THE LIGHTFOOT LETTERS

An intimate portrait of an English working class family’s everyday life in the 1920s

Purely by chance, artist Maria Walker found a bundle of letters wrapped in a pink bow in an antique shop—letters written between 1923 and 1924 by members of the Lightfoot family and their friends.

The Lightfoots lived near Widnes, an industrial town in the Borough of Halton, Cheshire, England. Site of a 19th-century chemical factory, Widnes was described in 1905 as a “poisonous hell-town” because of its high level of air pollution. But by the 1920s the town and the health of its residents were improving. Slums were being replaced with better housing.

These letters were addressed to Frances, the eldest Lightfoot daughter who at the time was staying with her Aunt in Manchester, about 30 miles from the family home. Frances’s mother, Ada, kept her informed of all the local gossip, the antics of her younger brothers and sisters, and the ordeal of doing the washing and mending clothes. Other letters contained stories of trips to the dentist, ice skating on frozen ponds, Christmas parties at school, killing pigs, mending boots, and the general election. 

Maria Walker has incorporated lines from these letters in her textile artwork.