I was 13 years old and my mother had got me a job to go to, at number 10 TheCrescent, Filey, to work for two sisters, Miss’s Gibson, at five shillings per week. I had to be up by six o clock every morning and in bed by eight.  No stopping up burning light, which was oil lamps. My father used to bring me my clean clothes and I had to give my mother the five shillings and she used to make home made toffee which was lovely to eat.  She used to give me a big bag full. Then I left in the November, I went in May, but I was a child at home until I was thirteen.. I was very naughty, always getting into trouble.  My mother used to say I ought to have been a lad.  If I had been I would have got more belting than I did while I was a school girl. My grandmother (Eliza Sunley)  lived a few doors from us in Gristhorpe and I had to take the evening papers out and call and see my grandmother.  So one day, it was a Saturday, I had always to read her the Mercury.  So one day I called she said “ Ho come again, I am busy now.”   Just what I wanted.  Me and my sister  (Dorothy) had been given a new dress each from an aunt of ours.  So mother had put me mine on to let grandmother see.   My father had a bike with rubber tyres and my mother had heard I had been on my dad’s bike a few times.   She used to say, “ If I ever catch you on it I will belt your backside with buckle in.”  And she would have done.

So this day grandma didn’t want me, I knew my brother was down Station Lane with the bike, so off I ran and got on riding nicely.  I was just going on Gristhorpe station when I looked round and I was over the handlebars into a gutter of muck up to my neck.  Well, I didn’t know whatever to do, but God was good to me that day, as it was fit to roast you alive.  Then an old lady that lived in a house came across and said had I hurt myself.  I said, “ I don’t know what to do.”  So she said, “ Well come with me”, and she took all my things off which I hadn’t many on, and she put me in her washing tub and washed and ironed all my things.   You couldn’t believe she had made my dress look like it was.  It was a dress you could iron.  But she was worried more about me as I had cut my thumb badly.  She tied it up to stop it bleeding, then I couldn’t thank her plenty.  So I went home now I was going to get all this sorted out.  My brother was waiting for me in the lane when I got to him and told him,“Don’t for goodness tell our mother”.   I said, “ What have I to say about my hand?”  While on our way up from the station was a bank where violets grew, so he said, “ Get some and tell her you slipped down the bank and cut it on some glass.”   So he went home before me.  She said had he seen me.  He said, “ I haven’t seen her, I don’t know where she is.”   “ No so long as she hasn’t been on her father’s bike.”   Then I went home and I thought by the way she looked at me, my brother must have told her.   She said, “ Have you been on your father’s bike?”  and I said I hadn’t.  So she said, “Only you haven’t”, so that was alright.   Then my dad wanted to look at my thumb and said I ought to have some stitches in it, but he went into a field and he found a plant that stopped bleeding and it did the trick.   Then on the Sunday that we had to go to church I had plenty of time, so I thought I had better run down and tell Mrs Bulmer how I was, but who was coming up the lane but her.  I said, “ Where are you going?” and she said she was coming up to ask how I was.   I said, “Don’t, as my mother had told me many times if she heard I had been on my father’s bike, I would get a good hiding and sent to bed without my tea.”   So she said, “ No honey, I am glad I have seen you.”  I often went down to see her after that.

So that is how I met what was to be my husband  (Harry Pledger).  Then we both left our farms and we both got a job again on two brother’s farms and I stayed there until I got married.  (Marriage Certificate shows that Violet was at The Gate House at Lebberston and Harry was a waggoner at Cayton Cliff Farm). I was 20 and my husband was 24 and I lived at home with my mother as she had a bad heart and in those days there was four houses I could have which I wanted, so I went to live near my mother at Lebberston until we moved to Cayton.

I shall always remember once we were making a noise upstairs when she told him to come and stop us, so he did, and then I thought he has gone now as I heard him close the door, so me, as soon as I heard him go, I got out of bed and said to my other two brothers’ and sister  (Sep, Tom & Dolly) as we four slept in one bed, “ I am not frightened of him.”   So I went down stairs as you could look through the top of the door and see into my mother’s room and when I went downstairs I put my feet on his head.  I nearly broke my toes rushing back up the stairs – it was always me to get into trouble. As soon as I had taken the papers out I had to go to bed, the other three were in bed and I used to sit in the window, as other children could stay up later than us.  So one night I had a penny given, you never told your mother or you would have had to give her it.  You could buy things for a penny in those days and I asked one of those lads if he would go to the shop and buy me 12 chocolates and he could have one.  When he came I moved out of the window so he could throw them in the bedroom, but he threw them on the tiles – I could have killed him.  So we had to get into bed and hope for the best in the morning.  When we got up, mother had gone to work at my grandma’s, as her and my sister  (Lizzie)  who was 7 years older than me, had to help with the ironing, as they did washing for boarding houses in Scarborough, and on a Saturday afternoon we had to walk from Gristhorpe to Scarborough.   On the morning I went to get my chocolates down off the roof, something, either birds or mice, had eaten them.