I can remember Aunt Ede (who was my Godmother) talking about the time when the family had to
send her out to work at the age of 18 – making cardboard boxes for Cadbury’s. It
was a big shock to her after being brought up to play the piano, paint a
little, and do delicate sewing & embroidery. All the other girls used to sneer at her
“People like you’ll be in the offices in 6 months”. I think she had a difficult time at that
point. But the girls were right & Aunt Ede did better once she was in the
office. Cadbury’s had a college doing
evening classes which all their employees could attend. Aunt Ede studied for the Post Office exams
and after a year or two went to Pershore as Sub-Post Mistress where she met and
married the local Police Seargent, Uncle Chuck, who was a widower with one son. They stayed there until Uncle Chuck got
thrown out of the police service for taking bribes of a rabbit or two from
local poachers. I assume this was during
WWII when even wild rabbits were logged and ‘owned’ by the Government due to
the severe lack of food. They moved to Sutton Coldfield where Aunt Ede ran the
local Post Office & took in sewing to make ends meet; while Uncle Chuck had
a small-holding growing vegatables, pigs and hens.
Mum was 20 years younger than Aunt Ede. The Cadbury’s had kept an interest in Mum’s
family. The factory was run by 11
brothers, cousins and uncles while their women-folk did the social work. They included trained midwives and nurses.
Mum was what was known as a ‘Cadbury baby’.
Cadbury ladies attended Mum’s birth at her cottage with their own coal,
water and linen.
At the end of WWI all the men required to work on munitions
were sacked. Grandad never worked again.
It must have been after this that Grandma went to the Poor
Board for money. Before doing this, they
had to sell all their belongings apart from one dining table, one
‘sit-up-and-beg’ dining chair & mattress for each person living in the
house. But at the Board meeting, Grandma
had worn her best hat which she was told to sell – no money! Grandma wouldn’t – only her best would do for
church.
Mum attended the local village school, walking 5 miles to
& from school each day. She passed the scholarship to Grammar School, but
was not allowed to go because what little money they had had to go towards
paying for her two brother’s apprenticeships.
School leaving age
was 13, but her mother “kindly” allowed her to stay on and teach the little
ones for a year. After that, her Mum
kept her at home to help with the housework for a year. By then, Mr Austin had started his car
factory at Longbridge and as soon as she was allowed, Mum got a job there. She stayed there until after the war when she
was pregnant – rising to Spare-Parts Clerk over the years.
During her teenage years Mum used to hang around the village
green with the boys (including one Peter Jones who later married Ann Haydon)
while telling her Mum she was attending Evening Classes.
During the 30s she joined the local Harbourne Tennis Club
and went to Health-and-Beauty classes.
One day, a Tennis Club friend asked her who she fancied the most. “Frank Jones” she replied. He was one of 4
table-tennis players (which also included Bunny Haydon – Ann’s father – and
Johnney Spiro) who used to tour the tennis clubs of Birmingham. A foursome was arranged, and the romance
blossomed. They got engaged before the
war – a 7-year engagement because he was apprenticed to a solicitor in
Wolverhampton. If Mum had got married or
pregnant she would have lost her job, so they had to wait until Dad was earning
enough money for them both. Dad was a
year younger than her.
Mum was adventurous for the times e.g. going on holiday to
Switzerland with her friend Dot – no adults to keep an eye on them! I think that was 1936, the year that Dad won
the B’ham Open.
When WWII came, Dad was not required to join the full-time
army as he was a student at Birmingham University. But when his solicitor ‘debunked’ (as Mum put
it) to America, Dad was given war-work at Hawker-Siddley. He had to work 5 days at the factory, and one
day at University. Dad found it almost
impossible to keep up with his studies, so decided to take up the Government’s
offer and defer his remaining studies to after the war and so put in for the
army. He was called up with 6 weeks
notice just before Xmas. So Mum and Dad got married 20th
December. His future didn’t work out as
expected, because Dad had missed some lectures during the 6 weeks after ‘call-up’,
so the University didn’t have to honour the Government pledge. They refused to
take him back after the war on the grounds that he was over 30, which was too
old to be able to learn. Dad never
talked about this, but Mum told me he felt badly let down.
He didn’t talk about the war, either. He told Mum a fair bit after he came back –
just the once – & never mentioned it again.
The incident Mum remembered well was when, in France, he & his
corporal were accosted by German soldiers and Dad couldn’t pull the
trigger. He saw the German soldiers as
largely just people doing their duty, like he was doing his. After D-Day, his job was to put an overcoat
over his uniform and seek out the French targets up ahead for his 3 tanks to
aim at (he was a sargent). As a
consequence, he spent a fair amount of time behind enemy lines with quite a few
telegrams of “Missing…” sent home. Unfortunately
for Mum, the army didn’t have Dad as married. The telegrams went to Dad’s Mum,
who used to crow that Dad felt his Mum was ‘home’ – not his wife.
