Twopence to Cross the Mersey

the long version

Helen Forrester had a childhood most of us would like to forget. Bought up for the first twelve years of her life in the wealthy middle class of southern England, she was suddenly ejected from her pampered hot-house existence into the bleak realities of Liverpool during the Depression years. In the first two volumes of her autobiography – 'Twopence to Cross the Mersey' and 'Liverpool Miss', Helen bravely told the terrible story of the degradations her family – once so rich, now so desperately poor – had to face, and with only themselves to blame. This was a story that was frightening to hear – Helen's uphill struggle to provide her younger brothers and sisters with food and clothes and to placate her fiery-tempered mother and spiritless father, and her longings for the education that was cruelly denied her and for the small luxuries of life that would give her the youth she was missing. (From HarperCollins http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/Authors/1901/helen-forrester)