Chapter 16
The Social Scene

To say, in days previous to 1914, that a man had five hundred a year was to say he was a man of substance, even affluence.
I do not know what level of income attracted the notice of Inland Revenue. I remember that Enoch Davis, the postmaster, said that Tax Notices came only to Hillesley House and to Mr. Dawkins who lived at the 'Denney'.
In general, I think that living standards were rising when Edward 7th was on the throne. The aftermath of the Boer War was forgotten, farming prices were rising and food from our developing colonies made living cheap. I have no record of meat prices but it was a usual thing for children to come to our shop for a three-penny chop. Since a loin chop from a sixty pound wether (we killed them up to eighty pounds dead weight off the roots in the winter) probably weighed nearly half-a-pound, it is some indication that meat was cheap.
A suit at Holloway's or Thomas's in Wotton could be bought for about twenty-five shillings and a pair of stout boots for seven shillings and sixpence. Cattle prices were rising, a really good dairy cow or a fine heavy fat steer could make over twenty pounds. Prices rose dramatically when war broke out but those who remember the 19 30's will know that cattle and sheep fell then to less than their value in 1914.
So far as life was lived in Hillesley, people were reasonably prosperous and fairly content.
The bicycle in the form we knew it came as a liberating influence to the labouring classes. Some of the wives had them too and man and wife could explore the world outside the village.
Another status symbol which came with the bicycle was the gramophone. In almost every cottage window 'His Master's Voice' or 'Edison' models with their big trumpet horns could be seen, often placed on the big family Bible which had hitherto had pride of place. Of an evening, when friends called in, shrieks of laughter could be heard as the old music-hall hits were played. Alexander's Ragtime Band', 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-hay' and a chorus which told of the 'Land where the women wear the trousers' were the songs which were on everybody's lips. This was not to the pleasure of some of our parents, or our Sunday-school teachers, who looked back to the time when Sankey and Moody's hymns were sung by plough-boy and farmer alike.
Silk stockings had not been thought of - except for queens and fine ladies, thick wool for everyday, possibly black lisle for Sundays, were all suspended by elastic garters.
Hair was long, as were dresses, and such a phenomenon as a women's hair-dresser had not appeared. Not until the Land Army clothed its recruits in breeches did a woman appear in trousers in our village. This was excused by the exigencies of war, otherwise any woman who dared to show her legs in trousers before 1914 would have been severely ostracised - sermons even might have been preached about such an outrage. This was the time when lip-stick came with the trousers and short hair followed soon after - earthshaking developments in Women's Lib!
Our doctors deserve some notice. People still talked of old Doctor Cox when I was a boy. He lived at Hawkesbury from where he walked to wherever his patients might be. Once, they said, he had a horse but one day it threw him and he vowed never to ride again. He was succeeded by a Doctor Rhind but he left to become M.O.H. in the Thornbury district and Hawkesbury never had a resident doctor again. The doctors from Wotton then took over and those I remember were Doctor Simmons and Doctors Forty and Clowes. The others were only names to me but Doctor Forty attended our family and I knew him quite well. Doctors were very much on their own in those days. A specialist from Bristol could be got in an emergency but generally the country doctor worked alone. Doctor Forty had been in the district for many years and those who could put up with his sometimes brusque manner respected him greatly. He performed in cottage homes, operations which today would be undertaken only in a hospital theatre. Many legendary stories were told about him. When I saw him he had acquired one of the few motors which then came to the village - a 'Wolseley' with big brass lamps. Previous to that he kept two good horses and would gallop straight across country to an urgent case. Doctor Forty attended my father when he had leg badly smashed by a kicking bullock, setting it without the aid of anaesthetics and making a good job of it. So Father could never speak highly enough of the old Doctor. He would often tell me that in his riding days the Doctor would ride from Petty France to Tortworth without opening a gate! Lloyd George's Panel Scheme was only in its infancy when the Wotton doctors practised and I cannot imagine how really poor people paid for medical attention. I expect the doctors, like Robin Hood, made the rich pay to help the poor.
In matters of health village life has changed more than in any other. A more enlightened era of public health had already begun. The terrible scourge of tuberculosis which had attacked so many young people who lived in small over-crowded homes, was being tackled by new methods and teaching from Europe. The wooden hut provided by the County Health Authority began to appear, and the open-air treatment had some success. There were few qualified dentists around and doctors extracted teeth. Perhaps there were visiting dentists in Wotton from Bristol, but many of the older generation distrusted false teeth, neither could they afford them. They looked prematurely old with their toothless gums and shrunken cheeks.
There were mothers in the village who still talked of the children they lost when the 'fever' came. I never knew what kind of fever it was, probably diphtheria, but I think it took six children, mostly boys, from the village.