POOR folk couldn't afford to visit the doctor when they became ill back in the 1920s, because treatment demanded payment. That's why there were so many home-made remedies about -- from bread poultices, with which to draw infection, to a chest-rub of goose grease or a piping hot, boiled onion placed inside a sock to soothe toothache. But, says Mrs I. M. Cooke of Clinkham Wood: "To prove that they worked, we are still here to tell the tale".

Mrs C, a prolific writer of poems centred on the 'good old days', has stepped out of rhyme to provide a fascinating narrative concerning her 1920s girlhood.

Her dad, a shopworker in St Helens, rose each morning at 5.30am in the summer to work on his vegetable allotment before setting off to earn his daily bread. And to help keep the home-grown produce on the family table, our Ennnerdale Avenue correspondent took on shovelling duties with her brother.

"We went round the streets to collect horse manure which was plentiful in those days". Pre-war street traders, from fruiterers and fishmongers, to pop sellers and rag and bone men, all had horse-drawn carts.

In the autumn, the pair collected falling leaves to make leaf mould for the enrichment of the soil on dad's plot.

And here are a few other random memories from Mrs C...

"Mam made patchwork quilts and 'pegged rugs' from old clothing. We children helped by cutting the clothes into strips and dropping them into a tea-chest which mam got from the grocer".

Tea then was weighed out and packaged in the shop, as was sugar, butter and margarine. Empty sugar sacks were used as the backing into which pieces of cloth were threaded, to form those once-familiar multi-coloured pegged rugs which adorned most working-class hearths.

Kids developed more slowly then and, unlike many of today's youngsters, were still quite child-like until they left school at 14 and stepped straight into full employment.

"My first job was sewing in Oxley's factory which was above the old department store. My wage was five shillings and sixpence (a fraction over 27p) a week, made up of a shilling a day and sixpence for working Saturday morning. That odd sixpence was my spend".

Many, such as our correspondent's family, were God-fearing folk. "There was no work done on Sunday at our house. It was the Lord's day; so it was church in the morning, Sunday school in the afternoon and church again at night".

Kids had to know their place. "We had to do as we were told, at home and also at school. Even the local bobby was allowed to clip us round the ear if he caught us doing something wrong".

Not that the kids of that era were pure angels. "I remember boys swarming up the gas-lamps to turn them off after the lamplighter had been round, and such like pranks. But there was no real damage done, as there was always the fear of being sent to a reformatory school, run like a prison".

These reflections of tougher times may sound strange to today's younger generation.

But, Mrs C rounds off chirpily: "A lot of the things people now take for granted were either just being invented or hadn't even been thought of. So what we never had, we never missed!"