In an earlier story I told of my involvement with several Gangs, one of which was the Mermaids Yard gang.

When my Grandfather Domenico first settled in Exeter in the early1890's he lived in Cottages leading into Mermaids Yard. 6 and 7 Mermaids yard Cottages.  Here he lived with his second wife Pacifica and Lucy and Angelo Children from his first marriage to Louisa Cocozza.  Also at this address were various other relatives and Villagers that he had brought over from Italy to help him in his business.

LIFE IN THE TENEMENTS

This is a borrowed photo of the back of American tenements. I hope from this you will get a flavour of the atmosphere that existed.

During the day, the tenements were a noisy communal hub for the women, who, shouting across the square to adjoining properties to their friends and neighbours exchanging greetings and news. 

Life was hard and privacy at a premium,  but the high degree of communal interaction produced by the constrictions of tenement life developed an ability to get along with your neighbours and survive life’s trials.
Families were tight knit units because they had to be to survive, and the manner of life needed for a large family to live in one or two rooms produced a high degree of interaction and communication between the members, therefore the facts of life did not need to be taught at school and the respect for each others privacy was ingrained from an early age.Husbands helped their neighbours home after drunken sprees and Wives helped each other through childbirth and often still births and their children’s illnesses.  They also supported each other in the care of their elderly parents. 
In fact they knew that their interdependence prevented them, many a time, from ending up in the workhouse.

The Exeter Workhouse 1905

A new infirmary was erected In 1905, comprising four units:
A central administration building, male and female ward pavilions to the east and west, and a maternity block to the north. A further planned block to the east for tuberculosis patients was never built.   1905

In the tenements..........

The constant communication between neighbours and the mutual dependency needed to make things work was essential as they lived three or four families to one toilet and maybe twelve families to one communal stairwell. 
Everyone was interdependent upon each other and if you raised your voice the neighbours above, below and on either side knew what you were saying.  Consideration for others needs was drummed into children from an early age as they shared a toilet with up to four other households. 
You shopped along side your neighbours in the same shops - every day buying the same basic traditional foodstuffs.    The employment of school children was at last being addressed by the country.  There was much resistance to the proposed new regulations which were designed to protect young children from exploitation and abuse.  The following is an anlysis of the situation in 1901.  'To Inquire into the Question of the Employment of Children during School Age, and to report what alterations are desirable in the laws relating to Child Labour and School Attendance and in the administration of those laws.'
The Committee was set up as the result of serious facts disclosed by the Return on Wage Earning Children (1899 (23) (205) lxxv). Approximately 300,000 children combined paid work with school attendance, probably 50,000 worked 20 hours per week and a considerable proportion of this number worked 30, 40 and 50 hours per week. Many worked longer than the factory hours allowed for children of the same age. In evidence, Mr Mundella argued that as the statutes regulating factories and mines could not apply to the thousands of little shops, etc., the Education Authority should be given powers, through bye-laws, to issue labour certificates to school children (q. 300). Though some witnesses argued for total prohibition of street trading for girls, the majority inclined to the view that light suitable work of approximately 20 hours per week was good for children. The Committee held that children's employment should be adjusted, not totally prohibited. Its recommendations were based on the assumption that training for manual work should begin before the age of 14, that education should continue after school leaving, that poverty ought not to be legally recognized as a test of the right to work, and that local authorities should be given powers to make bye-laws for employments not already covered by law, to license individual children for street trading and to prohibit night work. The public would support restrictions when conditions of play were more healthy and beneficial and were within the reach of the general mass of the children.

Each families income dictated their health and diet, and most families saw little meat, relying for sustenance on cheap vegetables and local fish or offal.  Few people died of starvation but many of consumption (TB) and the like.
It was common for people to eat meat that had been condemned as unfit for human consumption, but fit for animals.  This meat would was called “Cats Lights” and had been stained green by the Ministry.  This meat was intended for cats and dogs. But poor people bought it and was boiled and cut up, it was cheap and usually safe.  I remember just after the war, the queues outside our factory gates as people queued up at the next door butchers to buy these `cats lights`! Passers by ridiculed the people in the queue, but they still came each week to buy the foul green stuff.  I bought it for Rusty my cat.
To get about you either cycled or you rode with your neighbours on the same public transport or walked with them on the same pavements wherever you were going. If you lived in a tenement you did not own your own transport.  
The imperfections of human nature were impossible to hide in these circumstances in either others or yourself.  You learned to live with them and grew tolerant of each other’s idiosyncrasies.   
“There were eighteen families to each block of three floors.  Each floor had a railed landing, which was communally shared and usually without territorial rights, unless of course families were at war with one another.  This unpleasantness was usually resolved quite quickly as daily needs changed and people relied one upon another for help and sustenance. 
On the ground floor, there was a room where there were one or two large boilers.  These heated water to a suitable temperature for people to boil their washing.
When it was a mother's washday and the water was steaming in the boiler, she would go down there with her scrubbing board and her packet of washing powder and her green carbolic soap for scrubbing and dolly-blues for whitening and Robin starch for starching the table-covers and pillowcases and shirt collars.
Some tenements built the turn of the century did not even have indoor plumbing, just a pump and outhouse for up to 150 people to share.
I remember visiting Mrs Hooper’s house many times. The rooms were dark and the windows which could have let in more light had net curtains and heavy drapes shrouding them.  The lighting was by gas.  The gas fittings were high on the walls and they sputtered through the delicate gas mantles.  The smell of the place was interesting to me (an outsider).  I can only suppose that they had grown up with the smell and were accustomed to it.
The rooms were crowded with furniture, none of which matched and even the living room had a bed in it.
Jo and Winnie Hooper worked in support of the Forte family while they were at work providing house cleaning and child care and they also worked in our Ice cream factory.  Previously, in better times the Hooper family lived next door to my grandfather in Mermaids Cottages, They were very supportive to grandad and the families were very close.
The Ice cream factory was around the corner from Mermaids Yard in Preston Street. 

Jo and Winnie Hooper were called “Aunty” by us Forte children as a mark of the respect in which my parents and their parents before them had held the Hooper family.
More pleasant, kinder people it would have been hard to find.  They were industrious, honest and reliable and when my Grandfather had first come to settle in Exeter in the “Mermaids yard Lodges” they had been good trustworthy neighbours.
Below is the census return for 1901 which shows the people living in my Grandfathers house at that time.
The strange names are due to Italian writing techniques and the Census takers interpretation of what had been written.  Therefore Forte was translated as Torte.
They lived in the Cottages approaching the entrance to Mermaids Yard. 

Here is the extract from the 1901 Census 


PRO Reference Schedule Number
RG Number, Series Piece Folio Page
RG13 2045 31 10 62 

Address
6 & 7 New Mermaid Lodge
Civil Parish Rural District
Exeter  
Town or Village or Hamlet Parliamentary Borough or Division
  Exeter
Ecclesiastical Parish Administrative County
St Mary Major Exeter 

Domenice Torte (Forte)
Relation to Head of Family Condition as to Marriage Age Last Birthday Sex
Head M 31 M
Profession or Occupation Employment Status Where Born
Ice Cream Manufacturer Own Account working at home Italy Casalatties (Casalattico)
Language Infirmity This probably meant that he spoke BROKEN ENGLISH, which was interesting and often hilarious,    Whats'a'matta Yu?  etc
 
Pacifici Torte
Relation to Head of Family Condition as to Marriage Age Last Birthday Sex
Wife M 20 F
Profession or Occupation Employment Status Where Born
  Undefined Italy Casalatties
Language Infirmity 
 
Lucy Torte
Relation to Head of Family Condition as to Marriage Age Last Birthday Sex
Daughter  Lucia S 3 F
Profession or Occupation Employment Status Where Born
  Undefined Devon Exeter
Language Infirmity 
  
Angelo Torte
Relation to Head of Family Condition as to Marriage Age Last Birthday Sex
Son S 2 M
Profession or Occupation Employment Status Where Born
  Undefined Devon Exeter
Language Infirmity 
 
Antonio Torte
Relation to Head of Family Condition as to Marriage Age Last Birthday Sex
Father (My Great-grandfather) W 67 M
Profession or Occupation Employment Status Where Born
Ice Cream Manufacturer Own Account working at home Italy Casalatties
Language Infirmity 
   
Sabetto Akrefabee     SALVETTO?
Relation to Head of Family Condition as to Marriage Age Last Birthday Sex
I  can not find anything like this name anywhere S 19 M
Profession or Occupation Employment Status Where Born
Ice Cream Manufacturer Own Account working at home Italy Casalatties
Language Infirmity 
 
Reffiarle Nardone        RAPHAEL?
Relation to Head of Family Condition as to Marriage Age Last Birthday Sex
Lodger           (Raphael) S 16 M
Profession or Occupation Employment Status Where Born
Ice Cream Manufacturer Own Account working at home Italy Casalatties
Language Infirmity 
   
Thomasso Copouno  CAPOUNO?
Relation to Head of Family Condition as to Marriage Age Last Birthday Sex
Lodger M 32 M
Profession or Occupation Employment Status Where Born
Ice Cream Manufacturer Own Account working at home Italy Casalatties
Language Infirmity 
   
Domeric Moralle    Domenico Morelli?
Relation to Head of Family Condition as to Marriage Age Last Birthday Sex
Lodger  Morale was Morelli M 41 M
Profession or Occupation Employment Status Where Born
Ice Cream Manufacturer Own Account working at home Italy Casalatties
Language Infirmity 
   
Thomas Moralle     Morelli?
Relation to Head of Family Condition as to Marriage Age Last Birthday Sex
Son S 10 M
Profession or Occupation Employment Status Where Born
  Undefined Italy Casalatties Casalattico
Language Infirmity 
   
Other than my Grandfather Domenico Forte and his father and wife and children, others living in the houses had been sent for from our village in Italy to assist in the running of the business.  Most of these people were either related to us through Bloodline or as Godparents etc. Compadre! PADRONE! etc.