The life of Henry Hiley Part 3 - living arrangements at 72 Victoria Street

In today's post Henry talks about some of the living arrangements at 72 Victoria Street.

There were three cellars in the house. There was a coal cellar where the coal was tipped and the coke. There was a wash cellar and there was a big cellar under the shop. And it was in the big cellar under the shop that we normally had a bath once a week. It was a long zinc portable bath. It had to be filled with hot water from the boiler and there was a drain down there. We didn’t have to carry the water upstairs and tip it outside. And whilst we still had the chip shop, whilst we still sold chips, there was a potato peeler there. It was like a drum, a big drum. The inside of it was like a nutmeg crater. There was plenty of water sloshing about in there, and it was turned by hand, either by Sam or by Father, and then, when all the skin had been rubbed off, then the eyes had to be picked out manually. I never liked that contraption at all.

The plumbing in the house was primitive. There were just two cold taps, one in the kitchen over the big slop-stone, and one down in the cellar. Any hot water had to be got either from a kettle on the fire or from the gas boiler. Well that was it.

The lavatory arrangements were even more primitive than you can imagine. We had to go across the back yard to the lavatory, there was a little house there and there were five houses in the terrace but there were only four lavatories. We shared with the Hoyles who lived next door to us. Now there were two pail closets, two facing east and two facing west, and in between there was an ashpit. All the rubbish was put into a great big tub and that was taken away once a week. About the worst job in all the world that I can imagine was the man who came once a week with the muck-cart and emptied the pales and then drove his horse and muck-cart I don’t know where. Whether it went to a sewage farm or not, I don’t know. We always believed that it was tipped up Calderbrook in a field up there, but it was awful. When Father went across he used to take his pipe with him. He was alright. He could smoke his pipe but the rest of us were much too young even to try a cigarette.