The Milliner's Apprentice: Girlhood in Edwardian Yorkshire

by HazelWheeler (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1997

  $4.22

  Travel back in time to village life in rural Edwardian England, when patriotism was the norm, as was going to church on the Sabbath, and the village bobby , schoolteacher and doctor were looked up to and respected by all. The author evokes her mother's childhood in Jasmine Cottage, Boroughbridge. The life of a country constable's family is recreated through story, anecdote and song. She describes Hilda's first day at school, the fortunes of her elder brother Willie, who became a footman in London, and the day Hilda won a prize for best essay on citizenship on Empire Day in 1915. She recalls Hilda's first day as a milliner's apprentice and her subsequent move to become a wartime post girl. She recalls, too, the horrors of World War I, which ranged from her father's brush with a low-flying Zeppelin on a bridge to the sadness of her brother Ernie's military funeral. Throughout, the close-knit nature of the community in which her mother lived is emphasized.