Edith Hiley

The next few posts are devoted to Edith Hiley, a dear sister, aunt and great aunt. Edith was born in Littleborough on 9th December 1913 and died in Halifax on 30th October 2001. 

Today's post covers the time up to when she left school.

Henry wrote these notes about Edith a few days after her death:

Edith was always eager to tell us that, when I was born, she dashed into the street, excitedly telling everybody she met that she now had a baby brother. That was in January, 1919, when she was just turned five years old. We were a family of five children, the eldest was Sam, then Edith, Agnes, Mary, finally me.

The Hiley children
From L: Agnes, Henry, Sam, Mary, Edith

In the earliest times I can remember, Edith was first rate at making up stories and telling us them at bedtime, indeed at any time. I had a letter a few years ago from a lady who was a girl on our street in the 1920s, who mentioned particularly that Edith had made up stories for anybody who would listen.

Our mother died in 1923, Edith would be nine years old then. In a way, at that age, she became our surrogate mother, though probably not Sam's. We used to help out father in his pie making shop, I don't suppose I did much to help, but we were a close family, in and out of our neighbours' houses on the street. Three years later, our father married again. (How he managed to persuade any woman to agree to take on the work in the baking and selling of pies, looking after the house and becoming mother to five children I have never understood). Our stepmother loved us and cared for us all. Despite all the work, she likely preferred her new life to working in the weaving shed.

Mother had died of consumption at the age of forty. Sam died of the same disease at the age of twenty one. The rest of us were x-rayed, Agnes was found to be smitten as well. Edith was by this time at the Secondary School in Rochdale*. Now I am surmising. I believe that the sweatshop of our household, the deaths of Mother and Sam, the onset of the industrial depression of the late 1920s, all affected Edith's performance in school, though she did pass her School Certificate. Her History teacher called on my father, asking that Edith be allowed to continue at school, but he wanted her at home to help in the business. That time I think of as being the worst of Edith's life. She worked at home, making pies and such, and seemed to have lost heart.

* Edith won a County Minor Scholarship. She left school at age 16.

Agnes, Sam, Edith