大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War website by Julia Shuvalova for GMR Actiondesk on behalf of Joyce Hilton and has been added with her permission. The author is fully aware of the terms and conditions of the site.

CHAPTER 3 - Evacuation - Southport Here We Come

Dad begged my mother to take us to safety before he returned to his camp and during the second night of the blitz, when Aunty Edna and Derek came across to our shelter, plans were made to leave next day. Uncle Arthur had relatives at Southport and that was where we were to go. I don't know how Mum got word to our Grandparents but she found a way. On the morning of the 24th we were out early with as many possessions as we could carry. I kissed the house good-bye and that was that. We never lived there again. As we walked to Victoria Station fires continued to burn along Deansgate. Many other people were carrying their belongings one family even carrying a mattress!

I don't remember the journey but it was amazing that the buses and trains were running. It obviously took more than 'Leaves on the line' to stop the trains in those days. We arrived safely at the 'safe' house in Southport. Although we didn't know them, Uncle Arthur's cousins were welcoming and took us in but it was crowded and we had to sleep top to toe, four to a bed! They had a son who was a pilot officer in the RAF and they talked about him frequently, obviously a constant worry.

We could only stay with the Edwards family temporarily and soon we moved into a guest house on the promenade. It was a tall, ugly house. There was a huge table in the middle of the dining room cum lounge and a very small fire in the grate. There were many other evacuees from Liverpool living there including six Chinese doctors; extremely polite young men. There was snow on the nearby beach and they made a snowman for Norma.

It was bitterly cold. We shivered between cotton sheets in our attic bedroom and wore everything we could in bed including gloves and pixie hats. Dad's sister Mary came and shared our bed. What we ate I can't remember but Christmas wasn't at all celebrated, that's for sure. Being safe and alive was all that mattered. We could hear the raids over Liverpool along the coast. A land mine fell into a tree on Lord Street and hung suspended.

I was enrolled at a nearby school; Christchurch. We were all evacuees, and we had a lovely teacher. I was happy there and soon made friends. Surprisingly I was still allowed to sit for the scholarship. The teacher was very encouraging and asked the class to wish me well. I sat the first part, called the preliminary, at another school and apparently I passed, but we received a letter from Southport Education to say that as we were not ratepayers I couldn't take up my scholarship. It couldn't happen today, but this was wartime and we weren't 'official' evacuees. My mother had too much to cope with to think about taking the matter further.

During our three years of exile I went to three schools. The one after Christchurch and before Birkdale Secondary Modern was awful. I hated that school because I was made to feel an outsider although it was Norma's first school and she was quite happy there. Later, at Birkdale, I got on fine with girls who had been there and had been quite hostile. Strange how kids can be cruel one minute, for no real reason, and then be fine the next. I suppose it is all just a matter of growing up. I had three years at Birkdale Secondary School and loved it. It was an excellent school; very modern with lovely playing fields. The curriculum was apparently very similar to that at a Grammar School. I proudly wore my blazer and cap which were green and gold. All the girls at school around Southport wore caps and very smart they were too.

The schools in those days were often segregated, all girls or all boys, even in the infants! Back in Salford the school had both boys and girls halves but with separate classes and even playgrounds. The only time we mixed (quite innocently of course) was in the basement of the school during air raid practice where we sat until the all clear. The teachers were all 'Maiden ladies', none being married. In fact if they got married they had to leave! Very strange attitudes by today's standards. Before the war one of my favourite teachers (Miss Hawkins) had to leave when she married one of the Salford 'Mounted Police' (not an ideal place for horses these days). Throughout my time at Birkdale I sat next to a local girl called Eileen Johnson. We became firm friends and still keep in touch to this day.

After a while Mum and Aunty Edna found a house to rent in Birkdale; a large detached house in a good area, with attics and cellars, 4 Welbeck Road. A fellow resident at the Southport guest house, Miss Stephens, asked if she could go with us. She was a spinster lady from Liverpool and was something of a mystery to us. Now that we had proper accommodation we moved our furniture up from Salford. Neither we nor Aunty Edna had much furniture and what we had looked lost in the big rooms. so Mum and Aunty Edna bought curtains, carpets and a huge sideboard at a sale room (where the money came from I don't know). The other residents must have been dismayed to see a furniture van from Salford! The classic slum! If they hated us being there, I certainly hated living there. We never saw a neighbour, although I'm sure they saw us from behind their net curtains. Worst of all I had begun to miss my friends back home in Salford.

Money was very tight and we were far worse off than we had been before the war. Dad had been self-employed as a back-street 'Turf accountant', literally running his 'office' (his 'pitch') from the back yard of a house. Punters would come down the back alley and he would stand on a stool taking bets over the wall. Betting was illegal in those days (it only became legal in 1961 in fact when Dad opened his shop on Eccles New Road) and it was a slightly perilous occupation. A 'bookies runner' was usually employed to watch out for the police, doing a 'runner' and sometimes get himself arrested! Not a great career.

When I started at Seedley Council School in Salford at the age of four, I remember the teacher asking me what my Dad did, and I said, in front of the whole class, "He鈥檚 a bookie on a wall Miss!" I expect she was a bit bemused. Anyway, for the duration of the war a friend of Dad's, also a bookie and too old to join the forces, ran the business for him. We hardly had any money from it, however, and Dad's Air Force pay, which was sent to Mum, was only 10/- (50p) a week. As a result she had to work all through the war, as did Aunty Edna, each looking after the other's children.

Our house became a refuge. Relations came and stayed for a while to get away from the war. Uncle Les was in the RAF and while we were at Birkdale he got married to a girl called Margaret he had met while stationed in Staffordshire. Margaret was one of those who came to stay, because space was so limited she had to share my bed! By comparison, Miss Stephens had a large and comfortable bed-sit upstairs. Derek was convinced she was a spy and watched her every move. She had a married 'boy friend' who was an officer in the Merchant Navy. He brought things we never usually saw like fruit.

Rationing was now very serious. The first 'basic' ration book was introduced in January 1940. These were our rations for the week:

* 4oz bacon or ham
* 8oz sugar
* 2oz tea
* 4oz butter
* 2oz cooking fat or margarine
* Meat to the value of 1s 10d (around 9p) usually taken as corned beef

Some children had never seen a banana! I remember a single banana being given by a seaman for a church fund's raffle - it raised 12 shillings!

The second form of rationing was the special 'pink book'. Each family was given coupons to the value of 16 points every four weeks. Families collected points to buy ' luxury ' items. Apart from regular food, we had ration books for sweets, clothing and petrol (only available in special circumstances). We never saw sweets and bought carrots, cocoa and sugar instead. You would rarely see a fat person and we were very fit and slim at the end of the war.

Shopping was a long and laborious job and we joined any queue, regardless of what it was for. Our Mothers did wonders with meagre rations making appetising meals out of very little meat and plenty of vegetables. We made cheese with sour milk. We boiled ends of soap to make new soap. Clothes were unpicked, wool redyed and used again. Thrift was a by-word. As a small girl at my Salford school at the start of the war I was given a huge amount of wool to knit a sweater for an airman, because I said I could knit. It was a mammoth task for a ten year old to undertake and I never did manage it. I'm ashamed to say I sold the wool to Uncle Arthur's mother who came to live at the house in Birkdale.

New clothes were often bought with a Co-Op 'cheque', when you had enough coupons that is, which was paid for weekly to a collector who came to the house. The cheques could only be used at the Co-Op, but that wasn't a problem as there were many in Salford and Manchester. The Lands Department Store on Regent Road, which sold everything from clothes and shoes to toys and household goods, also did their own 'cheques'. It was always a little demeaning paying using cheques rather than cash but we had no choice. This form of buying by instalments was the precursor to Catalogue Shopping, which was already common in the States but of course didn't have the same stigma attached to it. On one occasion Mum answered an advert in the Southport paper and bought second-hand clothing for me. They didn't really fit properly and were hardly the height of fashion but pride didn't come into it; I had outgrown my own clothes and that was it!

One good thing about living at 4 Welbeck Road was that we were never lonely. The house was always full, in fact it was like a commune. Despite the crowding I don't remember many conflicts. We shared a big old fashioned stove that was already there, and cooked at different times. Dad and Uncle Arthur came home on leave whenever they could. Aunty Edna let her sitting room to a very pleasant young woman, a civil servant who had been drafted to Southport to work in a big hotel taken over by the Civil Service for the duration of the war. When her sailor husband came home on leave I remember there being much laughter as he chased her around the room.

Later Uncle Arthur's mother and father moved in and various other family members of theirs and ours came and went. Miss Stephen's sister and her policeman husband and children came too from time to time to get away from Liverpool which was having a rough time from Hitler. A cousin of Uncle Arthur's stayed with us during her pregnancy and had her baby there. She too was from Salford and her husband had been killed in the army. She was a very sweet young woman. Mum started working at the Scarisbrook Hotel as a waitress. It fitted in with Norma and I and brought in badly needed money. Southport was full of members of the forces on leave and fortunately they were generous with their tips. Mum had a big pocket on her apron and she emptied it out on the table every night. Sixpences and threepenny bits. Every few weeks, when we had enough money, Mum would say "We can go to Salford". What a joy to go home and see Granny and Granddad. School friends would sneer about dirty old Salford, but I defended it strenuously and could have kissed the ground when we arrived back at Chapel Street Station.

Dear Granny and Granddad; they must have been lonely during those days. All their sons were away in the forces except Harold, their youngest who had been evacuated on his own to Lancaster. They survived all the raids and even spent a night in a cinema while an unexploded bomb was dealt with in their street. Uncle Stan recalls searching for them, finding them in the cinema and bringing them fish and chips. Gran wrote every week and sent me a 1/- postal order for spends, but it always went on some item of food.

Norma and I occasionally went to the pictures in Southport with friends, travelling on the electric train that ran between Liverpool and Southport. It was only one stop to Southport and the station was very convenient for our house. In different circumstances I would probably have liked living there. Derek and I spent hours rowing on the Marine Lake and enjoying some of the more affordable pleasures that were still available. Once I saw Betty Driver, of Coronation Street fame, singing with Billy Beavan's Band at an outdoor concert.

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