BERMONDSEY GIRLS - Rose Amelia Wigzell - Part 1 - Younger Days

My name is Rose Wigzell,  I was born Rose Amelia Cherry on 28th May 1920, during the Depression, in Bermondsey, South London, near the canal..

When I was born there were already 6 kids in the family, including my half-sister Mary and half-brother Charlie.  Dad always said that I was the seventh child of his so I should be psychic like my Mum – but some years ago my eldest daughter who does a bit of genealogy found out him and his first wife Mary Adelaide had had a firstborn called Ernest who died as a baby, so that theory’s out the window!. Anyway I always refused to call them my brother and sister, though Mum insisted that we should.  But I couldn’t stand the way they were to her, and how nasty their Mum was.  All big hat and no knickers she was, and her from Rotherhithe and no better than she should be; ran off with some man when the kids were small and just visited them now and again with posh presents, while my Mum and Dad could hardly afford to feed us.  She even let the children call my Mum Eliza ‘Poor Nanny’, when she looked after them as if they were her own while she was off gallivanting. 

Mind you, I suppose we were poor, even by the standards of those days. Dad had been a stoker at the dock foundry, and a dock labourer, he knew all the boatmen and dockers down there, in fact his first wife’s Dad was a lighterman, and the bloke she ran off with was a stevedore -but as the depression wore on there was very little work to be had, and even I young as I was could see how badly affected he was at not being able to provide for his family like a man should.  Day after day he would come back from the docks, not picked for work, and what little money he had would go in the pub in St James Road, where we lived, right on the corner of the Canal Bridge. A lot of men went that way, and a lot of women too tried to drown their sorrows down there – you would see poor little kids outside pubs sitting on the pavement waiting for their Mums.  Shocking my Mum said.

We had no toys of course; we made our own fun then.  My favourite game was swinging round the lamp posts: we would throw a skipping rope over the crossbar below the light, the grab the ends and swing round and round.  I think that’s how I broke my front tooth, though it might have been fighting with Ivy Belchambers, she was always taking the rise out of me for being small, and poor, so I would give her a bunch of fives now and again and make her cry. I blacked her eye once, Mum was really cross because I wouldn’t say sorry.  It served her right anyway. My big brother Ern showed me how to make a good fist and land a hard punch. I always won our fights even though she was a foot taller than me, and older, and I had to jump to hit her. I was a proper tomboy and wouldn’t let no-one get one over on me!

Once when I was about seven or eight my Dad made me a dolly and a pram out of some wood he had found down by the timber yard on the canal.  I loved that doll, and never wanted another when my sister Elsie broke it, jealous she was.  Dad mended shoes to make a bit of money, and Mum took in washing.  But Dad got more and more miserable and was often bad tempered when in his drink; even got a bit violent – Mum always said to us girls ‘never let a man hit you’. Maybe that was why Ern was so keen for me to learn to stick up for myself. Dad was often admitted to the round ward in St Giles Hospital, and eventually died in 1930 in The Constance Road block of East Dulwich Hospital; both hospitals used to be workhouses, but most people couldn’t afford better. I was only ten, it was put down to an ulcer, but we always thought it was the drink and right to the end of my days I seldom ever had more than a gin and orange at Christmas – though I may have stretched a point when my Lou came back from the war!  But that’s yet to come.

I liked school, though I couldn’t always go as we didn’t have enough shoes to go round, but it didn’t take me long to learn to read, and they put me up into the same class as my older sister for a while.  That’s where I met my Lou.  We were married for 59 years.  I’ll tell all about that later too.  In those days, as well as the usual history, arithmetic and geography lessons and that, we had to learn housework.  Don’t laugh, it’s true.  Every week the girls would go into the laundry room and learn washing, ironing and bleaching, as well as sewing, knitting and darning. Blimey, I wouldn’t like to suggest that to my girls! There was a big fire in the middle of the room and all the flat irons were piled up on a frame on it like a metal pyramid, and Miss Chill would say:  ‘Now girls each take your iron and test it’s hot enough, then you can practise pressing these blouses and collars’.  Cheeky cow used to bring in all her own bits for us to wash and iron for her! Big bloomers the lot! I didn’t mind the actual cleaning, but I never could stand sewing, and couldn’t knit til the day I died.  Taught meself to crochet though somewhere along the way.

Our Min and Vi made all their bottom drawer bits at school and I made them some stuff too, not nearly as good as our Vi’s; lovely pillowslips and antimacassars she had.

Us four girls all shared a bedroom, even a bed, right at the top of the house which we lived in with two other families. It drove me mad the way my sisters left it up to me to keep it tidy, but it was bad enough living in a slum area, I didn’t want my room to be like that.

Things looked up a bit for Mum as the older kids went out to work, but she still took in washing when she could; the basement kitchen was always full of steam and her poor hands red raw, but she was determined to show everyone she could manage without the help of the state.

I left school at fourteen; broke Mum’s heart it did that she couldn’t afford to send me to the Grammar School; I would have loved to go to Haberdasher’s Askes at Hatcham, but I knew that not only could Mum not afford to buy the uniform, but she needed the money I could bring in, what with Dad being gone and all.  So I deliberately mucked up the scholarship exams, and went off to work in the factory as soon as I could.  I was proud as punch when both my girls passed the 11plus and went there.

I was glad to have a bit of money of my own; I always had my nose in a book and when I saved up enough to buy a bike, well, that was real freedom to me.  I worked in various local factories, Peak Freans Biscuits, tin bashing at Pearce Duff, and later during the war at Siemens the munitions factory.  We had loads of laughs, us girls, taking the mickey out of the foreman and all that, making him blush.  We had one young fellow there who wasn’t quite the ticket if you know what I mean; he was a bit older than me and used to have fits.  I knew  he was an epileptic, and many a time I gave someone what-for for taking the rise out of the poor bloke.  Big chap, nce and kind he was, and worked a damn sight harder that some of the blokes there. I helped him through several fits, and feel so sad that my own great-grandsons are having to deal with the same thing now.  Still, their Mum and Dad, my one and only grandson Justin - I call him my Errol Flynn - are wonderful people and will cope, I know. Cruel world ain't it?