Dad married my mother on 29 September 1920 in Newark. She was very beautiful, with vestiges of her Gypsy ancestry, as these photos show.
The next generation of Barratts came along. Here we all are, at Mablethorpe, a holiday resort on the Lincolnshire coast, in 1937. You can guess who's in the pram, being the last to arrive. In keeping with the protocol of family information on the Net, I shall not identify my siblings.
I have my mother's domestic diary for the period 1935 to 1949, in which she recorded purchases, holidays, new furnishings and other events. This is the first page.
Here’s an interpretation of this historic page:
1935
Sep. 4
Shoes, John (then aged 14) 10/11 ( = 10/11d = ten shillings and elevenpence)
Freeman Hardy Willis, size 6
Shoes, Yvonne (then aged 9) F.H.W. size 3 6/11
Shirt, size 5, Clement (then aged 13) 3/6
Shirt, size 6, David (Crooks) (David was 11) 3/11
Nov. 19
Electricity [Not installed at our house until 1937. At least two of the old gas mantles were still in place during my childhood but had been disconnected.]
Nov. 21
Marconi Wireless. [Until then, my brothers had used a crystal set.]
— 29
Suit, Clement (size 7) 12/6.
There is a great deal of domestic and social history in the pages of this remarkable diary but, alas, no room to reproduce more of it here.