大象传媒

Part two of an edited oral history interview with Mrs. Florence Wilkinson conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum.

鈥淥h, very often you鈥檇 lose your gas, water and electricity. I know one day I had a little half shoulder of lamb, only a little tiny one, a whole weeks ration and I bought this little piece of lamb and I鈥檇 got nowhere to cook it because the gas had gone. So I had an open fire in the sitting room 鈥� so I put the frying pan on the fire and eventually I managed to get a bit of meat off it. Another time I had a - I think it might have been an egg boiler, it was on a little metal stand and it had three or four pieces and then a bowl shaped piece made of metal on the top and you put water in that and put an egg in that and you could boil an egg in that. One egg per week! I don鈥檛 know if that was it鈥檚 original purpose but it boiled eggs beautifully.

Oh, you always queued and of course in those days you queued for your butter and then you queued again for your cheese and then you queued for something else. There were nowhere near so many people. Now I made a cake, the recipe was in the newspaper and it was headed 鈥楩ood Facts鈥�, there used to be a little column. Well, this cake is called a 鈥榮pice鈥� cake, I can tell you what the recipe is. Well you take:

four ounces of sultanas
two ounces of fat, which could be margarine or lard
a teacupful of water
two ounces of sugar

you put them all in a saucepan and you brought them up to the boil and then you took it off the boil, off the gas to let it go cold, not stone cold but until all the heat had gone.

In a basin you had eight ounces of self raising flour and I think it was spice - at any rate and you added to it the contents of the saucepan, stirred it well. In the saucepan again you put two ounces of golden syrup and a teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda and a little milk and you mix it all thoroughly and then you put the contents of the saucepan into the rest of the ingredients and mix it thoroughly. You baked it in a slow oven for an hour. At the end of the hour you brought it out and it would be nicely browned.

Well the first time I made it was about 1942 and it really was good but the thing was if you wanted to buy golden syrup or if you wanted to buy sultanas you had to buy them on 鈥榩oints鈥� which were in your ration book and you had so many 鈥榩oints鈥� a month. So you had to ration yourself to whatever you wanted. So one month perhaps you could buy the sultanas and the next month you bought the golden syrup and then you could make the cake.

Well, the bombing got so bad, this was about June 1944, after my son had been born, I mean we didn鈥檛 get any sleep for nights. We were spending our nights in the shelter and my mother decided that I ought to go away. It was bad then. As we were leaving, my mother was with me then, we were at Liverpool Street Station just when they were bombing London and the girl porters - oh, yes they had girl porters when all the men were called-up. So I had a girl porter and I remember two of the girls crawling under a luggage trolly on the platform, I mean if they鈥檇 been bombed they鈥檇 have been flattened. But just as the train was going out 鈥� oh, that was awful!

We went to Pepper Lane, Thurston. It was near Bury St. Emunds, it was five miles out of Bury and it was just a lonely village, a quiet lonely village, it isn鈥檛 any longer but it was a very quiet village. We stayed with my father鈥檚 brother, Harry. It was very rural. We had to go to a little hut in the garden, you know. Oh, it was quiet in Pepper Lane! It was marvellous, we could go to sleep every night you know. I remember I was still at Thurston and walking towards the station one morning putting David in the pram, I was going there for something, I forget what and I heard on the radio that 鈥� someone met me and said, 鈥楶aris has been liberated!鈥� (25th August 1944). I thought that was wonderful and we were walking along a lot faster then.
Yes it was nice until the Americans came to an airfield in the next village. One morning they were all leaving on a flight to somewhere in Germany, bombing and two of them collided overhead. I heard this noise, oh, dear and of course with the baby 鈥� I rushed downstairs 鈥� a thatched cottage we were staying in. And of course all the jeeps were all rushing the down the lane to this site where the two had collided of course everybody was killed. One man, they didn鈥檛 find him for several weeks. His body was in the middle of a cornfield and when they were reaping the corn they found him there. Very sad!

My two married cousins, one of them had lent me her pram and of course her child was needing the pram back again because the winter was coming and I said to my mother, 鈥榃hat can we do?鈥� (We didn鈥檛 have any air raids or anything like that until they started sending over the V bombs.) So she said, 鈥極h, well we might as well go back. We might as well be bombed at home as bombed over here鈥� because they were sending them over Anglia then, they were getting them in Bury St.Edmunds and March and all places round about so that鈥檚 what decided us.

So back in London we had the V bombs - they came over 鈥� and you heard it go over and then it stopped and then you would go in the shelter because it would fall immediately. Yes, all the doors and windows were blown off in my house and in my parent鈥檚 house with the blast from the bombs from the bomb, all broken glass. We had one elderly man came to do the repairs! I remember he came to my house in Williams Lane and he鈥檇 got to put new windows in because they鈥檇 all gone and he said, 鈥極h, I can鈥檛 climb up a ladder鈥� I said, 鈥榟ow are you going to replace them?鈥� 鈥榃ell I鈥檒l go in your bedroom鈥� so he came in my bedroom to put the window in. He spent hours up there, I reckon he went to bed! Otherwise you just had a piece of cardboard or something up at the window. We were mostly in the house and if you heard it come over you rushed out into the shelter. But of course you never knew, I mean sometimes the air raid warning would go on for hours and hours and you would say, 鈥業 can鈥檛 stand it!鈥� And you think, oh it鈥檚 quiet now, I鈥檒l be alright now, the air raid siren would go to the 鈥楢ll Clear鈥� and then the next minute another would come over. Oh, dear it was dreadful!

Of course you didn鈥檛 hear the big bombs, the V2 rockets come over - you only heard them after they鈥檇 arrived. We didn鈥檛 have any near us at all, they mostly were south east London because they demolished a lot before they got here. I remember one must have fallen on a Woolworths or a big store somewhere in the Lewisham area and killed ever so many people because they didn鈥檛 hear it coming.

Oh, yes you always felt something was going to happen, the Second Front, any minute now! Then of course it was put off for a day because the weather was bad. Yes, you just saw loads of military vehicles going through and you thought, oh something鈥檚 going on.

And then of course when the war ended David was a year old and Frank came home and the first thing that everybody did was to take their blackout blinds down. Oh, that was wonderful, it really was. All the children had a tea party in the road, it was a little cul de sac in which we lived then and I remember I took David out in his high chair and he was banging away on the table. We saved our rations. It鈥檚 amazing the things that people saved. We brought these tins out, oh, I鈥檝e got so and so and I鈥檝e got so and so, we鈥檇 all saved something.鈥�

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