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Mercy run

I remember being a very young child and staying with an Aunt in Ovington. My family was from Sheffield and we were staying in Northumerland to avoid the heavy bombing in Sheffield. My baby brother fell ill while we were there and seemed in a very bad way. My cousin that we were staying with (she was 15 at the time) set out to run from Ovington to Prudhoe. When she got there no doctor could be found and she ran along the banks of the river to Stocksfield.

By the time she got there she was in an exhausted state and someone took her to the big house where a Harley Street doctor was staying – he came back with her – told us that it was meningitis and that we all had to get down on our knees and pray because he might not get through the night. We did and the following morning he was well enough to be transferred to hospital in Walkergate.

Some time after a magnificent coach-built pram arrived for my brother – sent apparently by the doctor – the story was that he was a friend of no less a person than Lady Eden and that the pram he sent was none other than the one that Anthony Eden had been wheeled about in as a boy!

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