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This story has been recorded by a Radio Bristol Peoples’ War volunteer and permission has been given by Doris Crane.

I am Doris Crane (nee Jarrett) and I was born on 7 November 1918. I was almost 21 when the Second World War was declared on 3/9/39 and at that time I lived with my parents and five siblings at 17 Montague Hill, Kingsdown, Bristol. It was a large terraced house with the kitchen below street level (you could see the feet of passers by from the kitchen) there were 176 stairs to the top of the house. Initially my parents Florence and Gordon Jarrett rented the house for 2 shillings and six old pence per week (2/6) but later they bought the house. Montague Hill was next to the city centre and because of this we experienced and suffered from the Bristol city bombing.

When the war started I was a tailoress working at Todds in Old Market, Bristol,
about a mile or so from where I lived. This work made me exempt from war work as we made much needed servicemen’s uniforms, they were in such need we were working from 8.00am until 8.00pm. We girls used to put notes in the pockets of the trousers we made and sometimes the serviceman who eventually got the uniform trousers would respond to our notes by sending us sweets which we all shared.

It was whilst I was working at Todds that I met Cary Grant, the famous Hollywood actor. His father Mr Leach was a trouser presser at Todds. He was such a small man he had to stand on an orange box in order to reach the pressing table and he swore like a trooper! One day his famous son came to visit his father at work. I remember the windows were blacked out during his visit and there were a lot of policemen about. We all had our photographs taken with Cary Grant and I still have that photograph.

I remember one night when we had just left work about 6.00pm Todds took a direct hit from an incendiary bomb which flattened the premises and this changed my war. A while before this Todds had taken over a corset factory in Bath, the next town about 12 miles from Bristol, and all the girls were sent there to work. We travelled by train from Bristol Temple Meads station at a cost of six pence (6d) each way.

Corset making was not exempt work so in 1940 I was sent to work at the aeroplane works at Filton about five miles NW of Bristol, I travelled on the bus with a neighbour who also worked there. It was here I learned to make nuts and bolts, the only girl in a team with seven men. We worked shifts 6-2, 2-10 and a night shift. We wore overalls as everything was covered in machine oil. We were on piecework which meant we were paid according to our output i.e. the higher our output the higher our pay so we were all dependant on the next shift working as fast as us. Every Friday our reward arrived in a brown paper packet. I remember it as a happy place to work.

When war started I was courting, I married Harry Crane from Stanton Drew, Somerset, in 1939 a week after he registered for the armed forces. My wedding dress cost 2/6 (2 shillings and sixpence) which I got by buying 6d stamps at the Forget-me-Not shop. Rationing and scarcity of food prevented us from having a wedding cake we had a bread pudding instead! Harry was posted to the Somerset Light Infantry where he became a red cap.

I left the aeroplane works at Filton in September1941 when I was 9 months pregnant with my first child Joan. The day after I left work I caught the bus alone to visit Tower Hill clinic in Old Market for my last check-up prior to the imminent birth of my baby as the bus got to Old Market street it was struck by an incendiary bomb that blew the back of the bus off and the vehicle was on fire. Fortunately I was sitting downstairs at the front of the bus and escaped without injury. I remember I was carrying my specimen for the clinic in a bottle in my hand and all I thought was to hold on tightly to it, I was so busy concentrating on this that I didn’t even scream, I and the specimen reached the clinic, a short distance away, safely.

My daughter was born 2 days after the bus incident she weighed just 2 pounds and miraculously survived. Harry was given leave at the time of the birth. I remained in hospital a month with seriously high blood pressure and Joan remained 2 weeks longer for her weight to improve. Even when I was in hospital it was struck by a bomb and we new mums beds were housed in the corridors. When Joan came home we fed her with a fountain pen filler on Cow & Gate dried milk and the nurse called every day.

Our next door neighbours allowed us to share their Anderson shelter so about 3.00pm every afternoon we began getting together the things we would need during the night time bombings of Bristol. We had to take everything as we did not know when we would next be able to get back home. There was so much stuff to take for a small baby not least of which was a big container which was a gas mask for a baby.

I eventually went back to work in a little shop called Hodges which sold just about everything. I continued to live at my parents’ house after my marriage
and my mother looked after Joan whilst I was at work. One day when I was coming up the hill to my home a man was leaning against the railings smoking a cigarette and he asked me the way to the BRI (Bristol Royal Infirmary) I told him, but I was suspicious of his accent. After thinking about it I went down to the central police station, Bridewell, and reported the matter. The man was still by the railings when I and the police got there and they took him away. The police came back a few days later to say the man was a German and had been taken into custody. I never found out who he was, where he came from or what he was doing on Montague Hill, Bristol.

It was whilst I was at the shop one afternoon and Joan was at home with my mother that a bomb struck our house, thankfully no one was hurt. As a result of the house receiving a direct hit we had to leave it. My parents received £15 in compensation for the house; they were told it was either that or return to the house and bear the cost of demolition and clearance.

Many times I stood on the front doorstep and heard and saw the bombers overhead. I saw the bombing of Old Market the night the department store John Lewis received a direct hit completely flattening it to the ground. It used to be next to the Empire Cinema (known as the ‘Bug House’ admission 2d) in Old Market St.

Other things I remember were
® The dances with the American GIs. Harry didn’t like dancing but he didn’t mind me going. I once won a cup for dancing.
® Food Rationing when the weekly ration per adult was 2 ounces cheese and margarine, 2 sausages, powdered egg and milk. There was orange juice and a small bottle of milk for children. Clothes and shoe coupons.
® Soap powder called ‘Erzall’
® 28 pound of coal which we collected in a pram from a coal yard in St Pauls
® NO bananas
® Packets of Oxo 3d and I collected wrappers and got a Betty Oxo rag doll for Joan
® No toilet paper we used newspaper
® If you had a hole in your stocking you painted your leg the same colour so that the hole didn’t show
® We wore paper knickers!
® We had a gramophone with a huge horn and bought records at 3d each, but we often got home to find we had cracked the record.
® A battery wireless on which we listened to the war news
® Our lighting at Montague Hill was gas lighting operated with 2 chains and we paid for it with a 1d in the slot metre, sometimes when it was emptied there was a 2d refund!
® Going to Cockle Jones on The Centre and buying 1d worth of cockles which we strained through a battered straw Brownies hat!

Doris Crane (nee Jarrett)

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