‘Nearly all the jobs were piece-work. As the piece-work rate was calculated by the ton it goes without saying that the heavier the commodity, the more money we earned. Some of the best work was moving casks, that is to say big barrels of treacle, oil and lard, but goods in sacks were also welcome. It was fairly hard work to “port”, that is to say to carry the sacks from the vessel and into the warehouse – and I remember porting bags of soda and the skin on my back was raw from the mixture of sweat and soda, I bear the scars to this very day.’
Memories of the Copenhagen Free Port, ca.1915.


The flat and the family
The Sørensen-family consisted of Peter Martin Sørensen, Karen Marie Sørensen and their eight children. Peter Martin Sørensen was a general labourer and Karne Marie Sørensen was a housewife.
Having lived in many different flats the family moved into a two-roomed flat at Østerbro in 1915. This flat remained the family home until 1990.
In 1915 five of the children were still living at home: Karen (27) ran the household; Kristian (26) worked in the Copenhagen Free Port; Anna (21) was about to enter domestic service; and Yrsa (19) as well as Olga (17) were in domestic service in upper-class households.

Yrsa Sørensen stayed put
When their parents died some time in the 1940s, Karen and Kristian hung on to the flat, and in the mid-1960s Yrsa took it over. Yrsa Sørensen never married. She worked as a cleaner and ended her working life as a toilet attendant at the Copenhagen Central Railway Station. Yrsa Sørensen remained a tenant until December 1989 when she went into residential care.
Her heirs donated the flat and everything in it to the Workers’ Museum and it can now be exhibited as an example of a general worker’s home in the early years of the 20th century.
Unaltered since 1915
The flat is a two-roomed flat in which the living room faces the street and the bedroom and a narrow kitchen face the backyard.
Original there was an outdoor latrine in the yard, but later a water closet was added in a cubicle on the backstairs.
When Yrsa Sørensen moved out virtually no alterations had been made to the flat and its appearance since 1915 when her parents moved in. She always took great care to ensure that nothing was changed. The original varnished pinewood floors are still there, and if you move any of the furniture you can see that everything has always been in the same places as the floors are totally untreated in the places where the furniture has always stood – the floors have simply been varnished around the furniture.
Interior design
In the living room there is a dinner table with chairs around it and a big wrought iron chandelier suspended over it. The pictures in their gilt frames are oleographs cut from a popular weekly. The most recent addition to the room is a wireless set from the late 1950s. There is no telephone or other modern gadgets.
The colour scheme of the kitchen is the traditional Danish ‘kitchen’ blue with a larder, a plate rack on the wall, and a fine cast iron kitchen range. The kitchen sink is made of iron and is edged in tinplate. Over the sink there is a single cold-water tap.
The bedroom was furnished by a double bed, a night table and a washstand.