大象传媒

Emerald Street - Strictly personal. 1939 - 1945.
by Tony Redman

My claim to fame is that I must be one of the youngest people to have lived through the whole of the second world war and, although I do not truly remember much about it, several events occurred which affect my life to this day.
My date of birth is 21st July 1939, only about six weeks before war was declared.

My father's birth date was 2nd November 1910, making him 29 when hostilities began. My mother's birth date was 31st October 1914. and they met when he was the butcher's boy at Bill Till's in Woodgate, Leicester. He continued working there as a time served butcher until he joined the Royal Army Service Corps and, as a skilled and experienced butcher, he was quickly promoted to sergeant.

We lived in an area of Leicester which was demolished in 1949, an area bounded by Woodgate and Abbey Gate and Blackbird Road. The streets were named after jewels, Ruby, Diamond, Crystal, Opal and Emerald Street, where we lived, in a tiny terraced cottage with three up and three down. The kitchen had a stone sink with a cold-water pump and two outside lavatories between three houses.

Mother's name was Emma and father's name was John Thomas Hallam, known always as Jack.
My elder brother was also called John Thomas Hallam, always called John. He was four years older than me. I was called Tony Frederick, Frederick after my grandfather, and Tony because my mum did not want people calling me by a shortened form of Anthony. First I was christened at the parish church of Saint Leonard at the corner of Littleton Street and Woodgate opposite the pawnshop. A short time later I was baptised at the Abbey Gate Baptist chapel at the corner of Emerald Street and Abbey Gate. The chapel was a small round building partly under the shadow of the railway bridge, which crossed Abbey Gate towards the Great Central Station.

In 1942 we had a new baby when my little sister Monica arrived on the 26th February.
Later that year we both caught diphtheria which was bad news because, although penicillin had been developed before the war, all the limited stocks were being diverted, quite rightly, for the troops and the infant mortality rate had risen to 95%.
It seems they were able to treat the baby but my mother was told they could do nothing to save me and I would be dead by morning. They put me in a side room whilst my mother sat outside all night and prayed. When I was still alive in the morning they put me in isolation for the next sixteen weeks until they were sure I was no longer infectious. The place was called Groby Road Isolation Hospital. Somehow I seemed to recover in spite of the treatment because I believe I remember being in the nursery at Slater Street from the age of three to the age of five when I moved into the big school in the next room.

I do remember wearing the little smock fastened at the neck with a rubber button, which the curly haired cherub is sporting in the photograph. It brings back memories of lining up for doses of cod liver oil and concentrated orange juice all from the same spoon if my impressions are correct. About ten o'clock we had tiny bottles of milk, about one third of a pint with foil caps which we pierced with drinking straws and sucked until we reached the bottom when we competed to see who could suck the loudest to empty the last dregs of milk. On hot days the cream could be very thick and quite warm whilst, in the winter, there could be ice in the neck of the bottle.

At dinnertime we had to open the partition, which divided the two classrooms and push the tables two together facing each other to seat eight children, two on each side. We ate our food with a spoon and pusher - a sort of metal spade with the end flattened and tipped over to push the food onto the spoon. Little wonder, in my memory, everything was mashed. It probably was and it always smelled like carrots. The pudding was always tapioca. Then, after dinner, we had to clear the tables and push back the partition and have a sleep in the afternoon. We had rows of little truckle beds that folded like stretchers or deck chairs with a sort of hammock slung between the collapsible struts. I remember lying there wide awake and pretending to be asleep with my eyes tightly closed, then, when I thought the teacher was not looking, I opened one eye and gazed around the room, wondering why they were all sound asleep on such a lovely sunny afternoon.

The 6th April 1944 brought another bundle of joy in the shape of my baby sister, Joyce. Joy was short lived, however, because, in October my mum's mother, Harriett, died.

We lived at 42 Emerald Street whilst granddad Fred and grandma Harriett lived next door but one at number 38 with our Aunt Bett, who was unmarried.

Aunt Flo. had married in about 1936 and, with husband, George, rented a house at 16 Tewkesbury Street, where they lived happily until Flo's mother became increasingly frail and finally bed-ridden. Flo had to spend more time nursing her mother and less time looking after her husband until there came a point when he walked out and went to live with their best friend, who also left her husband, to set up home with George. They eventually had about six children together but Flo would not give George a divorce and they were never able to marry as they wished.

Harriett was buried at Gilroes on a bitterly cold October afternoon with flurries of snow. The ceremony was held at the graveside and our mum attended with the baby in her arms. although she had never really recovered from what had been a difficult birth. She developed a chill, which would not go away. Out of all the five daughters, she was the youngest and the smallest and, as I have been told, Harriett had always said: "When I go our Emma will go with me."

One night about six weeks later, she was alone in the house with the four children. She was coughing and, I remember, looked very sick but she put us to bed and went to bed herself. The must have been a Friday, because the next morning, as Flo told the story, John was playing happily at their house when Flo said to him about midday: "Ain't it about time you were going home for your dinner?"

John replied innocently: "No, me mam's not up yet. She's still asleep. I couldn't wake her." Flo said she knew at once something was wrong. Emma had four children. She was always up early and busy with the housework. Flo said she flew round to the house and rushed upstairs calling Emma's name and, of course, found her dead in bed. They called out the doctor and he diagnosed pneumonia.

It was November 1944. Jack, her husband was a sergeant in the Army. When Aunt Annie eventually traced him, he was in a tented hospital on Victoria Park suffering from meningitis. There was a war on. He could get compassionate leave for the funeral but there was no way he could look after the children and eventually, it was decided that Flo and Bett would take us in and look after us for the time being.

One day, shortly afterwards, I came home from school for my dinner at Aunty Flo's house and was playing on the floor with my crayons when Flo said: " Come on, you, it's time you were going back to school, you'll be late." I said: "No, it's not time yet.". My mum had taught me to tell the time. I went back to school when the big hand pointed straight down. Now it was only pointing across. However, Flo insisted and tearfully and angrily I put my coat on and stormed out of the house. As soon as I got outside the street was empty and eerily quiet. I turned the corner into Littleton Street and looked along its entire length. There was not a soul in sight, not a bike, not a car. I was puzzled but I knew the way to school and walked on a little way. I heard a door open behind me and then another on the opposite side of the street. I turned round to look. One old woman mouthed across to the other old woman: "That's him. That's the little lad that's lost his mother."

As I reached the top of the street there was a slight bend where the church had been built. The railings had been taken away for the war effort and I climbed up to walk along the wall. I looked back from my hiding place, peeping around the wall. They were all out on their steps, looking the other way. A funeral hearse glided by the end of the street, with wreaths on the top and a coffin inside, followed by two or three big black cars, all slowing down and stopping about outside our house. They were from the Co-op. We had everything from the Co-op. No one ever did tell me my mother had died. Perhaps they thought I would not notice.

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