In living memory

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Inspired by another thread, where posters were talking about the early 1990s as a different era.

How far back can you take living memories?

My maternal grandfather was born in 1898. Signed up as soon as he was 18 (or possibly a little before) and fought in the Battle of The Somme in July 1916. I have very clear memories of his WWI medals, and the framed certificate on the wall citing his mention in dispatched for conspicuous gallantry (signed by Winston Churchill when I think he was Minister for Munitions). My mum was born in 1946, and I was born in 1975.

so I have living memories of the memories of someone who was born in the Victorian era. Can anyone go back further?

My living memories be my grandparents, born at the beginning of twentieth century, so not quite as old as yours (by a few years).

However, for those still alive today, it would be my dad in his nineties, who talks about being a child during the war. It’s odd to think that soon, there will be no one who lived during the war, and was old enough to remember it.

Interesting! I was having this exact conversation earlier. My paternal grandfather was born in 1899. He had an older sister and older sister in law, both of whom I remember as elderly spinsters who had ' lost their young men' in the Great War and remained single. Can't go back any further than you though

I can remember my DGD talking about being on the railroads, he was born in 1896, so that us as far back as I can go.

Of those who are alive today, the eldest is my brother born in 1956. My DM died young and DF a few years ago.

I’m hoping that there might be some posters in their 60s, 70s or 80s that can take us back further!

I get slightly awe-struck when I realise that my grandfather’s grandfather was alive in the Regency period. Real life Bridgerton.

I never really had a close relationship with my grandparents to have ever asked such questions. Grandad 1 died before I was born, Granma 1 died when I was about 8, and Grandparents 2 never used to take us out, have us over for sleepovers, etc.

I have a child in primary who has a grandparent born before the war - they came in to speak during the WW2 topic 😂

My grandfather said that he could remember queen Victoria s funeral procession.
He'd have been very young.

I am still in my 50s, with maternal grandparents who were born in 1892. My grandfather died before I was born but I have his WW1 medals here. They had my mum relatively late in life (1927) and she died last year at 96, having in turn had me at almost 40.

My grandfather was raised by an aunt who died when he was 28. She was born in 1872. When she was 10, in 1882, an 83-year-old would have been born in 1799. There is a good chance she spoke to someone older than 82 when she was 10. If she did, then I have spoken to a man who spoke to a woman who spoke to someone born in the 18th-century. She would definitely have spoken to pre-Victorians (i.e people born and raised between 1800 and 1837, when Victoria came to the throne). My mother is still alive and can just about remember this old aunt.

My mother also remembers her grandfather, who fought in WW1, and was out there during the Christmas truce of 1914. I also met a relation who was wounded at Dunkirk and a great uncle who was at D-Day.

My grandmother told me that her grandfather had been in the Boer War and that she could remember visiting him as a girl and seeing a Zulu spear and shield on the wall of his terraced house.

The earliest born person I recall was born in about 1910. She lived in a cottage that looked like something off a chocolate box lid. We think of the Essex accent as cockney gangster, but she had a rural Essex accent that has pretty much died out (the accent Joe Gargery would have used in Great Expectations).

My Great grandmother was born in 1889 . I knew her very well . She was part of a large Irish family who had moved to the East End of London . She didn’t have shoes as a child and frequently played truant , having to hide if she saw the ‘school board man ‘ who patrolled the streets . She left school at 12 and married my lovely great grandfather who I just about remember . She met him when he wolf whistled her whilst strolling down the street …At the time he was wearing his uniform having just returned from the Boer war . He went on to be a stoker on a ship , that most terrible of jobs , in WW1. She too ( pp ) went to Queen Victoria’s funeral parade . She taught me all the skipping rhymes she learnt as a child in the late 1890s. She didn’t use any writing paper at school , just had a slate and chalk & would tell me off if I was was wasteful of it whilst drawing / colouring.

She talked about her own Grandmother who had frequently promised her in childhood that she’d take her for a ride in a Hackney carriage’ if she was good ‘. The outing never materialised & my GG was still cross / disappointed about this in the 1980s !

My dad was born just before the war, and his younger sisters of whom one is now deceased remember having tea in the air raid shelter under the dining table (sister in question must have been 2), and he remember his first banana (which I think might have been during the war), and remembers living at a house they lived in during the war, but I don't know if that counts as "remembering the war". I will have to ask him as he would have started school so would have been carrying his own gas mask, having air raid drills etc. while at school. Before he went to school they were all a bit privileged so I wouldn't be surprised if they had a nanny and didn't have any food worries (living in the country).

My mum was born during the war but doesn't remember anything of the tales her mother told me (they were not in the UK but there was rationing and her mum gave her all the meat ration and she sucked it and spat out the fibres - my DGM was appalled and told the doctor at their next appointment and the doctor said "she got the nutrition, don't worry!". But I don't think my DM would remember that or where they lived.

Actually so do I! DD just turned 11 and is in Y6, and her GF (my DF) is the one born in early 1939.

Grandparents born early/mid 1890s. My grandfather remembered the village bonfire for the relief of Mafeking in 1899. My grandmother remembered the death of Queen Victoria and later, the newsboys calling "Titanic lost! Titanic lost!" and people running to buy papers. She also knew Jack Judge (who wrote "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" ) from childhood until his death (very nice man apparently and when I was little she occasionally still put flowers on his grave)

my grandfather was born in 1899.
I talked to him a lot, he had war memories and memories of few cars on the road etc.
He died when I was and adult so I knew him well.
I have a photo of my Granny aged about 3 standing on a stool with boots on, they had button on them and she did them up with a button hook. He father was the coachman at a big house, main form of transport was still horse and carriage (pre-WW1)
My parents are mid-80s. They were small children in the war. I grew up with my mums stories about air raid shelters and playing in the garden when the sirens went off, and rationing.

My paterntal grandfather was born in the 1870s. I'm not as old as that makes me sound - he had a family, was widowed and then had another family in the 1920s and 30s. So, weirdly, one of my uncles from that first family died in WW1, yet his brother, my own father, was a small child in WW2. I'm only in my early 60s!

My grandfather was born in 1896 to older parents who had lived through the Famine, which killed a huge proportion of the population in their area. I think it possibly goes some way towards explaining his very poor MH throughout his life in terms of intergenerational trauma, which unfortunately passed down to the next generation.

When I cleared out my Mums house, amongst her boxes of memorabilia there was an ancient invitation to tea party at Buck. Pal. & there were sepia photos of the relation before the party straight out of Bridgeton, with Feather Boas & parasol.

My family had a few shops & I have a photo of a great grandfathers delivery cart, he was at the reigns.

When I was a child my mum went to the local green grocery with her book of child food coupons, for food for us, there was an earth floor.

I remember meeting a great-grandmother, she was born in 1870 and would have been in her nineties.
She was wearing a high-necked blouse with a beautiful cameo brooch at her throat, a dark cardigan and midi-length dark skirt. Her grey hair was scraped back in a bun.
I’d just been given a sixpence by my aunt, her granddaughter, and GG asked me if it was a threepenny piece and I didn’t understand that they’d once been silver coloured, too (before my time!)
Her only son died in the trenches in WWI and two of her three daughters pre-deceased her, including my grandmother who died before I was born.