Previous Home ... Agnes Milliken

I am originally from Hart Street, in East Belfast, and I lived there for 18 years. In our family there were 11 children, 6 girls and 5 boys.

Some of my earliest memories are that of going to school, my teacher was called Mrs Burton, and there were 30 children in our class. We learned our alphabet and numbers, as well as knitting and darning when we got a little older.

We were in class 9-3 every day, and if we were late we would get the cane. My daddy used to give me a lock of hair of a horse’s tail to put across my hand if I was getting caned, because it would stop the sting.  “It works, ‘cos I was late quite frequently.” Our school games included Three Ball, Skipping and Hopscotch.

Sunday night was bath night in our house - the bath sat beside the fire and everyone had to get washed. Every time you got your hair washed, you would have to get the steel comb for ‘nits’ - we used to hate that.

My daddy was very particular about shoes - they all had to be cleaned. This was done on a Saturday and they would have been laid out around the fire for church on Sunday.  We would have worn our Sunday best for church and we were made to go three times on Sundays.  I went to Sunday School until I was about 16 years old.

One time, I remember that we decided not to go to church and we took the money out of the envelopes and went up to the 5^th Railway.  We did this for a couple of weeks - but then we got caught and got into so much trouble. My mum was a disciplinarian, but, in our house, dad was the ultimate authority.

Sometimes we got treats from my dad, he would have got 6 bars of chocolate and 3 bottles of lemonade. We would have got this on ‘tick’ if we couldn’t afford to buy it.

I enjoyed my childhood, especially so when I went into hospital. I got more Christmas presents because I was in hospital, and I was in over my birthday too.