Cracked Eggs and Chicken Soup - A Memoir of Growing Up Between The Wars. Norman Jacobs
I can remember Dad looking so unhappy and almost defeated. In my eyes, he had always been such a strong, happy man. Things must be bad, I thought.
Mum started crying even harder. ‘No, Jack, supposing they put us in the Workhouse. Can’t we try the Board of Guardians first?’ The Workhouse was a threat that hung over all poor families at the time. It was the most hated institution in the country and families did all they could to avoid being incarcerated behind its dark forbidding walls. It wasn’t prison of course, but it might just as well have been. Families were split up and the men and boys put to work on hard labour, while the women too had to ‘earn their keep’ while trying to look after any young children they had. It was to be avoided at all costs. But if you had no money and couldn’t feed yourself or pay the rent, sometimes there was just no alternative other than begging on the streets.
‘They won’t put us in the Workhouse, Becky,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll make sure of that! But perhaps you could try the Guardians tomorrow to see if they can help.’
The following day, Mum took us brood of kids along to the Jewish Board of Guardians’ office in Middlesex Street where we joined a long queue of people waiting to be seen. Eventually it was our turn and the man behind the desk said, ‘Hello, Mrs Jacobs, haven’t seen you for a while. How bad is it this time?’
Mum replied that Jack was out of work and had been trying to get another job but so far had been unsuccessful, ‘I’m sure it won’t be for long. He’ll be back in work in no time, but if you could give us something to tide us over we would be very grateful.’
The man drummed his fingers on the table. ‘You know, Mrs Jacobs,’ he said eventually, ‘it wouldn’t hurt if maybe you came to shul more often. We like to help Jews down on their luck, but we have to be careful how much charity we give out, and maybe the more deserving get the most.’
Mum started crying. ‘Can’t you see the handful I’ve got here with all my kinder? We just don’t have time for shul. But I promise we’ll come as often as we can, believe me.’
The man gave a snort and said, ‘Yes, I’m, sure Mrs Jacobs. I’ll give you a couple of tickets this morning, but maybe you should take notice of what I said already.’
The tickets he gave us were known as BMC tickets, which stood for bread, meat and coal. Their value was 1s. 6d. and they could be exchanged at any shop displaying the notice ‘We take BMC tickets’. The tickets had a proviso printed on them saying the shopkeeper was not allowed to give any change; you either bought the exact amount or paid the extra if it was over. The reason for this being that some people might buy a small amount then booze or bet with the change. The shops that displayed the signs were mostly run by Jewish owners and it was to these that we went after obtaining our tickets.
Although they were called bread, meat and coal tickets, they were accepted for any purchases. Mum’s priority this morning was to get some veg for a stew, so it was off to Nelly Ragan’s in Shepherd Street to get some pot-herbs, carrots, turnips, onions and potatoes as you could get a much greater quantity of these for your 1s. 6d. than meat, and a nice stew would see us through a few days with luck. As there was no actual meat in the stew, Mum also bought an Oxo cube. At that time they were little hard objects which took about an hour to melt but at least they gave you a vague taste of meat.
One other shop we went to when times were hard was Palacci, a small general store in Shepherd Street near White’s Row. It was here we would be sent with one of our own cups for a penn’orth of jam or mustard pickles. This was done by weighing the cup first then adding the jam or pickles till a penny’s worth was registered. We could also get a penny packet of tea or cocoa here.
We were also fortunate in living near Spitalfields, a big fruit and vegetable market. This was always very busy, especially in the morning when Commercial Street would be choked with moving and parked traffic. All the produce sold there was laid out on sacks, in baskets or in boxes. One of the sights of the market was porters carrying numerous round baskets of produce on their heads. The importance of morning at Spitalfields for us though was that this was the best time to go looking for ‘specks’. These were bad oranges or apples thrown into a box which could be scavenged for nothing. Selecting those with half or more salvageable I would take them home where the bad parts were cut away and the remainder eaten. This was also the source of much of our orange box furniture.
As it seemed unlikely the Board of Guardians would be giving us any more tickets in the near future, Mum spent just one of the tickets, saving the other for a few days’ time if Dad still hadn’t managed to get any work, though in truth, Mum wasn’t too concerned that the Board of Guardians had threatened her with no more tickets unless we went to shul once in a while as, fortunately for us, though, I suppose, unfortunately in other ways, there were a number of other smaller charities who dispensed second-hand clothing and BMC tickets, who weren’t quite so fussy about who they gave their charity to. Camperdown House in Aldgate was one such place. These places created a band of people known as professional schnorrers, who were always to be seen wherever anything was being handed out. They would line up for the clothes and then flog most of what they got, so getting a few bob at a needy person’s expense.
As the week wore on, it became obvious that there was just no work around and that we were going to have to continue to rely on charity to see us through. So, in spite of Mum’s misgivings, Dad did go and see the Relieving Officer with our famous pillowcase, hoping to get it filled up.
The Relieving Officer was employed by the Ministry of Health to assess claims for support as a result of unemployment or sickness. Although many, like Mum, were afraid this assessment would lead to a spell in the Workhouse, the local Board of Guardians of the Workhouse were in fact more interested in trying to keep families together in their own homes if at all possible as it put less pressure on them to have to house and feed yet more inmates.
When Dad returned from the Bun House, which is what we called the Relieving Officer’s establishment, he emptied the pillowcase on to the table and, to our great delight, out fell a large quantity of basic foodstuffs, more stale bread, cracked eggs and the like but the highlight of this haul of food was a stone jar of Hartley’s strawberry jam, which I think we finished up in less than an hour! As well as its being a little treat, the empty jar served as another cup for us. An item of foodstuff we weren’t so keen on was a piece of very smelly cheese – God knows how old it was! Davy exaggeratedly held his nose and said, ‘Phew! That smells like sweaty feet!’ Ever afterwards in our house, cheese we obtained from charities was always referred to as sweaty feet.
Dad told us that the Relieving Officer had also given him some money to pay for the rent and gave it to Mum to put away for the next time the rent man called. Looking back on this now, I think we were very lucky to have such a responsible father. I guess many at the time would have just drunk the rent money away, but Dad was a real family man and hardly ever went out for a drink. His first priority was always looking after us.
As winter was approaching, Dad had another idea about where we could get some relief and this was the Soup Kitchen in Butler Street. It opened three nights a week and issued bread, marge, saveloys, sardines and of course soup. The first time Dad went down there, he took me with him. He had to fill in a form – name, address, number in family etc. – which the clerk at the desk stamped and placed on a pile of other such forms. He then handed over what he called a kettle, though it wasn’t like any kettle I’d ever seen. It was a round tin with a lid and metal handle with a thick wire attached to each side, upright when held, lying down the side when not in use. Because of this we always called it our can rather than kettle. These cans had a number stamped on the side depicting how many portions you were to get. Because we had such a large family, ours had the number four stamped on it.
Visiting the Soup Kitchen became a way of life for us over the next few years and it was usually me who Mum and Dad sent along to get our supplies. By opening time, there would usually be a long queue along Butler Street and when the doors opened we would all file in. Once inside, six crash barriers had to be negotiated in a single line till the door leading to the serving area was reached. There would be two men doing the serving, both dressed in white and wearing tall chef’s hats. The