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Mrs Horseman lived in North London during the war, at New Southgate with her parents. She was sixteen when war broke out. Before the outbreak of war she was training to be a tailoress with a Jewish family. The Jewish family had gone on holiday to America at the time war was announced and refused to come back to England, while it was at war, so Mrs Horseman went to work in a surgical dressing factory. They made soldiers uniforms there. She stayed at the factory until 1945. The factory was positioned in the fight path of German bombers travelling to bomb Hatfield (where the ammunitions were made). There was a ‘fire watching’ rota, so every few days she would have go to the factory at night to watch out for German Bombers. Mrs Horseman remembers one lunch time German Planes flew over the factory on the way to Hatfield the planes had been so low that she could see the pilots.

During the war Mrs Horseman’s family home was bombed. A bomb that looked like two dustbins suspended in a parachute, which she referred to as a ‘land mine’ fell near her house. The house took six months to be rebuilt, the family moved into a flat temporarily. She can remember her front door had been forced of its hinges by the explosion so the black landing light was showing from the street, the black out warden shouted to them to turn the light off, but there was an exploded gas main burning just down the road. Thirty people had been killed by the explosion, the family had been lucky that the blast had gone the opposite way to their house.

She had to leave her house at six thirty in the morning and returned at seven thirty, she remembers shrapnel falling around her when she walked home at night.

She had two brothers one was an artillery captain. The other brother was an air force cadet before the war had started, but he couldn’t fly due to bad hearing, when war started he worked repairing planes he worked at Biggin Hill for a while.

The food shortage was hard; they had a small garden, in which they grew spinach and some soft fruit. She was a regular at the greengrocers and would sometimes find a banana or orange put in her bag of potatoes. The worst food she remembers were dried eggs, she missed meat the most.

V.E. day was a very big affair in London, the spirit was tremendous. She went with a party with who is now her husband. After the war she completed her training as a tailoress and worked with her husband for two years (before they got married). He was a tailor too; they worked for Savile Row on Carnaby Street.

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