The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— <strong>The</strong> <strong>Death</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Christian</strong> <strong>Britain</strong> —<br />
when I came home from that I kept on my clothes because I was<br />
going to the Sunday school, and then we went to Bible class at night.<br />
And the reason I went to all that was because I got wearing my<br />
Sunday clothes. As soon as I was finished from the Bible class you’d<br />
to take them <strong>of</strong>f, hang them up and put on your ordinary clothes.<br />
You weren’t allowed to wear your Sunday best for playing with. So<br />
the one [day] I looked forward to is a Sunday just for that – to keep<br />
my Sunday clothes on. 52<br />
Hetty Beck born in 1879 in London recalled the special Sunday dresses<br />
she wore as either white or very pale, used for church and Sunday school<br />
anniversaries and for Sunday evening walks with friends, in stark contrast<br />
to the black she wore after funerals during the long mourning time. 53 It<br />
was the same for young Catholic girls. ‘Sunday-best’ dresses were bought<br />
annually, usually in spring, as Maria Nolan (born in 1910) recalled:<br />
First Sunday in May, that’s when you got your summer clothes<br />
bought.... And all you did was, she [mother] did was, to go down to<br />
the village shop; they were Baptist folk, and very nice people . . . Mrs<br />
Bingham would get the order and she would go to the Glasgow warehouse,<br />
and just exactly, she just took a tape and measured us, and she<br />
brought back the beautifulest clothes. It was the talk <strong>of</strong> the village.<br />
‘I wonder what the Nolan girls will have this May?’ Sometimes be<br />
shepherd’s tartan with velvet; another time it would be green velvet. 54<br />
<strong>The</strong> dresses are remembered with great clarity: the parade to church in ‘our<br />
button boots and our parasols . . . black button boots we had on, and eh<br />
a black dress. It was awfy fancy made with frills, puff sleeves and everything.’<br />
55 One woman recalled being taken for a new Sunday-best outfit,<br />
but after making a scene in the draper’s shop about dress colour (she wanted<br />
green), her mother threatened her with the very real punishment <strong>of</strong> not<br />
going to church. 56<br />
Sunday-best dress was a signifier <strong>of</strong> both feminine and religious apprenticeship.<br />
Churches were privileging women’s and girls’ sense <strong>of</strong> their own<br />
identity. But they were also privileging women as vulnerable. <strong>The</strong> Band <strong>of</strong><br />
Hope’s magic lantern stories <strong>of</strong> female victims <strong>of</strong> male drink were widely<br />
recalled in first-hand testimony:<br />
You would see the mother would probably be in bed, and she’d either<br />
just had an addition to her family or she was ill with tuberculosis.<br />
And you usually saw the father who had been drunk, and it was<br />
always perhaps the eldest sister was looking after, you know, a big<br />
family. And this was brought home to you about, you know, drink,<br />
you know, how it was the downfall <strong>of</strong> your eh – So, with the result<br />
that when you would go to these things, you know, you’d sometimes<br />
come away with your face all tear-stained. ... 57<br />
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