BERMONDSEY GIRLS - Eliza Minnie Cherry - Part 1

My name is Eliza Cherry.  I was born Eliza Minnie Mutton on 18th September 1889 at 54 Abinger Road, Deptford, near the foundry and the docks. ‘Liely’ my family called me. I only knew two of my brothers, William George who was about five years older than me, and Henry Walter who was born in 1886.  We didn’t see much of our Dad, also called William George, who was a sailor at one time; Mum told us one of his ships was the Albert Victor, he was a steward then, but that was before me and my brothers were born.  It was a paddle steamer and later was used as a hospital ship for fever patients. We also had a sister Miriam Augusta, who was born about a year before me, but died when she was about a year old, a few months after my birth.

All I really remember about Dad is that he was a big blonde man, and always had this cough; Mum said it was from working in the smoky engine room; he was a stoker then you see, keeping the boilers fed with coal. It was the cough that did for him in the end; when we were living in Queen Street he got took really bad, and because he was a sailor they put him in the Seamen’s hospital at Greenwich.  I went to see him once; I hardly recognised him, he was really thin and coughing something awful, and we weren’t surprised when Mum went there one day and he was dead. Exhaustion due to cancer of the lungs they called it. Only 38 he was.

I do remember we moved a lot, mostly when we couldn’t afford the rent, then we had to hide from the rent collector and go to cheaper more crowded places.  I suppose that’s why so many babies got ill and died. 

I don’t remember much about my brother Henry either; I know he died when he was about nine, I get the feeling he was a bit sickly. Anyways, Dad died when I was ten, not long after we lost my baby brother Albert Victor at only a few months old; then it was just me and me Mum, because my brother Bill stayed on with Nan and Grandad Warren where we had been staying while Dad was ill.  Nan Eliza was Mum’s Mum, and Grandad Henry Warren was her second husband; I never knew Grandad Palmer. No-one ever said anything about him, I don’t even know his name.

Nan and Grandad Warren were kind to us kids and our Mum Amelia, who everyone called Milly. But we never saw much of Dad’s family, though they didn’t live far away.  I think they were ashamed of us for some reason, ‘cause we was so poor I suppose

Anyway, by the time I was 12 me and Mum lived at number 42 Railway Grove, in Deptford. We only had one room, the house was small and dark and we shared with two other families with several kids.  It was a bit cramped and smoky and smelly, being by the railway bridge and not far from Deptford Creek, with all the stinks from both river and railway; (we had even lived on old boats at times); but Mum always tried to keep our homes as clean as possible, and earned what she could as a charwoman. They used to say Henry the Eighth had all his ships made in the Deptford yards; but there was definitely no sign of royalty there in our time!

I went to school, Stanley Road School in Deptford it was, but if there was any bit of work going, I hopped off and did it to earn a bit of extra money. Mum was a good cook when she had the time, she could stretch out a bit of fat bacon and make a lovely suet pudding with a bit of sage and onion, and cakes too when she could afford the eggs.

As soon as I was old enough I went into service, there were still plenty of people wanting housemaids; flippin’ ‘ard work it was too, and not much money either.  I was only about 11 when I started, the family I went to was not too bad, there was much worse than them, but they had me on me knees for hours – I reckon that was what did for me in later years, with the arthritis and rheumatism and all. Still you just get on with it don’t yer? So I didn’t get much schooling, but when the time came I hoped I would be able to give my kids a better start than I had.  My Mum Milly could read and write a bit, but my Nan Eliza never did learn.

That was about the time Mum married Fred Daniels.  It was Christmas Day 1901. Only just over a year since Dad died.  I didn’t blame her, Fred was a decent bloke a couple of years younger than Mum, and he at least had a job – a vellum beater and bookbinder.  That made him a bit smelly too; a different richer sort of pong but at least it kept us fed.  A couple of years later I had a half-brother, Freddie, then another two followed, George and Edward. Poor George died in the 1944 New Cross V-bombing of Woolworths.  They only recognised his body by the photos of my Rose’s wedding in his pocket, which he had carried with him since he gave her away in 1942.  But all that’s yet to come in my story.

Deptford was a very crowded place in those days; there were small houses with 4 or 5 families with several children each living in one room.  Disease was rife, what with the rats and the foul air from the docks and the river.  Plenty of crime too, and drunkenness, with all the seamen coming ashore, Mum always kept me in as much as possible.

But of course the local families knew each other quite well, which was how Mum came to marry Fred, they lived near us in Church Street, and their house was a bit nicer than ours so I was glad to move in there as soon as they married.

And that was how I knew my man Ernest Cherry.  He was ten years older than me and lived in Windmill Lane, off Hanlon Street quite near us. He already had a wife then, and two small children, a boy Charlie and a girl called Mary Adelaide after her mother. It was obvious he had his eye on me, and when his wife ran off with some bloke called Mitchell, he used to ask me to look after his kids sometimes so he could go to the pub with his mates, or do an extra bit of work.  I was only about sixteen then, and Mum said it would end in tears, but by the time I was 21 I had moved in with him and was expecting our Minnie.

It was a bit of a scandal of course, though I reckon Mum’s family really didn’t have much to boast about, I’m not certain her Mum was married before she had Mum and Uncle George, though she always said she was a widow when she married Henry Warren. I loved my Nan Eliza though, and I am named after her, and we gave the name to our first child too, thought we always called her Minnie.

By the time she was born we had moved away from Deptford to Arthur Street in Peckham, near Ernie’s family. Mum said my Dad had lived there when he was a boy.  When the Census man came round just a couple of months before Minnie was born, Ernie said I had to bump up my age a bit and say I was his two kids’ mother, Mary was 7 by then and Charlie 4 and what with me carrying it would’ve looked bad.

Over the years I looked after those two like my own as well as the eight I gave birth to; their Mum visited now and again; toffee-nosed bitch she was, looked down on us with all her makeup and flash clothes; she taught the kids to look down on us too; when they left home and had families of their own, they let their kids call me ‘Poor Nanny’.  That made me so sad.