STILL IS STILL MOVING TO ME...

One of the reasons why Marie Lloyd's rendition of the song "My Old Man Said Follow the Van" (performed above by Jessie Wallace in the tv film Marie Lloyd) was so popular with the patrons of the London music halls was that many of those listening to the words had lived through similar events. Younger readers of this blog are probably puzzled reading the various parts of our family history just how many times our ancestors moved home during their lives. My mother told me that since the day she got married in 1926 she had moved home something in the region of forty times!  The reality, when I came to check it,  proved this statement to be not far from the truth.

So why all the moving?  The song, of course, tells of what used to be called a "Moonlight Flit" - an after dark, unannounced, house move to avoid paying rent arrears. I'm sure that happened a few times in our family history but the most common reason was that the lower-paid citizens moved because there were lots of places to move too. Working class people rarely owned their own homes so the amount of rental property was phenomenal compared to today. If you found cheaper rooms, needed extra space, wanted to be nearer to relatives (or further away from them!) you simply gave your landlord notice and moved - often your landlord would happily find something more suitable rather than lose you as a tenant.