James Auger (1874 - abt. 1952)

months when they took me into their home and cared for me until I was five. My memory starts when I was between three and four years old. The three biological children of my foster parents had long since left home when I became the 7th foster child of about 15 small babies they welcomed to their home. They seemingly cared for three infants, both girls and boys, oat one time, in stages over about 20 years or so. My time in Saffron Walden coincided with them fostering an older girl called Ruth and a younger one called Alice who were thus my constant companions and playmates. I kept in touch with Ruth, who lived in St. Louis, and met her several times over the years until she died in 2012. Our foster parents were a kind, working class couple – he had been a brick-layer – who treated us like their own children, and this was a very happy time for us. Their home was a two-storied, three-bedroom house, close to Saffron Walden’s large and beautiful church and its small museum, and only a few minutes’ walk from the town centre with its fine balconied Town Hall and its market place. Several steps led up from the street to the front door, which opened into the spotlessly clean but little used front room, its waxed linoleum floor gleaming. This room only came alive and the fire lit at Christmas and on very special occasions. The scullery with its more comfortable sofa and chairs was more homely and a popular place to play when it was cold and wet, but the kitchen was the heart of the house. The blackstone fireplace-cumoven threw out heat, a kettle simmered away on the hob, a sturdy fireguard stood in front, and a fringed mantelpiece above held assorted little mementoes from places visited. A built-in big round copper with fitted lid snuggled in the corner near the fire and was fronted by Dad’s comfy armchair. Dad would read the newspaper and smoke his pipe, and let us sit on his knee and he’d tickle us, and as “How much do you love me?” and I would answer “Hundreds and hundreds”, which was the highest number I knew, and he would laugh heartily through his whiskers. I still remember the day I scribbled all over a sheet of paper with a crayon and excitedly rushed to show my parents that I could write. The central kitchen table where the food was prepared was a magnet for the children after a baking session, as we would vie to lick clean the mixing spoons. There was also a gas stove for cooking and a shallow sink with a single cold water tap under the kitchen window. Narrow stairs led up to three bedrooms, each with a large double bed with a big feather mattress and a wardrobe taking up most of the space. The parents slept in the front bedroom, the two or three little ones shared a big double bed in the second bedroom, and the third bedroom was kept for family who occasionally came to stay. Gas mantles lit the downstairs and we carried candles up to bed. One evening I tried eating the wax candle: I don’t know why – curiosity perhaps as I certainly wasn’t hungry – but I suffered no harm. We had stone hot water bottles when it was cold, and those feather mattresses that one sank deep down into were so cosy and warm. Adjoining the back door was a covered brick area serving as a pantry, holding the wire-meshed meat safe, and other food to be kept cold. We played outside in the small back yard, with a chicken coop along the back wall holding a few chickens, a fenced flower bed along one side and a scrupulously clean proper flushing toilet a few steps from the back door. A wall box of red geraniums filling a shelf on the kitchen window seemed to thrive on the used tea leaves they often received. Immediately behind the high wall in the backyard was a school and playground, which became very noisy during class recess time. Monday was always washday, when the kitchen was transformed into a steamy hive of activity. It meant rising very early to light the fire under the copper and topping up the giant cauldron from time to time with boiling water from kettles on the stove, and stirring the household wash around with a long wooden paddle. Sheets, towels and all the clothes followed, making it a mammoth job taking up most of the day. The mangle was uncovered and put to good and constant use, the finished items hung by pegs on the clothes lines that crisscrossed the small back yard, held up by long poles notched at the top end. Dinner was always cold on Mondays. I can’t think what happened when it rained! By evening the kitchen would be draped with drying off sheets and clothes, the smaller items steaming over the fire guard. Tuesday was ironing day, with the flat irons heated over the gas stove. Tuesday was also Market Day and Dad would sometimes take me to the cattle auction and to look around the variety of stalls set up in front of the town hall. My foster parents were Chapel and would occasionally take us with them on a Sunday afternoon. Out came their best clothes smelling faintly of mothballs. Across the street was a sweetshop owned by Dad’s brother and sister-in-law, where toffees, jujubes, licorice strings, gobstoppers, sherbet bags and home-churned ice cream provided great attractions. In the spacious house attached to the shop lived their daughter and her husband, a head butcher, and their four children whom I would sometimes visit. They were a musical family and had an upright piano which fascinated me. I remember going to their children’s Christmas parties, admiring the large Christmas tree lit with tiny candles each one sitting in a little round fluted tin tray, and decorations made of icing sugar, and dipping my small arm deep into the bran tub to bring out a mystery gift. I would often visit Ethel, my foster parents’ own daughter who lived further along the street, close to the museum and church, and would hold on to the handle of the pram as she took her two young children for walks, accompanied by Gyp, a big black dog. Ethel was warm-hearted and always cheerful despite her hard life. Her husband had been gassed during WW1 and could only do light work, and Ethel cleaned houses to augment the family income. Their tiny tow-up-two-down house was lit by oil lamps but the house was always immaculately neat and clean. On summer evenings our parents would take us for leisurely walks into the nearby countryside, or across the common with its most unusual low maze, or to visit the homes of other foster parents in the area for a cup of tea and a chat. I would sometimes accompany my foster father to the local football matches in a field some way behind the house, and sometimes to his allotment beyond the football field. This carefully tended plot of land kept us in fresh vegetables and fruit in season. One day, when the nearby big house, completely hidden behind a high wall, opened its grounds to the public, I was enthralled to see peacocks spreading their spectacular tails. I remember one exciting day when the chimney sweep came. All the furniture in the kitchen and scullery was covered with dust cloths, we children ran outside to watch for the broom to emerge from the top of the chimney, and saw sacks of soot carted away. The bell of the muffin man carrying his tray on his head, brought all the children running into the street. I suppose it was a month or two before going to Redhill that I turned five and was enrolled in the nearby Infants’ School. I was thrilled to start school, and eyed with anticipation the see-saw and rocking horse I the toy area, and the copy books and pencils (or were they slates?) of the slightly older girls. Coming back from shopping in the town during school recess my foster mother would sometimes slip me a still warm bun through the school railing. My first five years in Saffron Walden were a very happy time for me and I have been eternally grateful to my foster parents for making them so. I kept in touch with them until they died in old age, visiting them many times, including after I’d emigrated to Canada, and spent a fortnight’s holiday with them every summer during WW2.