 | 0:25:54 | |
And because we knew there was going to be a bombing, | 0:25:55 | 0:25:58 | |
we didn't know what it was going to be, but it was going to happen. | 0:25:58 | 0:26:02 | |
We've got to be prepared for this, you see. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:05 | |
Attacks from the air are swift... | 0:26:05 | 0:26:07 | |
Everyone knew a gas mask was essential in an air raid. | 0:26:07 | 0:26:10 | |
Be quick in getting your masks and putting them on, but keep cool and you will always be safe. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:17 | |
So when Eileen lost hers whilst playing, she panicked. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:22 | |
When I'd got home, I'd lost me gas mask, | 0:26:22 | 0:26:25 | |
I had our Rita's but I hadn't got mine. | 0:26:25 | 0:26:29 | |
Oh, my God. So me mother had to tramp back up right up to the fields | 0:26:29 | 0:26:35 | |
and we looked all over for this gas mask. | 0:26:35 | 0:26:38 | |
Gone, lost. Oh, my God. | 0:26:38 | 0:26:41 | |
So we had to go down the ARP station to be issued with another | 0:26:42 | 0:26:47 | |
and they gave me a right telling off. | 0:26:47 | 0:26:49 | |
I was absolutely terrified of the guard telling me off, | 0:26:50 | 0:26:55 | |
but had somebody notified Hitler? | 0:26:55 | 0:26:59 | |
That was my main worry, because if he knew I had lost my gas mask | 0:26:59 | 0:27:05 | |
and knew where I lived, was he going to send these gas bombs | 0:27:05 | 0:27:08 | |
that I had been training to put my gas mask on for? | 0:27:08 | 0:27:12 | |
Oh, I were poorly. I felt sure somebody would of notified Hitler that I had lost me gas mask. | 0:27:12 | 0:27:19 | |
If you have a child of school age and wish to have him evacuated, | 0:27:19 | 0:27:23 | |
you should send him to school tomorrow, Friday, | 0:27:23 | 0:27:26 | |
with hand luggage containing the child's gas mask, | 0:27:26 | 0:27:30 | |
a change of underclothing, night clothes, shoes, spare stockings or socks, | 0:27:30 | 0:27:36 | |
a toothbrush, a comb, a towel... | 0:27:36 | 0:27:39 | |
At the outset of war, around two million children from the big towns and cities | 0:27:39 | 0:27:46 | |
were evacuated in voluntary schemes to the safety of the countryside away from the predicted air attacks. | 0:27:46 | 0:27:53 | |
Around half of all city children left on what seemed to be a great adventure. | 0:27:53 | 0:27:58 | |
But many had never been away from home before and the upheaval was greater than any had imagined. | 0:27:58 | 0:28:04 | |
It was a lottery whether a child found a good home or not and some were treated cruelly. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:10 | |
However, for the lucky ones, this could be the beginning of a new life | 0:28:10 | 0:28:13 | |
that extended their horizons forever. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:16 | |
Like Donald Bayley, the young bully from West Bromwich. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:20 | |
We looked around the house and this house was different, | 0:28:20 | 0:28:24 | |
this was what I would say now was a middle-class house, | 0:28:24 | 0:28:28 | |
very quiet, very sombre, very peaceful house. | 0:28:28 | 0:28:35 | |
And she turned out to be the most wonderful, wonderful person. | 0:28:35 | 0:28:38 | |
We became "my boys". | 0:28:38 | 0:28:42 | |
We were all "my boys", Donald and Philip. | 0:28:42 | 0:28:46 | |
Never called me Don, never called him Phil, Donald and Philip. | 0:28:46 | 0:28:50 | |
The Blitz finally began in September 1940, bringing with it terror and heartbreak | 0:28:52 | 0:28:57 | |
for the families who remained in London and big cities all over Britain. | 0:28:57 | 0:29:01 | |
For almost nine months they were the targets for nightly bombing raids | 0:29:01 | 0:29:06 | |
that would kill more than 60,000 civilians. | 0:29:06 | 0:29:09 | |
Parents and their children took refuge in a variety of shelters. | 0:29:09 | 0:29:13 | |
For David Bromage from Plymouth, it was an Anderson shelter. | 0:29:13 | 0:29:17 | |
Things really started getting bad, the raids started about five o'clock in the evening. | 0:29:17 | 0:29:23 | |
We had an Anderson shelter in our garden, | 0:29:23 | 0:29:27 | |
so we stayed there and stayed there and I think, | 0:29:27 | 0:29:30 | |
during when the night time came, suddenly there was one hellish bang. | 0:29:30 | 0:29:36 | |
We couldn't go out and look but the house must of shifted | 0:29:36 | 0:29:40 | |
from one side of the road to the other more or less, | 0:29:40 | 0:29:44 | |
then a warden, an air-raid warden, come along and said, "I'm afraid you'll have to move. | 0:29:44 | 0:29:49 | |
"You gotta go out because your house has gone. | 0:29:49 | 0:29:51 | |
"You can see from the front of the house through to the ruddy back." | 0:29:51 | 0:29:55 | |
David went to live with relatives nearby. | 0:29:56 | 0:29:58 | |
The children in blitzed cities settled into a new daily routine | 0:29:58 | 0:30:04 | |
that revolved around air-raid shelters. | 0:30:04 | 0:30:06 | |
They continued to entertain themselves inside, | 0:30:06 | 0:30:10 | |
but with the next bombing raid never far away it wasn't easy. | 0:30:10 | 0:30:14 | |
You were in there for four hours, five hours at times because the raids were so big | 0:30:14 | 0:30:19 | |
and people were just getting... | 0:30:19 | 0:30:22 | |
well, us boys were trying out games of some sort. | 0:30:22 | 0:30:26 | |
Or read a little book but you were to scared to really do very much anyway as children. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:32 | |
However, even amongst the devastation of blitzed streets, | 0:30:33 | 0:30:37 | |
the morning after a raid, the children could find adventure and excitement. | 0:30:37 | 0:30:42 | |
One of the most popular boys' games was to search for shrapnel and bomb shells. | 0:30:42 | 0:30:47 | |
When we came out of the shelter, | 0:30:47 | 0:30:49 | |
us boys, out again on to the streets, onto the bomb sites. | 0:30:49 | 0:30:54 | |
We'd go out and pick up bits of shell, bomb casings, everything like that and live incendiary bombs. | 0:30:56 | 0:31:03 | |
Well, you could barter with them very well indeed, you know, | 0:31:03 | 0:31:08 | |
nice big bomb with the fin on it and them German markings. | 0:31:08 | 0:31:12 | |
We had so many at the time we took 'em and put them on the mantelpiece, one either side. | 0:31:12 | 0:31:17 | |
The true horror and tragedy of war was never far away for the children of the Blitz. | 0:31:19 | 0:31:24 | |
It was brought home to David in the aftermath of the worst attack on Plymouth. | 0:31:24 | 0:31:30 | |
One particular bomb came down and killed five, I think it was five people. | 0:31:30 | 0:31:36 | |
Completely gone outright, the following morning, | 0:31:36 | 0:31:40 | |
we boys would scrabble around the bomb site looking for shrapnel and one thing and another | 0:31:40 | 0:31:45 | |
and on this particular... | 0:31:45 | 0:31:47 | |
I moved this stone and there was a finger...with a ring on it. | 0:31:47 | 0:31:53 | |
It just stunned us for a minute, then it made me realise it was... | 0:31:55 | 0:32:01 | |
..friends and brothers of friends of mine who had been killed. | 0:32:03 | 0:32:07 | |
Meanwhile, many of the city children who had been evacuated | 0:32:10 | 0:32:13 | |
were beginning to discover the joys of the countryside. | 0:32:13 | 0:32:18 | |
"Dear Mum and Dad, | 0:32:18 | 0:32:19 | |
"Thank you so much for the postal order. | 0:32:19 | 0:32:21 | |
"This morning I went on a horse to Westwood Farm. | 0:32:21 | 0:32:26 | |
"The horse's name is Prince." | 0:32:26 | 0:32:28 | |
We'd got a wood which was ours, | 0:32:30 | 0:32:32 | |
you could go round the edges of the fields. | 0:32:32 | 0:32:34 | |
There was a stream that ran through, you could drink out of this stream. | 0:32:34 | 0:32:39 | |
The best we'd ever seen was the recreation ground, but there wasn't a tree on there. | 0:32:39 | 0:32:46 | |
This had... You could climb the trees. | 0:32:46 | 0:32:49 | |
In fact, one thing we used to do, cos there were young willow's there, | 0:32:49 | 0:32:53 | |
we'd climb up as high as we could, | 0:32:53 | 0:32:55 | |
until we couldn't climb any higher. | 0:32:55 | 0:32:58 | |
And we'd hang on and the tree would bend slowly | 0:32:58 | 0:33:02 | |
and lowered us to the ground. | 0:33:02 | 0:33:05 | |
Sometimes, if we were lucky, | 0:33:05 | 0:33:07 | |
it would spring back up again so we could do it again. | 0:33:07 | 0:33:09 | |
The evacuees quickly learned the games played by generations of country children, | 0:33:11 | 0:33:16 | |
all of them geared to the opportunities provided by each changing season | 0:33:16 | 0:33:21 | |
and by nature's bounty. | 0:33:21 | 0:33:23 | |
One game was to pretend to be a poacher, | 0:33:23 | 0:33:25 | |
as John Hooper, evacuated from Cardiff to mid Wales, remembers. | 0:33:25 | 0:33:31 | |
The salmon came up to spawn and we used to play poaching salmon. | 0:33:31 | 0:33:35 | |
Cos the river ran right past the school and one of the boys | 0:33:37 | 0:33:42 | |
would go up the stream about 50 yards or so | 0:33:42 | 0:33:45 | |
and chuck in lumps of wood about that long, salmon-size lumps of wood. | 0:33:45 | 0:33:49 | |
And then as these little logs came down we'd hook them out, you see, land a salmon. | 0:33:50 | 0:33:56 | |
It was inevitably you'd get wet feet. | 0:33:56 | 0:33:59 | |
Some of the bigger boys would occasionally be the water bailiffs | 0:33:59 | 0:34:03 | |
and if they caught us they would naturally push us into the river. | 0:34:03 | 0:34:07 | |
So we'd go in the afternoon to school, soaking wet feet, freezing cold - anyway, loved it. | 0:34:07 | 0:34:13 | |
We sent our children out into the country for their safety. | 0:34:13 | 0:34:18 | |
And we found we'd given them more than safety. | 0:34:18 | 0:34:22 | |
We'd given them a new world. | 0:34:22 | 0:34:25 | |
In 1945, the evacuees were enjoying their last summer in the countryside. | 0:34:25 | 0:34:30 | |
By then, the experience had inspired the nation with a new vision of a better life for all its children. | 0:34:30 | 0:34:37 | |
Donald Bayley had been changed forever. | 0:34:37 | 0:34:40 | |
I think I was a different person when I came home after evacuation, | 0:34:40 | 0:34:45 | |
the aggression had gone, the absolute aggression that I had as a child | 0:34:45 | 0:34:49 | |
had totally dissipated. | 0:34:49 | 0:34:52 | |
And I think I was a more friendly person. | 0:34:52 | 0:34:57 | |
The environment in which we lived clearly has a difference, | 0:34:58 | 0:35:03 | |
I mean there's no comparison between the green fields | 0:35:03 | 0:35:07 | |
and the countryside to the back streets of West Bromwich. | 0:35:07 | 0:35:11 | |
But the cities to which the evacuees returned had been deeply scarred by the war. | 0:35:12 | 0:35:19 | |
There were social problems, one of which was an increase | 0:35:19 | 0:35:21 | |
in troublesome behaviour amongst the children who'd remained behind in the blitzed cities. | 0:35:21 | 0:35:28 | |
The disruption of family life took its toll. | 0:35:28 | 0:35:31 | |
The soldiers who returned came home to cities that were often unrecognisable to those they'd left. | 0:35:31 | 0:35:36 | |
It would take a long time to build the better future that they'd been fighting for. | 0:35:36 | 0:35:42 | |
For their children, the disruption sometimes continued as countless families | 0:35:42 | 0:35:46 | |
were forced to move around, looking for jobs and new homes. | 0:35:46 | 0:35:50 | |
All too easily the child without a settled home and friends | 0:35:50 | 0:35:55 | |
could end up an outsider, like Josie Pickering from Manchester. | 0:35:55 | 0:35:59 | |
We moved around the country a lot and it always went to a place | 0:35:59 | 0:36:05 | |
where I couldn't speak the accent, | 0:36:05 | 0:36:08 | |
and so when you went to a new school | 0:36:08 | 0:36:12 | |
the teacher would pick you out to read aloud, because you spoke differently. | 0:36:12 | 0:36:18 | |
And the kids would all take the mickey then | 0:36:18 | 0:36:22 | |
in the school playground, "You can't speak properly and all that." | 0:36:22 | 0:36:25 | |
So I used to say me prayers at night, "Please God, help me to talk like the rest of the kids." | 0:36:25 | 0:36:32 | |
So I was pronouncing the words like, | 0:36:32 | 0:36:35 | |
SOUTHERN ACCENT: "Come", "fun", "don't". | 0:36:35 | 0:36:39 | |
But really I was saying come, fun and don't. | 0:36:39 | 0:36:44 | |
So then when I learnt to speak Southern, | 0:36:44 | 0:36:48 | |
blow me down, we came back to Manchester and I spoke differently again | 0:36:48 | 0:36:54 | |
but this time the kids thought I was posh. | 0:36:54 | 0:36:57 | |
I used to make this imaginary game up, to me it was real, it wasn't imaginary then. | 0:37:05 | 0:37:10 | |
And I would sit on the outside loo and I used to think, "I'm going to escape one day." | 0:37:10 | 0:37:17 | |
And I really thought I could. | 0:37:17 | 0:37:19 | |
And I used to pack a few of my favourite toys in this little toy suitcase | 0:37:19 | 0:37:25 | |
and I'm really sad when I think of it now. | 0:37:25 | 0:37:29 | |
And I had this green umbrella with this duck handle | 0:37:29 | 0:37:34 | |
and this duck looked quite human, | 0:37:34 | 0:37:38 | |
so I used to talk to it. | 0:37:38 | 0:37:40 | |
I used to say, "One of these days, Quacks," | 0:37:41 | 0:37:44 | |
cos that were his name, "we're going to escape, we're going to go on a train to London." | 0:37:44 | 0:37:51 | |
I'd wiggle the umbrella then so he was answering me, | 0:37:51 | 0:37:56 | |
then I'd make this noise of a train going, "Choo ch choo choo." | 0:37:56 | 0:38:01 | |
Then me mother use to shout in, "What you doing out there, you been out there for ages. | 0:38:03 | 0:38:09 | |
"And you've got jobs to do in here." | 0:38:09 | 0:38:11 | |
I had to say, "I'm coming now." | 0:38:13 | 0:38:15 | |
Post-war Britain was in a sombre mood. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:20 | |
Large swathes of many cities had been seriously damaged or destroyed by enemy bombing. | 0:38:20 | 0:38:27 | |
With almost 400,000 deaths during the war there were few streets and families | 0:38:27 | 0:38:32 | |
that did not suffer the loss of a loved one. | 0:38:32 | 0:38:34 | |
All this helped shape children's lives and imaginations. | 0:38:34 | 0:38:38 | |
When evacuee Marcia Fletcher returned to Manchester, | 0:38:38 | 0:38:42 | |
one of the favourite games she played with her friends took place in the local cemetery. | 0:38:42 | 0:38:48 | |
It was nice and quiet there, lots of wild flowers and we use to look at the statues really | 0:38:48 | 0:38:54 | |
cos there were angels, and things like that. | 0:38:54 | 0:38:57 | |
And we used to get sort of morbid and look for babies' graves | 0:38:57 | 0:39:01 | |
of which there were very many in a Victorian cemetery, | 0:39:01 | 0:39:05 | |
often four or five on the one grave. | 0:39:05 | 0:39:07 | |
Then a baby and a mum or a mum and the baby | 0:39:07 | 0:39:10 | |
and we found this very sad, we used to enjoy the misery of it, you know. | 0:39:10 | 0:39:14 | |
We use to look for graves where you know there was a lot of babies buried, and we'd sort of adopt it. | 0:39:15 | 0:39:21 | |
Or a grave that was abandoned that obviously no-one had visited for many many years. | 0:39:21 | 0:39:26 | |
And we'd adopt them and have them like our own little private garden | 0:39:26 | 0:39:30 | |
and we'd put flowers on a jam jar. | 0:39:30 | 0:39:32 | |
There was always jam jars where you got water for the flowers | 0:39:32 | 0:39:35 | |
and we might pick a few flowers that had been discarded but that were still quite fresh. | 0:39:35 | 0:39:40 | |
And some wild flowers we put in and we'd look after these graves. | 0:39:40 | 0:39:45 | |
We played in the graveyard but we did respect it. | 0:39:45 | 0:39:48 | |
We didn't walk on graves. | 0:39:48 | 0:39:50 | |
We always made sure we didn't walk on graves. | 0:39:50 | 0:39:52 | |
With the war over, the police could now give their full attention | 0:39:54 | 0:39:58 | |
to law and order on the streets and to catch any gangs of children who dared to defy them. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:03 | |
Much street play resumed where it had left off before the war, | 0:40:03 | 0:40:07 | |
and if there were minor misdemeanours | 0:40:07 | 0:40:09 | |
they were usually dealt with on the spot by the bobby on the beat. | 0:40:09 | 0:40:13 | |
A sharp rebuke, a clip round the ear or a visit to the child's home usually sufficed. | 0:40:13 | 0:40:18 | |
Maurice McGinnes and his friends from Plymouth were known to the local police. | 0:40:20 | 0:40:25 | |
They loved scrumping apples from the orchards on the outskirts. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:29 | |
You couldn't get on the wall because they used to put glass, | 0:40:31 | 0:40:35 | |
cement glass on top of the wall, | 0:40:35 | 0:40:38 | |
but then we'd get a sack, | 0:40:38 | 0:40:40 | |
put that on top of the glass and climb the wall, put our hands on top, and get the apples. | 0:40:40 | 0:40:45 | |
There was about three of us, course we were filling all your pullover up and all this. | 0:40:45 | 0:40:51 | |
Course you'd get down and you're walking out like this | 0:40:51 | 0:40:55 | |
and the policemen up there - and they were policemen, I mean six footers and big blokes. | 0:40:55 | 0:41:01 | |
"Come here!" they'd shout. | 0:41:01 | 0:41:03 | |
He's not miles away but course you'd stand still and all these apples. | 0:41:03 | 0:41:08 | |
Down he'd come and you had to put all these apples down | 0:41:08 | 0:41:11 | |
in front of him on the floor and he'd say, "What's your name?" You told him your name, where you lived. | 0:41:11 | 0:41:17 | |
No lies, you told him and he'd turn around and say, "Right, I'll be around to see your father." | 0:41:17 | 0:41:23 | |
The policeman was a respected authority figure and if children got into trouble, | 0:41:23 | 0:41:29 | |
their parents knew they had to be seen to uphold the law. | 0:41:29 | 0:41:32 | |
Dad would open the front door. | 0:41:32 | 0:41:35 | |
"Mr McGinnes?" "Yes, Constable, what is it?" | 0:41:35 | 0:41:39 | |
"Your son, Maurice, was scrumpying." | 0:41:39 | 0:41:43 | |
Come on in here, you! I don't know what I'm going to do with them. | 0:41:43 | 0:41:46 | |
Don't you let me catch you again. | 0:41:46 | 0:41:47 | |
This policeman's going to lock you up. | 0:41:47 | 0:41:50 | |
In front of the policeman, Father would say, "Right, boy, upstairs, no tea," | 0:41:50 | 0:41:54 | |
and the policeman would say, "Right oh, Mr McGinnes." | 0:41:54 | 0:41:58 | |
And I'd go upstairs, police would be gone, and father would say, | 0:41:58 | 0:42:02 | |
"Maurice come down and finish your tea, boy." And that was it. | 0:42:02 | 0:42:06 | |
In the early 1950s, Britain was still struggling to recover from the war | 0:42:10 | 0:42:14 | |
and rationing was still in force. | 0:42:14 | 0:42:16 | |
The spirit of make-do and mend was embraced by children who made their own toy swords and bows and arrows. | 0:42:16 | 0:42:22 | |
The recent victory over Germany boosted the popularity of every kind of war game | 0:42:22 | 0:42:28 | |
and children re-lived glorious battles from World War Two in their imagination. | 0:42:28 | 0:42:33 | |
Even greater flights of fantasy could be inspired by discarded objects from the Blitz, | 0:42:33 | 0:42:38 | |
as South London girl Jo Roffey discovered. | 0:42:38 | 0:42:42 | |
We used blackout curtains as a magic carpet. | 0:42:43 | 0:42:46 | |
Oh, and I loved it, | 0:42:46 | 0:42:48 | |
and my brother, he used to make us dress up so we looked the part | 0:42:48 | 0:42:52 | |
cos he said, "You can't go to Timbuktu looking any old how. | 0:42:52 | 0:42:55 | |
"You don't know who you might bump in to." | 0:42:55 | 0:42:58 | |
He used to put my dad's waistcoat on and a tin helmet | 0:42:58 | 0:43:00 | |
and we used to get on this magic carpet and go all over the place. | 0:43:00 | 0:43:05 | |
In austerity Britain any child's toy was a luxury | 0:43:07 | 0:43:11 | |
and there was no bigger birthday treat | 0:43:11 | 0:43:13 | |
for a working class girl or boy than a pair of roller skates. | 0:43:13 | 0:43:17 | |
I wanted these roller-skates and they were 15 bob, | 0:43:17 | 0:43:21 | |
old money, that's quite a bit of money, | 0:43:21 | 0:43:25 | |
15 shillings, you could do a lot with 15 shillings in them days. | 0:43:25 | 0:43:28 | |
But my mum knew I really, really wanted these roller skates | 0:43:28 | 0:43:32 | |
and I woke up on me birthday and there they was in brown paper, wrapped up in brown paper. | 0:43:32 | 0:43:37 | |
Well I couldn't put them on my feet quick enough, I put them on me feet and I never had them off. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:42 | |
Everywhere I went. My mum would say, like, "Go down the bakers and get a loaf of bread." | 0:43:42 | 0:43:47 | |
Vooom, I used to whiz into the shop. "Oh, careful," the women used to say, "coming in here on them." | 0:43:47 | 0:43:52 | |
I said, "Well, I'm not going to be long, I only want a loaf." | 0:43:52 | 0:43:55 | |
But I wouldn't take them off. | 0:43:55 | 0:43:58 | |
Me mum use to say, "Be careful how you cross the road on them." | 0:43:58 | 0:44:01 | |
Social class continued to define play in '50s Britain. | 0:44:01 | 0:44:06 | |
And there was to be very little social mixing. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:09 | |
# If you go down in the woods today | 0:44:09 | 0:44:12 | |
# You'd better not go alone... # | 0:44:12 | 0:44:14 | |
Middle- and upper-class children grew up in a closed, chaperoned world | 0:44:14 | 0:44:19 | |
where the back garden often marked the boundary of unsupervised play. | 0:44:19 | 0:44:23 | |
Friends were vetted, and in well-to-do families all activities were supervised by nanny. | 0:44:23 | 0:44:29 | |
It could be frustrating for more adventurous children like Stella Sykes. | 0:44:29 | 0:44:34 | |
The only children we really knew, were children whose parents | 0:44:34 | 0:44:38 | |
were friends of our parents and we would be taken there | 0:44:38 | 0:44:42 | |
and our nannies would usually be friends. | 0:44:42 | 0:44:44 | |
Because everybody I grew up with had nannies, | 0:44:44 | 0:44:47 | |
all called by the name of the family they worked for, | 0:44:47 | 0:44:50 | |
of course, never by their own name. | 0:44:50 | 0:44:52 | |
And we would go and have tea with, I don't know, | 0:44:52 | 0:44:58 | |
John and Jane, with nanny, | 0:44:58 | 0:45:00 | |
and there nanny would make an arrangement for them to come back and have tea with us. | 0:45:00 | 0:45:07 | |
We did used to escape. We were quite good at escaping the nannies. | 0:45:07 | 0:45:11 | |
The one thing we really wanted to do, loved more than anything, | 0:45:14 | 0:45:18 | |
was to go down to Tenterden and play on "The Rec" - the recreation ground. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:22 | |
Which was forbidden with nanny. | 0:45:22 | 0:45:23 | |
Nanny, being the most appalling snob, | 0:45:23 | 0:45:26 | |
we weren't to go there because the common children would be playing there. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:30 | |
We weren't suppose to mix with rough children, not her little charges. | 0:45:30 | 0:45:34 | |
But, of course, the only thing we wanted to do was go down there! | 0:45:34 | 0:45:38 | |
And for some extraordinary reason, we were allowed to drink Lucozade, | 0:45:38 | 0:45:42 | |
but Tizer was forbidden, because that was common, according to nanny! | 0:45:42 | 0:45:48 | |
So the only thing we ever wanted to do was to drink Tizer and meet these rough children, exciting children. | 0:45:48 | 0:45:54 | |
You knew you was late when I shouted you this morning. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:57 | |
I overslept a bit meself. | 0:45:57 | 0:45:59 | |
Now look, it's a quarter to eight by the right time - that clock's not fast this morning, you know. | 0:45:59 | 0:46:04 | |
Most working-class parents with larger families | 0:46:04 | 0:46:07 | |
simply wanted to get their children out from under their feet so the day's work could be done. | 0:46:07 | 0:46:12 | |
Even in the bomb-damaged cities, there were still enough parks and council playgrounds | 0:46:12 | 0:46:17 | |
within walking distance to keep children occupied all day. | 0:46:17 | 0:46:20 | |
One of them was Rene Ranahan from Bristol. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:24 | |
You went out in the morning and you didn't come back till tea time. | 0:46:24 | 0:46:29 | |
Your mother used to say, | 0:46:29 | 0:46:30 | |
"I don't want to see you till tea time, out! Go on!" | 0:46:30 | 0:46:33 | |
And off we used to go, in all winds and weathers, | 0:46:33 | 0:46:36 | |
to the park with our little fishing net, | 0:46:36 | 0:46:39 | |
with our little jam jar, do the fishing, you know. | 0:46:39 | 0:46:42 | |
Put the little tiddlers in the jar. | 0:46:42 | 0:46:45 | |
And then we used to go off then, we used to find the swings and the roundabout. | 0:46:45 | 0:46:51 | |
If you were on the swings, if you could go over the bars of the swings, you were brave. | 0:46:51 | 0:46:57 | |
And I never, I never ever. | 0:46:57 | 0:46:59 | |
But some of the girls that were ever so brave, they used to let the boys push them, | 0:46:59 | 0:47:05 | |
and push them up so high that the swings literally went over the top of the bars of the swings. | 0:47:05 | 0:47:12 | |
Oh, my heart used to come up in me mouth with fright, I'd say, "Oh, I could never do that! | 0:47:12 | 0:47:17 | |
"Don't ask me to do that, I could never do that." | 0:47:17 | 0:47:20 | |
In their search for adventure, gangs of boys discovered new areas to play in. | 0:47:22 | 0:47:29 | |
Daring each other to take risks to prove themselves. | 0:47:29 | 0:47:32 | |
Occasionally, accidents did happen and tests of courage ended in tears. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:37 | |
But the abiding memory is of the freedom and excitement | 0:47:37 | 0:47:40 | |
of growing up and learning limits, away from adult control. | 0:47:40 | 0:47:44 | |
Robert Morris grew up in a village near Leicester. | 0:47:46 | 0:47:51 | |
We had a group of trees in the field below the street where I lived and they were known as The Climbers. | 0:47:51 | 0:47:58 | |
And it was a range of trees, | 0:47:58 | 0:48:01 | |
so the art was you'd climb a tree, then you'd progress | 0:48:01 | 0:48:07 | |
across the canopy, as it would now be called, and get down on the far one. | 0:48:07 | 0:48:11 | |
If you fell off in between, you went back and started again. | 0:48:11 | 0:48:15 | |
One of the boys said, "I bet you daren't get on that branch | 0:48:15 | 0:48:19 | |
"and do like they do in the circus, | 0:48:19 | 0:48:21 | |
"where you hoop your legs over and hang upside down off the branch." | 0:48:21 | 0:48:29 | |
And I distinctly remember saying, "No, no, I don't think so, | 0:48:29 | 0:48:33 | |
"because if I fall, I'll probably land on my head." | 0:48:33 | 0:48:35 | |
And they said, "You coward, you cowardy-custard, you daren't do it!" | 0:48:35 | 0:48:39 | |
So bravado kicked in, and I picked the branch, | 0:48:39 | 0:48:45 | |
got into position, then realised it hurts like hell at the back of your... | 0:48:45 | 0:48:49 | |
cos you're on a knobbly wooden branch. | 0:48:49 | 0:48:52 | |
And I must have tried to shift position and down I came. | 0:48:52 | 0:48:56 | |
But as luck had it, in the process of falling, I did the complete turn and landed on my feet. | 0:48:56 | 0:49:02 | |
SINGING | 0:49:02 | 0:49:05 | |
Well-to-do girls were carefully protected from any contact with common children in the street. | 0:49:05 | 0:49:11 | |
But when they were sent away to boarding school, | 0:49:11 | 0:49:14 | |
they discovered that behind its respectable image, lay a dormitory sub-culture every bit as tough. | 0:49:14 | 0:49:19 | |
One of those initiated was Stella Sykes. | 0:49:19 | 0:49:23 | |
When I first went to my boarding school, I took Teddy with me | 0:49:23 | 0:49:26 | |
because he had been my constant companion, and he was, after all, chief of the toys at the nursery. | 0:49:26 | 0:49:32 | |
And when we had the dolls' tea party, Teddy was always the host. | 0:49:32 | 0:49:37 | |
One of the girls snatched him and they threw him around the dormitory | 0:49:40 | 0:49:44 | |
and I was backwards and forwards trying to grab him. | 0:49:44 | 0:49:47 | |
And one of them got him with her nail scissors, she cut his nose off | 0:49:47 | 0:49:50 | |
which was really, really upsetting and actually, I remember another thing too. | 0:49:50 | 0:49:56 | |
They stabbed him, they cut his tummy open | 0:49:56 | 0:49:58 | |
to see if I'd got anything hidden inside him, which I hadn't. | 0:49:58 | 0:50:01 | |
I did cry. I remember sobbing my heart out about Teddy, but there wasn't anything I could do. | 0:50:04 | 0:50:10 | |
They were bigger, they were older, they knew what was going on. I didn't. So I probably... | 0:50:10 | 0:50:15 | |
I supposed I just had to be as stoic as I could, | 0:50:15 | 0:50:19 | |
but I don't think it was very stoic. | 0:50:19 | 0:50:22 | |
I mean, at eight, one isn't really very well equipped to deal with what seemed to me like a mob. | 0:50:22 | 0:50:28 | |
It was probably only three or four girls, but it seemed like a big mob! | 0:50:28 | 0:50:31 | |
The cinema provided a welcome escape from the harsh realities of life in early '50s Britain. | 0:50:31 | 0:50:37 | |
This was the golden age of Saturday-morning matinee shows | 0:50:37 | 0:50:41 | |
and cinema clubs, with three quarters of Britain's children attending weekly. | 0:50:41 | 0:50:46 | |
Good morning, kids. Welcome to another matinee... | 0:50:46 | 0:50:48 | |
The local cinema was a great meeting place for boys and girls from all over the neighbourhood | 0:50:48 | 0:50:53 | |
and there were plenty of opportunities for wheeling and dealing before the lights went down. | 0:50:53 | 0:50:58 | |
..the great collie that you saw in the film A Mystery in the Mine. Here they come... | 0:50:58 | 0:51:02 | |
This boy said to me, | 0:51:04 | 0:51:07 | |
"Have you got any money?" So I said, "I've got a penny, why?" | 0:51:07 | 0:51:11 | |
He said, "Do you want to buy something?" | 0:51:11 | 0:51:13 | |
So I said, "What is it?" | 0:51:13 | 0:51:15 | |
He said, "Put your hand in my pocket". | 0:51:15 | 0:51:18 | |
So me brother was sat next to me on the other side and I said to him, "What shall I do?" | 0:51:20 | 0:51:26 | |
He said, "Well, have a look what he's got to sell!" | 0:51:26 | 0:51:29 | |
So I put me hand in his pocket and it was a white mouse, so I bought it off him for a penny. | 0:51:29 | 0:51:37 | |
The main attraction was usually a cowboy film, hugely popular, especially with the boys. | 0:51:38 | 0:51:44 | |
The ritual battle between good and evil played out by their fantasy heroes never failed to please. | 0:51:44 | 0:51:51 | |
It was a safe place where every boy and girl could let go and create pandemonium in the darkness, | 0:52:00 | 0:52:06 | |
often driving cinema managers to distraction. | 0:52:06 | 0:52:09 | |
One of the imaginary cowboys was Robert Morris. | 0:52:11 | 0:52:16 | |
We'd got a very strict manager and he wouldn't have any nonsense. | 0:52:16 | 0:52:20 | |
And if the kids were bouncing up and down too much, he'd come in and say, | 0:52:20 | 0:52:24 | |
"Any more of this and the film stops and you're out". | 0:52:24 | 0:52:27 | |
And you'd think, "Like hell we are! We've paid thruppence." | 0:52:27 | 0:52:30 | |
So you'd sit like little choir boys through the rest of the film and then explode when you got out! | 0:52:30 | 0:52:36 | |
But you were restless. | 0:52:36 | 0:52:38 | |
Because you'd seen these cowboys, every kid that came out of that cinema was on horseback. | 0:52:42 | 0:52:49 | |
And away you went... | 0:52:49 | 0:52:51 | |
SLAPPING ..all the way down home. | 0:52:51 | 0:52:53 | |
Imaginary reins, "Whoa!" Rearing up if a car, which was rarity, came. | 0:52:53 | 0:52:57 | |
"Whoa, BOY!" and let the car go on across the road. | 0:52:57 | 0:53:01 | |
This rough and tumble fantasy world of Cowboys and Indians was mostly a boy thing. | 0:53:02 | 0:53:07 | |
Any girls who wanted to join in had to bargain hard to make sure | 0:53:07 | 0:53:11 | |
they didn't end up with the less glamorous roles the boys didn't want to play. | 0:53:11 | 0:53:15 | |
But being a baddie could have its advantages. | 0:53:15 | 0:53:19 | |
I said, "I bags to be a cowboy | 0:53:19 | 0:53:22 | |
"or the Indian chief." | 0:53:22 | 0:53:24 | |
So they said, "Well, you was the Indian chief last week." | 0:53:24 | 0:53:27 | |
So I'd have to take turns. They were all lads that I played with. | 0:53:27 | 0:53:31 | |
And then when I was the cowboy, | 0:53:32 | 0:53:35 | |
I was the one that rode into town, the baddy | 0:53:35 | 0:53:39 | |
with me two guns and I was shooting everybody. | 0:53:39 | 0:53:43 | |
All these lads had to die then, they would all fall, | 0:53:43 | 0:53:46 | |
"Aah", on the floor, playing the part, pretending to be dead. | 0:53:46 | 0:53:50 | |
And we had really good times. | 0:53:50 | 0:53:52 | |
Good times for middle-class girls also often involved riding, but on a real horse or pony. | 0:53:54 | 0:54:00 | |
In the early '50s, pony clubs all over Britain blossomed | 0:54:00 | 0:54:03 | |
as parents indulged their daughters' love affair with their very own pony. | 0:54:03 | 0:54:08 | |
The girls entered a fantasy world, encouraged by countless adventure books, | 0:54:08 | 0:54:12 | |
in which they imagined themselves and their ponies to be brave heroines saving the day. | 0:54:12 | 0:54:17 | |
They were absolutely magical ponies. | 0:54:17 | 0:54:19 | |
My second pony, I was told she'd been a circus pony. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:24 | |
Because if you asked her her age, she was probably about 15 at this point, | 0:54:24 | 0:54:28 | |
she would pat the ground four times with her paw. | 0:54:28 | 0:54:30 | |
And I was utterly convinced she'd been trained in the circus! | 0:54:30 | 0:54:33 | |
But I'm sure this was just a figment of my imagination. | 0:54:33 | 0:54:38 | |
But I loved the idea, this circus pony, and we were going to travel the world together, you know. | 0:54:38 | 0:54:44 | |
It was the way we went off into our imagination. | 0:54:44 | 0:54:48 | |
And living of course as we did, with plenty of land, I'd go off on my pony and... | 0:54:48 | 0:54:53 | |
I was always going to be rescuing people from burning buildings, or rescuing people trapped somewhere. | 0:54:53 | 0:54:59 | |
With my plucky pony, we'd be pulling the log off, you know, to rescue someone's trapped leg or something. | 0:54:59 | 0:55:05 | |
# There was a lovely princess... # | 0:55:06 | 0:55:08 | |
Unsupervised outdoor play flourished everywhere in the 1950s. | 0:55:08 | 0:55:13 | |
Whatever social class they came from, the most popular girls' games | 0:55:13 | 0:55:17 | |
conjured up a fairy tale world of handsome princes and wicked witches. | 0:55:17 | 0:55:21 | |
And they were usually very inclusive, with each girl taking a turn. | 0:55:21 | 0:55:27 | |
"A wicked fairy cast a spell, cast a spell, cast a spell! | 0:55:27 | 0:55:31 | |
"A wicked fairy cast a spell, long, long ago! | 0:55:31 | 0:55:35 | |
"The princess slept for a hundred years..." | 0:55:35 | 0:55:37 | |
# She fell asleep for a hundred years | 0:55:37 | 0:55:40 | |
# A hundred years, a hundred years... # | 0:55:40 | 0:55:44 | |
It was one of those games where we all did it. | 0:55:44 | 0:55:46 | |
Everybody was the princess and everybody was the wicked fairy. | 0:55:46 | 0:55:50 | |
And everybody with the swords and briers and everyone was the prince. | 0:55:50 | 0:55:53 | |
So you were all... | 0:55:53 | 0:55:55 | |
we quite liked that, because we were all the same, you know. | 0:55:55 | 0:55:58 | |
Because sometimes in games where you were picked out, | 0:55:58 | 0:56:01 | |
there are often children who aren't picked out, you know. | 0:56:01 | 0:56:03 | |
And you could say, "Dip, dip, dip, my blue ship, sailing on the..." | 0:56:03 | 0:56:07 | |
And if you know someone's coming up who you don't like, you could say, "wa-ter" instead of "water". | 0:56:07 | 0:56:13 | |
CHILDREN CHANT A RHYME | 0:56:13 | 0:56:15 | |
This was a unique children's tradition, with strong democratic instincts shared by the boys too. | 0:56:23 | 0:56:30 | |
You definitely had phases. | 0:56:32 | 0:56:33 | |
If the majority said, "We're off this game, we're on the other," then that's what you went to. | 0:56:33 | 0:56:39 | |
If you didn't, you just didn't get a game, you weren't invited. | 0:56:39 | 0:56:42 | |
So you went with the majority and once the decision was made, "We're on to ciggies." | 0:56:42 | 0:56:47 | |
Or "Johnny on the Mop Stick, ye-es!" | 0:56:47 | 0:56:50 | |
And away you go. | 0:56:50 | 0:56:51 | |
To the children of the early '50s, it seemed as if these games would last forever. | 0:56:56 | 0:57:02 | |
Patterns of children's outdoor play had survived the disruption of war | 0:57:03 | 0:57:08 | |
and had changed little since the first decades of the century. | 0:57:08 | 0:57:11 | |
"On the mountain lived a lady, who she is we do not know. | 0:57:12 | 0:57:18 | |
"All she wants is gold and silver, all she wants is a nice young man." | 0:57:18 | 0:57:24 | |
And then they would skip out of the rope and the next one would skip in and then the song would start again. | 0:57:24 | 0:57:30 | |
# ..Who she is I cannot tell All she wants is gold and silver... # | 0:57:30 | 0:57:38 | |
"Eachy peachy pear plum, out goes Tom Thumb." | 0:57:38 | 0:57:42 | |
Then you go for through it again, "Eachy peachy pear plum", so it's | 0:57:42 | 0:57:45 | |
one up, one at the wall, or you can do one up one over, or one under your leg. | 0:57:45 | 0:57:50 | |
But of course, soon as you dropped the ball, if you dropped the ball, you were out. You gotta start again. | 0:57:50 | 0:57:55 | |
CHILDREN CHANT A RHYME | 0:57:55 | 0:57:58 | |
But from the mid-'50s onwards, children's play would be transformed | 0:58:01 | 0:58:05 | |
by a revolution in the British way of life, | 0:58:05 | 0:58:07 | |
which brought greater affluence, mass car ownership and modern housing estates. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:13 | |
Each new generation had more of everything - except the freedom to play outdoors. | 0:58:13 | 0:58:19 | |
Could children's creative instincts survive and flourish in the modern world? | 0:58:21 | 0:58:27 | |
This is the question behind the continuing story of children's play in Britain. | 0:58:27 | 0:58:33 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:50 | 0:58:53 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:53 | 0:58:56 |