From Yesterday’s Warminster by Danny Howell, 1987:
Mr and Mrs Roland Curtis and family,
at Marsh Street, Warminster, circa 1910.
Mr and Mrs Roland Curtis, living at 9 Marsh Street, Warminster, in 1908, had 22 children, three of whom died. Two daughters were married and living close by, but the remaining 17 children lived with their parents in two cottages. All 19 sat down together for their daily meals, the ingredients of which were the result of astonishing domestic economy by Mrs Curtis. Breakfast consisted of a one gallon loaf, half a pound of margarine and tea; dinner was a one gallon loaf, sixpenny bits of beef in a stew and three-pence worth of potatoes; and tea included a one gallon loaf, half a pound of margarine, vegetables or pieces cooked up, and tea. Supper was an unknown luxury in the Curtis household.
Roland Curtis was a farm worker, employed at Crockerton, and when his wife Sarah Ann was asked in 1908 how she managed, she said: “There isn’t a great deal on Saturday because the money’s gone but sometimes on a Saturday night I can buy two shillings worth of beef and maybe a bit of bacon and cheese, which makes a good dinner on Sunday. I don’t plan the money out, there isn’t enough coming in for that. We’ve just got to make it do. The rent is 3s 6d a week but that’s for the two cottages, we couldn’t get into one; two rooms in this and three in the other but we’ve hardly got a bit of garden. When my husband is in full time work he gets 14s a week but it’s been a slack time most of the winter, indeed he’s on slack time now. One week my husband only brought in 6s and another week 8s and that’s for keeping twelve. My eldest boy at home, Charlie, is now in the flour mill and now the next, Frank, is working there too; he only began work about a fortnight ago but now they give me 6s a week each. Mabel and Lily are at the factory, shirt ironing, but the work’s been so slack there and sometimes they bring home as little as 4s a week, and Lily sometimes only 2s 6d. It’s been a terrible winter.”
“One of my girls, Rose, she’s twenty and I keep her home to help. It’s an extra expense but I’m so often laid up and I can’t do the heavy work I used to do. We’ve ten at home that can’t yet earn anything and it really does seem as if the bread alone takes up all the money coming in. Three gallon loaves every day! We use up to 18 shillings of flour every week; and that’s 12s worth for the week and 6s worth more on the Saturday for the next week. We make the dough ourselves in a tin bath but we send it to the bakehouse to be baked and that costs 2s 6d a week. Then there’s a quarter of a pound of tea every day, or should be, and that’s not enough; and one pound of sugar and 15d a week for the baby’s milk. Five o’clock in the morning the kitchen fire is always lighted and most of the tea and sugar is used before six in the morning. A pound of sugar goes quickly with a matter of twenty cups of tea. Coal is so dear, 1s 5d a hundredweight and I can’t afford to have much. The wood is a bit cheaper and makes a good fire, especially with a bit of coal underneath but when I buy the wood, there is nothing left for the coal. Then there’s boots and stockings. It seems as if it would take 10s to do them properly but of course we can’t do it. Father cobbles them and keeps them going. As for clothes, it seems as if I’m sewing and patching from morning ’til night, and Rose does all the washing. It’s pretty hard work, like two families but my children are very good children.”