Nellie Alice May Hart Autobiography Part 2

Aunt Mary was Gran's youngest daughter. She had to stay at home and help Granny to look after us four children. Dad was very generous and allowed her 2/6 a week for her services to the four of us.

Aunt Mary had a rotten time, not able to go to work like the others. Granny was allowed 2/6 a week from the Parish which I had to go and fetch every Saturday morning at Ashley Cross. She paid 1/6 a week for the house to Lord Wimborne.

Mary would sometimes go to Poole to Martha to get away from it all and usually had to run all the way home to get there before Dad got home from work or there would be a row.

If Dad was in one of his moods he would make Granny wait until 6 o'clock before giving her any money for Mary to do the shopping. Luckily the shops kept open until 10 o'clock or later on a Saturday night. I always went shopping with Mary Saturday evening and we bought the Sunday joint, a 2/- leg of lamb then Mary, Bill and Martha spent the rest of the evening in the Antelope.

I can still remember walking back from Scaplen's Court about 11o'clock holding onto Mary's arm half asleep; them were the day's.

Mary married Charlie White and in due course had five children, George, Fred, Charlie, Leonard and Ellen.

All the children were born in Granny's house and when Gran died Mary and the family went to live in a council house opposite the New Inn in Wimborne Road.

When Mary's husband died she became ill herself and spent a short time with her daughter Ellen and then in London at the home of her son Charlie. When her condition worsened she returned to Poole and spent the rest of her life in St Leonard's Hospital.

Bessie was the last surviving daughter of Granny Hart but sadly she was killed by a Bakers Van outside of her Mother's house on the Ringwood Road when she was about eleven years old.

Cousin Nell.

Nell married Jack Hale from Hamworthy. He did full time in the Dorset Regiment in India. He was very tall and smart and stayed that way until he died at a good old age.

After the army he worked for years at Carter's Pottery, Hamworthy and in the evenings he worked at the Amity Hall (flea house) in Poole High Street. They bought a house in Sterte Road, Poole where they both lived for the rest of their lives.

I could write a book about Nell but there isn't enough paper around to write it on.

She ended her day's with "Jack" in her spare time at the Spiritualist Church in Kingland Road, Poole.

NELLIE ALICE MAY HART

Born March 7th 1899

Daughter of George Henry Hart and Alice Jane Hart

It was very sad losing my Mum when I was only seven years old. Afterwards we were all very lucky to be able to go and live with Granny Hart which was our Dad's Mum.

She did everything possible to make our childhood happy with always a smile and never a smack.

We were lucky in those days with the whole of the surrounding countryside as our playground.

From the old Shah of Persia to the top of Constitutional Hill there were fields, woods, hedges, ditches, trees, ponds, sand pits and no one to say "you cannot do this" or "you cannot do that" and no KEEP OUT notices.

Everywhere was safe for us children to wander where ever we wished. Children of today have no idea of the freedom that they have lost. It is very sad that progress has taken away our heritage of freedom especially for children.

If the children of today try to rid themselves of their energy then they are in trouble.

What fun we had in those far off days, skipping all the way to school, truckling our hoops, playing hopscotch on the pavement, "creepmouse " in the roads, flying kites, diablo in the playground and having great fun with an old clay pipe and a basin of soapy water to blow bubbles. We used to pick baskets full of blackberries to sell for pennies so that we could go to Poole Fair. We also gathered baskets of nuts, wild strawberries and loads of mushrooms or picked up sackfuls of acorns to sell to the farmer for his pigs. - I could go on.

On Oak Apple Day we all went to school wearing the biggest Oak apple we could find - today it is unheard of.

All of the Saints days we all went over to Longfleet Church for a short service and then had the rest of the day off. Today these are only a memory.

All things come to an end and just before I was fourteen years old I left school.

There was very little choice then for girls, you either went as a shop girl or you had to go into service. So, in 1913 "Little Nell" set off for the big world outside.

With my box containing black shoes and stockings and a black dress with two with two white aprons, brush, comb etc. I set out.

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