[Margaret Pilkington]

I was from a large family....there were seven children. My father was ill for many years as a result of being blown up on the beach at Dunkirk.......he couldn't work, so my mother went out to work to support the family.

Ma had three jobs - all menial cleaning jobs.
6am until 9am cleaning the offices at Howard and Bulloughs......9am untill 11am at the Elite Billiard hall......then back to Howard and Bulloughs in the evening.......she also did some shifts at Catlows Fruit Market on Broadway.......the Catlow Brothers let Ma fit her hours in around her other jobs.
They were also very kind to her with bags of fruit and vegetables some free, some very cheap.
If she had not done this then we would have starved.....truly, we would.

In those days if you didn't work then you didn't eat. Hunger is a great motivator.

When we went to school we got free school dinners...this meant that we had at least one good square meal a day.

I can remember there being no food in the house at various times in my young life.
And no money to buy food.
No coal to keep the house warm.....when it was cold we used to go to bed and huddle together under the blankets, with coats on the bed for extra warmth.
In the winter we made ice lollies on the inside of the bedroom window sill

This an extract from one of my blogs. It is about the kind of poverty that I experienced as a child.
Not the pseudo poverty that is talked of today, the kind where benefit claimants have the latest games consoles, flat screen TV's....in fact all the mod cons that the rest of us worked damn hard to be able to afford.