My Mum's family lived in East Ham, Woolwich and Leyton among other places. My Great Uncle Frank, the only one to survive the war, worked at Tate & Lyle and another worked on the building of Battersea Power Station and Ford at Dagenham.
My Grandmother was one of 8 kids and she along with one sister and two brothers were put in an orphanage while her father was in the army in 1916 because her mother couldn't manage to look after all of them and she could clearly remember seeing Zeppelins over the city from where they were, which I think was on, or somewhere near, Hampstead Heath.
They were in a Catholic establishment for girls run by nuns and her 2 brothers in another a short distance away, and although they could see them and wave to them were not allowed to mix. Her mother would visit whenever she could get someone to look after the other children and my Nan and her sister would be dressed in their one set of good clothes and taken to a room they were otherwise never allowed in. There was a rocking horse in there that they would never be allowed to play with except when visited.
It's funny how my friends and I used to laugh at Monty Python's 4 Yorkshiremen sketch and yet what working class people of (almost a hundred) years ago put up with makes that comedy all too real.
When I used to listen to her stories I used to thank God, and my parents and grandparents that I can't tell similar stories to kids now.