"The time for bed was ten o’clock at night - the little ones earlier - all up in the morning between six and seven o’clock and sometimes earlier - before breakfast the most of the rough work had been got through with everything made tidy as Mother used to say. My share at one time was to clean the knives and forks early in the morning - next I was promoted to cleaning boots - then to chopping kindling wood - and so on with little things - but we all received a few pence every week, if we did out work properly.
I hated work at home, and thought it very hard, so sometimes I would give my pence to my brother to do the work for me; and yet anywhere else, in the carpenter’s or blacksmith’s I would work like a Trojan! Anyhow the work had to be scrubbed with soap and water in a washing tub, the servant told Mother, ‘Master John has not chopped his wood.’ ‘Well,’ says Mother, ‘Mary, you know what to do.’
So Mary took me, gave me a couple of inches of a lighted candle, sent me to the cellar, there were there black coal, black beetles, black spiders and spider’s webs and everything weird and ghostly - perhaps a rat or so into the bargain. Knowing that my soft tallow candle would not last long, I worked with a will and got out just before the candle expired! Now it was my turn to be scrubbed and the water had become cold and so I cried and cried and cried but it was of no use. I slept soundly after.
Bye the bye, the fun and mischief often was to pour cold water on the fellow in the tub - I tell you it is no joke.
You see whatever was set us to do had to be done, and so we got used to the discipline and fell into regular and perhaps industrious habits. John Sebastian Helmcken (BCARS: ADD.MSS.505.V.12)
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