Eversley is a long scattered village about eleven miles from Reading and about five miles from Camberley. In the 1920s in both it and the adjacent village of Yateley most of the roads were gravel and there was a lot of gorse but few trees. Our mother went to Reading for shopping but I never went there until I was 16-17 years of age. A few times I visited Camberley to see the ‘pictures’ for 4d – the films were silent films. Our home was a humble cottage of two up and two down that was built about 150-200 years earlier. We had no electricity or gas and we had water from the well in the front of our home. This well had to serve the Whittles, Fosters (our neighbours) and the Loudes and Baldwins, who lived about 50 yards away in Chequers Lane near the post box. In our new home was a living room, a kitchen and a larder. Outside was a place for doing ones laundry and on the side was a coal shed and a general shed. Upstairs was a main bedroom and a small bedroom. For almost a year our parents slept in the big bed in the main bedroom with the twins and me in the other, single bed. At the foot of our parents was Lawrence in a cot and near the old fireplace was Veronica. In the small bedroom were Roland and Clifford in a single bed. Our parents had the chamber pots under their bed. We bathed in a big tin bath every Saturday and we also had bucket toilets. At the back of our house was the back toilet and once a week father dug a hole to empty the excrement. We used paraffin for lighting in the living room and candles for going upstairs, the kitchen and for going to the toilet. Father had a bicycle and got a ladies bicycle for mother but one day coming back from Camberley she told me that if she could get back safely, she would never cycle again – she had lost her nerve. Mother would always tell us never to shame the family, always be honest and truthful and to help each other at all times.

Towards the autumn of 1922, a man spoke to father of a possibility of gas coming to the village and he agreed. It took 4-6 months to dig the trench from the centre of Eversley to Up Green, but in due course we had a gas fire in the kitchen and light in the living room only. I still think it is wonderful. I hated it having a coal fire for cooking and hot water on a hot day. Also in early 1923, men from the Bramhill Estate, who owned a large part of Eversley took down the two sheds and built two wooden rooms in their place. These two rooms were used as a bedroom for our parents and Veronica and Lawrence.

I remember in the summer of 1923 an elderly couple asked me the way to Winchfield workhouse. Although only young I was sick in the heart as I directed them, in those days a lot of good people ended in the workhouse. Mr Denton of Chequers Lane told me that one of his jobs was to make sure his parents didn’t end up there. On Saturday 23rd September 1923 we were told to go out for the day as mother was ill, when we got back there was another child – a boy and he was named Gerald Arthur. He was the ninth in our family. The same year my father had to cycle to get a doctor when I was ill and was very surprised to find it was a lady doctor – Dr Hart, the bill was 18s.

Some years later a boy threw a stone at Laurence and he damaged his left leg at the back. He had an abscess and for about two weeks he used to walk with a stiff leg. Mrs Verranan a middle class lady about 100 yards away called on us at about 7 pm and asked about “that little boy with the stiff leg”. She asked what was being done for him. Mother said that she could not afford for him to go to hospital. Mrs Verranan insisted that ‘your boy’ must go to hospital as soon as possible. After a day or so he went to Yatelely hospital and spent two weeks there and he came home cured. Mrs. Verranan also gave our mother a book by which she could pay one shilling a week for the whole family for hospital treatment. Mrs. Verranan used to give mother dried bread and mother used to soak it and make bread and butter pudding. Clifford, at the age of ten years old developed epilepsy. He also seemed to think that Mr Ferdinando, did not need to go to the toilet. This was very funny at first but after sometime it became very tiring.

In 1923 Wilfred came back from Teddington from staying with Auntie Ann, our small cottage had two adults and eight children. As I mentioned, I shared a bed with the twins. I was in the middle and I found that on some nights I could not turn in bed without having both of them breathing on me. I complained to mother and she let me sleep in the shed with Wilfred. While staying with Auntie Anne Wilfred had picked up a Gloucestershire accent but if a boy commented on it he would reply ‘shut your gob’, he was the most vulgar person I ever knew. As he was 14 years old on 4th October 1924 he was able to go to work locally as a baker’s boy and a grocery boy at Winchfield. He tried to join the Royal Navy at 15 years old but failed for medical reasons. He then went into domestic work as a hall boy ‘living in’. This meant one less person in our home. Later on Wilfred tried again and was accepted into the Royal Navy and was trained at Shottley, near Ipswich.

As children we went to Yateley C of E School, our toilet was a bucket with urine going straight into the ditch! Initially the Head was Mr John Carter, but he retired in 1924 and Mr A.E. T. Gibbs took over. I remember a Miss Stevens, Miss Lancaster and Mr Gibbs. The same teacher taught us all day for two years – Miss Stevens always produced two ginger biscuits and a cup of coffee from her flask at 11:00am; I said to myself “I’ll do that one day when I go to work!” We started the day with a hymn, then register, sums, play, English or dictation for spelling and then lunch. Children living near went home for dinner and the others sat in the play shed to eat their sandwiches. Our ‘sandwiches’ were often just two lots of bread and margarine. Please don’t laugh, I would be glad to have had a school canteen lunch! Mr Gibbs our headmaster organised a cup of cocoa at lunchtime and we were allowed to have our ‘lunch’ inside the school on a cold day, he was a Labour minded teacher. After lunch we had more lessons and another hymn before going home at 4:00pm.

Near the door was always the list of marks each term and, except for once when I came second, at the top was the name “No.1 John Whittle”! Also, I became the best fighter at school by the time I was 12 years old. My brothers used to get me to fight their battles for them, in one fight I hit a boy so hard that he went up in the air before he fell down. I believe that our school was a good school and I believe that our teachers were very good and I looked up to them. They taught us all day, five days a week. Each spring on Empire Day, the whole school of about 180 had a service with the Recessions and Hymns and a talk about the Empire. At the end of term we received a report on our work to take home. When I was 10 ½ Mr Gibbs told my father that he would like me to try for the 11 plus at Camberley. Both mother and father said no, “everyone in our family will be equal”. In my view it was no good complaining if the law in our country allowed persons to leave school at eight or nine or ten, the Whittle children would go at the earliest possible time.

In those days we certainly were not taught anything about sex and most children left to start work at 14 years. Sometimes Mr Howell the vicar, (who I thought was a “fine old gent”) came to teach us right from wrong – telling us “that Satan was an evil spirit, tempting us to do wrong etc”. On Sundays we went to church, Sunday school and church again, sometimes at Yateley and sometimes at Eversley. Father’s hobby was campanology and he was one of the bell ringers at the church at Yateley. There was an elderly lady in Up Green who used to tell us how, as a child, she would see the Canon – the Rev. Charles Kingsley, who wrote ’The Water Babies’, around the village.

I asked mother why we never had vests and pants. I told her that a boy I sat near at school had both vests and pants. She said that if we had them she would have to have two pairs of them for all of us and she would have to wash so much more. The answer of course, was not to have too many children. Mother did buy suits for us on the ‘never-never’ and father studded our boots so that they would last longer. We all had an second hand overcoat, often from one or two rich ladies who I suppose thought they were helping the Whittles. I can never be a Tory – never in all my life! I don’t mind the rich and well-off people voting that way but not me! Our parents voted Tory, though. We lived in the Aldershot, Hants constituency– Lord Walmer a safe Tory seat. What happened was a posh car would come to our door and a nice posh lady or gent would knock on the door and say that they will come and give them each a ride to vote so that these ‘terrible reds’ would never ruin our great country etc. My parents told me that we had to be grateful to the rich for giving us jobs but I said that the wealth should be more fairly distributed.