Thursday 5th September 2019

Thursday 5th September 2019 - Number 5901

Welcome to the Laws Family Register

We reach out to all, regardless of Race, Colour, Creed, Gender, Orientation, or National Origin, offering support for researching family history and documenting cultural inheritance.

Robert Henry Laws

1828-1881

Captain of the Barque 'Woolhampton'

my paternal Great Grandfather

This is Robert Henry's Wife

Sarah Ann Laws, formerly Fuller

My paternal Great Grandmother

1846-1924

R I P

Gone but not forgotten, this blog is dedicated

to all those who have borne our illustrious

surnames LAWS and LAWES Worldwide

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our Database

(Updated daily)

01:00 Tuesday 3rd September 2019

50,053 Folks +4

16,602 Families +3

120,219 Events + 24

All in 10,478 Places +2

Are your LAWS family amongst them?

Did one of your family marry, into one of these LAWS families?

Mail us today with your inquiries. we'd be glad to help you.

Enquires are still very welcome

so please e-mail me, now

registrar@lawsfamilyregister.org.uk

John P Laws

'The Registrar'

------------------------------

Please, share this blog, with your friends & contacts

------------------------------

PLEASE NOTE GDPR (2018) PRIVACY TERMS

We have excluded records of living people to protect their privacy.

*We only show births before 1920 and marriages before 1940.

If you are interested in anyone listed in extracts from our database, email us with the name, dates and reference number, or require us to undertake a search on your behalf, and we will happily so.

We are happy to help you with your Laws or Lawes research, and in certain instances, we may be willing to undertake private research on your behalf. We will be happy to publish in this blog the stories of your Laws or Lawes research, and also to list members of the Laws or Lawes family you are searching for. (*Subject to the rule above.)

Please note all spelling is British English)

Please share our blog with your friends & contacts

Contact us here

+++++++++++++++++

A Child of the Twenties

A suburban childhood of the Twenties

seen from the Nineteen Nineties

my late father

John Robert Laws 1921-2008

Part 4.

As well as the coal store there was plenty of space in the cellar with a sort of second room into which a feeble light filtered from a small window below the 'front room' bay. I remember it as a junk store but maybe it was just things one couldn't throw away. Perhaps the most valuable thing in the cellar was the cold tap which didn't freeze even in the coldest snap when everybody's pipes were frozen and standpipes had to be put up in the streets.

If the cellar was inelegant, the other rooms were much better. After the kitchen, the most used room was the 'front room' often called the dining room. today it would be called the living room but room usage in middle-class houses was different then, mainly due to the lack of central heating.

In cold weather, a fire would be lit in the front room in the late afternoon on weekdays or well before lunch on weekends. Its heat output could only be controlled by stoking it up or letting it burn down with a little bit of draught control at the front and the alternatives of feeding it with lumps or slack.

The tiled fireplaces of the thirties and forties had not arrived, the fire was ornamented with tiled inserts on either side, enclosed by an iron surround. Above it, the overmantle enclosed a big mirror and supported a heavy green onyx clock in a Palladium style with a gilt dial and ormolu mounts. If this were not enough, it was flanked by a pair of blue-brown Doulton glazed vases which served as spill holders.

It all belonged to a rather earlier age, even at that time, the product of a rather late marriage before WWI of a couple raised in late Victorian times. Furniture was good and solid, even a dining chair took a bit of lifting, but there was no fear of it wearing out or falling apart and the room was big enough to hold a lot of it. As it was really a living room rather than a dining room, the fire had a large overstuffed armchair on either side and there was a matching sofa along the opposite wall.

One recess beside the chimney breast was occupied by a tall glazed mahogany bookcase and the other held a drop-front coal-scuttle which provided a little tabletop beside the chair. An enormous mahogany sideboard sat against the wall opposite the window, the back of its tall overmantle filled by a mirror. tapered square columns supported the tester style top on which stood a reproduction bronze statue of an athlete. I suppose the original statue must be greek but although some thirty years or so later I spotted a full-size replica in a public park in Liege, I remain in ignorance.

Ornaments abounded and on the sideboard were an epergne for fruit and flowers and a couple of silver plate and glass urns which never contained anything. More useful was the plated silver stand to hold the soda syphon and the plated vegetable dishes sitting on the long lacey cloth. 'Cleaning the plate' was a regular chore and but one of many labour-intensive housekeeping of those days.

There was, of course, a heavy mahogany dining table and half a dozen chairs for the main purpose of the room. Apart from mealtimes, a dark crimson chenille tablecloth with a fancy fringe all round covered the table and in the middle stood another epergne, plated and just for flowers this time. Last but not least the obligatory aspidistra sat in a magnificent state of growth on an ornately carved ebony stand in the window bay, its pot enclosed by a handsome china jardiniere of deep blue and white. from this window, at dusk, the lamplighter could be seen on his rounds lighting the gas street lights one by one with a long pole he carried over his shoulder.

To be continued tomorrow

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++==

to be continued tomorrow