A Ragged Schooling: Growing Up in the Classic Slum

by Robert Roberts

With great humour and vitality, Robert Roberts evokes his Edwardian childhood in the vivid portrait of a vanished community. Breathing the smoke from the factory chimneys, the children of Salford struggled daily to survive the grinding poverty that surrounded them. Sharing lively games along the railways lines and canal banks, their lives were rich in experience and comradeship.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Edgar · Rating 3 out of 5]

When the Duke of Wellington, then prime minister, passed through Salford and arrived at Manchester, upon opening the world’s first passenger railway line, he received his hottest reception since Waterloo. ‘Thousands of the lowest orders had poured from the courts and alleys to meet His Grace in person…(they) flung lumps of clay, bricbracs and other missiles…..groans and hisses greeted the carriage'. Thus Robert Roberts, quoting a contemporary, describes what had occurred a century earlier. ‘The new industrial proletariat gave sullen warning from the depths of the first industrial slums’. It symbolized the paradox of the industrial revolution. Disraeli described greater Manchester ‘as great a human exploit as the rise of Athens’. Yet the corollary, the dark side, was the enslavement of a whole class in dire working and living conditions for a couple of generations.
A Ragged Schooling describes a family well and truly entrenched in this dark side. Yet the Roberts family try to make the most of it and wrench as much living and fun out of their ragged life. The family is fairly astute, and they are not exactly on the bottom rung of the ladder. As well as the father working, they have a store and have several ‘tick’ customers, ie who buy on credit. Yet life is a constant struggle, even for them, right to the end. The children, including Robert are obviously bright, yet no way can they afford to stay on at school beyond 12 years of age – the working minimum age then.
Pollution is the norm everywhere and the people where he lives breed in ‘noxious vapours’ in concentrated forms as ‘our own streets stood immediately under the gasworks in the path of prevailing winds…. But very few questioned the right of industry to ruin our health and environment”. In the factory where he worked, he refers to the ‘automatic grinder….that spurted a stream of bronze motes through the air. With every breath we were taking in metal dust’.
The book is peopled by a few memorable characters. His father is drawn in a sympathetic way. He is fond of booze, but not excessively so and no more than anyone else in his situation – his sole release from the drudgery of life.
Iggy (Ignatius) represents the absolute dregs of society and is beyond the pale for Robert’s mates because his company reflects badly on them. Yet the author accepts him and sees his worth behind the rags, and delights at his wonder when he witnesses how the other half (or other 9/10s!) live. Later he met and reminisced with him in prison where Iggy inevitably ended up.
Aloysius Murphy, his father’s Irish crony, is another colourful character, with typical Irish charm, a regular visitor at the Roberts’ household.
The most impressive character for me is Robert’s mother, a most astute character, who never puts a word wrong and who in today’s world would definitely be an achiever of some sort. Yet in trying to rise up above her surroundings she was kicking against the pricks. Just in the last paragraph of the book, it is revealed that she did break free to finally leave behind the dark slums of the industrial north. But all too late, for shortly thereafter its implied she may have ended her own life. The author says he has covered this episode elsewhere (presumably in ‘The Classic Slum’).
This book rambles on a bit in places, particularly near the end. Yet for someone with the author’s background with minimum education, it’s a great achievement and an important social commentary on that period in the early 1900s.

[Gabi Coatsworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this memoir of a man, born in 1905 in one of the worst slums of Britain. Salford in Manchester was almost beyond poor, education might consist of a year of schooling before you had to work, and the air and rivers were so polluted that they could be deadly. In spite of this, Robert Roberts grew up very literate (thanks to his mother) and has written an engrossing and fascinating memoir. No self-pity, lots of humor, and a real historical gem. It's not often one sees a memoir from someone of the 'working class', so this book is truly valuable.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an incredible story from Robert Roberts who was born in a Salford Slum in 1905. The autobiography was moving, humanizing and encaptured marvelous humor. Life indeed was harsh in the streets of Salford. This is before the First World War. Still children could still have fun playing in the streets,their imaginations making up games which would give them the excitement they craved. This was a harsh time but the author has written the story with great sensitivity. Wonderful read.

[Moumita · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful, witty, and sensitive book. One wouldn't even know it's an autobiography from the way it reads. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in period pieces, Downton Abbey, and/or is an Anglophile like me. Although the book jumps from story to story, I really appreciated it as it kept everything lively.

[Sue Hyams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is fantastic! I found it via a Victorian history course although it's actually set in the early 20th century. An autobiography of Robert Roberts and his childhood in the Edwardian slums of Salford, it's a hugely entertaining, informative read. I loved it.

[Alexa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very similar to the author's other book, "The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century", but where that was meant to be more of a general social history, this is a (somewhat nonlinear) memoir, and I felt that it was more readable. Such a work from the working class in this period is very rare, this book is valuable in a library about working class history. I often found myself wishing I could talk to the author and ask a million questions.

[Paultaylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Friedrich Engels wrote about the condition of Working Class Lives in the industrial areas of Manchester during his time in the City between 1842-1844. His account of poverty is grinding but detached and statistical as well as judgemental of the system (of which he was part) that caused the poverty. Robert Roberts is writing about a time that is just over sixty years later as a member of the working class in Salford. He writes with warmth humour and candour in the way that an "outsider" like Engels never could. As with honour amongst thieves there is a cameraderie and empathy amongst the disadvantaged as well as an obvious pecking order. Life may well be a joke but Robert Roberts shows that the only way to deal with it is to make the most of it. The conversion of his father from a liberal devotee of Lloyd George to a lifelong socialist is particularly telling (albeit only a vignette) and gives clear voice as to why people should be left free to determine their own destiny rather than be lectured to by government, "do gooders" or Friedrich Engels. A true case of Physician heal thyself.I would love to read more of Roberts's work on the strength of this autobiographical account of his childhood.

[Gareth Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

Roberts's the Classic Slum is an excellent work, partially based on research and his own recollections. I had high hopes of A Ragged Schooling, but it's a little disappointing. Based wholly on his recollections some of which appear in the Classic Slum, it's an undemanding read. However, with little structure it's a rather a run of the mill remembrance with nothing to really set it apart from many similar books. It rather lacks structure and rather underplays the difficult life faced by his mother that it is so well presented in the Classic Slum. I feel a little churlish awarding only 2 stars, as it was a pleasant and enjoyable book.

[BookQueen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A vivid, ironic, and warm beautifully written biography of growing up in the slums of Salford, Lancashire. My grandmother was born in 1905 in Liverpool; the other side of Lancashire, so this book had a special interest to me.

His family are beautifully drawn - a clever family trapped by poverty and their dismal surroundings, particularly his mother who is perhaps most poignantly imprisoned but Northern humour shines through.

His account of The Duke of Wellington being jeered by the ragged crowd illustrates the subversiveness of the workers enslaved by the grim realities of industrialisation.

[Mira · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up after hearing a lively book discussion on Radio 4. There was some grim reading about the realities of slum living and just how hard life could be but a perfect, personal snapshot of an Edwardian childhood.

[Martyn Mccarthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very pleasing, well-written social history.