About the contributor

I was born in 1935 and almost immediately my father decided to leave and live with another woman.
To make sure we existed my mother moved to a cheap rented house and made a living doing cleaning work.
This consisted of cleaning business offices in the city centre and doing housework for women who had husbands in well paid jobs. I recall a dentists wife and an official with Bradford corporation.
Saturday nights were spent accompaning my mother on the tram to the city centre and going to the open air market to buy vegetables for the week as the stalls sold off. No fridges in those days!
My father had to pay money for my upkeep to Bradford Town Hall and my mother had to queue for it and sadly many times money hadn't been paid in.