Memories Of My Childhood

Extracts from: "MEMORIES OF MY CHILDHOOD"

M. L. RUTTER (Worman, Deitch) 1922-2012+

...28 SEPTEMBER 1994

In 1994 I persuaded my mother Majorie Rutter (then aged 72) born September 14, 1922, nee Worman to write a few words about her life for us her children. Despite painful arthritis in her hands, she wrote more than 50 thousand words into spiral notebooks spanning her childhood and early adulthood and I then typed them into a computer for her.

There follows some extracts which I hope speak for themselves of a loving person who experienced many misfortunes in life, but continued to see the positive in people and where possible tried to help others. Although disabled and in a wheelchair for many, many years, she continued to be an active charity fundraiser. - Paul Deitch

 

... I can still remember my parents well. Margaret Alice Carter my mother, whom my father used to call Madge and my fathers name was Harry Oscar Worman but he didn't like being called Oscar, so was always called Harry. My mother was an only child, her parents owned a farm but when her father died her mother had to sell the farm. Her mother's name was Harriet Carter, she also had a farmer friend Mrs Agnes Riches who lived on a farm at Wendling near Dereham in Norfolk.

Agnes befriended my mother and when my mother's mother Harriet met a gentleman from Plymouth who was the station master there she decided to marry him. His name was Slater, he had a son called Harold but Mr Slater didn't particularly want a daughter and my mother didn't want to be with him, so my Mum stayed with Mrs Riches who brought her up as her daughter...

Then Agnes Riches met another gentleman called Tom Mills he was a farmer and a dealer in livestock and he fell in love with Agnes and married her and my mother lived with them and in his family as there were several girls and boys but I can only remember the name of one Gertrude ...

My father (Harry Worman) was courting Gertie as he called her - but then he met my mother and fell in love and broke his engagement off and became engaged to my mother.

My father Harry was the youngest son. He had 3 brothers and 3 sisters, his brothers name were William, Walter, Bertie and his sisters' were Nellie Muriel and Edith. My grandma's name was Laura Worman. I didn't know her as she died when my father was 14 years old and I was told the family was brought up with the help of House keepers, (Editor note this was confirmed in the 1911 Census information) until Muriel was able to keep house, as my grand father Benjamin Worman was a very busy man. He was milkseller and also had a herd of cows to look after. They used to be kept in a cow shed in the mews behind 39/41 Trafalgar Street, Norwich. But he and his wife and family lived at 92 Hall Road Norwich and the children all went to St Marks school on Hall Road Norwich near St Marks Church ...

 My father left school at the age of 14 and was apprenticed to Dipples in Swan Lane and trained to be an Horologist ( to make and repair watches and clocks). When he was 18/19 he was called in to the Army for the 1914-1918 war. He served in the Royal Norfolk's and was at the landing of Gallipoli, Turkey where he was badly wounded in his left foot, gangrene set in and they thought they would have to amputate his foot- he lay in the hold of a troopship and said the flies and heat and the stench from the wounded was unbearable with flies crawling over you and vowed if he ever got back to England and survived he would always hate the flies. He was brought back to England and taken to University Hospital in London where the skill of Doctors and Surgeons saved his foot and he had a silver plate in his foot to hold it together...

When he came home he helped his father with his milk round and met many of his father's friends it was then about the beginning of 1920 when he met my mother and was married at Wendling Church.

They lived at 39 Trafalgar St , Norwich , a house owned by my grandfather which they rented from him and the dairy was attached to the wall of our kitchen we had a large garden and outside toilet, we kept chickens in a hen house for new laid eggs. My mother separated the cream from the milk and made butter which she sold and those days you could buy a gill of milk for 1 penny or even a halfpenny worth of milk. My father had a white horse called Colonel and a milk float which he used to deliver the milk with to all the houses and tenements and the big houses on Newmarket and Ipswich Roads. Milk used to be carried in churns and milk-cans and ladled out with half pint and 1 pint and quart ladles. People used to bring jugs and or cans to the doors, when the milk man came and later on the milk was put into glass bottles which had to be thoroughly washed out with hot water and rinsed with cold and put to drain, then when dry the milk was poured into the bottles and cork board tops were put on them. I remember the milk was brought on a lorry in churns and left at the bottom of our drive it came from a large farm, Skinners of Marks Hall near Norwich

After my parents were married they waited a while before they decided to start a family and I was born 14 September 1922. I remember my father telling me in my later years that I was born at home and a private nurse came in to deliver me and look after me and my mother,. I know my parents thought the world of each other when I was about 3 years old. Aunt Agnes came to live next door as she had divorced Tom Mills as he hadn't been very kind to her. She was a lovely person, kind and she loved my mum, and me very much. I spent many happy hours with her and she made us cakes and taught me know to cook ...

Those days we didn't have bathrooms, we had a hip bath in front of the fire which was filled with hot water which was heated in a copper. They used to light a fire under the copper with sticks of wood and coal and this heated the water. Later we acquired a big zinc bath. It took lots of hot water to fill but it was nice and warm having a bath in front of the fire with nice warm towels hanging on the fire guard and my nightie getting warm. I'd be taken to bed and a story read to me while I drank my hot Ovaltine, and then say my prayers, then I'd cuddle down the bed with my teddy bear. He was my favourite cuddly, but I also had a little dog called Fido I loved too. My bedroom was decorated with wall paper with the story of John Gilpin ( but I can't remember the story about it now ) and nursery rhyme characters...

Those days there weren't electric vacuum cleaners, and electric iron or washing machines. You had to use a stiff brush and dustpan to sweep the carpet and people would save tea leaves to put on the carpet to help sweep the dust up or take the rug up and knock or beat them across a wall. Use a long brown broom to sweep the floor or a mop to dust the floor - people scrubbed the floor on their hands and knees. Clothes were washed in galvanised baths. Water was heated in the copper, clothes washed with soap or Oxydiol and scrubbed on a board with Sunlight soap or boiled in the copper with some soda to get the stains out then rinsed and then rinsed again with Blue Bag in the water to give a it a nice fresh and white look.

Clothes were wrung out or put through two big rollers on a frame which was called a mangle and the water was squeezed out. and then the clothes were shook out and then pegged on the line. When they were nearly dry they were taken off the line and folded up put on a basket and then ironed. But irons weren't electric those days they were called flat irons and it was like a little box on a handle with shutters that lifted up on it and you would put a piece of iron which you had first heated in the fire till it was hot and then picked up by the tongs and placed in the flat iron.

Then the iron was rubbed with cloth to make sure it wasn't too hot to iron the clothes with to - burn them. Or you would have just one flat iron which you heated on the fire or gas stove. Most people in the towns lit their homes by gas lamps which you pulled a little chain to put the gas on and then struck a match to light the mantle and put a glass shade over it. It had quite a good light. Or you would have an oil lamp or candle to go to bed with.

The streets were lit by gas lamps and every night the lamp lighter would come round with a long pole and ignite the gas and with a long spill would light the gas. Those days not many people locked their doors at night as there was no mugging and stealing like there is now in the 1980's. If any one was caught stealing an apple from a vegetable stall or a roll from the bakers shop his ears were boxed or smacked across the face or the local bobby or policemen was called he blew his whistle and other policemen would come.

If the criminal was very bad he was taken to the Guildhall and locked in a cell or to prison and given the cat of nine tails. Its a whip with a lot of strings of leather or the birch rod. Children were smacked or put across their parents knees and whacked with a belt or slipper. Children were caned at school if they were disobedient ...

We were taught by Catholic Sisters. I wasn't a Catholic but my mother wanted me to have a good education and she paid my school fees. Tuition and books ect had to be paid for those days. We were taught arithmetic, religious instruction, reading, elocution, gym, history and geography, and drawing and painting, sewing and needlework. I lost quite a lot of schooling as I was ill quite a lot, then my dear mum was taken ill.

She'd been going to the doctors complaining of a lump on her chest. Doctor thought it was a abscess so he decided to incise it and then dress it and it would heal up and break open again. She remembered many years before when she was a young girl she'd slipped in the mud on the farm getting over a sheep hurdle and banged her breast on the iron rail and a lump had come up but she thought it was just a bruise and didn't take much notice. Eventually she had to go in to a nursing home for an operation. She was admitted to Grove Nursing Home on Grove Road Norwich and Dr Barfield took a portion of her tissue and discovered she had cancer and decided to give her radiation treatment.

Those days doctors and nurses surgeons anaesthetists all had to be paid for as there was no health service. A bottle of medicine was 7 shillings and 6 pence. a visit to the doctor 10 shillings and 6 pence and a consultation was 5 guineas a time. So many poor people didn't get any treatment at all they just couldn't afford it or ended up in the poor house or the work house. After mother's treatment I used to go and see her when I came out of school with my dad. We would take her grapes, Sanatogen wine and Battenberg cake which she liked and iced fancy cakes. We took books of lovely flowers ...

Mother had to go into a nursing home and have her breast amputated. My poor mum she was very ill. She came home again and we tried to have as normal a life as we could have. I was taken ill again with glandular trouble so back I went to hospital and had another operation as they thought I had TB.

Mother and I went to stay convalesce in our holiday cottage and Aunt Agnes came with us. I must have been about 7 years old and I made a vow then that when I grew up I would be a nurse so I could look after people and nurse them back to health. I used to play with my dolls and bandage them up and play doctors and nurses. Mother kept having treatment of various kinds. Then she found she was pregnant and when the baby was born it was a little boy. My father had always wanted a son. He was so pleased but the baby was weak and he only lived an hour. Mother and father were heart broken and I was sad because I longed for a brother or sister like other children. Mother was very weak but with careful nursing she got better again. I'd go to school and come home and she'd play with me and my toys. She made me lovely clothes to wear for parties ...

My mum suffered a lot with pains in her breast. I think it would be in 1930 that she had her right breast amputated and was very ill. She went back to into the nursing home for this operation and afterwards they said there was nothing more they could do for her. She came home. She was so ill she couldn't do much. Aunt Agnes looked after her and father when he was not on the milk round. I remember going in on a November morning.

I think it was the 27th if I can remember correctly and kissing my mum, before I went to school. She was very drowsy but she kissed me before I left to go to school. I used to come home at lunch time. Someone would always meet me and take me back. When I got home Aunt Agnes and father were crying and I asked them what was wrong and they said mummy has died, she's gone to join the Angels. I couldn't believe my darling mummy had gone away. I cried and cried and cried. I wouldn't go back to school I was so sad. I didn't know then as I was only a child 8 years old but mother had been on injections of morphine to kill the pain and the doses were made stronger so she could go into a deep sleep and not regain consciousness. Really for her it was a happy release, but for me the bottom had fallen out of my world. Father was heart broken, he used to go to seances, and spiritualists meetings hoping he'd get a message from my mother. I'd go out with him to friends and everyone would say that poor little girl. I'd stay with Aunt Agnes she take care of me but then father thought it was too much for him looking after a 9 year old child, so I was sent as a boarder to the St Jane School on Surrey Street. I hated it ...

I only lived to 2 streets from the convent but dad just felt his grief was so much he couldn't have me at home. I cried my self to sleep every night and hugged my teddy bear. It cost a lot to be a boarder, for tuition uniform and books and eventually he decided he could not afford it, which I was pleased about so I could come home once more. He decided to get a house keeper, I would have been about 10 by the. She was quite nice to me, her name was Miss Foulger. She had originally been a ladies maid to the Gurney family but wanted a change. She had got references so my father employed her but he was always so dictatorial he would tell her how to keep house so they had a row and she left. But she was good to me...

Then we had Mrs Heyhoe, ...

Then he advertised again and a Ruby Grapes answered the advert and came for an interview. I was at school but she'd seen my dolls pram in the front hall and thought father had a young child, not a girl of nearly 11 years old. She told her mother when she came for the interview that she liked this widower and was sure she would be married to him before the year was up. By this time I had started going to a private school called Carolyne House School.
...but we had a new housekeeper and I couldn't do anything right for her. The things she told my father I'd done were unbelievable but he was falling under her spell and believed them. He came to me one Saturday and said 'How would you like Auntie Ruby, as I called her, as a Mother?' I said I wouldn't, that no one will take my mothers place and he said 'Well you like it or not, I'm going to marry her and you will have to call her Mother. I expect you to come to the wedding next Saturday.' Well she was 36 years as she was born 5 July 1900. Her elderly parents were nice to me. They lived on a smallholding at Upton near Potter Heigham ...

She dressed me in a straight drab coloured jumper and straight grey skirt. I felt like a lost orphan. I'd started my periods at 11 years old when Ruby was our housekeeper. I woke up one morning and found blood on my leg. I couldn't understand how it got there as I hadn't cut myself. No one had told me about periods or about having sex or children. That subject was taboo. I called my father and told him and he said 'I think Miss Grapes ought to come and see you', and she said 'You've started womanhood. It's not an illness and you must expect it every month. You must use a diaper and a white square piece of linen. I'll show you how to fold it and you must put a piece of tape round your waist and thread it through the loops'. Those days there weren't disposable sanitary towels. You had to soak the soiled towels in cold salt water and then wash them and boil in a copper to get the stains out. If I happened to leave one under my chest of drawers by mistake she gave me hell. She loved to embarrass me in front of my father and he men that worked for him. How I hated her. I vowed then that if I ever had any children no way would I ever treat them as she treated me!

... I got a job in a Council Nursery on St Stephens Rd opposite Philadelphia Lane.

It was a children's nursery for babies of 6 months to children of 5 years old. Most of the children were in care or waiting adoption. I looked after the babies and slept in the same room as 6 babies who were in cots. It was my job to bath them, dress them, feed them and change their nappies and then while they were put to rest in another room I and another nurse would take the other children aged from 3 to 5 years for walks. There were about 2 other nurses there and a matron. I loved looking after the children as I was at last doing something I had always wanted to do. Ruby and father were very friendly with the matron and of course Ruby had to stir things up again, saying I'd had no proper training. One day I and the other nurse were taking about 12 children for a walk along Aylsham Road, and we had one child who was very unruly, she would never do what she was told. I think she was mentally deranged she certainly wasn't normal in the things she did and we were always told to take notice what she did as she was so unpredictable. We were just level with the home when she darted across the road in front of a bus. I'll always remember it. I shouted to the children to stop and not cross the road. I ran across the road and just managed to grab her hand and get her on the path as the bus screeched to a halt. However we both didn't get killed I'll never know. The bus driver and conductor got out of the bus and came and spoke to me and said I'd saved her life. They said we know what this child's like, it has happened before, if you have any queries from the matron we'll vouch it wasn't your fault.

But unfortunately for me the matron was looking out of the window and saw it all happen. When I'd collected the other children and the nurse from the opposite side of the road and taken them inside the home to get washed and changed for lunch the matron called for me to go to her sitting room and said she was going to give me instant dismissal. I was not fit to look after children. I said it wasn't my fault, I said I've got a written statement from the bus driver and conductor and people in the street saw what happened. She said I don't want any excuses I'm going to get in touch with your parents to come and take you away. So they came in a car and took me and my luggage back home but told me I wasn't going to stay there, only one day. Ruby said 'I've got a place for you to go. Where you're going you cannot take any perfume, no jewellery or money. Its a place for unruly girls like you'. I couldn't understand what she was talking about. 'And they will teach you to work, as I think you're backward or mental.

The next day, I don't know what the day or month was, its too long ago. I was taken to a home in Theatre Lane, Theatre Street Norwich run by the Sacred Sisters at Ditchingham.

I kissed father good-bye, he stayed in the car, Ruby came to the door with me, the door was unlocked and I could hear the bolts being drawn back and black hooded nun opened the door said she would fetch the Sister Superior. Ruby said she had brought me as arranged as I couldn't keep a job and just said good bye and went. The door was closed and locked and the bolts driven into place. I was cut off from the outside world. How could my father who was supposed to love me do this to me! My own clothes were taken from me I was just left with my underclothes, stockings and shoes. I was given a coarse dark blue cotton frock, white apron and white hat to wear and introduced to 11 other girls who were in there for all sorts of things, waiting for court cases to come up for stealing, trying to commit murders, getting into debt and prostitution you name it all sorts of things, talk about an eye opener how the other half lived.

God I knew nothing about that side of life and certainly what I didn't know about life when I went in there I knew when I came out! We had a room each with a iron bed, hard mattress, 2 sheets and 2 blankets and a counterpane; one wooden chair and chest of drawers and peg on the back of the door where we hung our dresses and coat. We were responsible for keeping our rooms clean We had to be in bed by 8.30 pm and had a chamber pot under our beds because at night wee were locked in our rooms with grills over the windows and not let out till morning. We had to get up at 6.30 am, breakfast at seven. Porridge sugar and milk a slice of bacon and fried bread or bread and dripping that was breakfast and a cup of tea. Lunch was meat, potato and cabbage and milk pudding or bread pudding, tea was bread or margarine or dripping sometimes a little jam and twice a week a slice of cake. At 8 pm we used to have a cup of cocoa made with hot water and a dash of milk. We spent our days scrubbing, sweeping and polishing floors and furniture washing and ironing clothes and sewing and polishing silver from the alter in the chapel and going into the chapel early in the morning at 6 am to pray. In our spare time we mended our Lyle stockings or clothes or read books or wrote letters to our parents. We had no radio, the only music we heard was the singing in the chapel, we were just cut off from the outside world. Thursdays when the shops were closed we would go for a walk. While I was there the Sister Superior wrote to all the schools I'd attended to get references of my work and behaviour, all came back satisfactory when they wrote to Carlyle House School Miss Bidewell the Head Mistress got in touch with Aunt Edith as Barbara my cousin had started school with Miss Bidewell. She told my aunt that she couldn't understand why Mr & Mrs Worman had sent Marjorie to a place like that. My aunt phoned my other aunt Muriel in Forestgate.

She came down to Norwich that night on the train. They both came to see me and the Sisters', they both brought 100 pounds each to try and buy my release from the home. The Sisters said as much as we would like to take your money we can't. The only persons who can sign Marjorie out are her parents. So my aunts kissed me goodbye and said she would always help me. While I was there I saw a doctor and a psychiatrist and was given a general knowledge and an intelligence test. I passed both tests, the doctors said there was nothing wrong with me, all I needed was love and affection, what had been denied me and understanding. One of the girls there befriended me she had been in trouble for stealing and had been to court and her father had also just come out of prison

They both had been offered a job in a hotel at Southwold, the Marlborough Hotel, and they said there was job going for a scullery maid. I pleaded with the sisters to let me take the job as I said if I stayed there much longer I thought I'd go out of my mind they said I could go if my parents sanctioned it. The doctors said it would do me good to have a job and make a fresh start in life, So Ruby and father signed the pap, I left the home with the girl and her father. Our new employers paid our fare we went by train to Southwold.

The hotel had 150 rooms and there were a lot of staff there. The girls father was kitchen porter, she was 3rd kitchen maid and i was the scullery maid, I knew the job would be hard work but it also meant freedom. I had to be at work at 5 am. scrubbing stairs from the top of the hotel to the bottom 4 storeys high scrubbing kitchen floors washing huge saucepans in th hot soda water. It took 2 of us to lift the saucepans they were so big and heavy ...

We slept in the basement of the hotel. When there was a high tide the basement got flooded and we would be paddling around in bare feet shovelling out water and mopping up. The hotel was full up with guests, mostly Army, Navy and Airforce people with their families having a holiday as this was 1938, the summer before the war started. From scullery maid I went into the kitchen as 3rd kitchen maid and learnt all about the kitchen work of filleting fish, and how to lay the various pieces, of bacon out and cut off the rinds, prepare vegetable and help make pastry. Then I heard of a vacancy in the house so I got a job as 3rd chamber maid. That meant cleaning rooms, making beds, emptying slops, taking papers to rooms and early morning tea up, or breakfasts to the rooms and collecting shoes to be cleaned but there always the chance of a tip when someone left the hotel. My work was on the top floor of the hotel, our bosses where kind understanding people. The man was the chef and his wife the manageress. He was Swiss and she was German. Our food was good, and we were never denied any food and could always have second helpings. Well the crisis came and troops had to return to their bases and the families returned home. Our bosses had to close the hotel as their papers weren't in order and they were both interned and the hotel closed down.

That meant i had to say goodbye to my friends and return home once more to the chant of your not going to stay here you've got to get a job or go back to that home. I thought, no way I'm going back there. I was only at home about a week, I'd seen a job advertised as a mothers help at Elm Farm, Suffield near North Walsham. I applied and went for an interview and got the job. I was now 17 years old, the war had started on 3rd September 1939. I was at home when the first air raid siren was heard but it was a false alarm...

When the war started (September 3, 1939) I was not old enough to register for war service, but many of my friends went into the WRAF. I still continued to work as a home help on the farm, but I had made up my mind when I was coming up to 18 years old that I would register to train as a nurse. I applied to Kelling Sanatorium, went for an interview and was accepted and measured for a uniform. I hoped it was the children's sanatorium, but it wasn't. It was the men's sanatorium which was a disappointment to me. But as I'd signed the application form and there was a war on, there was no turning back ...

It was a thing, every night the telephone exchange would get a message through that enemy planes were approaching the coast. 'Signal Red' and we would then, from the main ward (Doyle Carte) where the night sister had a room, phone round all the wards and alert them to check their patients and blackout. Then the siren would go a horrible wailing sound and then you would hear the heavy bombers going over head on their way to bomb Norwich. We didn't have time to think of ourselves we just had to stay alert as you never knew if they were going to bomb you. We got so used to the noise of the planes we knew which was German and which were English from a long way off. We could hear crashes and explosions and thought about the poor people who had been hit or maimed ...

The doctor told father Ruby was very ill and must be moved to hospital at Cromer. So she was taken in an ambulance and her parents sent for as father had stock to feed. He couldn't stay at the hospital so I had to get special leave from the hospital and stay in a private room near her in case she needed some one to talk to. She was very, very ill and didn't think she would last the night. But she rallied round again and after a few days was transferred to Addenbrooks Hospital. When she was 1 admitted there it was discovered that she had cancer and the treatment she'd had to disperse the cancer growth on her leg had gone to her lungs. I went to see her on my days off then I went on special leave to look after father's goats and pigs and chickens so that he could go and see her. After a few days he came back and I went and saw her again. I knew she was dying and she did too. She was gasping and coughing, couldn't get her breath. She said to me 'Marjorie I know kill treated you, will you forgive me before I die?' I said ' I'll forgive you Ruby, but I'll never forget how you made me suffer till my dying day. How could you do it to me when I'd never done you any harm?' I bent over and kissed her good bye and left the hospital to catch my train back to North Walsham where I'd left my cycle. When I got home father asked how was Ruby. I couldn't tell him she was dying. That night about 10 pm he had a phone call from Addenbrooks asking him to go to hospital as she was asking for him and hadn't long to live. He went on what they used to call the milk train, one that left about 1 am to go to London but he got off at Cambridge and he arrived at the hospital at 5 am and was with her four hours before she died.

She died at 9 am on 6th June 1944-D day - invasion of Europe. I had a premonition she had died, all the clocks in the house stopped at 9 am - wasn't it a coincidence! When the phone rang I lifted it and father spoke. He said Ruby had just passed away ...

Those days, 1945, a pound was worth two hundred and forty pennies so it would buy quite a lot, and things were much cheaper than they are today and much better quality. Father kept pigs and goats for the milk, I learnt to milk the goat, but it was hard work as she wouldn't release her milk for me and once or twice kicked me off the stool. We also had chickens to feed , ducks and geese which we kept for fresh eggs. People would come to the door to buy the eggs. We had lots of grass so the birds had plenty of land to roam on to get the worms and grubs and there were always scraps from the table and we gave them corn. We also had a conservatory which ran the whole south side of the house. In this there was lovely black grape vine, bunches of grapes used to be quite big and the grapes were sweet. These father used to sell or give to friends in exchange for something or other. There was a greenhouse with tomato plants and cucumber plants, a vegetable garden where we grew potatoes, carrots, parsnips, onions, cabbage, cauliflowers and sprouts, gooseberries, rhubarb and raspberry canes and a small orchard with cooking apples, eating apples and pears.

Those days one had to grow as much vegetables as possible to be self supporting and also they used to say "dig for victory'. Everyone made jam or bottled their fruit from their gardens and some people made home made wines from various vegetable or fruit. My father made home made bread, we used to buy a sack of white flour and get yeast from the local bakers or dried yeast. He was allowed extra rations for the airmen which were billeted with us. They were quite nice people which came from different places in the British Isles. He originally had thirty in the house when Ruby was alive and well. They slept on palliases, biscuit shaped cushions on the floor which were supplied by the Air Force and also grey or blue blankets they used to cover themselves with but when I came home there were only four and it was not long before they all went to huts on the radar station as Haisboro . My father used to ask the soldiers he met in the pub to come in for supper always having ale and Guiness in the house and whiskey and sherry he'd got on the 'black market' or in exchange for a chicken or when he had a pig killed for the house used one of the bacon joints or a joint of port or chops he'd exchanged for something else.

As the soldiers were away from home it was nice for them to have somewhere to go in the evening away from their billets they would play cards; nap or wrist or pontoon or such like. Some would play the piano or banjo or other instrument. They would bring something with them and we would have a sing song round the piano I would get asked to dances at Bacton Pavilion where the dances were held and would get taken home at night as those days there were no street lamps out in the country and anyway the war was still on...

The government lifted the restriction on people coming to the coast to stay and people were given back their houses and a government grant to get any necessary repairs done as compensation. It was about June 1946 when one of my friends who I had nursed with at Kelling well she had moved on to Papworth Sanatorium as a nurse, was marrying one of the patients from there and as he was slightly disabled she asked my to ask my father if she could come and stay at his guest house and father agreed. They paid about #3/3 shilling each for bed and breakfast, lunch and evening meal and hot drink and sandwich before they went to bed.

I think her name was Florrie Banks and his name as Stanley but can't remember his surname. The village had begun to get back to normal, began to see new faces in the shops as the men and women came home from the war, sons and daughters of the families as they got demobbed from the army and some weren't so lucky as they had been killed. One of my friends in the village Helen English she was married to Charlie English and had one son Michael. They lived behind her father's house and on the side of the house was an empty shop we heard eventually as they put it a Jew boy had rented it. He was married with two children and lived in a rented bungalow at Walcott where he had originally been stationed with the Yorks and Lancs Regiment.

The rumour got around he was a first class tailor and he was going to do tailoring, alterations, and run a haberdashery shop selling wools, cottons, needles, knitting needles, patterns and material and buttons. Things to embroider silks and cottons and his wife would do dress making. The shop had been opened two or three weeks but I had never been in till my friend Florrie said she would like to buy some wool to make a jumper for the summer so with her book of clothing coupons and money we went into the shop.

Behind the counter was this tall attractive black wavy haired man with brown smiling eyes, and at first I thought I've seen you before somewhere and then I remembered I'd seen him previously standing on the outside of the dance floor at the pavilion Bacton at the Saturday night dances then he was in uniform. I had asked him to dance in the ladies excuse me quick step but he had declined saying he did not dance but just came to accompany his wife as she liked to dance. We purchased the wool and asked if he did alterations to clothes and he said he did. I also noticed he was embroidering a cushion cover in the design of a crinoline lady and remarked on how nice it looked. He asked if I did anything like that I said yes when I get the time. Florrie and Stanley stayed for two weeks holiday it was nice to see her and talk over old times when we were nursing at Kelling Sanatorium as so much had happened to us since we had left she was now living at Burnham on Crouch with Stanley's parents till they got a place of their own. I visited the wool shop many times to buy various things and the man who rented it told me his name was Alfred Aaron Deitch, ...

 

Editor: Paul Deitch