This is my maternal great grandmother, Beatrice Kilner:
We share the same surname because I adopted it after my divorce. My birth name would have upset my stepdad, whose name I took when he married my mother, and my maiden name would have upset my dad, because it was my stepdad's name.
I never liked the idea of paternal surnames anyway: it seems to me that male love can be possessive enough, without encouraging it with labels of ownership. But I did want a name that felt like it belonged to me, and I to it, so I thought about which family members I liked and respected the most and Beatrice came out top of the list by far. I took her maiden name so that, having never met her father, I didn't feel owned by a man that I knew.
I liked her because she liked me. It was rare, in our family, for adults to actually
like children. My mother didn't and nor did either of my grandmothers. My step-grandmother was mildly fonder of us, but not overly. But Beatrice looked at our faces, gave us eye contact and addressed us as real, individual people. I think she was 70 when I was born, and I was 14 when she died.
She lived around the corner from us in Halifax when we were very young. We spent a lot of time at her house because she wanted to be with us, and my mother didn't. Her house was like a living, working museum. I wish I had photos of it, but sadly I only have 2 photos pertaining to her - the one above of a very young Beatrice, and this one of her when she was very old:
In the intervening years she was an elegant and stylish woman, although even my mother (who keeps the family pictures) doesn't have a lot of photos of her.
In the picture above, she's holding my Christmas present - one of the first affordable portable cassette tape players - and wondering what it is and how it works. It must have been a wonder to her because when the first picture was taken in around 1910, the only music in her life would have been from live sources: church music mostly, I would imagine, although Beatrice was never much of a church-goer.
She was one of three daughters of a cottage weaver who lived in Skelmanthorpe. I know of three anecdotes about her childhood:
- There was so little communication between her parents that her mother would send one of the girls out into the road, after their father had left the house in the morning, to see whether he turned towards the market or the pub. If it was the market, she knew to put the furniture back and get the loom out because they would be working that day. If he turned to the pub, she knew that she and the girls needed to get on with general housework instead.
- A young coal miner lodged with them for a while. His bed was under the kitchen sink. One day he and his friends were sitting around the kitchen table laughing and joking whilst Beatrice's mother Ann did the ironing. The lodger's choice of language must have been quite unsuitable in the company of her daughters, because Ann gave him several warnings and finally branded him on the back with her flat iron!
- Beatrice's household was by no means affluent, but some cousins in the village were even poorer. They would bring their dry bread supper to Ann and she would add beef dripping to it, to nourish them.
When she grew up:
- She married a journeyman tailor called Herbert Higson and became a seamstress herself.
- They had three children: Lesley (who later emigrated to Canada), Geoffrey (who became a locksmith I think) and Marian, my grandmother.
- In common with many young adults throughout history, they hit financial trouble early in their marriage and had to 'flit' to Blackpool in the 1930s depression. This must have been a harsh lesson to learn and Beatrice was very careful with her money in later life.
- Coming back to Halifax, they rented Stump Cross fish and chip shop and helped Marian to care for my mother as a baby during WWII, when Marian's husband George Norris Flather was away in the army. My mother remembers Beatrice as being kind and attentive and Herbert being extremely strict. Beatrice must have been about my age when my mother was born. The two of them were always close.
- Widowed in her early 60s, she lived in a tiny 'one-up, one-down' near to my parents house afterwards. she was fiercely independent but suffered from arthritis, which stopped her from earning money by sewing, and osteoporosis, all of which conspired to cause her many bone fractures in later life.
I remember her being very popular and friendly with the other inhabitants in her street. I remember the feeling that, even though we only lived a few streets away, the children in her street knew her better than we did. They would stop by and offer to get shopping for her. She baked a lot and always had homemade biscuits to offer people. She still did some sewing and took in laundry to help make ends meet, even though her laundry system was archaic! (She would certainly have known what
goffering was - in fact she reminded me of Mrs Tiggywinkle in lots of other ways besides!)
I remember her teaching me how to butter bread, with her hand over mine on the knife. Nobody else took the trouble to teach me how to do such things when I was so young.
I remember her letting me play with her things - especially the contents of her amazing button tin. And her tailor's dummy, and the little ironing board, that was just for doing sleeves.
I remember her falling down her cellar steps and breaking her leg. And falling off a ladder when she was cleaning her windows, possibly breaking it again. One icy winter's day, she went shopping for bread but fell and broke her arm. She went on to get the bread, but stopped in at the doctors on the way home.
I remember some of the last words she said, confused and dying in a hospital room: "Marian, we must get them rafters fixed afore winter," motioning up to the perfectly-plastered white ceiling. This said a lot about her life and the lives of many working class people of her age. But I know the feeling: I've had broken roofs too in my time and been greatly preoccupied with worrying about how to fix them.
I remember her babysitting for us every day, any time at the drop of a hat. She would often meet me from school instead of my mother and she didn't come to our house just to sit, but cleaned and washed and ironed while she was there. She thought nothing of doing this and needed no gratitude for it.
Above all else, I remember her being the only person in my childhood who was always (ever) pleased to see me, and who made me feel that I was
good enough, just being myself.
That's why I took her name and why she'll always be alive in my heart.
