My name is Ernest Worthington. I just want to talk about my mother, and her family. My mother was Ida Mary Worthington, Nee Swift. And she was born in 1905. Her mother was Rosa Swift, Nee Lookett, my grandmother. Rosa was born in London in 1879, one of several girls. Rosa came to live in Calverton, like a lot of those girls in those days, big families, came to work in service. And so she worked in service at the Admiral Rodney as a serving maid. She met and fell in love with my granddad, who was Richard Fotherby Swift. Richard and his family lived on pottery lane. That's the lane opposite the Admiral Rodney. They wanted to get married. But Richard's family forbade it because they were strict Methodists and were against alcohol and against Rosa by association with it.
Richard and Rosa ran away, not very far. They went to Carlton, and there they were married. And when my mother, Ida, was born, they came back to Calverton 1909 when Richard's parents had passed away. Mother went to school at St Wilfrid's and then worked at Coggin's stocking factory. She met my dad Lloyd, and he was one of seven in his family with only one girl. They lived in a two up and two down cottage, and I have no idea how she, my grandmother, used to look after a family like that. They were married at St Wilfrid's in 1936. My mother became a Baptist at that time. They ran to the house called Hollick Cottage, which has since been renumbered to 20 Bonner Lane. I was born in 1938, and my brother in 1940. So that's before the war and during the war. Dad worked as a stoker at Papplewick pumping station from before the war until 1948 then at Calverton Colliery. My mother didn't go out to work again after we were born, running her home in those days for full time.
No hot water on tap. She got that from a boiler, from a black, lead fireplace. The fire in the middle of the oven one side, the water boiler, the other side, hot plates on top, no indoor toilets. That was down the garden. No toilet paper. We used old newspaper. Pots under the bed at night, no electric appliances, washing by hand. I remember seeing my mother's hands red with being sore. With been immersed in water. There was an outside copper. We passed in front of the fire in an old tin bath. It was a life of absolute drudgery. It ended with a new council house in 1953 at number one Ramsdale Avenue, and it was luxury. I was 15 by then, hot and cold, running water, a bathroom, flush toilets, electrical appliances. All these things transformed my mother's life.