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Working in London and a wartime wedding

War work
“I didn’t enjoy what I was doing anyway, if it wasn’t for the kind of people that I worked with, I would have thought of them as lost years. Well, I was about fourteen in 1938 so I didn’t want to be evacuated, I could have stopped on at school, at the Central School. I left school because they were all getting ready, they were practising for the evacuation. I had two younger brothers and a sister at that time and my mother didn’t really want to let us go, but I had made up my own mind. So I left school and first of all, I worked in an office of a factory that made gas masks, I worked there for a year. I can always remember the smell - it was horrible. It used to make you feel sick, the stench of the rubber being prepared and packed. Then I was asked to go and work at the County of London Electricity Supply to do machine operating, do the bills. I had done shorthand and typing at school, so really this was just an extension of typing skills to work these electric machines, to enter the raw data into the machines. We did bills for the whole of South London in the machine room where all this took place, with this supervisor, who was, so we thought, so old at 32! Really, I suppose my memories of working is when I used to go to work with my friend who lived near me, we had been to school together. We would walk to work, it was a bus ride really, but we used to enjoy the walk and have a natter on the way. It was during the war, all the bombing and everything, that I worked here and in the evening we never were sure if we would see each other in the morning, we would say ‘TTFN (Tat Ta For Now). See you tomorrow if we’re lucky, we would say that as we went off.

There was an office where all the bills were collated, all the data collated to feed into the machines and the young clerks would bring the piles of work for the various districts. There were districts that were the best to get hold of because you had to number how many bills you had typed out each day, you had to keep your numbers up or else you’d be in trouble! So we looked for the easy piles where we knew the bills were all in long roads, it was much easier than if you were doing a road that was mixed up with industry. There were three young ones in the office and five older girls, who were big ones who looked after us really. We had to keep going the whole time but we did have our tea breaks and before we started work and on our way home we’d all be chatting. I met my husband to be when I was sixteen so you see we used to watch everyone’s romances flourishing. Everyone in the office had somebody that they were worried about or going with and one or two who had got married quite early in the war, except for our poor Supervisor, she was the one who was left.

I really remember going in the morning and asking, ‘Any letters?’ ‘Oh, yes, a green envelope today!’ A green envelope meant that it was uncensored. But, I had met Peter because he had come to the local Technical College. He was an electrician and he had come for a special course, all his group had. He had come to our Church because the Guides and Rangers were running a club with senior supervision for all those soldiers that were billeted in the area. They were billeted in local houses around our Church and our Church happened to be right near to where I worked. So, we used to help to make tea and serve biscuits and play table tennis, there wasn’t very much going on, but it gave these men a chance to get away from their billets and if they wanted to sit and write letters or anything. Then these three Scotsmen came in, obviously these 15 and 16 year olds eyeing up all these young men coming in - well we thought we were being very subtle! Anyway, I was doing something and this Scotsman came up to me and asked me to play table tennis, I wasn’t very good at things like that, he let me win! I knew he’d let me win because he could play and I couldn’t. So we sort of got friendly from there.

I was looking forward to registering (to do war work), I would really have liked to go into the WAAF, but when it came to it, people said, ‘You wouldn’t be able to leave it is a reserved occupation.’ But I said, ‘We are not doing anything, we are not doing anything for the war!’ They said, ‘but we have to keep the electricity going, sending the bills out.’ I thought that was awful, but they wouldn’t let me go. So I lost my dream. Peter was ever so pleased - he didn’t want me to go into the war. He went abroad soon after we met, well we had about three or four months and we knew what we hoped would happen. I got engaged before he went to the Middle East, from then on of course, everyone was interested. They didn’t think it would last, because of him going away and I was young. He was twenty, he was that much older, to me he seemed mature and he looked it, he had that kind of build.

The thought of working has always been intertwined with all our romances, we were such a close knit group and we went through such a lot together. One morning we came in and the whole place had been bombed, we were moved to Purley because that’s were there were some rooms that we could use. The Electricity Company belonged to the County of London. Our journey changed and we were still getting bombed like mad, we’d get up in the morning but you didn’t really get a good nights sleep, it was night after night. You trod through all the damaged debris in the streets and there was always water flooding everywhere. Yes, the smell of mushrooms from the bombed houses, and things hanging down from the houses. You never knew what you were going to find. You never saw any casualties. The rescue workers were marvellous really.

We went off to Purley, meanwhile they managed to repair some shops which were opposite our original building and made them habitable, the shop keepers couldn’t use them but they made them into our offices and machine room. The electricians in the Company had fitted it all out, so after a period we were then back in the same area again. Going to Purley, we had to change at Clapham Junction, once you had to use transport you never knew how long it would take you whereas we could walk to the original offices.

We had to do fire watching, we did it in two’s with a man supervising, go up on the roof. I did it with my friend, she really used to make me laugh, we used to get undressed and go to bed on two camp beds in the basement and she would put her curlers in! The siren would go and we would leap out of bed and put some clothes on quickly, put the tin hats on.

Experiences during ‘The London Blitz’ (September 1940 - May 1941)
One time I was in Putney out for a walk with a couple of friends. If the sirens went we tried to get home because our mothers would be worried. They were dropping a stick of bombs over the river at Putney and they came up the High Street. I was running away from where the sound was coming from and the last bomb was dropped at the bottom of the High Street. We were on Putney Hill, we got flung down, we didn’t have any damage done to us at all but I had put holes in my silk stockings! But one of the bombs had fallen on what was called the Cinderella Club, a dance hall which was above a black and white milk bar. After the soldiers stopped coming to the Technical College they used to have young air crews coming in to train and a crowd of these youngsters from the air crew course had been in there. They were all young! It all comes back, but I find that it upsets me more now. When you are in it all you get on with it. We did sit and shake, you did worry but you tried not show that you were frightened. You didn’t want the others to start feeling bad.

Wartime wedding
When my boyfriend came home from the Middle East he didn’t know how to get in touch with me. We didn’t have telephones so he sent a telegram to me to say that he was back in England, which shook me to the core because it was such a surprise, so unexpected. Could I give him a telephone number where he could reach me? So I asked the Supervisor at work if I could have a telephone call here because we were at work all the time, I couldn’t have a day off work. Everybody knew everybody’s boyfriends and knew what was going on. She said, ‘Yes’, she was really sweet about it, but the phone was right on her desk. I sent him a telegram telling him what hours I was working and when it would be convenient. Then every time the phone rang I thought this was him and when he rang I had to stand at this table and all the machines stopped. It was very brief really, it was difficult, you couldn’t say what you really wanted. He was saying about me getting time off, he’d got a month’s leave so I said, ‘Get time off?’ So then he mentioned getting married and I said, ‘Oh yes, I can get time off to get married!’ everyone gasped. He said he would be home as soon as he could, in a few more days. I went home and told my mum everything that was going on. We couldn’t get married in our church, that had been bombed, very badly damaged and was still out of use. The church they were using instead, I just didn’t fancy getting married there and I didn’t know how we could cope with all the arrangements for the wedding. It was my mother that went to the Registrar to make all the arrangements for the wedding. We got married in the Registry Office. Peter came home at the weekend on my 20th birthday and we got married three days later.

Everyone who came to the wedding brought some food, all the family came. We had it at home, two up and two down sort of house. They all brought something for the feast. My mother used all her Christmas fruit that she was saving, it was November time, to make a wedding cake. You weren’t allowed to ice anything, you couldn’t use icing sugar in those days - that was 1943. She was determined that I’d have an iced cake. She kept grating down ordinary sugar and poured it over the cake but it just went into a sugary mess. It was very sweet! People used to have a white cardboard top but she didn’t fancy that. My mother was determined that she was going to do the best that she could for us. It was the first wedding in the family, I was the eldest grandchild as well, everybody came.

At that time we hadn’t got any coupons and I certainly hadn’t got much money. I had a close friend I’d been to school with and she also worked in the office. She had married a Canadian, they were a lovely couple and he was still in our country on one of the bomber airfields. They were very sweet and they said, ‘We’d like you to accept a wedding present of a new dress for your wedding and we’ll give you the coupons.’ So I had a new dress that I hadn’t had to pay coupons or money for, I thought that was ever so nice. The rest of it I could manage, Peter had his uniform. But I was surprised because he had an Eighth Army Ribbon because they had come home in secret. He didn’t have the Desert Rat at that time - he was in the 50th Northumbrian Regiment. It was amazing, all those from the office stopped working and they came down the Registry Office, they weren’t very far away. When they all poured in the Registrar couldn’t get over it. They were all in the wedding photographs.

As I said I met and married my husband, Peter, during the war. Rosemary was born before the war ended so really I grew up rapidly. When I was having her my mother had got an eleven month old baby boy and my sister was eleven. My thirteen year old brother stayed at home and my other brother who was a year younger than me was busy doing his bit. I was sent up to Scotland to my in-laws, I was so homesick, I was really ill, the doctor said that I should go back home. It really was necessary for me to come home. Yes, I was in London through all the war. The ceilings came down and we moved to another house. We were in the middle of all sorts of bombing and a lot of people were killed. You don’t really ever forget it, none of us who experienced it!

Queuing, that really did start in the war. We might seem a daft lot to be queuing but it shared things out. I think it’s being democratic. Especially I thought that when I had a green ration book and I could go to the front of the queue. I was expecting a baby and you could go to the front of the queue, it was for the benefit of my baby! On January 26th 1945, the day after Rosemary was born the V-2s were coming then. I heard a terrific bang and the ceiling cracked all across. The rocket had fallen about half a mile away. The cracked ceiling was all that happened, that’s all we could see. You do wonder how you managed to keep your clothes clean and ironed. The planes came over continually - you had your meal before you went out anywhere.

The end of the war
You felt thankful that you had survived but you also felt awful for the people that were no longer there, very mixed feelings. When I thought after the war, Peter had came back from two war fronts, the Middle East where he was involved in all sorts of things and the Second Front. We had survived all through the war. I can remember the end of the war but it was quite a sad time really because my younger brother had been killed in an aircraft accident on 8 April, exactly a month before the war ended. He was so brave but all the family was still shocked and saddened by it. Because even though it was wartime and you knew things could happen it did seem to come out of the blue. I can remember this rat-a-tat at the door and I went to the door and received this orange envelope and I just had this awful feeling inside of me, even though telegrams were quite normal then. I gave it to my mother and she said, ‘Oh, Jimmy, he must be coming home this weekend!’ Our celebrations at the end of the war were muted. I was just thinking how lucky Peter and I were to have some years together.�

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