William Francis George Kite was born on 21st January 1915
But prostitute or not, with eight children, the priority was food. Aunt Elizabeth told me of the whole family scouring the fields for onion weed to make onion pie. She told of the smell in the air the morning they were taken to Stepney Way, in Bethnal Green, the Barnardo’s Headquarters.
‘She walked down the steps, her dark wavy hair over her shoulders,’ she said, ‘and she had Will in her arms.’
Emma would indeed be a thoughtful mother. The children had warm clothes, and their hair looked tidy. William’s cheeks are chubby and rosy. The photo I have treasured all my life, the one taken on their entry to Barnardo’s, reflects all these positive points. In England, keeping warm would be essential. People would die on the street, sitting on a bench. They would freeze to death. The walls of the shoddy, cheaply built houses were so thin that the cold would creep through. One night in 2016, the first night of a six-week caravan trip through South Australia, I felt a little taste of such a life. We had only the thin wall of the caravan to keep out the cold. We put a heater on (a very noisy, clunky-sounding one) and piled the blankets over us, but the cold just seeped up through the floor. It was a miserable night.
In 1900, people could find a bed for the night if they had two pence in a workhouse. There was no work, so the subsistence from the Government in the form of rent money gave the Kite family a home at St Mary’s Gardens. They were lucky to have one. It is said that prostitutes have better homes than others. The reasoning that they can afford the trimmings of life, and maybe that was why the Kite children escaped the era to some degree. Maybe they didn’t. After all, they were handed over to a third party. My father lived to have his own children, so I am thankful for the decision.
Of the eight children, six were transported to another country. Anthony died in a road accident, and one suspects being run over by some sort of vehicle. Emily, the eldest, was married at nineteen; the suspicion that it was earlier is strengthened by the fact that her brother stood for her when she married Edward Parr. She was over 12 years, the legal age allowed under Canon Law, the age of majority at that time to marry.
This photo below from Google Images shows women in a long skirt, gathered at the waist, made of cotton or perhaps linen, a cotton shift-type blouse and together sometimes an added belt.
Hats called cart-wheel hats were mostly overblown with artificial flowers and feathers, and all things fancy. Hats remain a part of women’s attire to this day, the racing season a case in point.
Fascinators and the ubiquitous artificial (fake) flowers are still a favourite in 2025.