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Part six of an edited oral history interview with Mrs. Anne Misselke (née Alexandre) conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum.

“When I was at the States Intermediate School for Girls in Rochdale I was billeted with a family, the chap was rather nice but the lady was old and she had no idea — my mum was a wonderful cook and she didn’t know how to cook, this lady. There was a chip shop just up the road so we used to have a lot of chips and mushy peas and she didn’t really know how to treat young girls. My cousin Gene was billeted with a lovely, lovely lady called auntie Maud and I used to go there every Thursday afternoon to have a bath and have my evening tea with them and I loved going to auntie Maud’s and sometimes I would go round to play. But my auntie — I was so unhappy I’ve just forgotten what her name was, I think it was auntie Florence. But she used to sit every evening on her wooden chair. She had a chair with wide wooden arms and she would sit there drumming her fingertips, she wouldn’t talk, she wouldn’t read or anything!

But anyway at the beginning of June 1944 I still wouldn’t go back to school after recovering from illness since Christmas 1943 so my mother said, ‘Well, you’ll to find a little job, you are 14 now.’ So we looked in the ‘Stockport Express’ and we saw this advert for a Junior at a ladies gown shop called ‘Erylls’. So on the 6th of June I started work — which was ‘D’ Day — at ‘Erylls’. There was a lovely girl who had been the Junior, she was called Peggy and she was 18 and I was 14 and we hit it off straight away on the first day. We had a wonderful time we loved it - both of us - working there. It was a lovely little shop. And Mrs. Bennett, the owner was very good and she said to my mother, ‘Now we understand Anne has been very poorly, now if we see her looking a little bit tired we’ll give her a sitting down job to do. Or if she’s really looking very peeky we’ll get a taxi and send her home.’ So she was really looking after me very nicely. But I thrived. Peggy and I used to dress the windows every week. We had a whale of a time because we could hear all the comments of the people passing outside and they couldn’t hear what we were saying. It was lovely!

Then in the February 1945 trade was very slack. One Saturday Mrs. Bennett said to us, ‘Now girls when you come in on Monday I want you to bring a big apron and something to cover your head. Because we are going to go up into the attic and see what is in those boxes, there are boxes - they are all covered with dust. They have been up there since 1938 and I’ve forgotten what’s in them so that will keep you busy.’ So of course we had a big scarf around our heads, no rubber gloves in those days and big aprons on and off we went with our dusters and feather dusters up to the attic. She said, ‘Start with these boxes near first.’ So we brushed them off there first of all and then came out onto the landing and dusted them off again and then we went down into the stock room and opened the lids. Oh, lovely hats! Hats like you didn’t see during the war because they were just pull on things - hats in the war but these had feathers and veiling and silk and satin and oh, they were gorgeous! ‘Oh,’ Mrs. Bennett said, ‘I’d forgotten all about them.’ She rushed downstairs and she got all the hat stands. She said, ‘Put the kettles on, girls!’ So we put the kettles on and she put all these hats on the hat stands and then we had to - with the kettle and get the steam on them. She said, ‘We’ll leave them there overnight. Now tomorrow morning you can dress the small window with all these hats and I’ll make a big notice ‘Big Find’.’ She said, ‘Now put some scarves and gloves in there to match, make it all nice.’ So on the Tuesday morning we went in and we dressed the small window and ladies passing, ‘Sale Tomorrow’ — oh, look at those hats, oh, we’ll go in tomorrow, we’ll queue up tomorrow! So the next morning of course there was a queue of ladies, oh, I haven’t seen a hat like this since before the war! We sold them all off - all of them were sold on the Tuesday. So on the next Saturday she said, ‘Right, same again girls, there are all those great big boxes right at the back’ she said, ‘we want all those out.’ So those were very, very dusty those boxes, we had to fight through the cobwebs first to get to them. They were great big tall white boxes, thick, beautiful white card boxes. So we got them down into the stock room and then we opened them - lots of tissue paper and then we drew out wonderful satin underwear! All heavily encrusted with beige coloured lace. There was pale green, pale pink, pale lavender oh, and pale blue, no white. But they weren’t creased at all, they were heavy, heavy satin and they’d been with all this tissue paper and they were all outsize and extra outsize and extra, extra outsize! They hadn’t been able to sell them in 1938 you see. But of course, I mean you just didn’t see underwear like that during the war and there was enough to ‘do’ the big window. So Mrs. Bennett said, ‘Oh, lovely, girls we won’t even have to press these. We’ll have the big window.’ And there were peignoirs, petticoats and cami-knickers and French knickers — oh, it was absolutely beautiful. And so she said, ‘Now when you are hanging up the peignoirs don’t forget to pull the waist in a little bit and just drape it nicely and put the nighties underneath to match.’ So we had a whale of a time dressing the window and all these ladies said, ‘Oh, look at that underwear. Oh, we haven’t seen underwear like that since 1938 or 39. Oh, ooooh. Have I got enough coupons? I wonder? I’m going to queue up tomorrow and see.’ And the next morning when we got there the queue was all the way down the road and round the corner. There were these tiny weeney little size 8 ladies coming in, ‘Oh, I must have it’ and I was saying, ‘well, I’m sorry Madame, it’s extra outsize’ ‘oh, it doesn’t matter I’ve got a sewing machine I can cut it down.’ So it took us about two days to sell them all, we had to go into the window to get the last ones out. But that was a fantastic find - that was!

Before the 8th of May which was the end of the war - the lady in the cigarette shop had said to my mum and auntie Gert - ‘Now then when they say the war is over you can come round and you can use the phone in my sitting room. I’ll give you tea and buns while you try to get through to your relations in Guernsey.’ So they went round after they’d said that the war was over on the 8th of May and the lady fed them tea and buns all day but of course they couldn’t get through because the Channel Islands weren’t freed until the 9th. Then on the morning of the 9th we heard Mr. Churchill say, ‘Our dear Channel Islands will be freed today.’ So they went round again and they sat at the phone and eventually in the afternoon auntie Gert got through to her parents and my mum got through to Gene’s parents and that was lovely. So we had a big party, because we always had all the Christmas parties in our house because of the cellar you see. So everybody came and everybody brought food and we had a big, big party, a big celebration. All the children played downstairs, we were too old to play downstairs by that time Gene and I because Gene was 17 and I was 15. And so we stayed with the grown-ups or we might have been sent down stairs to play with the children, I don’t know but anyway it was a lovely party.

Then of course my dad had to apply to go back and because he was in the building trade, he had to fill up a form, they needed people to build up the houses and everything. So we actually went back on the 10th of July and of course when we got back there - nobody was allowed on what was called the White Rock where the boats come in - there is a long walk down and then there is the Esplanade along here. Nobody apart from the people who worked on the White Rock was allowed there so we had to come off the boat carrying our bags and we could see all these people standing at the bottom here waiting. We were looking to see if our relations — we could see Gene’s mum and dad. Gene was very, very glamorous at 17, wow! She had boys queuing up she was like a honey pot! They of course, as so many parents, were still looking for a little girl of 12 and they could not believe that this glamorous person was their daughter. That was lovely. We saw them and we saw my uncle Cyril and Imelda and that, lovely - big hugs all round. Auntie Mabel was very seriously ill. My grandpa who had stayed behind — a lot of people had got TB you see because of the malnutrition and my grandpa had only died in the — I think it was the March or April — he had died in Guernsey of TB. And poor auntie Mabel was desperately ill she couldn’t come down to the harbour.

So, because we couldn’t get into our house because a family had been living in our house and so they were still there because they couldn’t get into their house because German soldiers had been living in their house. The Germans wouldn’t put soldiers in our house because opposite was an ammunition dump and so we had to wait. We went to auntie Eva’s, that was my cousin Gene’s parents, we went there for a few days. Then eventually we had a phone call at auntie Eva’s to say that we could go and inspect our house to make sure it was alright and so we went. We were walking round, my dad was out in his shed looking at his workshop to make sure that everything was still there. I can remember walking round and I can remember opening the drawers and opening the cupboards and saying to my mum, ‘Ah, is this all ours? Aren’t we rich?’ Of course we weren’t rich really, it was only a three bedroomed house but of course we’d only been living in rooms all through the war, five years. Then I went upstairs on the landing, where I’d been dressing up with my cousin Imelda and on this landing had always stood this very, very large oak chest on chest. It had been there because it was — my father’s family were Channel Island cabinet makers and that had been in the family since 1600 and something. When my dad wanted to go in the loft he used to pull the drawers out and climb up the drawers to get in. So I started looking, started at the top and worked down. There were my dolls! There were some dolls and a lot of my toys were all beautifully wrapped up in these drawers. The lady had had two babies while she’d been living in the house and she hadn’t allowed them to play with them. The doll’s house had obviously been played with because that was downstairs in the shed. My bike had obviously been played with, a tricycle, the swing had been used and other things, puzzles and things had been played with, colouring books and pencils and things. But a lot of them, she had not allowed her children to play with them and they were all there wrapped up, my dollies, my good, nice dollies. Anyway I got down to the two bottom drawers and I thought what on earth is all this? In these two bottom drawers there were rolls of material, there was underwear with the paper patterns still on them with the pins in. There were half embroidered tray cloths, there were tray cloths waiting to be embroidered, little tablecloths half embroidered, embroidery silks, rolls of elastic, reels of cotton, embroidery wool. There were little wooden cutouts shaped like a crinoline lady, the top of a crinoline lady with a shawl. There were chintz bags - one of them was all ready with a chintz bag attached to this lady with the little feet at the bottom and the elastic round the top, obviously for knitting. I called out, I said, ‘Mum, come and see. What’s all this?’ So she came running upstairs, ‘Oh,’ she said, ’fancy’ she said, ‘that was for the Mother’s Union.’ She said, ‘We were going to have a big, big sale in July 1940 and the young wives at the Mother’s Union - they used to come round here on a Thursday afternoon — we were going to have our own stall for the first time. We were going to have all these things on our stall. Look at all that, she hasn’t used any of that.’ So when we got back to my auntie Eva’s for dinner and we were saying what we’d found she said, ‘Elastic! Did you say elastic?’ We said, ‘Yes! Rolls of it.’ ‘Oh, ooohh’ she said, ‘I wished I’d known, we’ve been keeping our knickers up with string for ever such a long time!’�

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