I have to share authorship of this book with two of my husband's great aunts, who wrote about their family in 1918. In it I am writing from the point of view of one of them, Jessie Tree. Those of you who read Day after Day might remember her as being one of Muriel's friends, a few years younger, who helped with the suffragette march, went to the dictionary party and whose family provided the picnic which set up relationships for many of the participants. This book has only 10 chapters, although some of them are a bit on the long side. Most of it is true.

1910

I love to write. I spend every spare minute I have writing, but I haven’t the confidence to write something really wonderful, like a book. I write letters; articles for the newspaper or magazines which occasionally get printed; but mostly I just write out my thoughts.

We have not lived on Lansdowne Crescent long – but I thought that if I wrote everything that happened to all the people on our road, it would make a sort of book. I will write at the end of each year, and tell the ups and downs of each of our families, or at least the ones which are the most interesting.

Lansdowne Crescent is a very elite part of Worcester, with our houses reaching right through from one road to the next. There are only 18 houses on the road, some of them detatched, but most of them are joined at one side or the other, but none the less, all are very big houses. Because the gardens slope, we have 3 levels, and some houses have gone into the attic as well as having a cellar. Some have little porches off their bedrooms. Nearly all have patios outside. We have views across to the Malvern Hills in the distance, and the various spires and towers of the city cathedrals and churches in the closer view. Even the near distance is attractive, as it contains plots of vegetables and flowers from allotments, but they are all productive and well attended.

Let me introduce you to my neighbours:

At number 1, Beechcroft, we have Mr. William George Lewis and his family. Mr. Lewis is about 50 and his wife Lilian is ten years younger. He is a stationer. They moved here from Rainbow Terrace so haven’t been resident much longer than we have. They have no children at home. His shop is at 69 Broad Street and is
called George William Lewis, Young and Son.

At number 2 we have Mr. Edward Francis Needham and his wife Ellen. He is about 50. He runs the company Needham and Co. which deals in coal, corn and guano. Up until twenty years ago, he was in business with Mr. Charles Walker, whose daughter Charlotte is our good friend. Then Mr. Walker set up his own business, and the Needhams had theirs, so they were in competition. He has a work site in town at Lowesmore Wharf and his office at 4 St. Nicholas Street, but he also has another one in Birmingham. They have a son William who is about 10.

At number 3 we have Rev. John McNair. He is very elderly as is his wife Sarah. He is a retired minister from Gateshead in Durham.

We live at number 4. I will go into more detail about our family later. But we bought the house from the Hiscocks. Charles Hiscock and his wife Kate had 4 children when they lived here, but the interesting thing is that they also had 8 draper’s assistants and 2 servants living in the house. They must have done their drapery work from the house. I know it is a big house, but even so, it must have been very crowded with 16 people living in it.

At number 5 we have Miss Lucy Curtis. She and her sister Henrietta moved here after their parents died. Previously living in the family home in Hertfordshire, the women inherited enough money to buy a property of their own. They didn’t like the idea of continuing to live with their brothers and sisters in law. They obviously had quite a life previously because Miss Curtis talks about having three footmen, a ladies’ maid and seven other servants. She also hints at relatives in the peerage.

At number 6 we have the Days, great friends of the family. Mr. John Curel Roberts Day is a school inspector for primary schools. His wife Caroline comes from Mauritius and their house is full of pictures and souvenirs of her time there. They also had Mrs. Day’s mother, Mrs. Frances Duncan, living with them for awhile but she died in 1906. Caroline’s sister, Eveline, whom most people call Dot is still living with them. Dot is very small and shy and wears the thickest glasses. But she is a good friend to me, and through her I came to know another of my good friends, Charlotte Walker whose father I have already mentioned. Charlotte doesn’t live on the road (although in the past they lived just up the road at 4 Rainbow Terrace). She and her sister Mary now live at Redhill on Henwick Road. Their sister Lucy came back to live with them after their father died, but she herself has now died as well. She was only 43. Their other sister Lucy married a German last year, and they have a young son. They live in London and have not come to Worcester to visit.

But I am supposed to be describing the Days and I got diverted. The Days have 6 children but only 2 still live at home.

The eldest son, John, who is now 28, is ordained in the Church of England, but works as a schoolmaster and chaplain at Warwick School. He is also chaplain at Wroxhall Abbey the country retreat of the architect Sir Christopher Wren, set on the site of a medieval abbey with 27 acres of grounds and gardens complete with Wren's Walled Garden. He is married to May, who is also 28, the daughter of Mrs. Eliza Sinton who lives at number 9. John and May have one son Tom who is now 3.

The second son, Harold, who is 26, also married a girl from the same road, Muriel King, now aged 30 whose widowed mother still lives on her own at number 7. Harold and Muriel moved to Malaya after they were married. Harold had been working there for years before. Just before their wedding, Muriel’s father, George Williams King, who had been the Mayor the year before, died suddenly. He had cancer of the throat. And then poor Muriel had to have a very subdued wedding and leave her family and go off to Malaya. I can tell you that she wasn’t very happy at that time. And then at Christmas time when she was remembering the anniversary of her father’s death, she bore her first son, whom they called Harold Michael, but he died within days of his birth. They had gone to the next village where there were medical facilities for the birth, but even they couldn’t save him. Muriel was of course devastated. She writes to us, long and detailed letters of her life, so that is why I know so much about her it. She became pregnant again within a few months of the baby’s death, and was so pleased when her next son, John King Day, was born in late October 1909. She finds the life there very hard, even though her husband Harold was promoted and is now the Manager of the Mine at Ipoh. They have a bigger house and more servants, but the weather is still very trying and she misses her family and friends so much. There is talk that Harold might try to get a job in South Africa, where the climate would be more appealing.

I have included her last year’s Christmas greetings:

Christmas 1909

Dear Jessie and Margaret

Going back to the other Days – we have George next in the family. He graduated from Oxford where he took honours in classics and history, and obtained a blue for association football. He is now 25, and in 1908 he went to teach in Egypt for the Ministry of Education. But this year he has come back and has a job teaching at Northampton School. He is quite a golfer.

Mark, 22, the next brother has finished his training to be a mining engineer, just like his brother Harold, and he has gone to Malaya exactly as Harold did. But they are not at the same site.

Una, the only daughter is 21 and has just finished her teacher training course and started her first job this last September.

The youngest in the family is Stephen Roberts, but everyone calls him Bobs. He is only ten and so much younger than his brothers and sisters that he is spoiled by all of them.

At number 7, Linacre, we have Mrs. Louisa King, widowed for a few years, and her only daughter, Muriel, is married to Harold Day and living far away in Malaya. It was her husband George Williams who was Mayor of Worcester from November 1906-1907.

At number 8, Fair Hill we have Mrs. Emily Nicholls, who is a middle-aged widow of the bank manager, Joseph. She has two of her four children still living with her: Eileen who is 18 and Clifford who is 20.

At number 9 we have Mrs. Eliza Stinton. She enjoys lacemaking and is in the Worcester Choral Society – she is a soprano. Her daughter May, who is 28 is married to another of the Day boys, John. And her son Tom Stinton who is 22, was up until July teaching as Sixth Form Master at King’s School, and living with his mother. He has now gone to Guernsey to teach at Elizabeth College. He is keen on my sister Mary and they have become engaged. So you see we in the Crescent know each other quite well. Tom graduated from Magdalen College at Oxford in 1908 and then he did a Teacher Training year with them He wants to become a headmaster in the fullness of time.

At number 10, Rosendale, we have Mrs. Henry Rowe. Her husband was an architect and surveyor but he died a few years ago. Her son still runs the family business Rowe and Son, at 30 Foregate Street. Also living with her is her grandchild, Mabel Palmer who is now about a 30.

At number 11, The Cedars, we have Mr. John Charles Knight, who has his grocery business at 63 Lowesmore. His wife is Elizabeth, and they have a son, Charles, who is 14 and another called William who is 11.

At number 12 and 13 which are combined and called Raven’s Nest, we have Joseph Riley. He is a cycle manufacturer who was born in Ireland, and still very much carries his Irish accent with him. His elderly parents live with him. His father Joseph had been an insurance agent, and his mother is called Agnes.

At number 14, The Oaklands, Mr. Joseph Henry Garret lives. He is a surveyor of county roads. He is a widower. His sister Elizabeth lives with them and his three daughters, Mary, Angela and Amy as well.

At number 15, West View, Mrs. is E.J. Acton. She is a widow. Her daughter Dorothy, who is about 24 lives with her.

Number 16 is the Rectory for St. Nicholas’ Church, and the Rev. George Fisher Williams lives there. His wife is called Beatrice, and they have 4 daughters: Irene 20, Kathleen 18, Cecile 17 and Marjorie 12.

Number 17, the Homestead or Lansdown Villa is owned by Mr. Alfred Usher. His wife is called Marion, and they have 2 of their four daughters still at home – Joyce who is 23 and Esther who is 22. They also have a cousin Fanny Hockley who lives with them. He is the Managing Director of a Limited Company.

At number 18 we have Mr. Frank Everill who is an auctioneer and estate agent. His wife is called Emily and they have five daughters, of whom the youngest Gladys and Dorothy are still living at home.

The only other house which is on the road which joins the tops and bottoms of our houses is called Bishop’s House or Lansdowne House. It is currently under the ownership of our bit of nobility – The Honorable Mrs. Emily Ogilvey. She moved here from Oswestry in Shropshire. She is a widow with twin daughters Alice and Diana who are 32. Sometimes she is visited by Sir Herbert Ogilvy. Her husband was a clergyman of the Church of England – the Vicar of Hanbury near Bromsgrove. She is very reticent to talk about her husband’s family, but we think they are distantly related to the Earls of Airlie in Scotland. I wish I could find out more about her. If only Muriel was here, she would find out all there is to know, as she is obsessed by her supposed noble lineage from the Marquis of Winchester. Others of Mrs. Oglivey’s friends that she talks about are the Viscount Deerhurt and his wife Virginia. They are the nobility of Coventry and when he isn’t being labelled as a viscount he is called Lt. Col. George William Coventry.

Now that I have mentioned who the others are, let me tell you a bit more about my family. We are a very large family, although many are away at the moment.

My father is Warren Williams Arrowsmith Tree, and he is a very successful solicitor and has his office at 10 High Street in the city. Actually, my oldest brother, Frank, who is now 22 works there now too and Father has changed the sign on the door to read, Tree and Son.

My mother, Juliana Beven Brown Tree, is a very happy mother and homemaker, and enjoys her large family. She doesn’t see much of her birth relatives who come from Plymouth and Redruth, but she keeps in touch with them.

My father’s sister, Miss Louise Tree, whom we call Aunt Loui, is unmarried and she also lives with us. She’s the same age as my mother and they are good friends.

I suppose my sister Margaret, 27, who is two years senior to me and I, at 25, also being unmarried could almost be called spinsters. We are both quiet and shy, and find it difficult to make overtures to suitable men.

I spent some time studying in London over the past few years, taking courses in social history and economics but of course women are not allowed to take degrees, so I have nothing on paper to show for it. I help father in his office most days.

Margaret is the Secretary for the Charity Organisation Society, which meets daily at the Dispensing Buildings, Bank Street. She works with the Mayor, and our minister, Rev. Hough who is the chairman of the committee. Mr Cherry is the Honourary Treasure and Mr. Jones the Agent. But Margaret does most of the work. Their objective is to improve conditions of the poor by helping them only after carefully enquiry as to how permanent results can best be efficient and check as to possible mendacity and fraud.

Our next sister, Elizabeth, called Beth, is 24 she is a musical prodigy. We all love music and play instruments, but Beth has exceptional talent, and is teaching music. She also is unmarried, but she still has aspirations in that direction. She went to music school at Queen Margaret’s in Scarborough, and then stayed on as a teacher there. It is pleasant for us to have a relative in a seaside town for us to visit and we all have been up there at some time to see how she is getting on.

Then we have our sister, Catharine Mary, whom we call Carrie who is 22. She is the prettiest and most outgoing of the bunch of us girls, and she is engaged to Tom Stinton who is also 22. She is in her final year at Manchester University where she is reading mathematics. She will be the first in the family to get a degree and one of the first women ever to do so. We have known the Stinton family for perhaps 10 years – and our fathers knew each other before that. We all like Tom and enjoy his company and are pleased that he is going to be part of our family.

Then comes my brother Frank, who is 21. His real name is Warren Francis. He left school when he was sixteen, in 1904, much to his joy. He came to take his place at the office, where he speedily found his feet. It is of extraordinary interest to us who knew how much he disliked school work to watch him grow step by step. He is becoming one of the ablest young solicitors in the city. He hated school when he was at Warwick Grammar, and only just made the basic grades to finish. But once he was working for a qualification he very much wanted he settled down and became a fully fledged solicitor.

I got to know him much better over last year, because for a few weeks before his examination took place, he went up to London to be coached, and it was my happy lot to spend some of that time with him. We lived at a boarding house kept by Miss Green, who made us exceedingly comfortable, and, as usual, Frank speedily enslaved her as well as the old housemaid, Annie, who used to make every excuse (and sometimes none at all) for coddling him. As we were both hard at work we did not do much in the way of gaiety, but in a quiet way we both enjoyed the time there. I look back with pleasure to the happy evenings we spent in front of my bedroom fire, where after dinner we used to retire with our books and take our place one on each side of the fire, and diligently apply ourselves to work, he, of course, with the inevitable pipe in his mouth. We were some times joined by another boarder with whom we had chummed up, Miss Baldry, who had traveled a good deal, and was then studying hygiene. She soon fell a captive to Frank's charms (in spite of the difference in their ages), and when our work was done for the night we used to have great ‘pow wows’ before retiring to rest, sipping hot cocoa the while, and discussing questions of burning interest. I was reading a certain amount of economics and social history at the time, and Frank would sometimes leave his law and turn his attention to these subjects. He cares little for theatres - he always prefers outdoor exercise to stuffy places of entertainment, and he nearly always spends his Saturdays and Sundays in taking long walks somewhere in the country. In London, he struck up a friendship with an exceedingly interesting man, Mr. Warner, a member of the Society of Friends, who was then a lecturer at University College, and he and Frank used to go off for the day together, on which occasions Frank thoroughly enjoyed himself.

Frank evidently inherited a talent for the Law, and came into his own as soon as the dread examinations, which he always abominated, were over. So diligently did he apply himself to the work which must be done before he could hope to be of assistance to father, that at the age of twenty-one, last year, he became a full-fledged solicitor, having passed his final examination as young as it was possible for him to do so. lt was an immense relief to him when he passed his final examination, though he had enjoyed his five years of articles.

My next brother, Charlie, 20, is at Cambridge, reading classics. He hopes to become a teacher, and I know he will make a good one. He is very shy and hates large groups, so he will need to teach in a public school where the numbers in the classes are restricted, and everyone becomes a part of a big family. Charlie went to the local school, Tredennyke (which we call Toddies) until the age of 11. Then he was sent to a prep school in Brighton and from there got a scholarship for Charterhouse. After leaving Charterhouse he proceeded to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he gained a scholarship, and has remained there three and a half years. He works hard on the whole, and, as at school, he takes a keen interest in games, and only just missed his Blue for hockey. He on several occasions has played for the County.

Talking of Charlie reminds me of a time when there was a play being performed by amateurs somewhere in the town so we lent a few articles of furniture which had to be conveyed to the hall, among others a large armchair. In Sidbury I met the dray slowly proceeding towards the hall, and in the arm-chair was Charlie calmly reading, quite oblivious of his surroundings.

Of Frank's absent-mindedness I can tell another amusing anecdote. When in his teens, he sent down to town to buy some half-dozen herrings for the family dinner. The herrings were purchased, wrapped up in paper, and securely tucked under Frank's arm. On his arrival at home he produced the parcel, which by then looked suspiciously small, and on opening it, it was discovered, much to his and the cook's consternation, that but one herring remained. One by one the elusive fish had slipped out of the unguarded paper, leaving a veritable trail of herrings all up the road, much to the gastric enjoyment, no doubt, of neighbouring cats!

Charlie is a voracious reader, but his taste for literature takes a different turn from Frank's. He reads, of course, the classics largely, but novels, especially of the Jacobs type, amuse him very much. I well remember when he was about nine or ten his wading through a vast tome of about 1,200 pages, and whenever asked how the book progressed he always told one that he had reached page 260 or 553 or whatever it might be.

Our last brother, aged 15, was christened Philip Beven, but for some reason he has always been called Peter, or Pete. He started at King’s School in 1907 after his early years at Toddies. Pete was the only one of the boys to go to a local secondary school, Kings, but it has a very good reputation, and the Day boys and Tom Stinton all went there He was a boy who developed late, but the gospel of practical Christianity which was set before him at school fell on soil which later gave forth a hundredfold. This last year, Pete was confirmed, and it was then that he began seriously to set his mind towards equipping himself to enter the Church.

All three boys have been brought up to be helpful in the house. Mother is a strong believer in training boys to be as useful as the girls. For one thing, one never knew when it might be of use to have a little knowledge of such things, and also she considers that it is a great training ground for unselfishness. Some of the male sex consider that they are lords of creation, and that women were made to wait upon them hand and foot. Mother determined that this should not be the attitude of her boys if she could help it. It is their duty to wait on their sisters just as much as the sisters' duty to wait on them. This teaching bore good fruit, and the boys' thoughtfulness in little ways for us is really quite touching.

Charlie really seems to have a bent for domestic work. He brushes down the stairs with great vigour, and remarkably well, too. In spite, however, of Charlie's energies in the house, he considers that mother's standard of cleanliness is far too high, and when she appears duster in hand with a businesslike air he declares that she would even keep her funeral waiting while she rose and dusted her coffin!

Charlie inherited the family love of music, and though he never became a performer, he spends hours at the piano amusing himself with thumping out tunes he has heard, and then in his own way harmonising them. He really is most quaint about it. Very often, after being away for a whole term, he walks into the house, goes straight to the piano, and instantly loses himself to all else, leaving his loving family to find out that he had arrived by the familiar strains which Charlie alone could produce.

As is usual with boys, our brothers found nicknames for most of us. Janet was, I think, christened by Charlie who took the name from a foolish little ditty then in vogue.

Poor pussies now the dafine saw
Of going for ningies to the law.’

Ningy, I am informed, means ‘a trifle,’ so, of course, obviously the name for Janet.
I was honoured by two names, Frank and Pete each having their special one for me. Pete called me ‘Towks,’ derived, I think, from some character in Dickens whom he thought I resembled.

Next in our family is Janet, who at 18 is bubbly and bossy. She wants to be involved in everything and with everyone. She is still at school at the Worcester High School for Girls, also known as the Alice Ottley School. All we girls went there after we got to the age of 11. Up to that time we had a governess who taught us at home.

So that is the round up of our little road for this year. I will gather details over the year for when I next officially bring it all up to date in a year’s time.