Reg Edwards wrote:

My mother was a Black Country skivvy.

Hmm, Hey Reg, on this side of the pond, a skivvy is your underwear. What
on earth is it in your neighborhood?


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Mike, your enquiry has triggered me off again.

An English "skivvy" is, or was, the lowest of the low domestic servants -
the teen-age girl who lived in the attic or cellar and emptied the
bed-chamber pots in English Gentlemen's Victorian and Edwardian large
houses.

The breed died out during and shortly after the "Great Leveller" - World
War One - from which the sons of the family did not return. The Empire was
in decline. Due to loss of income the impoverished gentry could no longer
afford to employ so many servants.

Skivvies had to go. Working-class young women became employed in dark,
filthy Black Country factories at 20 shillings per week pocket money until
they became pregnant and got married. Then came WW2 and the air raids from
which I returned better educated and intact.

In this better age even the chamber pots have gone. Although I still have a
large heavy antique relic which was in regular use by my grandmother. As a
child I once saw her sitting on it. Should fetch a good price at an
auction.

Let's flash back to the early '60's. I was a tender lad of 7 or 8, and
my folks had bought a house after renting for years. The previous owners
had left a number of things, including a beautiful porcelain pottery
piece which my mother started using as a cookie jar. Imagine her dismay
when she was told that it was a chamber pot!!!! She stopped using it,
despite my protestations that it's ancestry made it even "cooler".

To this day, I am amazed that such a fine piece of pottery would have
such prosaic purpose....... darn good cookies too!

- Mike -