It is a semi-fictional biography of a girl in a canal family on the Oxford Canal in the first half of the 20th Century. Poignant in places, it begins: "The day the mule fell in the Cut I knew I was born ... "
As I recall (having read the book a couple of years ago) Ramlin Rose is not an individual but a composite compiled from stories gleaned from a number of individuals. But it's a good portrayal of canal life in Banbury during the early years of the 20th century. A must for anyone with relatives on the canal or associated work. And very interesting just from the social / local history perspective.
Will happily add more when I get back to Solihull and my books - right now I'm "enjoying" a very grey, cold, and wet, Plymouth. And having spent November in India I'd be very tempted to catch the first available flight back - if it were not for Ramlin Rose.
"Ramlin Rose" is an absorbing story and Sheila Stewart is to be commended in the way she used the information gleaned from her often inarticulate subjects. She explains her approach and why.
I found it tugged my heart strings as the raw reality of their rather grim existence comes through. The tragedies strike home. My interest, connection and proximity to canals in my earlier life. (yes, like a cat I have more than one --- or so it seems on reflection), brought this book vividly to life.
The piece I loved best was when Rose found out her husband's real name when they had to register at the beginning of the war! Without the book I can't be sure, but wasn't Syer Ramlin ---- Josiah Rampling? It brings home the fact that the boat people had a dialect of their own. And perforce, with long lonely days and lack of schooling, conversation was sparse. Anyway, you can hardly converse with the tiller!
"From the turn of the century to the late 1950s horse-drawn narrow-boats became a rarer and rarer sight on Britain's canals. Carrying a wide variety of cargoes to such destinations as the Potteries, the textile mills of Lancashire, the papermills of London, the colleges of Oxford, they struggled on against increasing competition from rail and road traffic to maintain their place in the country's economy. Yet little has been written about the families who lived and worked on these boats - in particular the women. 
Drawing on recorded interviews with the few boatwomen left who were born and bred on horse-drawn boats, Sheila Stewart has recounted their experiences as seen through the eyes of an illiterate boatwoman, travelling mainly on the Oxford Canal through the Great War, the Depression, the Second World War, and the decline of the canals. It is a poignant account of astonishing courage and resilience, capturing a unique way of life during the first sixty years of this century!"
ISBN 0-19-285302-3