TODAY WE ARE DELIGHTED TO WELCOME BACK, POET AND AUTHOR, KATHLEEN SWANN, WHO IS SHARING WITH US HER NOVEL, 'PHYLL TO HER FRIENDS' #RWRTeamBlog #ReadWriteRepeat
- 7 hours ago
- 7 min read
EXCERPT FROM 'PHYLL TO HER FRIENDS'
Background & Early Childhood
If you'd ever met Phyllis, my mother, you would remember her. Her father’s family had given her Celtic looks with large blue/grey eyes and, as she always said, her father's nose. She hadn’t got her mother’s curly red hair but just a gentle wave in her dark Welsh locks. But more than that, she would have greeted you warmly and asked questions in genuine interest about you. She would also have shared lots about herself, you would soon feel you had got to know her. Throughout her life she was generous, hardworking and loyal but she could also be forthright, honest and cutting. She didn’t suffer fools gladly and her opinions were long held and mostly unmovable. However, if she felt your need was greater than hers or if something would give you pleasure, she would willingly share her possessions with you. Her stark life throughout her childhood had given her an insight into poverty, hunger and hardship which she never forgot, but which formed her stoical character and gave her an unsympathetic view of anyone who cheated the system or wasted opportunities.
My mother’s story starts in the spring of 1917. The First World War had been raging for three years, thousands of young men had gone to fight, and many had died during the conflict. Women had taken on many of the men's jobs during this time despite having no level of social or financial equity with their husbands or brothers. Her father, Elias, was exempt from fighting on health grounds. He worked as a Dyer's Assistant in a woollen mill, Halifax being very much a mill town at the time. There were woollen mills, carpet mills and mills making parts for spinning and weaving machinery. These provided employment for a great number of the population, particularly women. Jobs in these mills were plentiful. My grandmother Elsie, and two of her sisters, worked in several different mills around the town throughout their lives.
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Since Anglo Saxon times Yorkshire people had been fulling, spinning, weaving and dyeing wool at home, mainly to clothe their own family. Sheep grazed well on the hillsides of West Yorkshire and the water was soft for washing, scouring and dyeing the wool. The old ways stayed and grew into a commercial activity, trading both at home and abroad. With the Industrial Revolution Halifax, and the rest of West Yorkshire, expanded its number of mills and its wool production to manufacture blankets, carpets and heavyweight cloth for the textile industry. At the start of the twentieth century Halifax had in excess of 36 mills associated with the production of woollen cloth or carpets.
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My mother was the second child of my grandparents, Elias and Elsie Gething. Sadly, their first daughter, Mary Eliza, died of pneumonia in the spring of 1916 at around 3 months old. By September Elsie was pregnant again and my mother was born on 30 May 1917. Mum’s birth certificate says she was born at 17 Cedar Street, King Cross, a district of Halifax, although that is not one of the addresses listed by Elias on his divorce statement and may have been a temporary stay for the birth. It was common in those days for babies to be born at home unless the mother was unwell; a hospital birth was only considered if the home
situation wasn’t suitable or if there were any obvious signs of distress from the baby. Healthcare was not free; patients may have made voluntary payments into a local service or have paid what they could afford at the time. My grandmother claimed that she was attended by a midwife for my mother’s birth, and this may have been because of the death of her first child. In many cases family members or local mothers would have helped a new mother bring her baby into the world.
The houses in these districts were generally ‘back-to-back’. This meant that two terraces of houses were built together, each having only a front door which faced onto a different street. There was no electricity, so the walls had gas lights or candles for illumination. Rooms were often small and unheated except for the sitting room which had a coal fire. Coal fires were often ‘damped down’ at night in the hope that they would retain some heat and be easier to light in the morning. This was an unhealthy practice as the house could fill with smoke fumes, and it didn’t improve the temperature in the rest of the house. On winter mornings there would be ice patterns on the inside of the windows and clothes kept in bedrooms were damp. The houses only had two bedrooms so eventually all the children shared a bed, which made the middle ones very cosy.
When they lived at Sykes Terrace, my grandmother’s sister Lily lived in a similar house along the street with her daughter Elsie, who was just a bit older than my mother. The sisters were a support to each other, and the cousins were great friends and shared many times together throughout the whole of their lives. Lily’s husband, Harry Glassbrook, was a soldier and was fighting in France at this time. Harry was killed on the Western Front in 1918 and so Lily became a war widow with a child to bring up. However, she did have a war widows’ pension which helped her to cope and sometimes she would help my grandmother with food or money for coal.
Mum's sister, Lola Blanche, was born in October 1919. Elsie was, once again, confined to the house, although work was becoming harder for women to find as the men were returning to their pre-war jobs. The First World War had ended but many women were now war widows or coping with husbands who had returned badly injured and suffering from depression and shell shock, or PTSD as it is known today. The country was in the grip of Spanish Flu which caused the deaths of thousands of people. Many men who had survived the war succumbed to the terrible virus, because they were weak from injury and lack of nourishment as well as suffering from depression. This disease devastated the poorer, vulnerable families who worked in the crowded environments in the mills. The damp and cold living conditions made people susceptible to flu, chest complaints and Tuberculosis, which was rife.
My mother was a lively, bright child who captivated her father, Elias, with her singing and dancing. She had his colouring and vivacity for life. Elias spent lots of time with Mum when she was small. She would accompany him at weekends to many different community occasions, he liked to show her off to family and friends. Elias was one of ten children and there was much rivalry among them all to produce talented children. He was known in the area for his impersonation of Charlie Chaplin and used to dress up for the Infirmary Carnival as a character from Charlie's film, The Kid. Dressed as Charlie’s sidekick from that film, Little Jackie Cougan, Mum would go with her father and the two of them would entertain the crowd with the side benefit of earning money which Elias would then spend liberally in the local pubs. This made him a colourful and popular character around the town. However, when her father was hard up he would abuse this relationship and take my mother into the local ale house with him. She would be dressed in her prettiest clothes with ribbons in her hair, then her father would get her to dance and sing on the tables. Customers would throw coins and that would pay for his beer and his bet on the dogs or horses.
Mum started school just before she was five and loved it, particularly English and mental arithmetic. She was enthusiastic in her desire to learn about everything and to join in classroom activities. She enjoyed reading, taking part in plays and poetry readings. She made friends in school and played happily in the playground, but as she got older, she became increasingly frustrated by the fact that her home life was falling apart and was reluctant to ask friends home.
The family grew with Mum’s brother, Ronald (known as Ronnie), being born in 1922 and Emmie, in 1925. Elias worked as a Dyer’s Labourer for George Armitage Ltd, Dyers and Finishers of Cotton Piecer Goods, and earned a regular wage, but this didn't often get to Elsie’s purse. The pregnancies and difficulty with childcare made it hard for Elsie to work, although she did some shifts in the mills when she could, but this put an added pressure on my mother. Mum had to stay at home and look after the young children when they were sick. She already dressed the younger ones in the morning before she went to school and gave them breakfast, usually bread and margarine, often giving up her own share to feed them. When they were old enough to go to school she took them with her and brought them home at night. Mum helped with the washing, drying and sorting of clothes, keeping the house clean and running errands. Her childhood was drowned in responsibility.
Growing up
Dance for daddy he said
in the bright noisy bar,
so she tapped her toes twirled on the table
in a pale pink cotton dress,
as coins landed at her feet.
Another round landlord, he shouted
smiling at the assembled crowd
I'm thirsty Daddy she whispered,
run home to your mother he snarled,
as the pub door slammed
silence
and loneliness
enveloped her.
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About Kathleen Swann
Kathleen was born in West Yorkshire but brought up in The Lake District. She wrote for the school magazine and enjoyed making up stories for local children and the children she cared for when she worked as an au pair in Brussels.
Having worked in the NHS in North Yorkshire for twenty-six years, where writing board papers and clinical reports were her daily routine, she promised herself that when she retired, she would return to writing and storytelling for her own pleasure.
Her first book of poetry, Ripples Beyond the Pool, was published in 2019. Her poems have been included in a wide range of anthologies for over ten years. Her second book of poetry, Mind of a Nomad was published in 2025.
As well as writing poetry she joined the local U3A Family History group and researched her mother’s family back through many generations. Together with the curating of many family stories, this led to the publication of her biography, Phyll to her Friends, in 2022.
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COMING SOON: On Monday, 16th March, our team member, author and poet Rikke Rose Rasmussen, shares her first 'Writing To Heal' post - 'Your Inner Flame'.
