Catherine Bailey Quotes

It is, quite possibly, a matter for argument, whether the time may not soon arrive when it would be wiser to urge him towards things he has a turn for and will do well, rather than push him towards things which you pre-conceive to be better and which certainly are better for other people.

cloak of secrecy: the private asylums and single-lodging establishments, both

In a note written shortly before her death, Violet had expressed the wish that her son should be the arbiter of what was left for history to judge of her life: 'He [John] may look and destroy, or keep everything.' she had instructed. The task had consumed him. From the moment she died, he had rarely emerged from the Muniment Rooms.

were ninety-four cases in the five rooms; together, they held over a thousand

Don't shut yourself up with books entirely; that is an unhealthy process for anyone, and leads to no practical end.

People don't get gentler as they get older but rather, harder.

Other sounds woke the hamlet: the blast of a ship's foghorn blown at the pit top to mark the start of the shift; the echo of others - 'buzzers', as they were called - from the pits in the valley below. For the deep sleepers, there was the 'knocker-up'; a human alarm clock, he used a long pole to rattle the window panes of the households that paid him a few pennies each week.

Traipsing the tunnels alone, the boys depended on the ponies for companionship; if their lamps went out, as they frequently did, a pony could guide them home. 'The ponies knew their way around their own district of the pit and could always find their way back to the pit bottom. They did this by travelling against the air which was being fed down the shaft,' Jim remembered. 'If you got caught in the dark, you grasped your pony's tail and tried to get your head just below the level of his back while he walked slowly - never offering to kick you - straight back to the pit bottom.