MEMOIRS OF ALICE ELLEN COTTINGHAM (continued)
HAVING A FAMILY DURING THE WAR (in her own words)
I began to feel a lot healthier when I was around eighteen. On holiday in Jersey at that time, I was willing to enter into everything in the holiday camp, and was voted most popular girl.
I went to a dance, a local hop, in a church hall. I was with three girlfriends. I did not see Eric in the hall but when we were walking down the road, four girls all arm in arm, this young man runs down the road after us and comes between the lot of us. I was the one who lived farthest, so he walked me home. [Eric was her future husband Eric Harry Johnson]
I went on holidays then with Eric. We went to Cornwall, Devon and North Wales. We did lots of walking – I was then about 22 years old. We used to go dancing or go up to Town on Saturday nights with all our friends and family. We would walk around the West End of London, have a couple of drinks, thoroughly enjoy ourselves and come home.
We decided to get married in 1938. At that time, Eric was into the long distance walking and I used to walk with him when he trained. When he walked the London-Brighton Road Walk, I got the train and took his change of clothes so that when he got there he could change and we could go out and have a meal and go to the pictures – and then take the train home from Brighton. We had a very good courtship.
When the War did not come as expected in 1938, we decided to get married on the 24th June 1939. But in August, Eric was gone – drafted into the Territorial Army. So that wasn’t it! He was sent to Thames Haven and I used to go around the different camps to see him. We rented as house at 240 Clockhouse Road in Elmers End, near Beckenham. Once I got home to find water pouring down the stairs – the upstairs tank had burst.
I was a fully qualified milliner by then who made hats from scratch on the wooden head blocks. I had been working on the tables doing piece work for a couple of years when the fur lady said ‘I am picking three of you ladies out to make me hats that are fashionable’. We were given the material and left to make up a design.
When I made my four hats, three of them went into the show room and they received huge orders on them. So I became a hat designer with the head designer and stayed there for six years. I used to go to the show room and model the hats for the buyers. I don’t know why he chose me as I don’t know if I were good looking or not, with my broken nose that I got from the car accident in my earlier years – but I had to have my hair done every other day!
When I got married, we lived on four pounds a week. Our rent was 27s 6d per week and we lived well on the remainder for a couple of months. When my husband was called up for the Army, we got more money but the price of everything went up because of the shortages.
During the War, I went to a farm to get out of London. I was four months pregnant and my husband was stationed at Wittering on a gun site. When I visited him, I stayed on a farm with Mrs Naylor and her husband. They had a little boy and Mrs Naylor was also pregnant. Mrs Naylor had her little baby girl while I was there and I looked after the farm and the farm hands for about four months. Eventually, I could not stand the sight of potatoes, as when the farm boys and girls came in from the fields, there would be a huge dish of mashed potatoes in the middle of the table.
At the farm, if you wanted a bath, you had to pump the water and it was two hundred pumps to get enough water. I left home for Christmas in 1940. My husband, father, grandfather and brother Lionel were at home. My mother had gone up north because she was afraid of the bombs. We had a good Christmas although it was very noisy with the sirens going all the time. My husband left and became an officer in the Army. In the following April, I gave birth to my twin daughters.
When I had twin daughters in 1941, I did not go back to work as the War was on. I did however go for another job and they gave me material to make a trial hat. The hat was to have taken tree days but it only took me one. On the day that I was to start work a bomb fell on the factory – as also happened to my old work place – and so that was the end of the job. So I stayed at home and started dressmaking. My husband Eric was away for nearly five and a half years.
I had not been to a doctor during my pregnancy as I had been away in the country, and so no one told me I was getting too big. When I got too heavy, I went to the Nursing Home and was admitted for three days to try to start the baby coming – but with no luck. I left and went to stay with a friend, Gladys Bell, who live near the Nursing Home, as I lived alone and could not get there in time without an ambulance.
I was so big I could not walk properly and I was getting really uncomfortable – so I went back to the Nursing Home and told them I would throw myself under a train if they did not do something for me as they had no idea what I was going through. The matron gave me a prescription to start the baby and I returned to Gladys’. I took the prescription at 7.30 pm and my waters broke at nine o’clock.
Gladys and her husband Mont took me to the Nursing Home and left quickly as there was an air-raid going on. There were two guns situated by the Home and when they fired, all the beds would move across the floor. They put me in a room at 9.45 pm and nobody came near me until 6.15 am the next day. I was in shocking pain but the nurses were looking after the babies because of the bombing.
Then they took me to the delivery room and I had one baby – but the nurse said ‘don’t relax yet, you are having another baby’. I was so surprised, and when they weighed the babies, one was 7lb 4oz and the other 6lb 10oz. They were beautiful babies and the biggest on the ward. I was in the Nursing Home for 17 days as I was not fit enough to come out.
The twins were born on 8th April. Someone sent their father a telegram but he could not get there for a week. The Matron took him to the nursery and asked him if he could pick out his twin daughters – and he did from the whole nursery as he said that they were the best looking ones.
I lost a lot of blood for weeks but I have never had a blood transfusion in my life. I had to drink three pints of water and three pints of milk every day. I had to pay a guinea a day for my stay while everyone else was charged 4 shillings per day.
Mr Johnson, the paternal grandfather (Keith’s grandfather Harry), used to walk around the Nursing Home like a lord – he was so proud of his granddaughters.
The Matron did not like me, as after I had had the babies at 7.30 am, the doctor did not come until 1.00 pm to stitch me up. He had no chloroform and when I was being stitched up, I screamed the place down – and the Matron said I was a spoilt brat.
When I left, I thought I would show up the Matron and I asked my mother to buy me a new girdle and bring me my red dress that fitted me like a glove so that I could wear the dress when I left the Nursing Home. I walked down the corridor and two doctors were walking towards me with a nurse who told them I was the mother of the beautiful twins. The doctors were amazed to see such a slim woman in a red dress walking towards them. When I got home, I could not wait to get off the red dress and the girdle.
I used to take my twin daughters out in a double perambulator in the summer months all dressed in white laying on white pretty pillowcases. People used to come up and peer into the pram and I used to ask them not to breathe on the babies. Every shop I went into, I had to ask the people not to pick up the babies as everyone wanted to hold them.
I had to beg the milkman to give me more milk as we were rationed for one pint a day. I used to wait until the milkman had finished his round and then buy what he had left over for extra money. I never had enough meat because of the rationing. The twins did not like potatoes but really liked minced meat. I used my meat ration as they were not old enough for a meat ration.
I never had any trouble with the twins but myself, I was in a bad way. All my insides were pulled out and I had to see a gynaecologist and wear something inside for about a year. When I felt better, I used to push them in the pram all the way from Elmers End to Courthill Road in Lewisham. Sometimes my parents would meet me in Catford and take me for a small drink at the Rising Sun. My father would go out to the pram and give the twins a sip.
My twin daughters were about 20 months old when their father was posted overseas on active service. They were going to school when he came back. I used to take them all over the place in the double pushchair, on the buses and taxis. When the war was over - so were the taxi days. I used to take the twins to see the ballet at the Lewisham Hippodrome – this has now been pulled down. We went on the Tune and had days in Town. We got around, even before my husband came home.
When the twins were about two years old, I took them down to Westcott in Surrey to visit the other grandfather (Harry Johnson) who used to take them to the pubs and sit them in the pub gardens and buy them shandies (beer with lemonade). Everywhere I went, people used to make a fuss of them. I used to make all their clothes and always bought them expensive shoes so they looked good.
Initially we lived in Clockhouse Road but moved to 65 Conisborough Crescent, Catford when they were about nine years old. During the War, after the twins had been put to bed, I used to get on the sewing machine and do a lot of dressmaking. I used to cut up blankets and make all sorts of things. Then I started making clothes for other people and that’s how I started my dressmaking business. My next door neighbours used to get very annoyed as they could hear the trundle of the sewing machine through the walls at night.
As the twins grew up, I made all their clothes. I used to make wedding dresses, an awful lot of wedding dresses – I can’t believe I made that many. I also made wedding dresses for both my daughters.
No comments:
Post a Comment