More Wartime Recollections of Mum Flo's Family

More Wartime Recollections of Mum Flo’s Family

I have written in my previous posting about Mum Flo’s devotion to her remaining fourteen children and how at the outbreak of war the family were split up with the older children being evacuated to Norfolk. We now pick up their story when it was eventually Edie’s time to return home. Edna had been the first to return to Dagenham as once a child reached the age of fourteen they were considered old enough to work

Now that it was Edie’s time to return home, Joan, her eldest sister, came by coach to pick her and seven year old Ossie up as the lady who had taken him in had by this time got six children herself and so had no room for Ossie.

Edie’s recollections: Dagenham

Edie came home to start work in February 1942 but she was not allowed to do so until the end of the school term. She had been away two and a half years and in that time she had lived in five different homes, if that is what they can be called. Unsurprisingly, on Edie’s return home she found it difficult to adjust as she had taken on the role of nurturer and protector and she found it difficult to relinquish that role.

Edie says that she remembers walking into her home and thinking that Mum Flo seemed like a stranger which is hardly surprising when one considers that she had been separated from her mother for two and a half years at a vulnerable age so it is entirely understandable that she found it difficult to re-establish the bond that had been there before.

Edie also remembers her younger sister, Margaret, walking in, a very tiny slip of a girl who was very, very quiet. Edie’s recollection is that Margaret had just returned home from Sunday school and she seemed very strange to Edie at that time. Edie also admits to feeling, for a short time, resentful of Joan’s position in the family. Nevertheless, it wasn’t too long before they were once again a strong family unit.

Edie, with Mum Flo’s help, found a job washing up in the canteen at Woolworths but her Father vetoed that idea as he would not allow any member of his family to do such menial work. He was an educated, proud and very principled man who had high aspirations for his family and certainly thought they were meant for better things than washing up.

He quite rightly wanted more for his offspring. However, Edie still needed a job and she managed to find work with a Mr Vennis, in the basement of Basinghall House in Basinghall Street, off London Wall, packing fancy goods. In those days girls wore knickers with elasticated legs and Edie had gone to use the one available toilet and was just at the crucial point of pulling said knickers up when a huge rat run across the top of some pipework.

Edie worked there for about four weeks but she has given me no indication as to how long the rat stayed for! However, her Father obtained an interview for Edie with a Mr Lawrence of Waterlows and so began her long and illustrious career with that company starting there first as a Messenger Girl.

Edie went for interview at Waterlows one Friday lunchtime, got the job and was due to start work there on the Monday. She had no idea it was necessary to give one week’s notice and because of this she was not given the wages she was owed until the last possible moment and then only by her sheer persistence.

Edie was by now comfortably settled back in Dagenham when one day she heard Mum Flo call out and when she went into Mum’s room to investigate she was told to run and get their next door neighbour who then ordered Edie to fetch Nurse Anchor who lived some way away. Edie flew like the wind and hammered on Nurse Anchor’s door and through painful gasps told her what was happening back home.

Nurse Anchor quickly mounted her trusty steed, an old bike with a big basket on the front and said “Don’t fret yourself…I’m on my way!” and with that parting shot started peddling furiously towards the family home.. She arrived at the house before Edie who arrived back just in time to see her new sister, Jenny, born. When the others arrived home Edie proudly announced that they had a new sister. Jenny was born in 1942.

Meanwhile, Joan and Edna were working in a munitions factory. They had to walk through Redbridge tunnel to get to work at Gant’s Hill Station. Obviously, this was dangerous work but there was some relief in that Edna used to go dancing at the Ilford Palais where she met Syd who played in the band and who later became her husband.. He was called up and served as a submariner with the Royal Navy.

From what I understand, Joan did not go out as much preferring to stay in and clean the house which was something she insisted on doing herself. Joan met her husband, Joe, after the war but in any event Joe served first with the Royal Navy and then switched to the Merchant Navy. He was torpedoed three times.

The highlight on a Saturday night, before Mum and the younger children were evacuated would be that someone would go round to the local greengrocers and get a pound of specs (apples).

Later when Mum had gone to Manchester, Joan, Edna and Edie cooked the meals but Joan would allow no one but herself to do the cleaning.

Back in Norfolk, meanwhile, Joyce was living happily with a Mrs R, a big lady but with nothing overhanging. She was a kindly woman, who had been a midwife in a London hospital but had no children herself. Mrs R married David R late in life and together they lived in a thatched cottage with a typical cottage garden opposite the village pub.

David’s brother lived close by and he had a walnut tree in his garden and they used to pickle walnuts as well as pickling eggs. In those times, the village church was the meeting place for most village activities so, although regular church goers, they were not really religious people in the sense that they were particularly devout. Mrs R and her husband David taught Joyce all about the natural world as well as many other things that influenced Joyce throughout her life.

Apparently, Mrs R also always wore white starched aprons so I think it safe to assume that this was where Joyce’s love of all things starched originated. Mum Flo once said to me years later that she wished Joyce would not starch the sheets as she kept slipping out of bed.

Among others things Mrs R taught Joyce to crochet, knit and how to do lace-making. Her husband taught Joyce how to pluck and draw a chicken, a useful accomplishment, and his wife taught Joyce how to cook. Once back in Dagenham, however, Joyce immediately set about forgetting that last particular skill. Well, there comes a point where too many skills can look like showing off!

Before moving off from Edie’s recollections but not really having anything to do with the linear narrative of this account, nevertheless, I think it is important to include one particular piece of information about Mum Flo’s husband. Edie has told me that her father had lied about his age in order to fight in the First World War and he had also fought in Ireland but by the time of the Second World War he had no stomach for killing.

If the war had carried on for another year he would have been called up to fight. However, by this time, having seen at first hand, the atrocities of war, he had become a pacifist and Edie has suggested to me that he would have gone on the run before he would have fought in another war. It was for this reason that he would never allow any of his boys to play with toy guns. Moreover, Edie has told me that later when Peter got called up for National Service, it broke her father’s heart.

TO BE CONTINUED