Source: Extract from interview with Olive Simmonds, C707/335/1-2, Thompson, P. and Lummis, T., Family Life and Work Experience Before 1918, 1870-1973 [computer file]. 7th Edition. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], May 2009. SN: 2000, http://dx.doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-2000-1
Text: Q: Did you ever go to the cinema?
A. They weren’t there. No. No. The – when we were – children at school we used to get little tickets given at the gates, to take home – and – if you – had that ticket and it came on Saturday afternoon you could go in for a penny. It was the beginnings of pictures. But mother flatly refused. She’d known cases where there’d been a fire and lots of little children had been – burnt and – or killed, every – you cannot go. Not there, So – there was absolutely nothing up to my being – thirteen of that kind at all. But aft – because of the risks and the dangers.
Comments: Olive Simmonds (1890-?) was born in Silsden, West Yorkshire, her family moving to Addingham, then Long Lee, before they moved to a drapery shop in Beechcliffe, nearly Keighley, just before she was thirteen. Any public entertainments would have been in Keighley. She was one of 444 people interviewed by Paul Thompson and his team as part of a study of the Edwardian era which resulted in Thompson’s book The Edwardians: The Remaking of British Society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975).
