Posted by Peter Ceresole on March 11, 2006 at 14:03:05 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Beckfoot posted by Jock on March 11, 2006 at 13:00:34:
The owners and occupiers would almost certainly have been the same; Molly Blackett and her brother James Turner. Either or both could have been named on the deeds, but it doesn't really count as 'multi-occupancy' as the inhabitants are very closely related.
The servant situation sounds about typical for a middle class family in the '30s. Twenty years earlier, here would almost certainly have been more and their (good) relationships with the surrounding farm people speaks of those previous times. In 1939, when I was born, my parents lived in a three bedroom semi-detached house in south west London. They had a live-in maid, although she was untypical in that they had recruited her in Switzerland- but then they were untypical in that way only. The maid was far from uncommon.
Poor Marie-Therese, when war started she was stuck in England. My father was a Swiss Tourist Office rep in London and helped organise her repatriation- along with that of other Swiss who wanted to go- before the serious bombing started.
After the war they moved to a larger house in Kensington, but they never again had a live-in servant. It had become a different world. But they did hire in a helper three times a week. Wonderful, gentle Mrs Joiner; my sister and I loved her dearly and I still remember her with a kind of longing...