Free Thatcher by Clare Beckett

Chapter 1: Mr Roberts’ Daughter
    It was an ordinary day in Grantham. On 13 October 1925, very little of note happened there, except that Margaret Hilda Roberts was born. She describes her first memories as an idyllic blur in which the sun was always shining through the leaves of the lime tree into our living room and someone – my mother, my sister, one of the people working in the shop – was always nearby to cuddle me or pacify me with a sweet . 1 For she was born above her father’s grocery shop.
    The family were already established in business when Margaret Roberts arrived. Her father, Alfred Roberts, was a grey-haired and pious Alderman of the town. He was a self-made man, the son of a shoemaker who had left school at 13. He went into the grocery trade, at first working in the ‘tuck shop’ at Oundle School, and later managing a grocery store in Grantham. He had made many attempts to enlist in the army during the First World War, but had been turned down on medical grounds. His younger brother Edward did serve, and died at Salonika in 1917.
    That year, Alfred Roberts married Beatrice Ethel Stephenson. They met through the local Methodist community, and were married in the church – the same one that Margaret Roberts attended regularly throughout her childhood. Beatrice Stephenson was a successful dressmaker. She was as frugal and practical as her husband, and they set out to save and prosper. In 1919, they took out a mortgage on a shop in North Parade. It was well placed, on a crossroads, near to the railway line: Margaret Roberts must have been able to set her watch by the sound of the trains. Pictures show a large Edwardian building. Nowadays, some of these big, comfortable houses have become guesthouses. Margaret Roberts regretted that there was no garden, though.
    By 1921, when Margaret’s sister Muriel was born, the family were comfortably settled. This was not sufficient for Alfred Roberts. He was a careful and prudent man, with ambition that his family should never suffer as he did in his own impoverished childhood. He was determined to build a solid and, if possible, wealthy base for his family, where his daughters could grow to live a full and useful life. In 1923, he opened a second shop in Huntingdon Road. In 1925 he expanded his business into two adjoining properties in North Parade.
    Prosperity did not lead to unnecessary expenditure, however. Margaret Roberts was born into a home that was practical, serious and intensely religious . 2 In the mid-1930s, 75 per cent of all families were officially designated working class but the Roberts, with two shops, were among the 20 per cent who could be considered middle class. Despite this the daughters had few possessions. There were no bicycles and not many toys, and trips to the theatre or cinema were rare. Their lives revolved around Methodism. The family went to Sunday morning service at 11.00, after Sunday school. There was Sunday school again in the afternoon, and the adults at least would attend service again in the evening.
    Nonetheless, these early years were happy ones for Margaret Roberts. The shops were quality grocers, selling food more often found in delicatessens nowadays. Margaret helped behind the counter when she was old enough, and took a full part in measuring and packing sugar, coffee or tea for sale: these arrived in big bags, and had to be decanted into 1lb. weights. The family had some standing in the town, and Mr Roberts’ younger daughter would have seen friendly faces and been made welcome wherever she went. She was part of the work upstairs, too – the unremitting work of making good and mending, washing and polishing, that kept a household respectable in the days before domestic appliances. She knew how to iron fine linen, and to heat a flat iron without scorching the linen. There is some triumph in running a comfortable, clean, and economic household that becomes a reward in itself. Thriftiness