Chickens, carbolic soap and chimney soot: life in the Back Yards of old

Can you imagine nowadays leaving the warmth of your house, taking out your umbrella and going outside in the rain just to spend a penny? Using newspaper instead of soft toilet tissue? Leaving fresh food in a cupboard with no refrigeration?

Modern inventions and health and safety standards have now eradicated such practices from everyday life. Before high-rise blocks of flats ruined the community, everyone had a house with a back yard. It smelt of all sorts - cat's pee, chicken poo, clean washing and carbolic disinfectant, along with chimney soot and factory smells.

It was a place for storage; for making things; and doing all those domestic chores that would otherwise ruin the Axminster indoors. It also served as a backdrop for wedding photographs and the place where learning to ride a bike could be undertaken without the fear of going under a bus.

A wedding in a back yard in Walworth. Copyright Debra Gosling, 2017

The tin bath would be hung on a nail in the back yard – there would be no room indoors for it, as most Bermondsey houses were cottage-like in their size with no bathrooms to speak of. Here was storage for step ladders, tins of paint, bits of wood and the washing mangle. There were no utility rooms, just the back yard to stick it all in!

It was a perfect place to hang out the washing, as well as providing amusement for the kids running beneath the sheets that flapped about in the wind. When the lines were not in use they made great skipping ropes too.

Before the advent of 'white goods' the food safe served as a refrigerator in the back yard. It was a small cupboard that had netting across it for ventilation and to keep out pests. Perishable goods, such as cheese and butter were kept there, normally for up to a week. A shaded corner helped to keep a couple of pints of milk cool through the day, or even buried up their necks in the cold earth.

Long before the 'grow your own' campaign was conceived, the back yard was the place to grow fruit and vegetables and to keep a few chickens for fresh eggs. There was nothing unusual about keeping livestock 'out the back'. Many people kept chickens and made sheds to house their flock.

Children did not need city farms to learn where their morning egg came from - it would have been their job to go out and get it from the yard! They also had access to fuzzy little chicks and many houses had a special little warm place for the newly hatched.

This pet chicken was not eaten. Copyright Debra Gosling 2020

However, children also learned where their Christmas dinner came from. Before the unhappy, hormone-packed, cruelly-farmed and bloated turkeys took over the Christmas table, a happy free-range chicken sufficed for a special occasion. It was probably not a good thing to name your chickens, as come December little Rosie would mysteriously disappear…

Most people did not kill their own chickens, as there was a man who would call and do it for them. In fact, it would seem that each area had their own avian Grim Reaper, who would carry out the 'fowl deed' which the family could not bring themselves to do.

The Galleywall Road occupants had a neighbour called Charlie, while around the corner in Southwark Park Road was another Charlie – Mr Charles Martin (were all chicken dispatchers called Charlie?!) The dead chickens were then hung up in the scullery and the job of plucking out the feathers was given to the kids, who got to work throwing the feathers into the tin bath.

Bermondsey has a lush soil for growing things, so turnips, tomatoes, carrots and rhubarb were all cultivated in little patches of the yard. It was not unknown for grape vines to thrive in Lynton Road. Add to that the sunflowers, hollyhocks and various other colourful plants and you can see the landscape was far from the dark slums of so many philanthropic pamphlets.

Tomatoes to the left chicken coops to the right in Galleywall Road. Copyright Debra Gosling 2020

In the yard the outside toilet, (normally the only toilet) was in reality a primitive loo in a lean-to, and was the dwelling of myriad spiders and ants. The actual toilet was usually a wooden board across the top of the sewer with a hole in it – and somewhere along the line corrugated tin would be involved. These days, such arrangements would probably be described as 'minimalist chic'.

Nobody lingered in the loo – besides the insects (and the occasional rat!) there was also the fact that in winter months it was jolly freezing. The summer meant you only had to contend with a few daddy long-legs, but winter time was a challenge. When it got really cold, the toilet iced over, so people kept an oil lamp burning in there (there's luxury for you) - and when it rained the roof would leak, hence the handy brolly.

In the days before Andrex there was little choice of loo paper - and recycling is not a new concept. The daily papers were kept and cut into squares, a hole was punched in the wad and then a string threaded through. This handy device was then hung on a hook in the privy at a convenient height for all to use.

Printing ink proved hazardous for some and in later years the hygienic and medicated Izal appeared, but anyone who remembers it will be wincing and looking rather uncomfortable. It was like a sort of hard, dry greaseproof paper which involved much repeated screwing into balls and smoothing out again to make it anywhere near usable. Ouch!