It is Tuesday 21st August, 1990 and I have decided to start rewriting my memories and will start as before with the Roper family records.

The early history of the my family

On the 4th March 1866 a baby boy was born to Mr George and Mrs Anne Roper who lived in at Stowmarket, Suffolk. They gave their first son the name of the Judah and later had a daughter Lydia and Nora and others whose names I have forgotten. Judah did very well at the village school and when he was 11 his schoolmaster told him he had taught him all he knew and that Judah must now start to teach the younger children. I don't know how old he was when his mother Anne died but he and Lydia had to look after their younger brothers and sisters until their father married another wife. She had two boys George and Charlie who were many years younger than my dad. After his second wife died George Roper married Sarah who brought up George and Charles and was still looking after George when I knew her. I always called her auntie Sarah. George Roper was a master labourer in Stowmarket.
At some time George Roper moved with his family to Colchester and Judah went as an apprentice to Mumford's engineering works where his father was working. On Sundays the family attended the Culver Street Wesleyan Church and I expect the younger children went to the Culver Street Wesleyan day school. At the age or 14 Judah was converted and felt the call to preach. He trained as a local preacher and was on full plan at the age of 16. There were many village churches in the circuit and after six days hard work at Mumford's Judah thought nothing of walking the nine miles to Mersey, conducting two services and walking the nine miles home again. When he had completed his apprenticeship he applied to join the Royal Engineers. After very exacting tests he was accepted and after basic army training in Colchester was stationed at Woolwich Arsenal in London. His Wesleyan Methodist membership and Local Preachers status were sent to the Wesleyan church in Woolwich where he was well received. One of the leading families in that church was the Kirkman family.
William Thomas Kirkman (b1829) had married Elizabeth Ann Bayly. William was a master boot maker and had a thriving business making hand sewn boots and shoes for the gentry. Their first daughter died. They had identical twin daughters born in 1858 called Emma and Frances – Em and Fanny. Fanny was full of fun and when her more serious sister Emma was courting she went out with her fiancé for a joke because he couldn't tell the difference. They had four sons and four daughters. Their youngest daughter Maude was born 17th March 1869. The family were very strict Wesleyans. No work was allowed to be done on a Sunday, Maud was sent to a private school, learned to play the piano and to do beautiful embroidery etc. She went to school until she was 16 and after that she was expected to help at home. She always remembered Monday mornings when all the Sunday washing up for a family of 10 and visitors had to be done. She attended the church prayer meeting and told me it was there that she fell in love with the young soldier local preacher who had joined their church. Her big sister Fanny-to her mother's disapproval had trained as a district nurse. She nursed the wife of bandmaster Arthur Miller until her death. The famous bandmaster to Queen Victoria's son the Duke of Connaught later asked this lovely nurse to marry him and they had a home in Edinburgh. When my grandmother found that her youngest daughter was interested in this young Engineer she promptly packed her off to stay with her sister in Edinburgh. She refused to let her daughter marry before she was 21. p back to index

My parents marry

Mother was 21 on 17th March 1890 and she married Judah Roper on 8th April 1890 at the Wesleyan Methodist chapel, William Street Woolwich. My father never liked the name Judah so when he moved to Woolwich he used his father's name-George Roper. As I write this I have in my hand the marriage certificate signed on that day more than a hundred years ago. Of course my father couldn't give his wrong name on and marriage certificate so as they wrote this after their wedding my mother knew for that first time that her husband's name was Judah. This reminds me of our fun in 1943 signing our marriage certificate when Jimmy and I discovered for the first time that we were uniting that the tribes of Ruben and Judah. At the time of their marriage dad had finished at Woolwich and was stationed in army accommodation at 8 Queen's Grove Felixstowe, Suffolk. Ten months later their first baby Rosa Elsie was born. Grandma's favourite daughter was called Rosa so grandma insisted that the baby must be called Rosa. The parents don't seem to have had any choice in the matter. On 5th May 1891 baby Rosa Elsie was baptised at the same chapel in Woolwich where her parents had been married. Immediately after that her little family set off on a long hazardous ship voyage to South Africa. They travelled with an army contingent from the naval base at Simon's town near Cape Town in South Africa.
I don't expect either of them had ever even seen a black man and it is difficult to imagine how lonely the young wife must have been when her husband was often away for long periods. As the baby daughter grew there was no opportunity for buying clothes. Sewing machines had recently been invented so my dad sent to England for a sewing machine to be sent out. Unfortunately it was badly smashed en route. However my dad was a very clever engineer and he soon made it better than new. Many years later I learned to sew on it and because of my father's work on it, it was very precious possession. When mother was too old to use it any more it was given to my Uncle George's widow Bessie Roper and I don't know what happened to it when she died.
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The family grows

On 17th November, 1893 their second daughter was born and called Maude Elizabeth after her mother and grandmother. On 23rd August 1895 their first son William George was born and named after his two grandfathers. In 1896 their five-year term in South Africa came to an end so the family with two fair-haired little girls and a fair head baby boy had a long sea voyage and went to visit family and friends in Colchester and Woolwich and many other places. Many people who knew Africans were black expected these little ones born in Africa to be black. While in Africa they had been given a grey parrot with a bright red tail and somehow they managed to bring Polly home to. I don't know how friends and relations managed to put up a family of five plus a parrot! Old Pollyfemus was very much part of my life until she died just before I went to India.
For his next five years with the army my father was stationed at Weston, part of Weymouth. During that time my mother's sister Fanny and her husband bandmaster Arthur Miller also lived in Weymouth and some of the time they shared a house. Queen Victoria liked to send Christmas hampers to people who had helped her large family so she always sent one to the Duke of Connaught's bandmaster. As there wasn't much money for Christmas presents the family decided to pretend to the children that Father Christmas had brought the hamper for them. My dad dressed up as Father Christmas but forgot to change his slippers. Six year-old Rose said "that's not Father Christmas he's got Daddy's slippers on!" She was shocked and upset that her parents were trying to deceive her and said, "it's like the devil".
Every Sunday the family crossed the bridge into Weymouth to attend the big Wesleyan Church in Maiden St. They soon made friends and with so many people living in Weston dad thought there should be a Wesleyan church there. He and others had class meetings and prayer meetings in their homes. Their third little daughter arrived and brought more joy. She was named Frances after auntie Fanny. Friends came to visit to welcome the new baby but sadly one had a disease which was passed on to the baby who died aged six weeks. Mother was devastated by this loss and never really got over it. She taught all her family never to kiss a newborn baby for fear of infection. When mother got confused after having shingles towards the end of her life she was always searching for her lost baby. My sisters eventually brought a baby-doll for her which she nursed for hours and felt comforted.
As the years went by the Methodists in Weston began to plan to build a church and brought a plot of land on the corner of Milton Road and Newstead Road. The culmination of their money-raising efforts was an open air bazaar. One of the events was a washing competition sponsored by Lever Brothers the makers of Lifebuoy and Sunlight soap. Mother won the first prize which was a beautiful satin lined box of 12 teaspoons and sugar tongs with the Sunlight sign on them. These were always kept for best for parties and put away carefully in the box. They brought mother happy memories of the five years in Weymouth and of her dear sister and her bandmaster husband who shared a house with them. On 1st May 1900 when their time in Weymouth was coming to an end their second baby boy was born. The Prime Minister at that time was called Gladstone so they named the new son Percy Gladstone. He was always called Percy or Perc but when he was grown-up he sometimes signed his name P. Gladstone Roper. He seemed to be more delicate than the other babies had been. When mother heard that their next posting was to India she was very worried at the thought of taking her four children to such a hot country. Auntie Fanny's husband died at that time and she urged mother to leave the baby with her but of course mother wouldn't hear of it. Out came the sewing machine and mother was busy making cotton clothes for all the family. Eventually all the goodbyes were said and they were on board ship for India still not knowing where they would be stationed. They disembarked in Bombay and spent several weeks in an army camp in very uncomfortable conditions and were eventually sent to Manora, a small island in Karachi harbour. They had a bungalow on the beach which must have been wonderful for three adventurous children aged 10, 8 and 6 but a nightmare for an anxious mother with a delicate baby. There were a few other English families on the island and a tiny private school. By the time they left five years later the Roper family were more than half the number of children in the school.
Part-way through their time in a Manora on 7th February 1902 mother had her 4th baby daughter and called Violet Evelyn. Just over two years later she had her third son and called him Edward Kirkman. He didn't cry when he was born so the midwife held him by his feet and slapped him hard. Mother had a lot of trouble with her little Teddy. As soon as he could crawl he would crawl on to the beach and put his sandy hands in his mouth. At one time his big sister had typhoid and he had it too but he survived it all and is still doing well 86 years later. Of course at the time of his birth Edward the 7th was King which was the reason for his first name. Queen Victoria died soon after Violet was born so as a baby she was always called Queenie. For dad and the older children this was a wonderful time. Mother always called their first four children Dad’s four and the last four were certainly mum's four. When they were happily settled in Manora news came that dad was to be stationed at Quetta on the north-west Frontier of India but this was changed at the last minute. A few months later there was a terrible earthquake and great loss of life in Quetta and dad’s saw God's hand in saving his family from that.
In that 1906 another move was due and this time he was to be stationed at Tynemouth Castle. After another very long and difficult sea voyage, this time with six children, he found a house to rent at 38 Berkeley Ave in Tynemouth. Auntie Fanny, who had felt very lonely since her husband died, packed up her heavy furniture and travelled north to join them. Unfortunately their house really wasn't big enough for them all and eventually she decided to go and live in Hove where her parents and her sister Rose lived and also her brother Tom and his wife.
In a 1906 Rose, Maud and Will were old enough for grammar-school and went to Tynemouth Municipal high-school. It must have been a tremendous change for them  after the private school in Manora with only three other children. Rose had never learned Latin and set herself the task of learning all the work her classmates had done in two or three years of Latin. When she left the school for university three years later the headmaster described her as the best pupil the school had ever had. I suppose Percy and Vi went to the local primary school.
On 20th November 1907 their 4th son was born and called Arthur Miller after auntie Fanny’s famous bandmaster husband. During these years in Tynemouth dad was obsessed with the news from Europe which he felt was leading up to a serious war. Although he had worked as an engineer in the army for 25 years he had never been involved in a war and was constantly praying and working for peace. He became involved in Tynemouth Methodist Church and was busy with local preaching. When he had completed his 25 years in the Royal Engineers he looked for a civilian job. He couldn't find anything that would use his qualifications but obtained a job with the Andrews Livers Salt firm in Newcastle and travelled by train to Newcastle from 1909 with Rose who was at Armstrong College - part of Durham University. pback to index

The youngest of 10

On a sunny Tuesday afternoon on August 24th, 1909 mother gave birth to her 5th daughter. She had been reading and book in which there was a little blind girl called Muriel so that was the name she chose. Father still praying for peace chose Irene, which is the Greek word for peace.
Rose, aged 18 ½ had just put her hair up into a 'bun' and let her skirts down to her ankles ready to be a student not a school girl. All the other children were at school except Arty who was only 20 months old and had to share his pram with his new baby sister. A few months later a lady looked at me and said to him "isn't she a little dear?" he replied with great feeling the "no-she's a little tiger". I suppose I used to scratch him. However we were very good friends when I was older.
At that time father's income dropped by ½ and with 10 in the family I can't imagine how mother coped, or how Rose managed to study with so many younger brothers and sisters around all the time but we really were a very happy united family. It was only when I was three that they found a larger house to rent. It was at 37 Linskill Terrace, North Shields about a mile from Tynemouth and the lovely seaside. The day of our move is probably my earliest vivid memory. All of the children had their own tasks for the move. I think the second sister Maude had the hardest task. She had to balance the parrot cage with noisy Polly in it on my pushchair and she had to look after Arty who had to push his toy house on wheels and keep an eye on me. I had to carry a box of picture bricks but I soon got tired of that and put it on the base of the house. Of course it fell off and poor Maude had to retrace her steps with her awkward load.
Eventually all the jobs were done and the ten of us settled into our new home. It's certainly was much bigger. It had three floors with continuous polished banisters from top to bottom which were lovely for sliding down. On the top floor there were two large attics the front one became our playing room and the back one was a box room with all sorts of exciting things in old trunks. There must have been five double bedrooms and a beautiful bathroom with a shower with a wooden screen and so many shiny brass taps for hot and cold and rain water for the bath the shower and the basin. It had a big kitchen with a coal range over which mother baked all the bread for her big family. We were so used to it that we thought it was a luxury if she ever ran out and had to buy a shop loaf. We had a very sooty little square of garden at the front with a holly bush in the middle and a yard at the back with a tiny rectangle of soil. There was a back lane where coal was delivered by a horse drawn dray. I loved horses and always tried to pat them but the only part I could reach was the back legs. Fortunately I wasn't ever kicked. On the other side of our road there was a field and beyond that there was a coalmine.
Up to the move I had always been that the baby in my parents' bedroom, but in the new house I shared a double bed with my sister Vi who was 10 and was always very good to me.
Arty went to King Edward's School and being delicate kept having to be off school. When he had measles I tried hard to be with him and catch it too but mother was very strict about that. Then he went back to school and caught it again. He had to sleep in mother's bedroom and we rigged up some way with his Meccano or train set that we could give him messages. I managed to catch it the second time and can remember being in mother's bed and having pieces of orange and special biscuits. The doctor came to see me and was surprised at how quickly I was getting over it. Arty brought a mirror for me to see what I look like with spots all over myself and I was very upset.
The Christmas I was three mother had to go to Hove as her father had died. My dad and big sisters did all the Christmas preparations. Knowing how much I loved animals they put a little tabby kitten in the top of my stocking. We called her Winky and she was lovely. The Christmas I was four Rose had finished at university and started teaching so she had a little money to spare and brought a doll's pram for me. She also dressed up a lovely boy doll in a green velvet suit. She brought a toy monkey for one shilling for Arty because she hadn't any more money but on Christmas Day I hardly look at my pram and said you lucky boy Arty.
I remember the great joy just after my 5th birthday when I started at King Edward's School. Vi's friend also had a little sister starting school so there was one person I had met and we became friends. Unfortunately Elsie fell over in the playground and was off school for a long time. Sadly my 5th birthday was just after the outbreak of the great war. By this time my dear Big Brother Will, was 19. He had done very well at school and won many prizes. I still have one of them which was very suitable for him, "Beast and man in India" and another "Romance of early exploration". Following in his father's footsteps he was an engineer apprentice with the gas works and so doing essential work exempt from being called for military service. However when all his friends were being called up he felt that he should volunteer for the army and let a married man with children do the essential work at the gasworks. He volunteered and was soon in uniform and sent away for training. When he came on leave dad decided we must have a family photograph taken while we were still all together. I'm holding my doll John and being annoyed that mother is holding my hand. By this time Rose had got a teaching job at Barnsley and Maude at Ilkeston. Father was needed in the army again and was very frequently away from home so our family was down to six. pback to index

The war years

Very early in the war there was heavy fighting in France and many many young soldiers were wounded and sent home for treatment. There were not nearly enough hospitals to cope with the casualties so many other buildings were taken over as army hospitals. Our lovely school was found to be suitable so we had all to be transferred to another school in the town. There was no room for us so we just had half-day school.
The children of Jubilee school went every morning for a month and the children are King Edward’s School went every afternoon. The following month we went in the morning and they went in the afternoon. It wasn’t very nice as it was just a church hall in a poor part of the town and there was no playground. We played in a narrow street and outside a locked church and used to swing on the door handles. I got a horrible fear of large empty buildings, a sort of phobia, which has lasted all my life. When Arty and I were not at school we used to place schools together. Our attic playroom became the school room and our home-made doll’s house became the headmaster’s desk. Arty of course was the Head Master and made me work quite hard which was probably a good thing. One day mother found I had pricked my finger and Art explained that it was the sewing lesson and that I had to sew the tape on his pinafore!
Many of the wounded soldiers in a blue hospital uniform whom we could see in our school playground had lost arms and legs. They needed lots of pillows and cushions and one of our jobs was to cut up and the spare rags to make pillows. One day while doing this I cut my finger so after that I was only allowed to fray the rags which I found very tedious. I remember I learned to knit and was given some wool to knit a scarf for myself but I found that tedious too and decided it would make a nice cover for my doll’s pram.
Although we had moved to North Shields we still belonged to Tynemouth Wesleyan church and Sunday school. It was too far for us to walk morning and afternoon so on Sunday morning’s mother generally took us to North Shields Memorial Church. This was a big high building with enormous organ pipes. I used to keep looking at them and thought they were spears for the congregation to use if we were attack by the Germans. At that Wesleyan church they used the service of morning prayer for Matins and I thought it was an Anglican church. In the afternoon we walked to Tynemouth and in the evening mother stayed at home with the little ones. That was the best time of the week. If any oranges were available they were cut in half and we sucked them.
My cat Winky had kittens several times. I thought she only had one each time as we always just kept one and found a good home for it. When I was about six Winky broke her leg. I used to put her in my doll’s pram and wheel her to the vet. At the time she had a pretty little kitten which I called Dusty so mother said the vet knew someone who would look after Winky and I could keep Dusty. We were very fortunate in having friends at church that had their own holiday cottage and several years they let us use it for a family holiday. The last time we went was just after Will had joined the Army. I put the Little Red Riding Hood cloak on Dusty and took her in the train in my arms. It was a beautiful country cottage with fields of cows and lots of flowers in the garden. We were allowed to cut vegetables and one day at dinner I looked at my plate and said “do we eat caterpillars mummy?” I loved all animals and insects. When I was older I would never eat cabbage and often wondered if the cooked caterpillar had put me off. Soon after we returned home from the lovely cottage at Wheelbriks Rose and Maude had to go back to their teaching jobs. Rose had moved with her job into the very poor part of London and it must have been very difficult there with the bombing. So as not to waste a day travelling she went on the night train. The next morning I couldn’t find Dusty anywhere. We searched and searched and I thought I heard her cry. We found a broken ventilation grid by the front door. Mother thought she must have gone in there under the house and couldn’t find her way back. I was very upset. When I told a school friend about it she said “would you like a puppy, my dog has got puppies”. I ran home very excited and asked if I could have it but I couldn’t. It was a very difficult time for mother with dad and the three eldest all away. To cheer me up she brought me a canary which we called Perky and which was allowed to fly round the room and often sat on my head or shoulder. She sang beautifully.
About 55 years after Dusty disappeared we move to Leek to live in a similar high ceiling terraced house with a backyard. When I went out of the front door I saw there was a ventilation grid just like the one in North Shields and all the feelings of a six-year-old came back to me. The following year auntie Rose came to stay with us and I pointed it out to her. She remembered that night very vividly too and said it was a sad time for all of us. Rose was then teaching in Leytonstone, a very poor part of London. Maude had her second job in Knutsford where she was teaching science to big boys much bigger than she was. When she came on holiday she used to bring lovely fruit like pears which we couldn’t get in Tynemouth so we thought Cheshire must be a lovely place to live. I remember her telling us that the ink was frozen in a desk ink wells so there must have had a very cold winter while she was there.
We had a lot of snow in North Shields and made lovely slides. I remember coming into the warm kitchen for tea of hot dripping toast. I had fallen down so many times on the ice that I couldn’t sit on my chair. I also remember my two big brothers taking me to the park, which was down the steep hill, and telling me to make as many snowballs as I could for them to have a snow fight with the other boys.
When dad and ‘the girls’, as we always called the two big sisters, and Will were away mother had a girl called Mary to scrub the floors and help in a house. When I was grown up mother often reminded me that I said to her “when I am a big girl you won’t have to have Mary because I will do all the jobs”. When I left home to become a teacher I brought mother the first vacuum cleaner we had ever seen called a Goblin.
August was always a happy month as the big sisters came home for a month. One year they brought some calico and some poles and made a small square tent which we put up on the beach to get undressed for bathing. It was always too rough for us to learn to swim but we had a lovely time. As the tent was too heavy to carry they used to put it on my pushchair. I used to love to run and jump holding their hands and felt I was far too grown-up to sit in a pushchair. When they were in a hurry going home they wouldn’t listen to that and I remember how ashamed I felt to be a baby. I used to shut my eyes and pretend I was ill.
I remember my 7th birthday very vividly. It was Thursday 24th August 1916. I had a lovely letter from France from my dear big brother who had also sent me a beautiful embroidered silk hanky and an embroidered card. Three days before he had celebrated his 21st birthday with his friends in the trenches in France and he wrote happy letters home. A few days after my birthday Art and I were downstairs when the postman came. Mother and Dad were still in bed so we took the letter up to them and I can still see the agony on my mother’s face as she opened up the letter and knew that her lovely, loving son and his closest friends had been killed on my birthday, three days after he had so happily celebrated his 21st. They had a wonderful letter from his commanding officer.
It was difficult for us to understand the agony of it all. I had a great sense of shame and remorse because I had been having such a happy time and hadn’t even written to thank him for his letter and presents. I wrote the letter in my remorse and said it must be buried with me when I die. Mother was shattered but of course carried on with all her jobs looking after the rest of us. Father returned to his work but very soon his health broke down under the strain. He collapsed and was in a military hospital near where he had been working. Mother had to arrange for all of us to be looked after when she went to visit him in hospital. I remember that sometimes the high-school headmaster’s wife would invite us to have tea in a very grand big house. It had a main staircase and also his servant’s staircase. I remember the marvellous games of hide and seek we played in that house. I don’t remember anything about the tea but I expect that was special too. One time my mother took us to see him by train and I thought the whole town was full of wounded soldiers in blue hospital uniform. Dad was in a big ward and it was all very strange.
About that time my brother Percy left school and got a job as an apprentice at a chemist shop. He started to be very careful about his clothes and his hairstyle. His naughty little sister was a terrible tease, climbing on the back of his chair at breakfast and running her fingers through his carefully brushed hair. As soon as he was 17 he too joined the Army and soon had to get into uniform and then leave home for training. Later he suffered from long marches and activities in Mesopotamia and India. Every spring the Sunday school children were trained to sit for a scripture exam. Although we lived a mile from the church we used to walk there in the wartime blackout for our classes. I remember that when I was seven we learned about Stephen who prayed for forgiveness for those who stoned him to death. I think Stephen was my first hero. I was given my brother Will’s Bible and it had in it a piece from the Salvation Army paper “the young soldier”, which gave suggestions for passages to read. I struggled with this until I came to Psalm 119 and I found that too long. My big sister Rose was anxious to help me prepare for the scripture exam so she sent me questions which I had to answer and send for her to mark. In reply she sent me a postcard of Jesus with children of many nations which was called, ‘the hope of the world’. I think this helped me to be interested in children from other lands. pback to index

The move to Colchester

The summer that I was eight, things had became very difficult. Dad didn't seem to be getting any better and his doctor thought he would improve if he moved back to Colchester where he had grown up and still had friends. By that time Rose had got a job at her old school in Tynemouth so that she could live at home and help us all. Dad's old friend, James Mason, a local preacher in Colchester eventually managed to obtain a house that we could rent in Harsnett Road near the Wesleyan church. Rose managed to find rooms and the removal date was fixed for May 1918. Vi had to stay behind to complete her' ‘O’ level exams. I had to give away a lot of treasures and say goodbye to all my friends. Our entire luggage was packed in a van and then it went by road and took a week to get to Colchester. We spent that night at a friend’s house and got in the train in Tynemouth station at 6 o'clock the next day. There were only five of the family to go, mother, father, Ted, Art and me with the parrot and canary in their cages. The journey took 11 hours. It was our first long journey and we were excited. Ted put his head out of the window and his cap was blown off, a major catastrophe! I put my head out and got a cinder in my eye, which hurt a lot. We were very tired and dirty when we arrived in Colchester. We stayed in a little house in Popes Lane with auntie Sarah who was in fact the third wife of my dad's father. She was a widow and was looking after dad's half brother George Roper. Uncle George had TB so he never slept in the house but in a shed in the little back garden. I became very fond of Uncle George who was the only Uncle I ever knew. The little house had no bathroom or indoor toilet and I was always teased because I called it a very un convenient house and I should have said inconvenient.
After a week our furniture arrived and we were able to move into our new home. The family who had moved out also had a little girl and she had picked lots of daisies for me and put them in a little paste jars on the windowsill. I thought I had never seen anything so lovely. It was all so fresh and green after the sooty air of North Shields. It was very strange for me to have a big bed all to myself and to be the only daughter at home. I remember how thrilled and happy I felt when I was considered grown up enough to wash the kitchen floor all by myself.
Art and I went to Canterbury Road School. In my class all the girls when knitting baby vests so I had to start one. The teacher couldn't find any more white wool so I had to knit a red vest and I remember being very embarrassed as my knitting looked so different from all the others. It was lonely not knowing anyone and being laughed at because I had a Geordie accent. After a time a Scottish family came to live opposite us. They had a boy, Bill, who was about Art’s age and Jessie who was my age. Jessie and I copied the Essex accent to be like the other children but she got told off at home.
The Wesleyan church was at the top of our road and we were all soon involved in the Sunday school and church and making friends there. At the end of the summer term all our three big sisters came home. Rose and Maude shared the big front bedroom, mother and Dad had the big back bedroom. Vi and I had a the room at the top of the stairs which only had room for the double bed against the wall and a small chest of drawers and a box with a cloth over it as a dressing table. The window just looked out at the next house. There wasn't lino on the floor. We had two pictures. One was of ‘The Good Shepherd’, Jesus with a lamb over his shoulders and the other was off three beautiful babies in bed together. The verse under that picture was about seeds in a seed bed.
"here we live cosily, close to each other,
Hark to the song of the lark
waken the lark says waken and dress you
Put on your green coats so gay.
The sun will shine on you all day and caress you.
Waken, 'tis morning 'tis May.
“Little Brown seed, oh little brown brother
what kind of flower will you be?
I'll be a Lily, all white like my mother.
Do be a lily like me.
What? You're a sunflower?
How I shall miss you
When you have grown up so high
but I will send all the bees up to kiss you
Little brown brother-goodbye."
I suppose I have remembered that as it comes to me sometimes when I and gardening.
There was a passage at the side of our bedroom to the bathroom and toilet and a tiny back bedroom with a double bed for Ted and Art. Percy was by this time in the Middle East with the British Army and later in South India.
That first summer holiday we discovered Doryland woods. I think they were about three miles away and we went nearly every day and picked blackberries and made quantities of delicious jam and jelly. Maude worked on improving the back garden and she brought a rose bush for each of us. Mine was called 'Dorothy Perkins', a rambler with lots of little pink flowers of. Vi’s was pure white, Percy's was called 'a shower of gold'. Dad's was a deep red. They were all very special and did very well. We also grew vegetables, which we had never been able to do before. Ted made a hen run and went to the market and brought 12 day old chicks. They grew well but turned out be 11 cocks and one little hen. Later on we had more hens and I was very fond of them. As they got bigger there wasn't room for them all on the perch and I used to settle them at night and tell them to move up and make room. At one time we had five hens that laid eggs for us. As I could distinguish the eggs I made a little notebook as a register and gave a mark for each one laid. Blackie came out on top. Ted also made a hutch and Vi had a lovely grey and white rabbit called Benjie. We had a step ladder which we could put over the barbed wire at the bottom of our garden so I could carry Benji over and let him run on the grass of the Recreation Ground. There was no room for a lawn in our garden as we wanted to grow vegetables and flowers and it was quite narrow.
Hoping to interest dad in the garden we rented a big fruit garden near St Boltoph’s station. It had asparagus beds and lots of damson trees. At 11 am on 11th November, 1918 the Armistice was signed and the terrible war was over. I remember all the excitement and cheering crowds in the town. I was surprised that on such an exciting day everyone seemed to be making bread; at least there was a smell of yeast everywhere. When I asked about it everyone laughed because it was the smell of beer that people were drinking not yeast for bread-making. It was amazing to see lights in all the houses and streaming out from the tall windows of our church. I said I wish there were churches all along the road. pback to index

The end of the war

When the war was over Maude managed to get a job at Colchester County High School so that she could live at home and help mother. Rose had felt called to serve overseas but couldn’t go during the war. She gave up her job and had some missionary training and then some time at home making lots of cotton dresses and she and many other new missionaries sailed for India in January 1920. Percy was home from India in 1919 and mother found a job in the Methodist Recorder. It was in Huddersfield, which was a long way from us but near to Amy who lived in Sale near Manchester.
The summer of 1919 my grandma had fallen and broken her hip and mother felt that she must go to visit her in August while her two grown up daughters could look after things at home. She decided to take me with her as I hadn’t ever seen my grandma. We stayed in Auntie Fanny’s little flat and shared a rather narrow bed against the wall. I had shared a double bed with Vi since I was three and sometimes she said I kicked her. I was so afraid of kicking mother in my sleep that I tried to stay awake all night. I don’t know how many nights I stayed there but I know my 10th birthday was on the Sunday we were there and mother gave me a ball. I can still remember the feel of that ball in my hand and how I longed to bounce it, but in those days you certainly weren’t allowed to bounce a ball on Sunday. We walked to 13 Blackchington Road to visit grandma and Auntie Rose. It was a very high stone house with a lot of steps up to the front door and a basement under the steps. My Uncle Tom and his wife lived in the basement. They had one daughter a bit older than me but she was a cripple and lived in a home where they were taught her to make beautiful artificial flowers for sale.
I remember feeling very shy as I stood by the big bed with my little grandma with a very white face and white hair tied with pink bows. Suddenly I fainted and fell on the floor. When I came round I was on a hard horse hair sofa in the front room. I was very upset. Grandma was 90 years old and she died soon after that so I never saw her again.
The outstanding memory of 1920s was Guides. In those days Guide Companies and Scout Troops were generally started in churches. The first Colchester Company met in an Anglican church not far from us and there were five other companies in different parts of Colchester. Our church found a lady called Miss Howe who will was willing to start a company so those who were interested prepared and gave a wonderful concert at to raise some funds and the 7th Colchester Guide company was formed. There were no Brownies and I was still only 10 so couldn’t start at the beginning. Maude agreed to train as a leader and Vi, who had been a Guide for a short time in Tynemouth, was a patrol leader. She was 18 and so were the other patrol leaders. I was allowed to start after Easter and worked hard to pass my second-class badge before I was 11. Miss Howe was housekeeper for her father who had retired from the Navy. He knew a lot about camping so they decided to take our new Guide Company to camp. We went to her Mersea Island. We had a big marquee and took the Sunday school forms and tables for our meals. The two ends of the marquee were used for patrol tents and there were other bell tents and a tiny tent called ‘Nutshell’ for the two Lieutenants. Mr Howe had a large wind-up gramophone with a big horn speaker and he kept putting records on for us. He did most of the cooking. My great embarrassment was that I had long plaits and could not do them myself so had to go to the Lieutenant’s tent. We always called our patrol leaders Miss and the surname and treated them with great respect.
At the same time a Scout Troup had been formed at our church and my brother Ted was very much involved in that. They also camped in Mersea at the same time and sometimes we met on the beach. It really was a wonderful time. Miss Howe and her father did a lot for us but I imagine she must have upset the Guide authorities with arranging this camp. Soon afterwards she resigned and Maude took over as captain and kept it on there for many years. She eventually handed it over to one of the first Guides and she became a commissioner. In 1970 I went from Glastonbury with my three sisters for the 50th anniversary of the 7th Colchester Guide Company.
In a 1920 I was also preparing to take the scholarship exam so I was given some homework to do. I had to write about my favourite picture so I described the picture postcard of ‘the hope of the world’, which Rose had sent me when I was seven. I was delighted when we had the news that I had passed and would be going to the High School in September. I don’t think I had ever had any clothes brought for me before that and I felt a very smart in my white blouse and navy gymslip. I had to wear a special school hat too. The junior part of the high school was in a very old building called ‘Grey Friars’. I think it had been a monastery. It had a beautiful garden and old trees. It had unusual shape rooms and very high windows and little staircases. My form was called 3a. All of the scholarship girls were given new books for all the subjects. We put our names in them and they were all ours to keep. The other children had to buy their books so they often had second-hand copies. We stayed in our form room for most lessons. Our history teacher was called Miss Ironmonger. She didn’t make the lessons interesting so we played about. We would ask to be excused and as the toilet was down a little flight of stairs we would spend most of the lesson jumping down the stairs and having fun. I was so shy that if I never answered questions in class, but I wasn’t too shy to ask to be excused and to play with others on the stairs.
It was quite any long way from our house to Grey Friars but I always walked home for dinner and back. We found a short cut by a little narrow footpath with high hedges. We had no fear hand in those days, no one thought it dangerous for girls to go on there own through such places. I didn’t ever remember being late for school.
All the Guides were looking forward to going to camp again but the Guide Association had made it very strict rules that only Guides who had worked for and obtained a camping licence could take their companies to camp. Maude in her new teaching job had had no time to do that but the captain of the first Colchester Guide Company at the Anglican Church near us was taking her Guides to camp. They were willing to take our company too. They were hiring a van to take their tents and equipment and the Guides on a Sunday at the beginning of August. My parents had a very strict ideas about what we could do on Sunday and wouldn’t give permission to travel. Maude was grown up so she could make her own decision and she decided to take any of our Guides who wanted to go. I was nearly 12 so Vi was 19½ but she still wasn’t considered grown up enough to make her own decisions. The rest of the Guides had less strict parents and I believe they had a wonderful camp. Maude was determined that shouldn’t happen again so she worked very hard all the rest of the summer to pass all the tests and practice camps to obtain her licence. I think that first week in August 1921 was the hardest week of my childhood. From then on the 7th Colchester Guide company camped every year. At first we camped in school halls in Felixstowe and Southwold. We took our palliasse covers which we filled with straw for our beds. One year we went on a boat trip from Felixstowe to Harwich and two of us pretended we were going overseas as missionaries. That dream eventually came true for both of us and years later we met again in India. In Southwold we got to know the local guides and kept up a friendship over many years.
After a few years we found a lovely field on a farm up by the estuary of the River Stour and we camped their in tents for many years. At high tide we could run straight from our tents into the sea. There were wonderful unspoilt meadows and woods and we did all our cooking on wood fires.
After two years at Grey Friars I moved to the senior school at North Hill in the upper 4th form. I think I generally went to school on the train and still went home for dinner. Sometimes I took sandwiches and we could have a cup of hot Bovril for 1d to warm us up. We played netball in the winter and tennis in the summer. When we started hockey we had a long walk to the hockey pitch as there wasn’t room for one at school. I wasn’t any good at any of the games. We never went swimming from school but on Saturdays and holidays, and especially at camp, I managed to learn to swim and when I was older I passed my life savings certificate so that I could take Guides swimming. pback to index

My teenage years

When I was 13 my brother Percy got married and Amy asked me to be a bridesmaid. Her friend was the chief bridesmaid and I was supposed to be a little bridesmaid in a pale blue frilly frock. My poor brother got a shock when he saw that his little sister was taller than his beautiful bride.
I found it a very long train journey from Colchester to Manchester and was very sick on the way and very shy at the reception when I had to take round the wedding cake to the guests. Afterwards we all went to the station to see the bride and groom off for their honeymoon. A year later, the day before my 14th birthday, their first baby, Peter William was born. He was so small that he wasn’t allowed to be bathed for six weeks and mother stayed to help Amy for a long time. I don’t know how we managed at home there but I expect dad went to stay with a lady who had brought a disused railway carriage as her home and looked after invalids in it. The following summer Percy and Amy and baby Peter came to stay with us and we were all delighted to be aunties for the first time. He slept in the big bottom drawer of our mahogany wardrobe and Margaret took lots of photographs of him with us all.
In those days people didn’t often call each other by Christian names except in the family. However, because there was a famous Margaret Roper in history one of the leaders amongst the Guides and also in the town started calling Maude, Margaret. As she had always hated the name of Maude we decided we might as well use the name Margaret and most of us did although some of her brothers never did.
Ted was always very active as a Scout leader and much of the preparation for both Guide and Scout camps was done from our house with mother’s help. Ted also used to take some of the Scouts to a gymnasium in Colchester. One day when he was 17 he had an accident there and broke his leg. It wasn’t set properly and all one summer he was unable to walk at all. He slept on a couch in the dining room for months. When he did eventually walk again one leg was shorter than the other. He has suffered with that leg for nearly 70 years but has done a tremendous amount for all our family and for many friends.
I think grammar-school work prevented Arthur from doing much in the Scouts. One summer he was invited to go and stay with my mother’s sister’s family in London. When he came home he had a fly swat which he used with great vigour. As I couldn’t ever bear to kill anything I really hated him for that. When I was 16 he went to London to train as a teacher at Westminster College. After two years’ training he got a job in Derby.
Guides and music took up all my free time. There were a lot of inter-company competitions. On Sundays there were Guides groups in different churches. We used to take our own tea. I remember Margaret liked banana and jam sandwiches and I generally had to make them as she was too busy. The Guides had a meeting together in the afternoon and we were expected to stay at the church for the evening service. It was a good introduction to various types of worship but I didn’t like it at all when they used incense. We had special classes and people’s homes when we were preparing for important badges like First Aid and Child Care. After some years I stopped being a little Daisy and became patrol leader of the Honesty patrol.
Although Guide camps were our main holiday, one summer Maude took me to Hove where we walked on the South Downs. We had a wonderful time. Another year she took Arthur and me to the farm at Wrabness where we camped and she taught us the Latin names of all the seaweeds along the estuary. When I was 16 or I had the great privilege of going with the Rangers to camp on the Isle of Wight. That was a wonderful holiday.
One of the families in our church and Guides lived just down the road from us. The youngest daughter, Dora, became my friend although she was two years older than me and was working in a draper’s shop while I was still at school. Ted fell in love with her sister Emma who was a year older than him. We used to tease them a lot when they were courting in our front room. The next sister Elsie was organist at our church and Dora and I often had to go and pumped the organ for her to practise. All three sang well and were in the choir. When the choir went to another church to sing I was often invited to go along to turn over the pages for the organist.
When I was 16 and Vi was 23 she realised that there was no chance of promotion in the education office where she was working so she applied for a job in Derby. Now I had a big bed all to myself but as the boys’ room was so small they decided to move into my room. They took a lot of trouble to make their little room at the back of the house into a bedroom for me and I love that room with its view of our garden and the expanse of the Recreation Ground. The best thing of all was looking at the stars particularly Orion. I remember going to bed at night with a hard maths problem on my mind and waking up with it somehow sorted out for me. I remember reading Psalm 27 sitting on my bed and looking out at the stars. I suppose I grew up in that very little room. Things must have been very difficult for mother but I remember much happiness.
Unfortunately I have left out the year when I was 15 so must go back to that because after five years in India, Rose came home for furlough in May and returned to India the following April. She was very strict with me having looked after so many teenage girls in India, many of them orphans for whom she was responsible all the year round. That summer we went for a holiday at Loughton in Epping Forest. We had walks and picnics in the Forest on Sundays and went shopping and sightseeing in London on other days. I didn’t feel at all grown up at 15 but they brought me a long green coat with a fur collar and tried to make me look grown up.
At the age of 13 I was determined to teach myself to ride Vi’s bike. With all the family watching I got on and wobbled my way down the road but when I reach the T-junction at the bottom I went so slowly that I fell off. I couldn’t get up and my brothers ran down and picked me and the bike up. I was put to bed and our dear Dr Roland came and said I had bruised the bone and must stay in bed for a week. That was the only time I was ever off school so I must have been a very healthy child. I remember Ted standing at the end of my bed singing funny songs to make me laugh but it hurt to laugh. It must have been at the beginning of the summer term and for the rest of the term I had to go to school on the train and take my lunch. That summer I had a brand-new bike for my birthday that I was still using until more than two years after I was married. When we suddenly had notice of a passage to return to India in May 1946 I put it on the train and sent it to Colchester to be looked after by Margaret. However when we returned home in 1951 it was decided it would be better to get another bike and I got one second hand in Falmouth for £8 and sold it in Radyr for £8. I then had Rachel’s one since she was pushing a pram and not riding her bike. It is the one that I am still riding.
The summer that I was taking my School Certificate was unusually very hot. We had desks in the school hall and enormous blocks of ice on tables to cool the air for us. I got fairly good results but didn’t get a high enough mark in Maths for university entrance. That meant that I must take up the London matriculation exam in five subjects before doing my A-levels. It was quite hard work with a different syllabus. The exam was only held in London so we had to go by train to London and stay in a college there and go each day to an enormous hall which had an aeroplane suspended from the roof above our heads it was a frightening experience. In the evenings there was nothing to do but revise. I did too much, and in my geography exam I found I couldn’t remember anything. I was quite sure I had failed. That was early in January 1927. I returned to school and eventually the results came. By that time my poor old dad was in bed and very pale but he brightened up when he heard the news that his youngest daughter had got her London matriculation and so could go to any university. Margaret wanted me to go to London University but my very wise headmistress pointed out that I was so shy a small university like Reading would be more suitable. How thankful I was later when I had 4 such happy and fulfilling years at Reading. pback to index

The death of my father

During that that spring dad got weaker and we realised that the end was near. He died on 4th May 2 months after his 61st birthday. I wasn't very well at the time and didn't go to the funeral but I wore a black coat all that summer as that was the custom. By that time, Ella was working in a big shop in Hastings to save up for getting married and I was very friendly with her sister Dora. Our church had tennis courts and we often went there with other young people. Two of the Scouts often joined us and years later I discovered that one of them had been in love with me for years and even came to Reading to visit me. He was one of a family of about 12 children in a small house. They always had two sittings for meals and if he was arranging to go out he had to check whether he was due for first or second sitting.
I enjoyed my very busy second-year in the 6th form. Only two of us were taking botany and three of us taking geography. The school believed in only two subjects at A-level and a wide variety of the subsidiary subjects so I also studied physics and chemistry, English and scripture. When I was planning to go to university Dora was longing to train as a nurse and didn't know how to begin. I had a little lump in my leg from a splinter when climbing trees when I was about 10. I decided that I would go to the doctor and ask him to cut it out. Dora came along with me so he asked her to hold the bowl for him while he cut my leg. He said she would make a good nurse and that he would recommend her to the big hospital. So she was able to give up her job in the draper's shop. It was a very hard training in those days but eventually she was fully trained and worked overseas and married a diplomat who eventually became a British ambassador and now they travel to New Zealand and Australia to see their grandchildren. pback to index

Reading University 1928 to 1932

1928 was a year of change. Arthur finished his teacher training at Westminster and got a job in Derby. I got my place at Reading University. Another girl from my form, Ivy French, who lived in Clacton was also going to Reading. In St Andrew's Hall freshers had to share bedrooms so we asked to share together. We discussed colour schemes and decided on blue and black but my sisters suggested some orange to brighten it up. Margaret was a wonderfully generous taking me shopping to buy a trunk, suitcase and clothes, all very exciting. So from a family of 10 there were only three left at home, mother, Margaret and Ted.
I had my 19th birthday before going to Reading but I still didn't feel very grown up. Ivy and I found we were sharing an attic room in a house called to Tanfield, 100 yards or was so along the road from St Andrews Hall. There were, I think, seventeen of us in the house most of us freshers as the rooms were big enough for sharing. The head of the house was 'Sharp'. She was studying music and had a room just by the front door. We never used Christian names at college so I don't remember her Christian name. The kitchen was our Common Room and we had our tea together there but all other meals were in Hall and were very formal. There was a high table on a dais which the warden 'The Honourable Ellanor Plumber' sat with other members of staff and invited students. If we were late for a meal it was very serious and we had to go to the high table to apologise. The committee members were heads of tables. Our places at the table were fixed by the committee members placing our serviettes in different places. We couldn't sit with our friends but had to sit where our serviettes were and so gradually we got to know everyone. Our tables were changed each week and it was a mad rush round to find our serviettes ring. They were all silver. We stood by and our chairs till we had grace. In the morning before breakfast we had a Bible reading and prayer. The previous warden had been much more strict about manners and said university students were "ladies" and if they went shopping they shouldn't be seen carrying parcels but must have things delivered. Another way of getting to know each other was that students should invite those of another year to tea in their rooms on Sundays but we were told it was very impolite for the guests to stay later than 6 o'clock. In our study bedrooms we had coal fires which we lit each day with a fire lighter. We were provided with a bucket of cold each day and if we were out and didn't use it we used to store it under the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers.
At the beginning of the term we were invited to join societies. I joined the Choral Society and although I couldn't sing I enjoyed it so much I continued all through my four years. Our conductor taught singing in a boys' school and for a few of our concerts they joined with us. I particularly remember when we sang the Messiah because he insisted that we should rehearse it right through in the morning and sing it right through again in the afternoon. We had wonderful service and sang in the University Great Hall.
I also joined the Student Christian Movement, S C M and stayed in that for four years. S C M had Sunday evening study groups and I joined one which was studying comparative denominations. This led to our worshipping in many different churches. At the beginning I went from regularly to Wesley with a girl called Joan Sharp from Manchester and Walley Range church. We sometimes went to a sort of Meth Soc meeting at their manse before the service but I didn't go regularly. Dad was once asked to try to get the girl called Roper back into the Methodist fold.
On a notice sent to parents before we went to Reading they were asked to sign a form to say if they would allow their daughters to go on the river. Mother wouldn't and I was sad as I really longed to join the sculling Club. Then someone told me that the notice was only for leisure trips on the river and didn't apply to university clubs so I joined the sculling Club. I had taken my cycle on the train to Reading and used to enjoy cycling along the Kennet to the Thames where we had our boat house. We had double and single scullers and I enjoyed every minute of it. We wore white cotton shirts and shorts all the year round even when we had to break the ice. When we were training for races we had early breakfast and were on the river by 8 am.
The fact that our school had stressed a wide variety of subjects in the 6th form of which only two were studied at advanced level meant that I could go straight into a degree course but must take two more subjects at Inter level. I chose geology and maths. My personal tutor was the geography professor who reminded me very much of my old dad. When I told him he became very friendly and helpful. I was one of two inter students who were invited to go on the geography expedition to the Malvern Hills in the Easter vacation. This was the most interesting and exciting holiday I had ever had and although I only did one year of geology I was invited to join the Easter expedition to the Isle of Man the following year.
That Easter vacation also saw great changes at home. Ted and Ella had decided to get married at Easter and asked Dora and me to be bridesmaids. Mother's dear sister our auntie Fanny was ill and needed someone to look after her so Mother decided to let Ted and Ella have our rented house as long as they would agree to let Margaret continued to live there. We packed some of mother's possessions into the old Italian car and Margaret drove us to Hove. We had a very bad thunderstorm on the way. Mother sat in the back of the car with an umbrella up to try to protect her and her luggage from the rain through the soft roof. Margaret and I sat in the front with macs on but were soaked by the rain through the open windscreen. The car managed to reach Auntie Fanny's flat but wouldn't go any further. We managed to push it to a garage but as I didn't understand about steering I'm afraid we broke one of the garage lamps.
Summer term was a bit worrying with inter exams coming up. Just before Whitsun I heard that the wedding was postponed until August as Ella was in hospital with appendicitis. I just didn't know what to do. It was too extravagant to go all the way to Colchester but too late to make any other plants. In the end I decided to go to Colchester and I remember very much the beauty of that weekend-bluebell woods, beech leaves and so on and really enjoying playing Mendelssohn's 'Spring Song' on our old piano. At the end of term I went straight to Hove to be with mother. Auntie was very ill and I didn't know any one there so it was a very lonely time. One day when I came in from a walk auntie was waving a telegram and was so happy to tell me I had passed my inter exams. A few days later she died. It was very sad for mother who had given up her home to look after her sister. During August they went to Colchester and Margaret and I went to camp with the Guides at Wrabness. It was wonderful to be with Guides again after a year away. We made up a song to a well-known tune,
'The nicest camp or I ever saw, was down at the Wrabness by the Shore.
There had been no camp quite so fine as ours of 1929.
We went into the woods at night and saw the glow-worms shining bright’.
There were lots more verses but that is all I can think of at present.
After camp we were back at Colchester doing lots of washing and cleaning up ready for the wedding on August 15th. After the wedding mother and I returned to clear up the flat in Hove and Vi and Arthur began hunting for a house for mother and Vi in Derby so that she could move and make a home for them.
When I returned to Reading at the beginning of October Ivy and I had been moved to single rooms in the annex-the house next door to Hall. One day a student called Littlecott, knocked on my door and asked if I would be the St Andrew's representative on the S.C.M committee. I had a very poor opinion of S.C.M at least of the way it was run and didn't want to get involved. However I thought it was no use criticising if I wasn't prepared to do anything so I very reluctantly agreed. I used to have to put up notices about S C M activities on the whole notice board and I would creep out at night to put them up so the my friends wouldn't know I was involved. Then I was asked if I would go to an S C M regional conference at Bewdley during the Christmas vacation. Again I didn't want to go but reluctantly agreed. That was our first Christmas in Derby it was a small house in a built up area and we didn't know any one. I was fortunate as one of my Reading friends lived at Knutsford and had asked me to visit her. I went by bus from Derby to Knutsford after Christmas and the bus went through Leek. Nora's family lived in a beautiful house with a large garden and it was all very different from anything I had ever known. When it was time for me to go to the S C M conference they packed me up a lovely lunch and put me on the bus. I felt I wanted to write and thank them but somehow felt I shouldn't. It was only years after words that I realised that was something I should have done.
I had no idea what to expect at Bewdley. In a letter giving the details of how to get to the conference I had been asked why I was going and about my call and had flippantly replied, “Littlecoat called me”. I think there were about 50 of us from universities all over England. I was in a dormitory with five other students. Every morning there was a quiet time and every night we talked and talked. I was very impressed with the quality of the lives of the leaders and I knew I had to make a much deeper commitment of my life to Christ. As I returned home to Derby by train I was filled with a new joy and peace and was able to share this with my mother. Our Reading S C M committee had arranged a pre-term conference so I soon had an opportunity to share what the Bewdley conference had meant to me. When term began I boldly put up a notice in Hall inviting people to come to a certain room to hear about S C M. Two of my friends who shared a big room let me use their room and to my amazement it was packed. I was amazed that I was given courage to share my experiences. From that time until I left Reading I was very involved in S C M. Jimmy my future husband was on that committee and apparently had notice me even in our first year when we both went to geography lectures, but he was too shy to say anything. Although I was now only in the geography department I was invited to join the Easter geology expedition to the Isle of Man. This was tremendous fun. We crossed from Liverpool to Peel on a wild and windy day. We should have had a four hour crossing to Douglas but because of the wind we couldn't get into Douglas harbour and had an extra two hours round the south of the island to Peel. Although many were seasick we enjoyed every minute and were even skipping on deck. We stayed at a small hotel in Castletown. One night when we were sightseeing the castle we were accidentally locked in. Most of the students returned home after a week but some of us stayed on for an extra week end. We became very close friends and called ourselves 'The Family'.
Professor Hawkins was the father and Lawrence Wager was the Big Brother. He was a geology lecturer and later was on an Arctic expedition and in 1932 climbed in an Everest team. Wager owned a small cottage in a village called Aincliffe in the Yorkshire Dales and we had some wonderful camping and walking holidays there. The other girl students were Nora Kemp, Nancy Scates, Gwyneth Hereford and Joyce Griffiths. Griff was studying Dairy at Reading so I don't know why she was on a geology expedition. She was the daughter of a vicar at Darley Dale, not far from Matlock. One vacation she invited me over to stay at the vicarage. I remember we had porridge for breakfast but spent quite a long time in a prayer before we could eat it. After her training Griff got a job at the Midlands Milk Marketing Board and she visited me at Kingsmead College, Selly Oak in 1935. While I was in India she went to Australia but after returning to England things went wrong and she was found dead on the railway line. That summer term we had several wonderful family outings. Lawrence Wager had a small open car with a boot which opened as a seat. He managed to get six of us in this. For the Whit holiday weekend when we were seven or eight, I went on my bike and had a rope attached to the car to help me up the hills. We took lightweight Arctic type tents and camped at Kingsclear not far from Newbury. On the Monday we walked on the Downs and saw Morris dances at Bamford. Wager did some at sketching. There are snaps of that weekend and of the Isle of Man in my called photograph album.
In at the geography department we were told that before taking a geography degree we ought at least to have travelled on the Continent. My mother kept asking me what I wanted for my 21st birthday present so I asked if I could go on a holiday to Austria. Through the N U S we were able to book an eighteen day tour of the Upper Austrian Lake District. Two of my friends, French and Shaw, decided to come with me and my sister Maude decided to come as well. In that summer vacation I decided I had better earn a bit of pocket money so Vi got me a job at the Local Taxation Office and we used to cycle down to work together. I couldn't work for many weeks as I had arranged to go to S C M Swanwick with other friends. We had a wonderful time there. As Margaret was taking her Guides to camp at Wrabness we decided that year to have a family camp. Mother stayed with our farmer friends in the farmhouse. Arthur and Marjorie were engaged and they joined us. pback to index

My coming of age

On Wednesday August 13th Margaret and I joined up with Ivy French and Shaw (I can't think of her Christian name as we never it used to it) and we joined the rest of N U S party at Dover and crossed to Ostend. There were so many new impressions. We were travelling third-class which meant hard wooden seats all night. We had some time on the platform at Cologne at about 1am and had beautiful views of the Rhine gorge by moonlight. We certainly didn't have much sleep. We went on in the same train all day and were met by Ilse, a lovely Austrian student at Salzburg. She took us in pouring rain to a school hall where rows of beds had been put ready for us. There was just one tap in the gym where we could wash. Then we were taken to a hotel for a lovely Austrian meal. After a good night's sleep we were taken to a coffee house for breakfast and then went shopping. Margaret decided to buy a pair of Austrian climbing boots which we could both wear and I brought some thick socks. We couldn't do much sight seeing as it was pouring with rain. We had lunch at the railway station and then caught the train to Obertraun. We had four friendly Austrian students with us. We had brought a tiny dictionary and were trying to learn some German. The views from the train got better and better, still deep blue lakes, snow-capped mountains, all was wonderful.
At Obertraun they took us to our hotel where we had a lovely meal and then across the road to the hall where we had our beds. The next day, Saturday, we climbed the mountain straight up from Obertraun to wonderful ice caves where the ice had been there for thousands of years but was now lit up by electric light so that people could see its beauty. The guides were watching us and assessing how we could cope with mountain-climbing. We had none of us ever seen a mountain like this before. They put me into group B and the other three into groups C. We had some days when we could plan are our own walks but most days there were organised tours. Obertraun is very near a big lake called Hallstatter See and one day we walked round the end of the lake to the town of Hallstadt and we went down a salt mine. There is a photograph of the group of us dressed for going down a mine. It was fun going down the chutes and very interesting. We also went in the Church and saw rows of skulls as there isn't enough space in that area for burying people. One day we climbed a mountain called the Liser and another called the Sarstein. Some of the guides took a group ‘A’ up the over 10,000 ft Dachstein and on Saturday 23rd August it was the turn of group ‘B’. That morning we were called at about 3am. After breakfast we were each given a share of the provisions to put in our rucksacks and we were soon tramping along the four-mile road walk to Hallstatt. I found that a bit difficult as bits of grit kept getting into the top of my boots. When we reached Hallstatt we started climbing up and up and up. At about 7000 ft there was a mountain hut called Simony Hutte where we were given dinner. We were free then to look around and I sat in a little hollow in the limestone about 1000 ft above the Dachstein glacier. There was a fairly dense cloud so I couldn't see the glacier then but I wrote of the wonderful beauty of the dawn light as we started our climb that morning. The Simony Hutte had a sort of loft with straw mattresses where we spent the night. We were supposed to get up at 4 am but the clouds were too thick for climbing so we were allowed to go to sleep again till 5:30. We had breakfast. I began to think I would never be able to get my feet into the boots but at last I managed it. We set off at about 6:15am and were soon on the glacier where we were roped together in fours. We were in clear sunshine looking down on thick banks of pink clouds. As I climbed up the glacier behind my leader I suddenly remembered that it was Saturday August 24th, 1930 and that I Muriel Irene Roper was a grown-up woman. Somehow it made me feel sad and old but I could laugh at the fact that I have forgotten my own birthday and didn't think anyone there knew that I was now 21. About the same time I felt a stab of pain in one of my teeth and thought that was another part of growing old. I had never been to a dentist in my life. When we reach the top of the glacier there was fresh snow in which we played for a time and were given a lots of cream to rub on to stop us getting sunburn. Then we were roped again and started rock-climbing to the summit. That was even more exciting than the glacier and I wished it had been a longer climb.

From the summit there was sadly no view because of cloud but we took sardines, bread, cheese, cucumber and chocolate from our rucksacks and had a lovely meal. Then we climbed down from rock again and had fun in the snow and had to be roped again because of the many crevasses down the glacier.

We had a lovely meal again at the Simony Hutte, soup, sausages and peas, bread and jam and then Bruno, one of our lovely Austrian guides, presented me with a beautiful iced chocolate sponge cake decorated with 21 bright blue harebells which had just been picked.

After lunch we set off on the return walk to Obertaun, down, down, down for 6000 ft with our feet pressing into our hard boots. Then again the four long miles along the lake road. When at last we were back in our dormitory the others were in bed. Margaret gave me some fruit she had brought for me and I just fell into bed and slept.

We had other wonderful walks during the next four days and then the journey back to Salzburg and sadly having to say goodbye to our lovely Austrian friends. On and the return journey in the train I was so tired that I climbed on to the luggage rack and slept. During the night someone got in to the carriage and tried to put their case on top of me. We crossed again from Ostend to Dover and Margaret and I went home to Derby after a very very wonderful holiday.
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Courtship, my call to the mission field

When I returned to Reading in October I was delighted to have a study bedroom on the top floor of the main hall overlooking the gardens (the very same room and I think the same furniture that Helen had 40 years later). By this time I had lots of friends and was very involved with sculling and SCM. I found work very interesting too. In the summer term I had been elected as woman's president of SCM and Cyril Tunley of St. Patrick's Hall had been elected men's President. There was a tiny chapel on Redlands Road where we sometimes met for prayer meetings. Nancy and I found it helpful to meet together so we met regularly in our rooms for a quiet time before breakfast. As there was so little spare time during term, the S C M committee arranged a pre-term conference so that we could spend two days together planning visits and meetings.

During the Easter vac in Derby a minister from Ceylon preached in our church. He told us that he had become a Christian when he was a soldier in the British Army in World War One. When he saw the suffering of all people in the East End of London he felt called by God to serve the people there. I felt challenged that a man from Ceylon could give up the needs of his own people to help people in this country. I felt sure that God wanted me to serve him overseas so I wrote to the mission house and became a student volunteer. When I returned to Reading for the pre-terminal conferences I share this decision and Jimmy Sankey and Dora Hopkins also became student volunteers at that time. We were told to work hard, get our qualifications, and two years teaching experience and then to apply again. S C M had a room in the old part of the University which was called the older red building. There was also a letter rack there where students or staff could put letters or messages from others. The day after our pre-term conference I found a letter addressed to Miss Roper. It was a formal note from the other S C M President suggesting meeting on the Saturday. I had already made plans to go out with my other friends, ‘The Family’, so I went across the road to call box and rang up some St. Pat’s. to leave a message that I couldn't go. As I walk back to my room and sat down at my desk to study I felt desperately sad. I wondered why and suddenly realise that I must have fallen in love. Although it was finals term for both of us and we had so many commitments that we saw very little of each other we were full of joy and peace and planned to spend time together once exams were over. Cyril was keen on tennis and somehow I found time and money to buy some white silk and make myself a white tennis dress. I had to make it very short as money was so scarce. We met in the cloisters on my way to the Great Hall for our first exam and Cyril gave me a scrap of paper on which he had written, ‘I can to all things through Christ who strengthens me’. Philippians 4 verse 13. After exams we all stayed up waiting for the results so we played tennis and went for walks. Alas he hadn’t passed his degree so he had to go home before degree day.

That summer a crowd of us from Reading S C M went to the Swanwick Conference. As Derby isn't far from Swanwick I was able to take Cyril home and introduce him to mother and Vi. Cyril was a member of the Congregational Church and felt he was called to the Ministry but didn't feel called to work overseas. I thought perhaps I could have a short time overseas while he was training for the Ministry.

That summer of 1931 Rose was home on furlough so we four sisters planned to have a holiday together in North Wales. Mother said she would go by train and visit her sister Rose in Hove. We packed everything for our holiday ready to leave in Margaret’s car but there was heavy rain and serious flooding so we had to delay for a day. Margaret decided to make a will and somehow we had a hilarious time. On the journey we visited Nantwich and Chester and had a picnic on Alderney Edge. We had rooms at Llanfair and hand lovely walks and swimming. For my sake they planned a charabanc trip to climb Snowdon on my birthday but when we got there we found there was only time to go up in the train. Because they didn't want to disappoint me we all walked up clambered down a steep rocky path to Beddgelect and by a miracle were picked up by another charabanc and just caught the last train from Portmadoc. I still have the diary of that holiday and a few holiday snaps.

During the vacation we had been planning another pre-term conference for September 30th. I still have all the notes on that to. It was a very good beginning to our last year in Reading. We were both on diploma of education (Dip Ed) courses and everything was new and interesting. There was a little mission chapel without a minister and we were asked to conduct services on Sunday evenings. We could choose out of a variety of subjects. Cyril was musical and wanted me to choose music too as there were few subjects we could both do. Some Sundays I went to the Congregational church with him. One Sunday I was out for the day with my other friends and in the evening I cycled up to meet him at the little mission chapel where he had been taking the evening service. He obviously was very unwell or and the next day I heard that he had been admitted to the university sanatorium. I visited him there whenever I could - standing outside and talking to him through the window. Of course I have to go on with all my work and S C M and sculling races and training so we didn't have much time. During Rag Week I was involved with a float with the caption Lady Muck goes camping. Nancy was the lady and I was the maid. One Saturday after a race I went to the sanatorium and Cyril's mum and dad were there. Towards the end of term I was told that he was to be taken to the Royal Berks hospital for tests. I cycled up and asked to be told the results but was told that they were not known. The next day one of my friends came to my room to tell me that he was dying of galloping tuberculosis and was to be taken home by ambulance the next they. That was 59 years ago. As I write I can still feel the agony of those days when all my dreams of our future life, our future family, were shattered. The next day his parents came to take him home and begged me to go and stay with them at the end of term. It was only a few days but he had sunk so rapidly that he didn't know me. I stayed on for the funeral and then went home to Derby. All those six months we have been so happy together. I was puzzled by the fact that God had called me to work overseas but not Cyril. When he died God's call to work overseas was the one thing that helped me. pback to index

Training to be a teacher

So in January 1932 I returned to Reading and S C M and Diploma of Education Studies. The committee felt it would be very hard for me to work with another President so I was encouraged to carry on my own. Jimmy Sankey was on that committee and helped me very unobtrusively in any way he could. Everyone was helpful. I went to the music department and said I didn't want to continue they were shocked, so I showed them the cutting from the newspaper about Cyril’s funeral where I was mentioned as his fiancée although we went officially engaged. They understood so I was allowed to give up music. I continued to sing in the choral society. We were learning Bach’s B Minor Massellis in Latin and it meant nothing to me in the practices but in the performance in Reading Town Hall I suddenly understood the Latin and it was alive with a wonderful sense of worship.

I had a long school practice in a grammar-school at Basingstoke. We had to walk to Reading station every morning and get a train to Basingstoke. As we couldn't eat lunch in Hall we were allowed 7½p (one and sixpence) to buy some lunch in a cafe. We generally had beans on toast. They were long tiring but interesting days.

During my diploma of education year I was a member of St Andrew's Hall Committee and heard of a student house on Redlands Road called Lydford. I had the ground floor front room as my study bedroom and looked after about 14 students. In the summer term we were all applying for jobs but there was a surplus of teachers, The only interview I had was at New Mills in Derbyshire. This was very fortunate for me as it was in June, the weekend of my brother Arthur's wedding in Derby. He was then teaching at Tiptree in Essex where the school half-term holiday had to coincide with strawberry picking and varied year to year. There is a big jam factory there and the children and their parents helped to pick the strawberries. Arthur and Marjorie kept their wedding very secret and were married in a little Anglican church which none of us had seen before. I found the interview a nightmare and of course someone with experience got the job.

Ted and Ella had their first baby, John, in December 1930 and their second baby was due in July. Mother and I wanted to look after little John and also have a seaside holiday so we booked rooms at Frinton and had a very happy time with him. Margaret was still living with Ted and Ella in Colchester so when Gwyneth was a few days old she fetched us all by car to see the new baby. John's legs were bent so I had to bandage them with splints every day. He was so excited to see his mother and baby sister. He sat on the bed between them banging his little splinted legs up and down and shouting happily, there’s Mama, there's Baba. He was so happy and good and made no fuss when the visit was over and be returned to Frinton for another week. Back in Derby they didn't seem to be much if anything to do in Rose Hill - the big Methodist Church that we attended. I went to a newly opened Congregational church near where we lived. There I found they wanted to start Guides and Scouts but were very short of leaders. I started training straightaway and started a Cub pack and Vi started Guides. I continued to apply for jobs and had my second interview at Ashford High School in Kent. Margaret had very kindly brought me a smart grey costume with matching accessories for my interview and without these I am sure I wouldn't have landed the job. Having gone south for the interview it was a good opportunity for a quick visit to Reading. Our geology professor had realised that not having started a job yet I wouldn't be able to afford to go to the quadrennial S C M conference in Edinburgh in January 1933. He gave me the cost of the conference. Nancy Scates who was in her diploma of education year was also going. So 1933 started for us both with the wonderful experience of a very big international conference. All the students were entertained in Scottish homes and we were very generously treated. Jimmy Sankey was also at the conference and sometimes walked home with us. One day a whole crowd of us climbed Arthur's Seat. On the way up on I was talking about mountain-climbing in Austria. Poor Jimmy had been wandering if he could proposed to me, but when I spoke of a continental holiday he thought I must be too grand. I have no idea he had such thoughts till years afterwards. pback to index

Two years at Ashford high-school

I returned from the inspiration of that SCM Quadrennial to hurried packing and setting out for my first job. I had a small 3^rd floor bedroom in a staff house on East Hill. The main school buildings were just across the road. It was a private boarding school and many of the parents were overseas, I had a small Geography room in the grounds a short distance from the main school. I taught Geography and Botany to all the senior classes and found it quite hard work. We were mainly a young inexperienced staff (probationary teachers were much cheaper in those days) We had lots of boarding school duties – supervising meals, prep, music practices, taking children for walks on Saturdays and Sundays and to church on Sundays. Most of our salaries were deducted for our full-board at the school so we had very little money and scarcely any time to ourselves. I soon got involved in the school Guide Company. I got to know a member of staff who was Captain of a Ranger Company in Ashford. She left for another job and no one could be found to look after the Rangers, so I took that on too. I worked for my warrant but was too young to be received as a Ranger Captain as you had to be over 25. I worked very hard and obtained my campers licence. I didn’t have many Rangers but we had a lot of fun. One of them was blind and she taught me the Braille alphabet and used to write to me in Braille after I left.

As usual my cycle was very useful and I sometimes cycle to Hythe or Folkestone for a bathe. All my life I had longed to ride a horse but never had any money to spare for it. One day I was cycling to Hythe and had an accident just by some riding stables. Someone came out of the stables to help me, but I still had no spare money. In 1934 there was a special Passion play season at Oberammaggau to celebrate the 300^th anniversary of the play. I went with some of my Reading friends and we met up with Heff who was working in Germany. I went straight from Colchester Guide camp at Wrabness where I had been helping Margaret. I had a wasp sting on my ankle and it swelled up so much that I couldn’t walk. I went in a chemist shop in Muinch with my little dictionary and got something to help me. After all the joy of two nights at Oberammaggau we went to Graswang and Liden Hoff and Partenkirchen. It was a wonderful experience. That summer we also had a lovely family holiday at Holyhead.

When I wrote to the mission house as a student I was told to teach for two years and then write again. I finished my two years at Christmas 1934 and started training at Kingsmead College, Selly Oak, Birmingham in January. This was another wonderful time of deep fellowship and friendship. When I arrived someone asked my name, so I said Roper. She laughed and said we use Christian names here. We were a very mixed family – several girls from the continent – especially Switzerland, who were going to Africa as missionaries, missionaries on furlough men and women. It was all very interesting. Kingsmead was a Quaker college and we had silent grace at meals and a wonderful prayer meeting on Tuesday mornings in a lovely upstairs lounge which was always called ‘Heaven’. I found the emphasis on silent prayer very moving and helpful. Every Thursday evening we had a college service and students took it in turns to lead the worship and being criticised by students and staff afterwards. This was an ordeal but good training. As a few missionaries might go to isolated stations with no medical help we went to a very poor part of Birmingham where there was a medical mission. We learned to extract teeth clean up ulcers, etc. etc. This was before the National Health Service and at a time of high unemployment and poverty in big cities.

While at Kingsmead I met again ‘Griff’ one of my Reading friends. I offered her a chocolate and she said ‘no thank you, I never eat sweets in Lent’. I got a shock because I hadn’t even realised it was Lent. When I thought about it I felt it was good to have something to make us remember all that our wonderful Saviour had suffered for us so I have followed Griff’s example ever since. After the Easter holidays I decided to cycle back to Birmingham. We had a wonderful summer term of fun and fellowship. I had been elected as senior student so got to know everyone. I had been expecting I would go to Africa and had learned a lot about Africa, but the Mission House decided I must go to Trichnoploy District in S. India and I expected Rose had something to do with that. All of us who were going to the tropics had to have lots of injections. That summer our King and Queen celebrated their silver jubilee of their reign and of course we joined in the special celebrations.

During the summer holidays I visited Ted and family in Colchester and Percy and family in Northampton. Then Margaret took us in her car to Tynemouth for a holiday visiting the place where I lived until I was 8½ . The church where Arthur and I were baptised was then a cinema and the hill where we had tobogganed and had snow fights had been filled in. On the way home we visited Durham and York. pback to index

Off to India

My passage to India was booked on the S.S. Moldavia sailing on September 7^th 1935. This was earlier than the date fixed for the Valedictory service so a special one was arranged at Deptford Mission in East London. I left Derby and had a few days staying with my friend Nora in Reading. She had married Dr Terence Ingold a Biology lecturer at Reading and they had their first baby, Joan. I also visited Professor Hawkins and his daughter Jean who had married Heff’s brother. They too had their first baby, but poor Jean was quite deaf and couldn’t hear her baby. Then I went to stay with Nancy in South London. We had two lovely days walking on the North Downs and had bed and breakfast in a little village. Nancy and Heff came to Tilbury to see me off and mother and Margaret came from Derby. Poor mother felt it was the last time she would see me as she was 66 and would reach her 3 score years and ten before I was due for my first furlough. Margaret was, as always, very thoughtful and helpful. She thought I would be homesick on the three week voyage so she made up a package of letters and little presents from family and friends so that I would have something to open every day. At the valedictory service I was very surprised that two men from our Reading S.C.M. were in the congregation and spoke to me afterwards. They were both teaching at Windsor – Jimmy Sankey and Maskell Dicken.

At Tilbury Mother and Margaret were able to come on the ship and have tea with me and see my small cabin with three other ladies. After we had said our last good-byes Priscilla Watts came and found me. She was returning to Dharapuram after furlough and had been told to look after me. There was also a senior missionary returning to Bengal, a young lady going out to marry a missionary in Bombay whom she hadn’t seen for four years, a Doctor going to Bengal and a printer going to the Mysore District. We all got to know each other and had lots of fun on board and at the ports of call – Marseilles, Port Said, Port Sudan and Bombay. At Marseilles Reg Matthew (the printer going to Mysore) and I walked so far that we almost missed getting back at the hour the boat was to sail. The next day Priscilla and I were on deck at 4am passing Stromboli and after visiting Port Said we stayed on deck all night watching the banks of the Suez Canal by moonlight. At Port Sudan we went in small boats to look through glass at the wonderful coral gardens and multi-coloured fish. We enjoyed every minute even in a temperature of 114 degrees. In Bombay we went to the wedding of one of our friends and said good-bye to the others. Reg Matthews and I kept up a correspondence over the next two years and managed a few brief meetings. He wanted us to get married but I knew I had to continue with my job at least until my furlough was due. Eventually we broke it off. Priscilla and I had three more days on the ship and arrived in Colombo on a Sunday morning. We were warmly welcomed at the W.W. bungalow and given a room in which to rest. But like in the song about ‘mad dogs and Englishmen’ we went out in the midday sun and found our way to the zoo. In the evening we went to an English service with a lot of boarding school girls and then caught the night train to the ferry crossing place in the North of Ceylon. We arrived at dawn and we and all our heavy luggage were put on the ferry. The Customs Officials looked at my well screwed up boxes and took my word for the contents. They charged duty on some cotton material. pback to index

India at last

It was wonderful to be in India at last. On the ship Priscilla had taught me the 256 letters of the Tamil alphabet so I kept myself busy trying to sound the names of the many small stations where we stopped. We were very hot and weary that evening when suddenly Priscilla saw an arc of lights in the sky which she recognised as the lights to Palni Station. A few minutes later the train stopped and we were soon on Palni Station being welcomed by Rev and Mrs J J Ellis and Rev and Mrs Paul Rangaramanujam. Twenty miles by car brought us to more welcomes in Dharapuram. It was all very strange to me but home to Priscilla. There were very strange noises which I was told were many frogs rejoicing in the first rain for 10 months. Everyone was rejoicing about the rain and thanking us for bringing it. We were soon in bed under mosquito nets in our new home.

When I awoke at dawn I saw our beautiful grey stone Church with its low dome and open tower set in a flat plain with scattered thorn trees and scrub. Away to the right of our ‘bungalow’ (it was always called a bungalow but was a very solidly built two storey house with open verandas and a flat roof reached by a solid ladder) I could see the hospital and girls’ school buildings. First I went to the church to pray and to give thanks to God who had called me and brought me here. I asked for His guidance for the days to come. The other missionaries sharing the bungalow were Dorothy Renshaw in charge of the Girls’ school who would be going on furlough the next year; Dr Edith Little in charge of the hospital and Mary Barlow in charge of the girls’ industrial school and a newly started Bible training school. Just a few days after I arrived we had all the excitement of the wedding of Mary Barlow and Rev Russell Spear. They had both been working in Dharapuram for several years. When they fell in love they knew that one or other of them would be moved since Indian people have arranged marriages and don’t have courtship before marriage. They managed to keep their plans secret. The only way they could meet together was for Mary to climb into the boot of Russell’s car in the garage and for him to drive it to a secluded place in the country. Eventually they got engaged and made it known and Russell was moved to the next mission station only about twenty miles away so Mary was able to continue to help with the work in Dharapuram after their wedding. pback to index

Rev. J.J. Ellis (JJE)

The Rev Ellis whom we always called J.J.E. decided that the best thing for me would be to learn Tamil in Dharapuram and whenever possible to go out to the villages with him to get to know the background and village life of the children in the boarding school. This was a wonderful opportunity for me and a great stimulus for language study as of course the children and the village people didn’t know any English at all. When J.J.E. left for village visits, generally round about 2pm, I had to be ready with tea and supper picnics and we often weren’t home until 2am. He was always up again by 5am for his essential quiet-time.

On my very first visit to the villages, Jane and Priscilla and the Rev GS Williams also came along. We hadn’t gone far on the rough roads when we had a puncture and sat by the roadside while J.J.E. changed the wheel. We arrived at a small village called Meenachivalasu where men, women and children were waiting for a service. We all crowded into their tiny mud and thatch prayer house. These were newly baptised Christians and no one could read so J.J.E. sang or read a line at a time and asked them to repeat. One little girl looked at me all the time – she probably hadn’t seen a white woman before. How I longed to talk to her and how eagerly I got down to studying Tamil after that. After the service the men crowded round J.J.E. talking loudly and shaking their fists and I felt alarmed. Then he said something and they were all smiles – putting their hands together with the Christian greeting ‘stothiram’ – Praise the Lord. Back in the car I asked whatever all the angry shouting was about. I was told that the men were asking if their village could have a teacher to teach them more about Jesus. They weren’t angry just very enthusiastic. As we drove along we passed many huts with burned roofs and I was told that the angry Hindu landowners had set fire to the houses of Christians and sent them away.

We drove on and as it grew dark we were driving through an area of palm trees until we reached a village called Palauya Kotta. We were met by the village teacher and boys who escorted us round the village. At each house the Mother and girls came out carrying trays of raw rice with tiny mud lamps to light the way to the Church. This Church, which was also a day school, was a much better building. The men and boys packed the front half and women and girls sat at the back. We sat facing them all sitting on a low stone wall. This was a special service – the reception of full members followed by communion. I felt sad that no women or girls were received but was told that as the teacher was unmarried he wasn’t able to train the women. He was soon to be married and his wife would train them. I was also told that the wall we sat on was part of a Hindu temple – a place of fear and that they had also used the legs of the plaster horses that guard the temple as plant pots to beautify the Church.,

After a happy time of fellowship at Palauya Kotta, we were on our way again and after many very bumpy miles we reached Perurikarunaipalayam at 10pm. Again a few were waiting to escort us round the village where everyone else had gone to bed as they had been working in the fields from 6am. There was a length of metal hanging from the Church and when this was struck as a Church bell everyone got up and came to worship. This was a much bigger Church and was the village where the first Christians in the area had been baptised about twenty years before. Persecution had driven the people from their villages and so the good news of the gospel had spread throughout the area and thousands were being baptised every year. They had had schools in these villages and people came to the service carrying their own precious Bibles and hymn books. Two of our most outstanding Ministers in our own district had been illiterate goat boys in that village when the ‘Good News’ was first preached there. One of them – Rev C.J. Nallamwithe many years later preached in our Church at Tenterden.

So on the night of my first visit to the village of great grace –(which is the translation of the Tamil name Perunkaranai palayam) we drove back to Dharapuram singing hymns all the way to keep the poor tired driver awake. I expect it was about 2am when we got into our beds. I had many such visits to the hundreds of small Christian villages in that area. Jane Moses had been given the task of teaching me Tamil and proved a very good teacher. It was hard to sit and study after about 6pm as we only had hurricane lanterns – which were very hot and attracted hundreds of mosquitoes, beetles etc. Often we climbed the ladder to the Church or bungalow roof to talk Tamil in the dark.

The weeks sped by, Rose was very busy with her Indian family in Bangalore and asked me to join them for Christmas. I caught a bus for a four hour very bumpy ride to Etode. This was outside our Methodist area and there were L.M.S (Congregational) missionaries there. They invited me to rest at their bungalow until the time for the night train. There was a bathroom but I couldn’t find any water. None of us had taps and I found later that their water was kept warm in a padded basket. After about ten hours in the train I arrived at Bangalore at 6am and found it much cooler – a lovely climate, all mod cons, good roads, shops etc. The orphan children and teachers who were there for Christmas all spoke good English so it was easy to get to know them and they too helped me with my Tamil. Rose took me to stay with another missionary in the small town of Hassan and there too there was a lovely happy group of orphan children.

After Christmas, back in Dharapuram, the heat got worse and worse. Jane often took me out in the villages with the girls she was training in the Bible school. We took a magic lantern and slides of the life of Jesus and the driver would set it up using the white washed wall of a house as the screen. The people would sit facing the wall and the girls would describe the pictures and tell the stories. These were mainly handicapped girls who in Hindu society would have been despised beggars. I vividly remember K. Pakkiam whose name means ‘Blessing’. She had never stood or walked except on her hands but she was a radiant Christian. These village services went on until Easter. The most wonderful Easter I had known with everything around me reminding me of Bible lands.

Soon after Easter it was time for a break from the heat and J.J.E. drove us up to his holiday bungalow on the Nilgiri Hills at Kotagiri. As the laden car chugged up the many hairpin bends of the Ghat road he stopped for a breather or to cool the engine. In my excitement at the beauty and the cooler air I jumped off a rock at the side of the road and broke my ankle. What a way to start a holiday. I didn’t have an X-ray and only discovered it had been a fracture weeks later when the swelling went down and I could feel it. After a few days with Priscilla in Kotagiri I joined Rose and others of her district at Mysore cottage in Gotorcamund. There were also married missionaries there with little children who called me the Auntie with the poorly foot. One family took me out for a few days at a forest bungalow amongst the hills.

Back in Dharapuram in the heat and the strong West wind which funnelled through a gap in the Western Ghat – the hills we could see from Dharapuram - we had occasional picnics and moonlight swimming. I expect these led to my getting dysentery. Dr Edith Little’s treatment didn’t clear it up so in August she sent me to the American Mission Hospital in Madurai for tests. I was there a long time but was no better. The school children made beautiful birthday cards for me using Tamil characters for their designs. I was no better so was sent to Goty again where I soon recovered in the cooler air. In October there was a school holiday and again I went to Bangalore and Rose took me to stay with her friends at the Mission hospital in Mysore. We attended the famous Durbah in the Palace of the Maharajah of Mysore. As we were being presented to His Royal Highness we had to wear formal evening dress which included white gloves up to our elbows. It was all very grand but also very interesting with the processions of elephants and all sorts of displays.

After returning to Dharapuram I had another long journey to Madras for my oral Tamil exam. My quiet time notebook for that day gives thanks to God for the beauty of the journey and for His presence with me, for the storm and the glory of the sunset and the rainbows and on the following morning for the dawn and the reflection of the clear calm sky in the calm water of newly flooded rice fields. I managed to pass both my oral and written Tamil exams.

About this time some of the teachers started coming with me to visit the Sweeper Street. This was a group of huts on one side of the town which were homes for the people of the sweeper caste – that is the people who spent their working life dealing with sewage. The woman who came twice a day to empty our commodes from our bathrooms by special outside steps was always pleasant, willing and conscientious. Even when she gave birth to a baby she was back on the job the next day. None of the children from the Sweeper Street went to school so we used to gather them together and try to teach them. My first Christmas in Dharapuram I had such a happy time with the orphan children who were in school over the Christmas holidays that I wanted to share some of the Christmas joy with the sweeper children. I wrapped little bags of sweets and went on my own on Christmas day. They had never had anything like that before and it was sad to see them fighting each other to get what they could.

In the Christian villages everyone wanted a special Christmas service. As there was only one minister for 60 or 70 villages they arranged to gather in groups for a Christmas Festival about two weeks before and after Christmas. Before the boarding school children went home at the end of term they would come and ask me to join in their Christmas. Night after night we celebrated in different villages and arrived home in the early hours of the mornings. In many of the villages there were schools and the local school children dressed up and acted the Christmas story. Many of the illiterate parents learned verses of the Bible by heart and as many as possible took part.

After Christmas all the missionaries and the Indian ministers and other workers went to Mannaugudi for Synod. This was a beautiful town with many lakes and was the childhood home of Rev Paul Rangaromaryam whose conversion when a schoolboy at Findlay High School caused so much anger in the town and the burning down of the Church. At Synod I was appointed to take over the girls’ school when Dorothy Renshaw went on furlough. Rose too was going on furlough in April 1937. pback to index

A break from the heat

In April Priscilla and I went by bus and train to an American boarding school in Kodai Kanal, for our hot weather holiday. We were 7,000 feet up on glorious hills with a beautiful lake. We joined the boat club and could take a rowing boat or punt anywhere at any time. We could punt to a quiet shady spot and settle down to language study or Bible study. If we wanted exercise we could leave the boat there and walk back round the lake. There were many missionaries of all denominations from all parts of India and Ceylon so there were excellent opportunities for seminars and house groups and wonderful united services. Every year a group of missionaries would put on a Gilbert and Sullivan opera and other concerts. One night a large group of us set out at about 1am on a bright moonlight night. We walked several miles down the ghat road and then climbed a high, isolated conical mountain called ‘Perumal’. We reached the summit just before 6am and saw a most spectacular sunrise. The sun appeared to come up in a sequence of regular shapes and we shouted ‘Chinese lantern, farmhouse loaf’ etc. As the golden ball appeared we sang hymns and worshipped God in all this beauty. It was a long way home in the heat of the day, but well worth it.

We were all having a wonderful holiday but the younger ones of us were very busy preparing for oral and written Tamil exams which were held towards the end of May. When these were over we really felt free and eight of us planned a five day hike. We arranged for coolies to carry our food and bedding and booked accommodation in forestry bungalows. Three of us were from the Tuchi District and our chairman had arranged a district meeting on the day we had planned to start the hike. The meeting was to sort out problems that had arisen in the District due to some finding Oxford group methods very helpful and others finding the opposite. When at last it was over J.J.E. kindly took the three of us in his car as far as he could. By the time we reached the track it was quite dark. A coolie had waited to show us the way through a tiger wood. We sang ‘Soldiers of Christ arise’ at the top of our voices and scared the tigers off. When we were through the wood we had lovely bright moonlight to take us to the forest bungalow where the rest of the party were waiting for us. What fun we had. The walks and views each day were wonderful. We aimed at reaching our destination early in the afternoon so that we could gather fresh dry bracken for our beds before the monsoon downpour began. On the Sunday we didn’t move on but had two nights in the same bungalow and a wonderful service in the pine woods. In spite of a sprained ankle two of us went exploring and got lost in the dark in a wood full of leeches.

Kay Freeman was also on holiday in Kodai and we had planned to walk down the Ghat together. Something prevented Kay so I set off alone at 4am. I had been told of this path from older missionaries who had used it in the days before there were buses. I had no map and there were no signposts or directions. I went through a village at about 6am and when I asked about a path to the plains they said it was impossible – but I went on. After a time I was surrounded by elephant grass higher than me and no sign of a path. I shut my eyes and prayed, opened them and saw a path and went on and was certain I was not on my own. I saw a river in the distance and thought that if I followed that I would get to the plains. Then I saw and followed another path and caught a glimpse of the river which was going over a waterfall so I was glad I hadn’t followed that. The birds and butterflies and flowers and trees were wonderful. By midday I was down on the plains and had about a six mile walk in terrible heat to Palni. I met some men who asked where I had come from and if I was alone and I felt ashamed afterwards that I hadn’t told them that I was not alone – the Lord was with me. pback to index

Running the Boarding school

I arrived back well and happy for an Oxford group house party and all the work of running a boarding and training school. I had to produce applications in triplicate for a government grant in support of all these destitute outcast children. I had to deal with applications for admission, teachers’ meetings, big sisters’ meetings, etc. Instead of the coolness and rain of the hills we had a strong hot wind which blew sand into everything – but life was very good. I managed to find time to go to an Oxford group house party in Karur at the beginning of the September holidays. There was much thought and prayer, heart searching and sharing on the four absolutes – love, honesty, unselfishness and purity. It was all in Tamil which was of course good for me. My dysentery flared up again and I had to be left in bed when everyone else went to two missionary weddings at the other end of the district. I had a week in Bangalore and then plunged into the Christmas term with emphasis on giving ourselves to God, giving our time to His service, giving our money to bring joy to others. That term we discovered that one of our girls had leprosy and had to spend a year in a leprosy hospital a long way from us. The other girls felt so sorry for all the children in the hospital that of their own accord they decided to give up their one meat meal a week and send the money saved to the leprosy hospital.

A new missionary arrived in Dharapuram. Minnie Jennings had worked in a bank until retirement age and they offered her service to the Missionary Society to go anywhere that her qualifications could be used, at her own expense. Before leaving home people in her Church gave dolls and lots of presents for our orphan children. We had a wonderful Christmas, I went shopping in Dharapuram and bought yards and yards of cotton sari material and material for blouses and skirts for the younger ones. The older girls made them up and they were put away carefully for Christmas day.

I remember the Christmas festival at Perunkarunaipalayam just before Christmas. An eight year old girl called Dhamayanthi took my hand and took me round the village to admire the decorative patterns outside each little house. Then we went to a central open space where the festival would be held. Looking in all directions we could see bobbing lights as Christians from many villages approached the central village. When five or six hundred had arrived and we were ready to begin, the Indian minister in charge asked me to open the service. I wondered how it was possible with all the noise of people greeting each other but Rev G.S. Williams raised one arm and in a loud voice said ‘Let us pray’, immediately all were on their knees on the ground in complete silence. The service was mainly the recitation of Bible verses learned by heart and the acting of the Christmas story by groups of children from the small village schools. This went on and on and many children fell asleep after they had done their part. It must have been about 10pm when the service finished. It was followed by a full Indian Christmas drama put on by the teachers of that area until midnight. As we had a thirty mile journey home on very rough roads, and another festival the next night, we didn’t stay till the end but sang our English carols all the way home.

On Christmas morning the children came at 6am to collect their new clothes. They had been very busy cleaning everywhere in school and cooking a Christmas feast. They were so happy coming to the service with their new clothes and flowers in their hair. After the service they were very happy welcoming their guests in the school hall for our Christmas dinner. We all sat round the hall, cross legged behind a large piece of banana leaf. The girls came round putting rice on each leaf and then curry and other dishes. When we had eaten all this with our right hands they brought a sweet, milky pudding which they poured on the same leaf and which was difficult to eat with our hands. When we had finished we went outside and children poured cold water on our sticky right hands. By this time we were very very hot and we were glad to go home and stretch on our beds and read letters which had just arrived from England.

Some of us had made a traditional Christmas pudding but everyone was either too ill or too busy to come and eat it. A few days later we all went to Synod and when we came back a new busy term had started. pback to index

Anbu – love

At midday on February 18^th 1938 I was asleep on my bed when I became conscious of Jane standing by me holding a tiny, naked baby. As I sat up she put her in my arms and said ‘Do you want her?’ Jane knew that I had longed for a baby almost all my life. When Rose went to India when I was ten she sent Mother a book of Indian babies called ‘Lotus buds’ and I wanted Mother to adopt one. One of the poems I had learned at school started

‘If no one every marries me,
And I don’t know why they should
For nurse says I’m not pretty,
And I’m seldom very good
And ended
And when I’m getting really old,
Say twenty eight or nine
I’ll adopt a little orphan girl
And bring her up as mine’

Yes – I wanted with all my heart to adopt this unwanted baby and I hurried with her in my arms to ask J.J.E. for his advice. He pointed out all the difficulties of bringing up a baby in a school. Priscilla had adopted a baby, everyone had spoiled her and Priscilla was desperately sad when she died. He said all the teachers would spoil her if I brought her up in school and I already had a more than full time job so couldn’t look after her myself. I hurried straight to school and called the teachers together. We talked if over and they all promised to do whatever I asked if I adopted the baby. I went to the hospital and saw the baby’s mother. She put her thumb print to a document which made me the guardian of her child. Jane promised to share the responsibility with me and we chose a young childless widow working in the industrial school to be an ayah for our baby. There was no difficulty over clean milk as our minister’s wife Kuppai Rangeramaniyam kept cows. Unfortunately cow’s milk didn’t agree with our baby but we eventually got her settled on Nestlé’s condensed milk. We arranged her baptism and made the promises together. From the beginning I was Mummy and Jane was Auntie. I chose the name Anbu – the Tamil for love and Jane chose Irene which means peace. She was a great joy to us all.

Priscilla had had a lot of health problems and her parents needed her help in England so I travelled with her to Cochin to see her off on a ship. We spent a few hours resting in a hotel and saw Gideon Bibles for the first time. We met up with Rev Marcus Ward and family, also returning to England.

I returned to Dharapuram for all the joy of receiving new members on Palm Sunday – of all the Holy Week and Easter Services. It was time to go to the hills and I had to leave my tiny baby with her ayah and our dear old school matron Mrs Hezekiah.

For the 1938 hill holiday I was staying in a rented house with Anglican, Congregational and Methodist missionaries. We had very happy fellowship together. That year was the bi-centenary of Wesley day. We sang lots of Charles Wesley’s hymns and prepared for a big united service in the American Church. That certainly was a heart warming occasion. The Rev David Francis preached on ‘By grace you are saved by faith.’

A group of us did a long hike sleeping in forestry bungalows. A German Jewess called Hilde joined with us. She had come to India after escaping from Nazi Germany. We took turns in leading family prayers. When it was Hilde’s turn she asked me if I had a Bible. I had only taken my New Testament so she borrowed that and read the part where Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment. He quoted from the Old Testament which was of course the Jewish Bible.

In Kodai the house where we were staying was near the lake and I often stood on the shore at dawn and talked to my Lord. I had many worries about school and found help as I prayed and prepared notes for our staff Bible study group. We also had a house party in Kodai that year. I was glad when I could at last return to Dharapuram. I found our dear old matron was ill and the orphan children and baby Anbu were all suffering. The staff came back before the beginning of term and we went into the country for a retreat which helped us to get to know each other better.

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My struggle with dysentery

As soon as I was back in the heat my dysentery began to trouble me again and Rose was getting anxious about me so I promised to visit her in the September holidays. We had notice of an Oxford Group House party in Vellore in that holiday so I planned to go to that and then on to Bangalore. Dr Edith Little was very angry with me as she thought I needed to have all the time in Bangalore. However Jane and I both went to Vellore. The first few days we were a small group receiving training in leadership. We had Indian food and hot crowded accommodation and I got worse and was no help at all. On Monday September 26^th the main house party began. A big hall was packed with people all sitting on the floor listening to many wonderful talks. The one that helped me was by an Australian lady doctor on Absolute Love. As she talked I knew that I must speak to her so I kept watching her. After a time she got up quietly and slipped out of the door. I knew I must speak to her but it took ages to find a way through the people sitting on the floor. Fortunately some one else had stopped her so I caught up with her just as she was reaching her car to return to hospital. When I told her of my condition she just took my hand and said ‘You are coming with me to hospital – don’t worry about your luggage we can supply all you need.’ In a very short time we were in Vellore hospital and all I had was my small New Testament and a note book. An Indian nurse settled me for the night in a private ward.

The next morning Dr Innes came to talk to me. She told me that the Lord had given her a cure for this sort of dysentery and that He was sending her patients from all over India so she was not surprised at my arrival. She explained the treatment but told me that the most important thing was to seek to know God’s will for me. She suggested that I should read John’s first epistle and listen to what the Lord was saying to me. She kept me in hospital for about ten days and then sent me back to Dharapuram on a very strict diet and said I must see her again in the Christmas holidays. Poor Rose, I had to cancel my visit to Bangalore. She was so worried about her little sister that she travelled all the way to Dharapuram to see me and insisted I must go to Bangalore for Christmas and that I could take Anbu. Just before she came we had had the Jewish girl visiting us and she had supplied me with some rouge as I was so pale. We laughingly called it ‘Dharapuram roses’.

That was a difficult term. I kept strictly to the diet and got steadily thinner and weaker. I got so weak that I had to take staff meetings and fellowships lying on my bed with the staff on the floor. I did my third Tamil exam again mostly on my bed. I had to travel to Madras for my oral and Jane’s sister Esther looked after me there. At the end of term Anbu and I travelled to Vellore on our way to Bangalore. She was eleven months old and adorable but I just seemed to be getting worse. Dr Innes seemed to think everything was working out alright so we went on to Bangalore. Rose took me to one party with her friends in the city but it was too much for me and I spent most of my time in bed with Anbu playing in a cot beside me. I wrote in despair to Dr Innes and said I couldn’t even pray. She replied by return – Don’t worry – let go and let God. In early January each District had its own Synod. Ours that year was in Dharapuram but as I wasn’t fit I was told to stay in Bangalore. Mysore District Synod was in Bangalore so Rose had other missionaries staying with her and I must have made things very difficult for her. Anbu was just beginning to walk and talk and it was lovely for me to have time with her. Eventually I travelled back to Dharapuram for the new term and discovered that in my absence the Synod had decided that I must be sent home to England.

In Dharapuram we each had our own early morning prayer time and breakfast on our own. In the evenings any of us who were free had a short prayer time together before the evening meal. One evening in February I returned from school late and crept silently (I always went barefoot in the house as it was cooler) on to the veranda where the others were praying. They were praying for me by name and suddenly I knew that their prayer was answered. I was filled with joy and faith - I was healed, I wouldn’t be invalided home I would continue with the work I had been called to do. That experience was over fifty years ago and I have never had any recurrence of dysentery from that day to this. So my school and village work continued with joy.

That summer 1939, a number of friends, some from Rose’s district and some from mine had rented a Swedish Bishop’s house in Kodai. When it was time to go on holiday. Anbu wasn’t well and I couldn’t bear to leave her so I took her and her ayah and a young schoolgirl as a chaperone for the ayah. It all worked out well and all the missionaries enjoyed having a baby in the bungalow. I didn’t have a pram so she went everywhere in my rucksack and people I passed on the road must have thought I was mad, talking and laughing by myself, as they couldn’t see the little dark head behind mine.

At the beginning of June we returned to Dharapuram for my last year before furlough. I had started a Guide Company for my teacher training student and this was going very well. There was another failure of the rains and terrible water shortage in the area so most of the village people had no work and so no food and thousands left home to seek for work. In some places the Government set up road building camps and supplied a little food to those who came to work on the roads. These destitute newly baptised Christians used these camps as an opportunity to tell others of the Lord Jesus. When at last rain came again and they returned to their own villages they asked their minister to arrange a thanksgiving festival and out of their poverty they brought them gifts.

In Dharapuram too we were very short of water and our deep well was almost dry. I had to employ a man with a bullock to bring barrel loads of water from the river. The girls too when they walked to the river – a good mile away – to bathe and wash their clothes would carry back a heavy pot of water on their heads. In this way we were managing but some girls became ill and before it was diagnosed as typhoid one girl had died. I shall never forget that funeral as I stood with the girl’s mother and we sang a Tamil lyric ‘When my Lord is risen from the dead what can I lack’. Several other girls were desperately ill in hospital and the faith and prayer of these illiterate village parents was wonderful. I discovered that the man who had been bringing our water had been filling the barrel in the canal instead of going to the river. I knew I must do something about a water supply for the school. A water diviner came and I walked with him backwards and forwards across the open space between our little boarding houses. Suddenly his twig moved and he said if we bored there we would find water. We had a bore hole made and when water was found we installed a small hand pump and the children could bring their pots and fill them with pure water – it really was a miracle.

In Dharapuram we had no radio and newspapers only reached us by post so were one day late. As all the problems in Europe were leading up to war, we felt very anxious about our loved one at home and about the future of our work in Dharapuram. Someone in the town sent us the news of the declaration of war which he had heard on his radio. That evening we were all together in our bungalow talking things over and when it was time for the Ellis’s to go back to their bungalow I gave J.J.E. my little new testament and asked him to lead us in prayer. He at once turned to Philippians chapter four and read.

Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again ‘rejoice’. Let your forbearance be known to everyone, the Lord is at hand. Never be anxious but always make your requests known to God in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. So shall God’s peace, that surpasses all our dreams, keep guard over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

That was a wonderful help. Rajammal one of the big sisters in the school had become a Christian when ill in an American Mission hospital and had been turned out by her family and eventually came to our school. She was a high caste girl from a rich family but was living with all our outcast girls. When Rajammal heard the news of the evacuation of school children because of the war in England she called the other big sisters together to pray for the English children.

At our next Synod it was decided that I should go on furlough in April and Marian should take over from me. I was of course longing to see my Mother and all the family but it was hard to face leaving my Indian family and Anbu. I knew Mother would love to have her but by then she was looking after three Jewish refugees – two from London and one from Poland – and she said it would be wrong to bring an Indian baby into the terrible situation of bombing in England.

One of my teachers came from the tea estate area of the Anamalai hills and through her family we were able to arrange for all the teachers to have two days of fellowship together on the hills. Marian came to the school to get some idea of the work she would be doing and we had group photographs taken while she was there.

I was, of course, expecting to come back to India. I have forgotten to mention that in 1938 I had a letter from an old Reading friend – Jimmy Sankey. He told me that the Ghana Church wanted him as an ordained minister so that he could look after the Church as well as the schools. He was just going on furlough and he thought it would be wonderful if we could share our lives together. It was a nice letter but I didn’t know how to reply to it. I was completely happy in my work, in fact I said I was ‘married to my work’. I talked of this proposal to J.J.E. and he said if I did marry Jimmy he would ask the Mission House to send him to our District.

That Easter the time for my departure was getting near and I remember spending a lot of time on Good Friday, after the three hour service, in packing my books into boxes to be stored until I would return from furlough. It was very hard saying ‘good-bye’ to everyone, Minnie Jennings was travelling with me. Jane brought Anbu to the station at Etode and when she saw me get in the train she insisted that she must get in and stay with me. Fortunately Jane had lovely parents in Mannargudi and she took Anbu there for the long summer holiday and she had happy times with other children.

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Return to England

In Bangalore I said good-bye to my dear big sister, her colleague –Winifred Rogerson was also going on furlough so Minnie and Winifred and I travelled on by train together to Bombay. It was very hot and dirty. I had hand luggage and a cabin trunk and the desk I now use as a present for Margaret and sewing box for Mother. They had been made at an Industrial school in our district. The trunk was labelled ‘wanted on voyage’ but when I wanted it could never be found which meant I was very short of clothes for the voyage and for arriving in England.

When our ship the P & O S.S. Strathallen was half way up the Red Sea we heard a news item on the ship’s radio which said that Italy had come into the War and that the Mediterranean was closed to all British ships. We watched and waited for our ship to turn round and I wondered how I would manage with so few clothes for a six week voyage round the Cape. I wished with all my heart that I could go back to India. However our ship was given permission to go through the Mediterranean and we travelled on to Suez. We heard that we could leave the ship at Suez and travel by car to Cairo and then by train to Port Said to met the ship again there. None of us had been to Cairo so we decided to do that. We had to fill in a form for the Egyptian authorities which included

Destination - Cairo
Ultimate Destination - England
Via ?

Minnie said she would put ultimate destination Heaven. Someone said via the Methodist Church to which Minnie replied – no that’s a junction you can go either way from there.

We had a most interesting day – a long drive over the desert in comfortable cars. In Cairo we visited museums. We rode on camels to see the Sphinx and Pyramids. We had tea on a boat on the river Nile and caught a train to Port Said where we got on our ship again. We went as fast as possible straight through the Med to Malta where we were not allowed to go ashore. We went on to Marseilles where almost everyone disembarked to avoid the mines in the English channel.

We enjoyed the train journey from Marseille and as we looked out at the wild flowers on the banks we got excited to think we were nearly home. We were very weary by the time we reached Calais and were shocked to see signs of bomb damage everywhere. We were told to stay in the train and after a long wait the train started up again and late that evening we arrived in Paris. That very day Germany had invaded France and Calais and Lyons and other cities had been bombed. There were hundreds of us, including many children on that train and we were allocated to different hotels for the night. Winifred and I shared a lovely hotel bedroom and had a good night’s sleep. We were wakened by a strange noise at 6am. Winifred said – ‘Come on – get up its an air raid’ I said no – they’re just testing the sirens. But she was right and soon all the people in the hotel were in the basement. When the raid was over we ventured out to find a café for some breakfast as meals weren’t provided for us in the hotels. It was funny trying to talk French after talking Tamil for over four years. Later we were taken back to the station and put on a train for le Havre. At Le Havre docks there were hundreds of people of all nationalities trying to get on the few boats that were leaving. We eventually got on a small boat. All the cabins were full but we managed to find two seats on deck. It was a very cold night as the boat rolled and tossed its way across the Channel. How wonderful it was to see the Isle of Wight in the dawn light and to come ashore in Southampton. It was Whit Sunday, May 12^th, and we were so cold we thought there would be snow on the ground. We went to a Post Office and sent telegrams to our very anxious families who, of course, knew all about the invasion and bombing of France. We had to travel by train to London and then I had to cross London and get a train to Colchester. I sent a telegram to ‘Jimmy’ to say what time we would arrive in London, but being a Sunday he was out preaching and didn’t get it. With our food in Paris and the Cairo trip we had used up all the money we had but just managed enough for the underground and I caught a train to Colchester.

Because of the war and shortage of petrol very few people were using their cars but fortunately good old Ted was having to run a car for his essential Post Office work, so he met me and took me to K.C.K. which I had never seen before. How wonderful it was, how peaceful and beautiful. Mother provided a lovely tea and then we went to the Whit Sunday evening service at Culver Street. We sat right at the back and when I looked at the pulpit and the choir they were going up and down as the rails of the boat had done the previous night. It all seemed so unreal, I couldn’t believe I was home. The last hymn was 386 ‘O Thou who camest from above’. In the third verse we sang ‘Jesus, confirm my heart’s desire To work and speak and think for Thee.’ I suddenly came alive and knew it was for me and that the Lord would use me here as he had in India. There was an icy wind blowing as we walked up Culver Street and I was wearing a thin green suit which had been made for me by a tailor in India.

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Jimmy Sankey

That evening the phone rang. We had never had a phone when I was in England before and of course we didn’t in India. It was very strange talking to a young man whom I hadn’t met for nearly five years and who for many years had wanted to marry me. He said he could come to Colchester on Friday 17^th but had to return to Cambridge the same day. Because my District wanted him in India everyone was waiting to know if we would get engaged but I still felt uncertain. A week or two later I had a weekend in Cambridge at a B & B, and we had more time to talk on our own on the river and I was able to say ‘yes’. The beginning of June exams were over and at the end of term he came to Colchester to stay with us. I had decided I would like an opal engagement ring. We searched all the jewellers in Colchester but nothing seemed just right so we went by train to Ipswich and bought one there and amongst all the beauty of our bluebell dell we got engaged.

By this time the war was getting closer. All our windows had to be covered with net to reduce danger from flying glass. Many nights there were air raids and we tried to rest on cushions under our dining room table. We had a beach hut on Mersea Island nine miles from Colchester. All sea-side places were now being mined to prevent the Germans from landing so all beach huts had to be removed. Margaret and I went to Mersea and moved all the chairs, china etc. to a friend’s house and arranged for the hut to be taken down and moved to Kings Cole Kitchen (KCK). We put it up near the back door and it proved very useful. As the war got worse there was a ban on all movement into a twenty mile zone round the East coast. I was kept busy helping Mother and doing things with my nieces and nephews, Ted’s three – John, Gwenyth and Patrick and Arthur’s Pam in Tiptree. Pam and Patrick were both three years old and played happily together. I took part in many Guide, Brownie and school events with Margaret who was a Guide Commissioner and a first aid worker. One day I had to go as a casualty in an air raid precaution exercise. I was also speaking at meetings – a new and rather frightening experience for me. I was also of course writing lots of letters to friends in India and England.

Vi had got married while I was in India and of course I hadn’t seen her little Colin who was three years old in July. Because of the war, Jimmy couldn’t come to Colchester so he joined me in Derby and we bought a tricycle for Colin’s birthday. (This was later very much used and enjoyed by all our four). I had to speak at a conference meeting at Sheffield and from there we went by train to Bolton and I met all the Sankey family. Jasmine was ten and I was delighted at last to have a little sister. Violet was working and Ira and Vera lived a few miles away with their first baby – David. We visited lots of relations and then booked accommodation at Ambleside for an engagement holiday. We had a wonderful time there walking on the mountains. After a week in Ambleside we packed food and clothes in our rucksacks and climbed Scafell. Unfortunately I sprained my ankle but we continued down to Wastwater and managed to find accommodation in a hostel near a tiny Church. On the Sunday we had to give up our planned climb of Great Gable but we had a lovely little service together in the tiny chapel and climbed Black Sarl pass. The sun was so powerful that my legs were swollen with sun burn as well as with the sprain. It was all so peaceful – so beautiful and no air raids. We dreamed dreams and made plans and chose names for the family we hoped to have some day. We planned that our wedding would be in Dharapuram on August 5^th 1941. We had a long walk back to Keswick and the train journey back to Bolton.

After our wonderful holiday I returned to Derby and Mother and Margaret joined me there. Poor Margaret had been looking forward to a holiday with me for five years. Because of Father’s illness she had always taken me on wonderful holidays so we set off together with all our necessities, including of course gas masks in our rucksacks to Kettlewell in the Yorkshire dales. We had a happy time but a lot of rain and we had to wear all the clothes we had taken to try to keep warm. All the B & B places were full but a farmer’s wife – very busy with haymaking and with no spare rations for visitors took us in.

Returning to Derby we went on to visit Percy and Amy and Joan and Peter in Northampton. From there I went by train to London and Jimmy met me there. We met for lunch with Priscilla and Dick and Dorothy Richardson (friend from the Tuchy District).

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The war affects our plans

After the day in London we had a few more days in Colchester – more air raids and terrible news about the expected German invasion. We had a happy day on the river at Dedham with Mother and Margaret to celebrate my 31st birthday. Soon after that I had to return to Derby to speak at more meetings and there too there were air raids every night. When the siren went and bombs started falling we all went down to the lounge and some nervous neighbours joined us so we got very little sleep. Jimmy cycled over to join us and we had a few more days walking in the Derbyshire dales spending two nights at a farm at Monsal Dale and two nights at Castleton. On the Sunday we walked over the hills and attended morning service in the Church where Frank Hockley (another Tuchy District friend) was the minister. We got a tremendous welcome especially from their two boys. Another day we met for a picnic with Percy and Amy, Joan and Peter, who were also on holiday in that area. It was wonderful to be able to get out of the sound and devastation of war. The situation in Essex and the South coast was getting very serious as Germany had occupied France and prepared a mighty invasion. It had been decided to evacuate all except essential workers from a twenty mile width zone all round the coast. People who had relatives in other parts of the country were encouraged to go first so Mother and Ella and her three all went to Northampton. Margaret was doing essential work at the first aid post and was allowed to teach pupils from the rural area at K.C.K. as this was outside the borough boundary. Mother was furious that her work of catering for these essential workers didn’t allow her to stay. I couldn’t return to Colchester so stayed on in Bolton, and as Jimmy’s Mother was working at a Munitions Factory I was housekeeping for five. All the time we were expecting news of a passage to India which kept being postponed because of the serious war situation.

That was the summer of the ‘Battle of Britain’ and Winston Churchill’s famous words about the debt owed by so many to our few fighter pilots who were bringing down the German planes over the Channel. Gradually the fears of invasion were subsiding and the evacuees began returning. Mother got her way and returned so I returned too. Mother had given me my sewing machine as an early wedding present and I had bought many dress lengths of cotton at sixpence, ninepence and one shilling a yard. So I got busy and made myself 18 cotton dresses. As Jimmy’s passage kept being postponed, the Mission House gave him deputation in Cambridge and Chelmsford so he was able to visit us again. He arrived on 20/11/40 which was Pam’s fourth birthday and Mother and I had both gone to her birthday party with John’s wife – Margaret was a big girl (8 or 9) who helped look after the little ones at that party. In December we had a telegram to say he was sailing from Liverpool so he returned home. His mother was working alternate week nights and days at an Armaments Factory. His Father had died that year and Jasmine was only eleven, so it was hard to leave them. The bombing in the Manchester area that week was the worst of the whole war.

In Colchester too we had a lot of bombing and Margaret was called out. I went on a first aid course. Arthur was still teaching at Tiptree and was also an air raid warden, sometimes on duty all night. Ted lived with us a K.C.K. until Ella and the children returned.

It was amazing how letters got through. One from Chelmsford took just four and a half hours from time of posting to delivery. There were at least three deliveries every day. Stamps cost two pence halfpenny. A pair of sheets J. bought in Bolton cost ten shillings and eleven pence and edging sheets which we gave Margaret for Christmas cost ten shillings and were delivered at the house.

While Jimmy and I were together at K.C.K. in December 1940 we at last received permission from the Mission House to get married after the 1941 Conference. We were sure I would have returned to India by then so we planned our wedding for August 5^th in Dharapuram to be followed by a honeymoon in the Nilgiri hills. After being together or having daily letters for six months, it was hard to face weeks or month without any letters so I wrote letters for him to open on the boat and he wrote letters for his mother to post on to me.

In spite of the war and shortages and separation I had a very happy Christmas with Arthur, Marjorie and four year old Pam staying with us and visits from Ted, Ella, John, Gwenyth and Patrick. On New Year’s Day we had a party for Mother’s helper Eileen’s younger brothers and sisters, age nineteen, fourteen, nine, seven, six , three and two – what a family.

I attended Culver Street Church and was very glad Margaret had kept my bike for me. In spite of the black out I used to cycle down the main road for a class meeting during the week. As more and more local preachers were being called up for active service, the Minister asked me if I could take some services on the plan. I thought that if I was going to do that I should train as a Local Preacher. I didn’t think there would be time for me to do this on a correspondence course so I got the syllabus and studied. The Mission House arranged deputation for me in different places. One day I was speaking at Windsor, so on the way back I stayed at St Andrew’s Hall, Reading and visited friends there including Dick and Dorothy Richardson with a new born baby daughter. In the middle of February – over six weeks after he sailed, I had a cable from Durban where they were delayed. In March I received long letters written on the boat.

I continued to be very busy. The warmest job was collecting and sawing logs for the fire. Mother had bought me my electric sewing machine as a wedding present in advance so I kept making dresses for my return to India.

In May I was going to Derby to stay with Vi and speak at some meetings, so on the way I went to the Mission House to find out what was happening about my passage. I was told that there was no hope of a passage for a long time. My furlough was over but they would employ me on full time deputation for six months and then I must get myself a job. It was terribly disappointing. A lot of my deputation was in London. I remember one circuit where I was staying at the manse and the minister told me that every member of his congregation had suffered serious damage to their houses and there were many injuries yet they turned out and appreciated my talks about the work in India. There was so much danger from flying glass in air raids that in one home I slept on the floor behind the piano and in another I slept in a garden shelter with the family. One time there had been bombs on the railway line and we were taken to London by bus and arrived after the meeting was over. I had a series of meetings in Northumberland so had long train journeys. Wherever I went people were very welcoming and friendly.

Mother wanted me to stay at home so I applied for supply teaching jobs. In the summer holidays we went to Nevin in the Llyn Peninsular in North Wales. We had rooms and we did the shopping and the landlady cooked the food for us. Margaret and I had some good walks and picked lots of bilberries on the hills. It was sad when August 5^th came – which should have been our wedding day.

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Teaching at Colchester

Back in Colchester I got a job in a tiny village school. There were three classes – infants, juniors and seniors. At lunch time I sat in the teacher’s desk and ate my sandwiches while I kept an eye on the children eating their sandwiches. Some afternoons I had to take football with all the boys – some bigger than me. We had another happy Christmas and I remember entertaining two lovely children whose lovely mother was dying of cancer.

In 1942 I had a phone call from the headmaster of Colchester Royal Grammar School to ask if I was available to take the reception class in the Prep School. I was thrilled as I had always wanted to teach infants and never had the opportunity. I started straight away.

The year before when I was staying with Vi and Don she was very sad because she was 39 and longing for a second baby but Don said she couldn’t go through all that in war time. He had been exempt from military service as his father needed his help in their shoe business, but he had to do part time fireman duty and was often out all night. I backed Vi up and the result was she was pregnant and I had promised that if I was still in England I would go and help her and look after Colin. The baby wasn’t due until the end of February but she had to have complete bed rest from the beginning of February so I was in Derby for her fortieth birthday on 7/2/42. There was snow on the ground when I arrived and I built a snowman for Colin which was still there when I left six weeks later. It was really my first time of house keeping and I found it hard work and my hands got very rough. Heather was born at home on February 20^th. I thought they had decided on the name Heather and sent a cable to Rose in India so they didn’t like to change it. They had really wanted Ruth but knew that we had already decided on Ruth for our first baby girl so they wouldn’t use it. While I was looking after Vi and Heather and Colin, Vi’s friend whose garden joined hers, had a daughter whom she called Hazel and these two little girls grew up together like twins – one dark and one fair. While I was there I had a bad time having a wisdom tooth removed and I missed our class meetings in Colchester but I was very glad to be of use. I returned home after six weeks for Mother’s birthday on March 17^th and it was so warm we had her birthday tea in the garden.

I was delighted to find they had kept my job at the Prep school for me and I really enjoyed that until August 1943. As well as the reception class I also taught Geography to the other classes and ran two packs of cubs. Sometimes I took the cubs out collecting rose hips for making rose hip syrup for babies and acorns for feeding pigs. Because of the danger to shipping our country had to be as self supporting as possible.

All the time the war was going on, at night incendiary bombs were dropped on buildings and did a lot of damage so all the teachers had to take turns at being on fire duty at school. We had camp beds where we could sleep if there wasn’t a raid but as soon as the siren sounded we had to get up and put on our helmets and carry our gas masks and watch for bombs. I never saw any on the nights I was on duty. When there were raids during the day we had to take all the children into the specially built shelters and stay with them until the all clear sounded.

I went on with my Local Preacher studies and eventually wrote all three exams in the super’s manse. Then one day I had an oral exam at the Local Preacher’s Meeting and was asked to tell them about my call to preach. I said I didn’t have a call, the Super told me he couldn’t fill the plan so they said ‘The need was the call.’ My Mother was thrilled because my father had been a local preacher at the age of 15 and I was the first one of his family to follow him. I preached in many of the chapels where he had preached nearly sixty years before. I was able to cycle to my appointments on the bike he had bought for me when I was fourteen.

During the time when I was teaching, Arthur had to leave his school and go in the Navy. He was on a minesweeper and was in a lot of danger but came through the war. After the war he was thought to have T.B. and was in hospital for a long time. Marjorie was on her own with Pam and found life very difficult.

One summer I was on my own at K.C.K. as Margaret had taken Mother to visit Vi and Percy. Our plum tree did very well that year, so I spent my time picking plums and packing them into parcels to send to the others. Postage was cheap in those days and fruit was very scarce. At Whitsum I went with a friend to her home at Southwold and I was asked to preach there.

All this time I was receiving aerogrammes from India where Jimmy was living on his own in Mannauqudi – making his own bread and teaching in Findlay High School.

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Compassionate Leave

In April 1943 the Mission House said that he should be given six months compassionate leave to come home and get married. Someone else took over his job and after his hill holiday he went to stay in Bangalore with Rose while he waited for a passage. By this time Italy was out of the war and some ships were going through the Mediterranean sea instead of round South Africa. In spite of censorship he managed to let me know that if he got a passage on a ship routed through the Med he would cable ‘Arrange wedding quickly.’ If he got a ship routed round South Africa he would cable ‘Arrange wedding’. I had given up my job and was finding the waiting difficult. At last the cable came, ‘Arrange wedding quickly’. I suggested four weeks but J.J.E. our dear senior missionary, now retired and living in Filey, suggested six weeks, so I arranged for 26/10/43 and sent out all my invitations. The days of waiting went on and on. I received a letter posted in Gibraltar but still no bridegroom. I knew he would need a few days to get ration cards, etc. etc, and also a marriage licence so on about 21^st I wrote to all our guests saying ‘WEDDING CANCELLED’. My friend Kath dragged me off to a cinema to see a very good film ‘Clive of India’ but I was too miserable to look at it. Suddenly she grabbed me and said ‘It says you are wanted at the ticket office’. She dragged me out and there was Uncle Ted with a message that the lost bridegroom had landed in Hull. His boat had been waiting in Gibraltar for a convoy through the Atlantic and had had limpet mines attached but fortunately detected. They were eventually given leave to sail round the North of Scotland and down the East coast of Scotland to Hull. There was a strike of workers at the docks so they had to move their own luggage. There was an air raid in Hull but eventually he found somewhere to spend the night – the only house standing in a bombed road. The next day he went by train to Bolton and rang me from there. We decided to postpone the wedding to Friday October 29^th and he said he would come to Colchester on the Saturday. I couldn’t wait any longer so went to London by coach hoping to meet him at Euston Station. I met several trains but didn’t find him and realising that if I waited any longer I would miss the last train from Liverpool Street, I ran through the blacked out London streets back to Liverpool Street and there on a crowded platform we literally bumped into each other – it was wonderful. On the Monday we borrowed Uncle Ted’s cycle and cycled into Colchester to see the minister about the wedding, to go to the registry office and to see friends. We had decided on a honeymoon in the highlands of Scotland after a quiet weekend in the country near Colchester so we cycled to Dedham to arrange for that.

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Marriage

In spite of all the anxiety and delay, everything worked out well. Mother coped wonderfully catering for all our guests despite the restrictions of rationing. Some stayed with us and some with next door and the rest with Uncle Ted. Margaret was my bridesmaid in blue velvet. Heather was one and three quarters and I remember that during the service she said loudly that she wanted wee-wee. It was wonderful that there weren’t any air raids or disturbances that day. We have our reception upstairs in the Church. We had a laugh in the vestry when we signed the register and had to give our fathers’ names. We hadn’t even met each other’s fathers and didn’t know that they were called Reuben and Judah – we were uniting two Jewish tribes. After having photographs taken we had a little time in the garden at K.C.K. with our friends and then the taxi picked us up and took us to Dedham where we had a happy weekend. I expect people realised we were a honeymoon couple and expected to find some valuables in our luggage. When we unpacked later we found we had lost a rucksack, a camera and a few things that we couldn’t possibly buy in those days but nothing that was essential to our happiness. On the Monday we went to Colchester by bus and walked round the ring road to the station and caught the night train to Edinburgh. Due to an air raid the train was delayed for hours. In Edinburgh we went to a very grand wedding at St Giles’ Cathedral and then caught a slow train to Taynuilt where we had booked a room in a small hotel.

It was a beautiful centre for walks round the lochs , across the moors and up the Mountains which were already covered with snow. Most of the time we were there we wore shorts and ordinary shoes. Although Jimmy had just arrived from the tropics and was suffering from dysentery we had a wonderful time. One day we walked to Oban. After a week we booked by phone at Loch Leven Hotel and travelled there by train. From there we climbed Ben Nevis in a blizzard and ate frozen sandwiches at the summit. We spent our last few days at Ardlui on the North shore of Loch Lomond. One day we walked thirteen miles along the shore of the loch and back again. That was the only day we could measure our mileage and the only day we were not in snow and so had dry feet.

After our honeymoon we stayed in Bolton with Grandma and Aunties Violet and Jasmine for about four weeks. Grandma was working in an ammunition factory so we did the housework and cooking. Jasmine was 13 and Violet about 28. During that time we had replies to an advert I had put in the Methodist Recorder asking for accommodation near London for a missionary and his wife. Jimmy had been due to be ordained at Conference that year but as he couldn’t get a passage in time his ordination was planned at Seymour Road Church, Bolton, in December. Our friends from India – Rev Sidwell and Doris Johnson, who was on furlough, joined us for this service.

Soon after that we travelled to London and on to 4, Hilldown Road, Hayes, Kent. The owner of the house was in the Air Force and was missing so his wife and little boy had gone to live with her mother. She had replied to our advert and had put everything beautifully ready for us including a lovely decorated Christmas tree with present for us, a fire burning and kettle boiling for tea and our first home together. We only had about a week there before going to Colchester for Christmas with my family, but after Christmas we settled into a happy routine with days in London at the Language School, deputation in London Circuits and walks in the surrounding forest.

My college friend, Nancy, had gone out as a missionary teacher to Malaysia. When the war spread to that area she and Roger were married and in 1942, expecting their first baby she had to leave everything behind and get on the last ship out of Singapore. Her daughter Katharine was born that year in South London and I was able to visit her. She had no news about Roger until Katharine was three, but when he eventually came home Katharine began to talk. She eventually got a first class degree in Russian at Oxford.

In March, just as we were full of joy that our first baby was due in November, Jimmy had to go off for three weeks’ deputation across Eire from Dublin to the West Coast and back. A Scout commissioner from Colchester had retired to North Wales, so I wrote to him for holiday addresses and we planned that I should stay in Colchester with my family then meet Jimmy for a holiday in North Wales on his return from Ireland. I had a very happy time sewing and knitting for our baby and had letters telling of the missionary enthusiasm of the small Methodist Churches and of their lavish hospitality with full details of meals that we couldn’t even dream of in war torn England.

We eventually met up at Bangor, travelled in a crowded bus to Portmadoc where we stayed on a farm. We had a wonderful holiday climbing mountains, walking in the sea along the sandy bays. I don’t remember any rain or any cold but I do remember that the 70 year old Scout commissioner who was showing us his favourite route up Snowdon walked so fast that I couldn’t keep up with him. They also entertained us in their retirement bungalow at Criccieth.

When we returned to London we had to go to the Mission House as Jimmy’s six months leave was over and he was needed back in India. However, when we said we were expecting our first baby it was suggested that he should go into an English Circuit instead. We accepted with great joy. When we returned to our lovely little house in Hayes we found that our landlady had moved back into the house and we had only the upstairs as a flat and some use of the kitchen. This was because the bank wouldn’t pay the mortgage on the house if she wasn’t living in it. There were now many missiles being launched against London from the German army in Northern France, so hundreds of enormous balloons were put up to bring the missiles down before they reached London. We were now in a very dangerous area and I think every house in our area was damaged. From our upstairs dining room we could see dozens of these balloons and from our bed we could see them coming over the house. One night we had ceilings down but were able to continue to live there. Our landlady bought an indoor shelter and put it in her lounge and we slept in it some nights when she and her son were sleeping at her mother’s.

Jimmy continued with deputation, Auntie Priscilla arranged for him to take O.M. services at Tenterden the first Sunday in June. She was looking after her old parents and we stayed with them. Because of rationing I took our rations in my suitcase and didn’t think to cook the meat so it was a messy offering. We had a lovely day. On the Monday Priscilla was going to a farm to collect some baby chicks and we had a lovely country walk. We were amazed at the continuous noise of planes going over when we returned home and put the news on, so heard that all that air activity was connected with the allied invasion of Normandy which was on June 5^th 1944, the beginning of the end of a terrible war which finished on May 8^th 1945 in Berlin.

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The move to Par

During our time in Hayes it was almost impossible to buy fruit or eggs. We used to cycle for miles round the nearby country roads hoping that some house might be announcing ‘rhubarb for sale’ or possibly any raspberries. In August Margaret came to stay with us, bringing strawberries from K.C.K. Then we were busy packing up and preparing to move to our first Manse and had no idea what it would be like. It was a long day travelling. I was over six months pregnant and tired when we were met by the stewards at Par and taken to the Manse. They quickly showed us round, except the dining room, and then saying ‘Your tea is ready in there, and there’s an apple pie in the oven in the kitchen,’ they all left. We opened the dining room door and there was a wonderful spread such as we never saw in those days. It was a lovely big room looking out over the front garden and the lounge too was in the front of the house. We couldn’t believe it was all just for us. We of course enjoyed our tea and were far too excited to feel tired, so we went out exploring and could see the sea in the distance. It was so peaceful with no planes, no balloons, no V bombs. When we returned and explored the house we found the pantry was full of all sorts of things we had never been able to buy in London. In those days Manses provided everything and there were cupboards full of china, cleaning things, bedding, towels – quite a lot that we would never need. The Manse was Tehidy Road and there were no houses on the other side of the road. There were I think about fourteen steep stone steps up our garden to the house which later was difficult with a pram, but there were less steps at the back. There was a garage and a small lane at the back so we kept our cycles there and were soon exploring the area on them.

Jimmy of course was soon cycling in all directions to his nine Churches. It was his first time in Circuit work and there were a lot of people to get to know. The first month seemed to be all Harvest Festivals, which are very popular in Cornwall, so people tend to support each other’s festivals, which means you can’t repeat the same sermon. When I could I went with him and I remember one at a tiny fishing village called Polkerris, between Tywardreath and Fowey. After the service we walked back clambering over the cliffs with a wonderful view of the bay and Par sands. Par sands had been mined in case of invasion so we couldn’t go on them but we could go on the little bays and paddle there.

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Ruth is born

I don’t ever remember going to an ante natal clinic but I remember a very nice Doctor came to the house and tried to turn my baby which was in the breach position. We had a happy day out exploring for our first wedding anniversary at the end of October. Our baby was due in the middle of November and I was very uncomfortable and said if she didn’t come soon I would adopt one. At last in the early hours of December 7^th things seemed to be beginning so we got up and managed to get a taxi to take us to a nursing home near St Austell seven miles away. That was a long day and a long night. On Friday December 8^th I got up and phoned Jimmy to let him know I was still waiting and I told him that in spite of it all I was still prepared to have ten babies! So the waiting went on. Jimmy cycled over at midday and the doctor told him he would do what he could but he couldn’t promise anything. Dad was listening outside the door as Ruth was being born and heard the doctor calling for more hot towels. Eventually our little daughter was put into my arms and Jimmy was allowed in. She was perfect.

For the next two weeks I lay in that bed doing nothing except feeding my baby when she was brought to me. I wasn’t even allowed to wash myself. Poor Jimmy was looking after the house and cycling round his nine churches and cycling fourteen miles every day to visit me. He was trying to get everything clean and ready for Christmas so took down and washed the kitchen curtains. I was allowed home on December 22^nd and tried to do some jobs and by 24^th I was very ill and had to stay in bed with a coal fire in the bedroom.

On Christmas morning Dad brought me my presents and breakfast and then took the service at Church. Ruth cried a lot so Dad spent most of the day nursing her and singing carols which she seemed to enjoy. Margaret and Mother rang up and when they knew I was in bed they decided to come to help which must have been very difficult for Dad as we hadn’t made any plans for having visitors. It was lovely for me to share the joy of my precious little daughter with my Mother and sister. When Margaret had to return for the new school term, Mother stayed on and helped me. It was a good thing she did as soon after that Dad got a very sore throat and high temperature. The only medical book I had was a small green book of homeopathic medicines which Mother had given me (and which I still have on my shelves). I looked up and found ‘clergyman’s sore throat’ and the advice given under that was to grow a beard. We had a good laugh but he has never taken that advice although his sons have.

Ruth cried quite a lot during her first three months which worried her Grandma, but she was good when her Daddy baptised her during that time. As soon as she was three months old she began to take an interest in her toys and became a happy contented baby. She didn’t have toys like babies do now as there were no toys in shops during the war, but I made some for her and she had many things, including her pram and cot, from the Bemrose family.

As Spring came it was lovely to take her for walks along the beautiful Cornish lanes. Grandma Sankey came to visit us and she had never before seen primrose growing. Uncle Ted’s family had a difficult winter with infectious illnesses and they all five came to stay with us during the Easter holidays. John Roper enjoyed that Cornish holiday so much that he and Margaret had their honeymoon at Fowey.

On May 8^th the war in Europe ended – it was called V.E. Day. Ruth was five months old and that day she sat up straight in her pram when I took her for a walk to Par sands. That May Auntie Rose arrived on furlough after seven years in India and she and Auntie Margaret came and stayed with us.

In August we planned a family holiday and stayed on a farm near St Ives. We bought a lightweight folding pram so we could walk on all the cliff paths carrying the pram with Ruth sitting enjoying it all. We all three enjoyed every minute of that holiday, especially August 8^th when Ruth was eight months old and the terrible war with Japan came to an end on V.J. day.

As I had become a Local Preacher in 1943, just before we were married, I was planned to preach at a little Methodist Church at St Blazey Gate, which was always called ‘Leek seed’. Dad insisted that I shouldn’t wear a hat when preaching although in those days all ladies wore hats to Church. In the vestry I asked some of the ladies what they thought and they were very indignant and said “Not even a child of three would come into our Church without a hat’ – so I’m afraid I disobeyed the minister rather than upset the congregation.

Mary Spear – the wife of a Dharapuram missionary whose little son John had been Anbu’s friend – was on furlough in Cornwall settling their children John and Phyllis in English schools, so she invited me to visit them at Harlyn Bay near Padstow. Ruth and I travelled by train and had a very happy time there, but soon after we returned home Ruth developed whooping cough. Dad vividly remembered two of his baby brothers dying of whooping cough so it was an anxious time. There was no central heating in the manse so we had her cot in the lounge for weeks and kept the fire in all the time. I spent as much time as possible with her but when I had to go to the kitchen to prepare meals she teased me saying ‘busy, busy, busy’. One day I was settling her for the night and forgot her prayers so she put her little hands together and looked up and said ‘Jesus’. Fortunately she recovered well and we were able to have a party for her first birthday with four teenage girls who were being prepared for Church membership. We managed to buy a big wooden horse made by disabled soldiers as a birthday present for her.

We were very happy in the little Church in Tywardreath but the Mission House had said we must be ready to return to India as soon as a passage became available. The Circuit appointed a minister who was working as a chaplain and he said he would be available when we left. We sorted out our boxes in the manse garage, which opened off the lane at the back of our garden. If we ever got any time we began to try to pack and Ruth began to unpack. Early in May we had a telegram from the Mission House to say we were to sail from Tilbury on May 9^th. We had just a week to pack, to hand over the job and to visit and say goodbye to our families. What a mad rush. I went straight to Church to tell the ladies at Fellowship. Someone looked after Ruth while we packed and cleaned the manse – including big high wall cupboards in the kitchen full of heavy china which we had never use.

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Return to India

Early on Saturday morning, Ruth and I left by train to go and visit auntie Vi and family in Derby. My bike which I had had since I was fourteen was sent by train to Colchester and Ruth’s big pram was taken to a shop to be sold. Dad had great difficulty in getting in touch with the new minister who was on holiday, but eventually he was found and agreed to take over. I met up again with Dad in Manchester and we said goodbye to his family in Bolton and then travelled together to Colchester. Auntie Rose had also been given a passage on the S.S. Stratheden which had been commandeered to take 2100 prisoners of war to Naples and then continue to India and Australia.. Auntie Margaret took us to Tilbury and we had a wonderful voyage with a very comfortable cabin. It was lovely to have time to relax and play with our happy friendly little toddler and to be with my wonderful big sister who had done so much for me when I was in India on my own.

Our first stop was Naples where we stood at the rail and watched 2000 prisoners filing off the ship and being welcomed by nuns and priests. Italy had been out of the war since 1943 so these men must have been prisoners for a long time. We were told that one had died on the ship the night before we reached Naples. We went on to Port Said and through the Suez Canal and it got hotter and hotter. I was busy sewing little cotton garments for Ruth by hand. In those days special orange juice was provided for all children under five in English clinics so I had taken several with me for Ruth but hadn’t realised it wouldn’t keep in a hot climate although it kept well in England. By the time we reached Bombay poor little Ruth had very bad gastro enteritis. When we docked at Bombay Dad had a letter about his stationing. He was to proceed on his own to Negapatam, as the family there were waiting for a passage and there wouldn’t be room for me. As Ruth was ill it was good that I could stay for some weeks in Bangalore. We were two hot days and nights in the train and were very glad when we arrived in Bangalore and took Ruth straight to the Zenara Mission Hospital. They at once gave her a dose of castor oil and she was soon her bright happy self again. Rose was delighted to be back in her lovely Goodwill Girls High School after a year away and delighted to share her home and garden with her sister and little niece. We must have been there for a month or more while Dad was taking over the work at Negapatam High School from Wilfred Bewick. His wife Vera and two little sons who were still living on the hills because of the heat but when their passage had been arranged they returned to Nega and suggested that Ruth and I should join them. That was a difficult period for us as, although it was big bungalow with five bedrooms, there was only one bedroom upstairs and it really was too hot to sleep downstairs which we all three had to do for several weeks.

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Family Life in India

In July 1946, Wilfred and Vera Bewick with Andrew and John, left Negapatam to take up circuit work in England.

The Mission bungalow in Negapatam had been built for the Dutch Governor when that part of India was a Dutch colony. It was grand and spacious with wide verandas front and back. It had an enormous lounge and dining room with two large bedrooms on each side with a large bathroom opening off each bedroom. From the back veranda there were stairs to the roof where there was a large bedroom with verandas and bathroom. All the rest of the flat roof was an open play area but because of the heat this could only be used in the early morning. On the back veranda there was a table and chairs where we had breakfast every morning at about 6am, which was very pleasant.

When the Bewicks left we took over their servants. We had a cook who also did the food shopping. He didn’t approve of me wanting to go into his kitchen. We had a butler who carried our meals from the kitchen and helped in any way he could. We had a gardener who carried the water, did the washing up and other jobs. The gardener’s wife did most of the sweeping and dusting and a small girl from the sweeper caste came twice a day to empty our commodes and wash the bathroom floors. I had no idea how to cope with servants and they just continued how they had worked for the Bewicks. Dad was very busy teaching, copping with school finance, etc, and studying Tamil. I was correspondent for a girl’s higher elementary school in the town and enjoyed my contacts there with the staff and children. My first Saturday afternoon I was invited to go to the ‘Sisterhood’ meeting. There were about twenty women and we sat in the boys’ desks in one of the classrooms. I found that always before they had met on the bungalow veranda but didn’t like to go there until we invited them. I of course invited them but said I didn’t want to meet on a Saturday as that was the only day my husband would be free for us to out as a family. However, when I got to know them I discovered many of them were teachers and of course Saturday was the only day they could come, so we continued to meet on a Saturday afternoon. Most meetings we just chatted and made things for a bazaar to raise money for Missionary work in another part of India. They gave me a piece of cheap white cloth and I had to draw threads and hemstitch it all round to make a man’s handkerchief. It took me many weeks to do and was sold for four annas. I enjoyed getting to know the other women but we never use Christian names. Mrs Thomas was obviously pregnant and she never had any children with her so I thought this was her first baby. I discovered later that it was her seventh. Her first was now a big schoolboy and the other five had all dies very tragically. We were overjoyed when she gave birth to a lovely baby girl. I asked my new friends about visiting other ladies in the town. They said I wouldn’t be able to find the homes so the Secretary, Mrs Samuel, offered to take me visiting. She had seven children between the ages of 3-15 and she had the job of vaccinator in the town. Her husband was a graduate teacher at the High School and also came to our bungalow every morning before school to teach Dad Tamil. Because they had to pay school fees for their children she needed to work but hadn’t any qualifications. So with seven children she was working for her school leaving certificate and I was glad to be able to help her with her English. One day I visited her home at dusk. The children were sitting on the floor doing their homework. At 6 o’clock they all put their books away and one took a Bible from under the thatched roof. We sat on the stone floor and had family prayer together which they did at that time every day. Their home wasn’t far from ours and other Christian homes and we often heard the sound of Christian hymns at dusk.

Very occasionally we found time to take Ruth to the seaside. This involved a walk to the river and crossing the river in a small ferry boat. There were fisher folk in villages by the sea who could only reach their homes by this ferry. They couldn’t understand why we wanted to wash our child in the sea as the water was salty. All the roads were loose sand so it was very difficult on the back of my bike for Ruth. For her second birthday in December, Mr and Mrs Samuel came to tea with all their children – Betty, Annie, Edwin, Egbert, Pauline, Doreen and little Kanageraj.

We were all looking forward to our first Christmas in Negapatam, but as food went mouldy so quickly in the damp heat I didn’t know how to prepare. Auntie Rose joined us after a long and very tiring journey and helped to get things organised. We had a very helpful friendly art master in the school and he made a beautiful bed for Ruth’s doll. It was so strong that she could stand on it, and she used it as a platform to entertain us. Rose was able to help me sort out the problem of the unfriendly cook. I got rid of him and trained Arokiaswami to do our cooking and he sewed as well all the time we were there.

Straight after Christmas we had to go to Dharapuram for Synod. The journey by train and bus took over twelve and a half hours. There were ten of us sharing the Minister’s bungalow for a week, and Ruth made friends with everyone and sat quietly and happily through long services and endless meetings. There was a wedding during Synod and one of our friends took a film and later gave us some snaps of Ruth at the wedding. It was wonderful for me to be back in Dharapuram after seven years. On the return journey Ruth and I stayed with Leslie and Marian Craze and Janet in Karur but Dad had to go straight on to Nega for the new term. Life was extremely busy for him with over one thousand students and he had to collect fees and interview parents as well as a lot of teaching and his language study. There were problems in the Church and long stormy quarterly and leaders meetings. Synod had appointed a new Indian minister to our Church but the pastor who had been living in our manse wouldn’t get out.

There were a few English people working in Negapatam and we occasionally invited them for an evening meal but most days Dad just worked. One day we had a visit from a Latvian missionary who had been working in India without a furlough for eighteen years. Now her country didn’t exist any more as it was part of the U.S.S.R.

The weather got hotter and hotter and in April Ruth and I had a long journey by train and bus to Kodaicanal and Dad joined us later. That was a lovely holiday, Ruth loved meeting other children and we had wonderful walks and rowed on the Lake. It was a relaxing time of fellowship with other missionaries from other parts of India. Most of the men had to return to the plains at the end of May, but mothers with children had another month. When I returned to Nega I was over seven months pregnant and Dad took a half day off school to come part way to help me with the luggage as I had so many changes. Some parents happened to go to the school office to see Dad that day and were so angry that he wasn’t there that they reported him not only to the District Education Officer but also to the Minister for Education as never being in his office when parents wished to see him.

Of course this was just before the handing over of power and the formation of the two independent countries of India and Pakistan in August 1947. We celebrated that day by having a tea party in our dining room for all the Indian teachers. We were delighted that they all came and shared in it, even the high caste Brahmins. I made a large cake and iced it in the colours of the Indian flag, which was much appreciated. In the town most people expected that we would immediately return to our own country but, of course, the work of the school and the Church had to go on as before. The news of the clashes between Hindus and Muslims in the North was distressing, but we didn’t see any problems in Nega. I was feeling the heat a lot at this time and whatever work I was doing, Ruth would say very sympathetically ‘When Ruth is a big girl Mummy won’t have to do that, Ruth will do it’. At the end of August Ruth and I travelled by train to Madras and caught the night train to Bangalore. Auntie Rose met us at the station and took us to her house where she had arranged for an old ayah to look after Ruth while I was in hospital. I just had a week to get things arranged and then on Monday September 8^th at 6am when I was washing some of Ruth’s clothes my waters suddenly broke. Rose called her driver and took me to hospital and the old ayah looked after Ruth.

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Our second daughter

My lovely Indian doctor – Eva Rangala, an old girl of Goodwill Girls’ High School, whom Rose had taught, was very concerned when she discovered that my placenta was in the wrong place and she had never had a live birth with this complication. I had no idea how serious it was and when Rose suggested sending for Dad I said no – it will all be over before he could get here. Eva was herself seven months pregnant with her third baby but she prayed all day and looked after me well. The Indian nurses kept coming and listening to my baby’s heartbeat. There was a clamp on her poor little head and weights hanging over the end of the bed so I couldn’t move at all. When I asked the nurse what I could do about the pain she said “You can scream”, but I couldn’t see how that would help. At 6pm my precious second daughter was born and she was perfect except for the necessary hole in her head. I was too weak to be moved so had a very noisy night in the delivery ward listening to other people’s screams, but full of thankfulness to God for His wonderful gift of a second daughter.

In the morning I was moved into a ward and in spite of a general strike Rose managed to bring Ruth in to see her baby sister. She was of course delighted. I had a very bad week with a high temperature and spent a lot of time wondering however Dad would manage to look after our two little girls if I died. Fortunately penicillin had become available after the war, and I eventually recovered and Rose was able to take us to her house when Rachel was two weeks old.

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Return to writing my memories 28.4.1993

A few weeks ago I had shingles and had no memory at all – I didn’t even know who I was or where I was living. A few days ago there were two bomb explosions in the City of London. One was in Bishopsgate and in every news bulletin we hear about, and somehow see, the devastation there. I have been to Bishopsgate many times, but as I hear the word over and over I don’t see the Mission House as I knew it when I candidated in 1934 or as I visited it often on furlough from 1940-43. I see my big sister Rose in 1919 when she was preparing to go to India as a missionary. I see her machining away making lots of cotton clothes to wear in the heat of India and then I see her deciding to make a blue velvet dress for me. I remember when I was stood on the dining room table while my two big sisters tried on my beautiful dress and went round the bottom with a marked stick to get it level. There was much discussion about the length as I was growing fast and my Mother wanted the dress to last and Rose wanted it to look pretty when it was new. One time I felt faint as I had to stand up so straight for such a long time. I can’t remember how long I wore the blue velvet dress, but I think that eventually it was sent out to India for Mary, a little orphan Indian girl whom Rose had adopted.

This morning after the daily service on the Radio someone read some poetry and I was able to join in Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’ which I learned when about fifteen in Colchester County High School for Girls when I was taught by Miss R.R. Phillips. Recently I had a letter from Gwenyth – Uncle Ted’s daughter – who told me that her eleven year old granddaughter, Katy, is now studying at that same school, having passed the eleven plus as I did 73 years ago. In my bookcase I still have many of the books which I received at the school because I was a scholarship girl. I also have several leather bound books which my big brother Will had received as prizes when he was a pupil at Tynemouth Municipal High School. Before he went there he was at a tiny private school in the little island of Manora near Karachi (Now Pakistan). I am amazed at how well my sisters and brothers did at school in Tynemouth.

And at last he stopped and pointed to a door and said “That’s where they take the babies.” I walked over and knocked on the door and someone shouted in Tamil – “Who is that”. When I said, they flung the door open and eager hands took the poor wee baby to hospital and took me to a lovely rest room for the night.

The next morning was Sunday and a missionary came to take me to see the family. She brought me a sari to wear because the children are only used to people in saris. She took me to a garden where lots of tiny boys in bright red sunsuits were all playing together. We went through an arch to the baby girl’s garden and ten or so tiny girls in blue sun suits rushed to welcome us. I squatted down and the first to reach me jumped into my arms chattering and laughing. I walked over with her to the big girl who was in charge of them all. She knew I was from Dharapuram and had brought a baby and she was so amazed that I was carrying Rosebud the baby that I had seen three years before, the day she was born. I had said then that she was like a rosebud and when she arrived in Dhonavir two days later that was the name that Amy Carmichael had given to her. She had lived in that home for three years and was a very happy fearless child. As I was talking to the helper the clock struck and all those happy little girls put their little hands together and closed their eyes. Later the helper explained that they do that every hour to pray for all the children who are not in happy homes.

Later on I was taken to Church where I could sit in a small gallery and look down on 600 or so happy, healthy children and adults, joining in worship together. I was told that there were then 700 in the family but of course some were looking after the babies and some were working in the hospital etc.

I suppose this was one of the most wonderful days of my life. In the service many took part. We prayed for Amma - Mother – and for the new baby brother. In the hymns the tiny ones like little Rosebud who wouldn’t know the words had a flag to wave so that they were joining in. Some children had special flowers in their hair because it was their coming day. (They couldn’t celebrate birthdays as these were mostly not known).

In the afternoon we went for a walk in the fields and I saw the wonderfully equipped hospital which looks after not only the big family, but the village people around. There are beautifully carved texts on the wall.

In the evening we had a prayer meeting. There was a visitor there from China and we prayed for the work in China and for our work in Dharapuram.

On Monday I was told that Amy Carmichael wanted to see me. She was a frail little old lady in bed in a big bedroom. There was netting at the windows and beautiful tame forest birds flew about the room and came on her fingers for food. She asked me lots of questions about our work. She had recently written a beautiful little devotional book called ‘If’ and she sent a copy for each of my teachers in our fellowship gang. She suffered so much that she often wasn’t able to see visitors so I was very privileged.

When it was time for my train one of the helpers was setting off on a journey, so we travelled together and I was very impressed with the way she sought to share the good news with other travellers.

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11.9.89

Quite a number of years ago the Churches together in Marple decided to run a day care day for handicapped and lonely people and we made up a rota of helpers, drivers, etc. I was delighted to be on the rota for the first Monday of every month. I often took flowers from the garden and liked to get there early to welcome our guests in one at a time. When they came they had tea or coffee. Some helpers cooked a wonderful lunch for us all and we helped with the serving. In the afternoon we generally had some entertainment such as slides or a talk, and then we served tea and scones or biscuits before the drivers arrived to take them home. It was the most worthwhile job I have had in any Church in this country.

In 1989 the first Monday in May was May Day holiday and the Day care was cancelled on Bank Holidays, which I thought was a shame. As I wasn’t going to Day Care I decided to do some gardening to get rid of weeds from the plot near the greenhouse so that I could plant out some seedlings. The ground was dry and hard so it was hard work and my back hurt a lot so I had to come in. It got worse and worse, so I eventually went to the Doctor. She said I had probably pulled something and it might take six weeks to hear.

Janet Holwill was organising the entertainments at Day Care on the first Monday and she had shown us wonderful photographs of Guernsey where her parents lived. When I described this to Dad, we decided that we would go there for our summer holiday so we booked a B & B for two weeks in June and booked our flight from Manchester Airport. If we hadn’t already spent all that money on our holiday we wouldn’t have gone as I couldn’t walk at all. However, it was just six weeks since my gardening effort and we decided we would go and hope for the best. Rachel and family took us to Manchester airport and we had a very comfortable and interesting flight and easily got a taxi to the place we had booked, which was quite near the cliff top. We were soon off for a walk and the views were wonderful. However, I couldn’t walk so we went home again and I went to bed while Dad went exploring on his own. I explained things to our hostess and she told me there was a bus stop near the house and we could go into St Peter Port and get a bus timetable and see the Island that way. We did that and got another bus back and had a good night’s sleep.

The next morning after breakfast Dad said “Are we getting a bus?” and I said “No I’m walking. I don’t know why but we went on walking until we were very near the sea and it was wonderful. We walked another way and found a pub where they served meals in the garden – we enjoyed every minute of that first day and I was so thankful that we could walk together. We had bought maps and planned walks each day. One day we booked a boat trip to a smaller island so we had to be in Peter Port by 10am. Other guests told us of a good walk to Peter Port so we set off before 9am and walked there. We clambered into the rocking boat and enjoyed the trip with a lot of other people. When we got off the boat all the others walked the mile or so to the town but we turned in the other direction and walked on rocky paths all the way round the island and eventually came to the town. The return boat trip was starting from the town so we walked the extra mile to where we had got off the boat and then walked back again.

When we got back to Peter Port we had a meal and then set off to walk home by the coastal path. There were no signposts so we got a bit lost but eventually we got back to our guest house by about 8pm, having been walking and enjoying ourselves for eleven hours. We were tired but happy. The cliff path back was up and down hundreds of steps. I think I calculated we had been up and down at least 10,000 stone steps during that holiday.

We were there for two Sundays and enjoyed the services at a Methodist Church a few miles away. The last few days there my back was beginning to hurt again and when we arrived home it was again very bad so I went to the Doctor and she arranged for me to see a specialist who had me in hospital for an Xray. He told me I had osteoporosis which I had never heard of and that I had fractured two vertebrae. So I was amazed and praised the Lord that he had given me a miracle for two weeks, allowing us to have a wonderfully free holiday together, which I said was like a second honeymoon.

From June 1989 I continued with a lot of back pain but I was able to continue to cycle and when Ian bought me a folding stick which would go in my saddle bag I was able to do our local shopping. Pat Williams sometimes took me to the market by car so I was able to do shopping there. In February 1990 the Doctor sent me to Stepping Hill Hospital for tests and the only advantage of that was the one of the helpers took me in a wheelchair to visit Madge Lee who was in the psychiatric ward after a time of severe depression. We continued to have house group here and I continued with day care and much visiting.

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1990

In June 1990 we decided to go by train to Llandudno and were able to book a nice B &B there. I couldn’t walk much but we enjoyed it and Dad had extra walks by the sea. From there we got a taxi and had a week at Plas-y-coed, which we enjoyed very much. We celebrated 50 years since our engagement by a walk along the sea front, but I twisted my foot and walking became more difficult again. When we got home again I went to see the physiotherapist at St Thomas’ Hospital and she helped me a lot. I loved going to St Thomas for physio because I travelled down with others who were in need and was able to visit friends from Church who were patients there. Some of the time I went twice a week and other times I didn’t go at all as they felt I was not improving. I continued to have a house group here and to preach when planned, but I had to sit in the pulpit on a high chair and get someone else to dedicate the collection. That Christmas, Stephen and family went to Zimbabwe and we had Christmas here with the family.

I forgot to mention that in May 1990 my University friend planned a reunion at Cambridge. I was able to visit Helen and family for two days and then on the way home I broke my journey at Oxford. Sarah Tan met me at Oxford station and took me to pick up Nora in the village of Benson. Terence was quite happy to look after himself and we had a very happy journey and a wonderful time together with Heff and Kurt in their beautiful home and garden. It had been built during the war when you were not allowed to build big houses, so it was built as two houses and gardens for two lecturers. After the war the other lecturer moved so the Lipsteins had the whole house and garden. Kurt was German so it must have been difficult during the war. He was over 80 but still working. In the University Heff too was still very active and still cycling. Nora found walking difficult and was impressed with my folding stick and bought herself one soon after. She was almost blind so gave me lots of information about talking books, etc. but we have been fortunate and I haven’t needed that. Sarah Tan enjoyed being with us all. On Sunday morning we all walked to King’s College Chapel for the morning service and I was very thankful that I could walk with the help of my stick and steel corset. Sarah again gook Nora home and then took me to Oxford Station and Rachel met me at Stockport.

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1991

Julia’s wedding was planned for Easter Saturday in Stamford and we were all invited but I felt it would be too difficult for me. Stephen had again asked Dad to take the Maundy Thursday and Easter Communion services and Helen and family had planned to come straight on here after the wedding. I decided to come home on my own to be here to welcome Helen and family. Looking back three years later, I am amazed that I managed. I got home and cycled to Marple to buy vegetables etc. and got everything ready for the family. Dad came home by train on the Monday morning.

When we started to decide about our June holiday we discovered that Sarah Tan was trying to arrange for the eighty year olds to have a second re-union in her home in Oxford. I also realised that Mark was to be received in Membership at a Conference Confirmation service at Marple in June and I didn’t want to miss that so we decided on a May holiday. Whenever I had been at Methodist Hotels people had told me that the Park Paignton was the best, so we rang up and booked there from 6.5.91. Our taxi turned up at 8.30 for a 9.30 train in Stockport. Unfortunately for us there had been an accident at Hazel Grove and all the roads were blocked with extra traffic and by 9.30 we were only half way to Stockport so we asked our driver to bring us home. The next morning Rachel took us to Rose Hill Station on her way to school and we changed on to the Exeter train at Piccadilly Station. It was a long slow journey but we finally arrived at the Park. After the evening meal people were playing carpet bowls so I joined in. When my turn came I was playing against Ted Roper. He was very friendly and is still writing to us. He and his wife Marjorie live near Derby and his daughter is a Methodist Minister.

We had decided not to have a midday meal. The weather was very kind to us and we managed to walk along the coast most days and also had a good coach trip. One day there was a coach to a coffee morning and sale at a Church south of Paignton. When I met the Minister there and he asked my name he said “Are you related to Andrew?” I think he had been at Northampton.

Just before it was time for our return journey, the railway lines had been put out of action and there were no trains through Exeter so we had to go on a very small line and eventually got through Bath to Bristol and at last reached Stockport.

The following week Dad had his cataract removed and when he came home the next morning he could see everything including the pattern on the carpet.

At the beginning of June I got a train to Oxford where Sarah Tan met me and took me to her home where again I met up with my friends Nancy, Heff and Nora. We had a lovely time together, though we were all a year older. On Sunday morning we all went to Church in Oxford and in the afternoon Sarah took Heff to get her coach back to Cambridge and me to the station to get a train to Wokingham. It all worked out well and Barry and Chris met me at Wokingham, I stayed until Wednesday morning. At Helen’s I had a phone call from Dad to say Andrew was coming to Heathrow the following week for an interview at Kingswood School and to see Churches needing a minister for the following year. I was so thankful we had had our holiday in May. Andrew had a very busy ten days but managed a little time here showing us his video of the places he had visited. He was so exhausted that Stephen took him to Greasby on his last day and the people there were sure he was right for them and he felt it was right for him.

The following Sunday we had the Conference Confirmation Service here and I had quite a lot of services and meetings and had another visit to Wokingham. We felt we would like to see Greasby as we had never been to the Wirral, so I rang up the Sisters of Jesus Way. We took our bikes on the train and had quite a job changing trains at Manchester. Red Acres, the Sisters’ House was up a very steep hill but it was lovely when we got there. We put our bikes in their big garage and they gave us maps to use and showed us the way to Greasby so we had a good look round and thought it a lovely place for a family to live. We didn’t see any one to speak to but the Sisters told us Greasby was the best Church of their circuit.

We cycled along a rough track near the sea (an old railway line) and came to a country park but on the way back Dad had a puncture and had to walk. He managed to buy something to help to mend it and the Sisters were very helpful.

All this time I was busy with meetings, services and visiting as usual and Dad wanted to do a lot of decorating and gardening ready for Andrew and family being here before Christmas. Stephen was busy candidating.

On Sunday December 8^th, Dad wasn’t feeling very well. When I was asking him about it I suddenly noticed that he was talking like his Mother did and I thought perhaps he had had a stroke. I went to 49 and talked to Rachel and she rang for a Doctor and when he came he said it was a stroke. The next day his own doctor came but he didn’t do anything. He had a terrible cough and was sent for X-rays.

Ten days after Dad’s first stroke, Stephen and family arrived here in his Church minibus with Andrew and family. How wonderful it was to see them all well and happy. The children settled in well with James and David in our bedroom and Joanna and Deborah in the study. I slept on their settee and Dad had our folding bed in the lounge. After Christmas they went to Devon and then settled in Caversham in time for three of them starting at school.

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1992.

The first half term was as busy as ever. On the half term Saturday, I went shopping as usual but came home with a very black eye and my glasses shattered and concussion so that I never knew what happened. Rachel thought she should take me to Stockport Infirmary and the doctor there said I should stay in so Rachel came home for clothes for me. I was in hospital for four days and quite confused. As it was half term, both Andrew and Stephen were able to visit.

I was soon as busy as ever and so was Dad. Helen and family came for Easter and Dad had his second stroke. This was more severe than the first and affected his speech a lot and he lost the sight of his right eye. After some time he was sent to St Thomas’ hospital and the speech therapist visited him here. He still had a terrible cough as a result of the stroke and he had to have all his coffee etc. thickened. The speech therapist gave him exercises to practise but he wasn’t able to read them. I used to read letters to him and parts of the Recorder and I had to deal with finances. Andrew had an operation at the Royal Berkshire Hospital and had deputation all over the place, including here, and several visits to Greasby. He finally collected his furniture from there on August 18^th.

During September, Andrew and Margaret invited us to go to Greasby. Unfortunately I had a fall when I was putting the gas fire on and hit my head on the gas fire! The folk at Greasby – especially Gladys – were very sympathetic and trying to look after me all the time. Andrew brought us home through Liverpool. It was a very happy time.

On November 22^nd I cycled to Church as usual. On the way home I got off my bike to cross the Stockport Road and fell heavily on my left hip. Someone got me to a nearby shelter and called an ambulance which took me straight to the Infirmary. A friend from Church took my bike home and called to tell Dad. Rachel and family had take S & J to Chester Zoo for a birthday outing, but she came down when they got back. I had already arranged for a taxi to take Dad for an appointment at Stepping Hill on Wednesday 25^th at 2pm. He was given laser treatment. Both Andrew and Rachel went to collect him from hospital and the next day he could see to read, which made it much easier for him to look after himself.

On the Tuesday I had an operation to pin my hip and it had a devastating effect on my brain so that I was imagining terrible things and didn’t know where I was. I was trying to finish an Aran jumper for Elizabeth and was very confused. Rachel must have spent a lot of time bringing Dad in to visit me. I got them to bring my Christmas letters in so that I could write to my friends but I have no idea what the letters were like. After some time I was encouraged to walk with a frame and was told that the more I practised, the quicker I would get out of hospital. They brought me crutches to try but the pain was so bad, so I only used the frame. On 12^th December, after eighteen days in hospital, I was brought home and slept in my bed in the dining room where I have been ever since, apart from a few visits.

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1993

On January 21^st I had to go by ambulance to the fracture clinic and after that I had shingles, and I have no recollection of that time, I really didn’t know who I was or where I was and I must have been very difficult to look after. Apparently one day I went down the two steps to the lower lounge and another day I went out of the front door and walked up the drive. I could hardly believe it when Dad told me that as I couldn’t do it with my frame. I remembered about the crutches I had tried in hospital, but didn’t know how to get some. Then Dad remembered I had a name and number in the phone book and he arranged for someone to come to see me.

Stephen and family came here for Easter and Sue helped me to learn to walk with my two long crutches. As they were leaving the next day, the ambulance came to take me to St Thomas’ hospital to be measured for another steel corset. I came home in a one man ambulance and was able to walk into the house from the ambulance. Now I could get myself out of the door it was possible to go to Church in Rachel’s car and possible to arrange for a taxi to take us on holiday, so I rang Palm Court and rang taxis that take payment by traffic tokens. We went to Palm Court from June 7-21. We really had a wonderful holiday and we had borrowed a wheelchair and walked by the sea every day and went to Church both Sundays and took part in prayers etc. in the house. Rachel and Sarah came over to join us on the Saturday. We got back in time for my cataract operation but it had been postponed until August. In August it was again postponed until December. In December I had pleurisy and was on antibiotics so I was not allowed to go for the operation. I was given another date, but again I had pleurisy and was on antibiotics. At that time Mrs Jennifer Rees Jones was speaking at a Marple Christian forum meeting. She had been miraculously cured. I had read her book about her experiences and when I spoke to her I felt that my eyes were much better so I didn’t ask for another date for my cataract operation.

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July 1994

So the months and years go by. In July 93 Andrew took us to stay with the family in Greasby and took us to see nursing homes at Hoylake and Chester. We liked the homes and filled in forms, but we both prefer to keep busy and Rachel is happy to do our shopping and other jobs and so we are still here. This year we again went to Palm Court in June, after having visited Stephen and Sue in Bristol and Andrew and Margaret in Greasby.

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June1995

A happy day today with Stephen Sue, Peter, Hannah and Rebecca visiting us on their way home from a few days’ caravan holiday at Heather’s home near Bakewell. Stephen and family had arrived there on Sunday evening and all of them went to the Cliff College meetings on the holiday Monday. Andrew and family were also caravanning there and they all had a happy time together.

Stephen has taken some of my early memories and hopes to photocopy them.

I am at present walking with great difficulty and being very forgetful but we are still very much enjoying our own home. Mark, Jonathan and Susanna and Rachel and Ian spent some time here with them.

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June 1996

Andrew collected our things and took us by car to Starr Hills Home for the aged, Ansdell Road South, Lytham St Annes. He had lunch with us and then went to find his digs for Conference.

We were very comfortable and very well looked after. Dad took me for a walk in my wheelchair. We had a mid week service. Andrew visited us most evenings.

We had a lift to a service on Sunday morning and in the afternoon Stephen came and took us to Raikes Parade Service for his ordination. Rachel, Ian and Susanna also came.

It was a wonderful service. Andrew took part and Sue’s parents and many of their friends were also there. On Monday morning Stephen, Sue, Peter, Hannah and Rebecca all visited us. They saw the special bath which I had had a bath in. They went home via Gloucester as Peter was to stay there in a doctor’s home in preparation for doing a medical degree. We had a second very relaxed week and when Conference finished on Saturday June 29, Andrew came and collected us and took us home.

In July Mark and Anna arrived here from Poland and had happy times playing badminton on our lawn. Mark did a course on teaching English overseas at Manchester University. Jonathan made friends with a nurse called Chris. When Mark and Anna returned to Poland, Jonathan went with them and Chris went out by plane to join them later.