大象传媒

I was born on 18th July 1919, in Bellevue Hospital, New York City, U.S.A.

My mother, Emily Elizabeth Ada Boyle, formerly Inseal, had married a Canadian war-wounded soldier named Patrick Boyle, whom she met in Hampstead. He swept her off her feet and they were married within six weeks of the meeting. The stories of taking her to the United States of America helped this whirlwind romance, but the fact was that he was born in Glasgow. His mother was Scottish, his father Irish. He had brothers and sisters of whom I know nothing except that they all did very well. One was an actress and one a doctor. I know nothing about my grandparents on the 'Boyle' side either, my father having been disowned by his family, this being due to his 'drinking.

He went to the U.S.A. when he was about 17 years old and worked in Hotels. His birthday was 20th July and he was 10 years older than my mother. He joined the Canadian Army at the outbreak of World War 1. He was a charming, good-looking man with blue eyes. After being wounded in France he came to England and was admitted to a hospital in Hampstead. This was when he met my mother. She did not know about the drink problem until sometime after their marriage, when, by then, she was living in a tenement flat at 47, Amsterdam Avenue, New York City, miles away from her parents and loved ones and expecting her first child. My mother had a very strong character, and having discovered what a fool she had been, set about making a life for herself. She found a job with a lady named Lillian Ellis, who was at that time The President of the American Red Cross in New York, and had a lovely house in Greenwich Village.

My mother was 20 years old 'when she first went to work for Mrs. Ellis doing her housework. She also arranged English teas in the afternoons for this lady's friends. This became very popular, so mother suggested having the English garden tea parties in the afternoon for the public. These parties were held I Mrs. Ellis's beautiful garden, and so helped to raise money for The Red Cross. This type of thing was unknown in the U.S. at that time, but very soon became very popular.

Mrs. Ellis was very kind to my mother; she let her continue working for her and arranged the booking of the hospital where I was born. I was named Lillian after Mrs. Ellis and she was my Godmother.

My father, when drunk, was very violent and punched and kicked my mother even when she was pregnant. Mrs. Ellis pleaded with my mother to leave him and suggested she should come and live in at her house, but my mother was so sure she could change him and that when her baby was born he would be different, but after I was born things were just the same. He would be charming when sober for a number of months, but the first drink after a stretch of abstinence would se him off again and he would spend every penny he could. His wages would buy drinks for all his buddies; he had to be the life and soul of the party. Then he would return home penniless having spent the whole of his wages. What had not been spent on drink had been stolen by those so-called friends who would take advantage of him.

Mother worked hard after I was born, taking me with her. Mrs. Ellis gave her a beautiful swansdown pillow to put into a Moses basket for me to lie in.

My brother Bill was born 15 months after me, and things did not change very much. Now with two children and a drunken husband and the main bread and rent provider, my mother was determined that she would save enough money to return to England. Each time she saved a few dollars my father would steal it for drink. Eventually my mother found a safe place to save some money; this was in a cocoa tin in the food cupboard. She had to be careful he wouldn't find it, so she sometimes left a little somewhere else for him to find, thus preventing him from searching further.

He knew that from time to time my mother received money from England, as No.8, Maryon Road, Charlton, had been left to her in the will of her aunt. This house was rented out and her cousin, Henry Stockvis, collected the rents, and attended to the repairs etc, then sent the remainder to her, and of course when it arrived, my father used to be after her for some of it.

Thus the savings in the cocoa tin slowly built up and by the time I was 4 years old, she had saved enough to book the passage for herself and two children to return to England. Without him knowing, she packed her case and when he was at work, she left her flat in New York and caught the boat.

I do not remember New York at all, but I do remember being on the boat, and a steward giving me a rosy apple every day. Many relations met us at Southampton, and this I also remember.

At first we lived in a flat in Vauxhall Mansions, Vauxhall. My grandmother also had a flat in these old Victorian buildings. There was a big yard at the back where all the children played, and it was not far from the river, so when mother took us out walking it was along by the river wall to Battersea Park, or across the river to the gardens at the side of the Houses of Parliament.

My mother was a very good woman. She would always try to help people; she had a very good brain and had been clever at school. She was the eldest girl of ten children, four boys and six girls. Her mother was a lovely Buckinghamshire lady, and an excellent cook. Her father was a clerk on the railway. He was very fond of the ladies. He died at the age of 48 years.

Mother had always felt she would have liked to be a barrister, in those days an unheard of occupation for a woman, and this just shows what strength of character she had.

Once back in England she started enquiring as to how she could get possession of her house in Maryon Road, so that we could live in it. It took quite some time, but as she had children and was in need of a garden she eventually got the bottom part of the house. The top still being let gave her a small income.

Of course, it was not long before my father came to England, promising once again, that he would give up the drink. For a while all was well and another baby was on the way, my brother Jim. Very soon my father started drinking again and my mother was expecting her fourth child, my sister Dorothy. By this time my mother decided she had had enough and applied for a legal separation and my father returned to the U.S.A. Mother decided it was easier to tell everyone that her husband was dead, rather than say he was a drunk who had returned to America.

She settled down and worked very hard to get money for food, as she had no settlement from my father. She let rooms, cleaned for other people and took in washing; this helped her to make ends meet, and kept us well dressed. We have a lot to thank our mother for her selfless devotion to us. She loved her four children and protected us like a mother hen protecting her chicks.

At first we all went to Wood Street School Woolwich. We used to come home every day to a cooked dinner, then return to school in the afternoon. Even so times were very hard. I hated Mondays. Mother washed all the shirts for the Charlton Football players who lived with Mrs. Haring at 19, Maryon Road. She also did washing for Mrs. Stephens, the builders in Hill Reach. The boiler was alight at 6am and the house smelt of washing all day. It was bubble and squeak for dinner with cold meat from the Sunday roast. When I came home in the afternoon after school, I had a big pile of washing-up to do as mum was washing and scrubbing all day, so washing the dinner and tea plates was my job. I loved taking back the neatly ironed shirts for the footballers along with Mrs. Stephens' sheets and pillowslips. I always got sixpence for myself for taking them back, and that was a fortune in those days. Sometimes my brothers would take them so they could have a turn at getting the sixpence. We could always get three pence for cleaning doorsteps, so there was always a way of getting pocket money.

I was 7 years old when my sister Dorothy was born and as my mother was usually working, I was left in charge of my little sister. I used to take her to Maryon Park, but when it was time for us to return home, she would start screaming and lay on the ground throwing tantrums. When I told my mother, she said 'take no notice of her and leave her there' and sure enough when I started to walk away she would stop crying and come running after me.

My mother was very proud of us all, and kept us very well dressed. She stressed upon us, that in spite of having very little money we were just as good as anyone else in the road. There were quite a number of wealthy people around us. Next door but one lived a toffee-nosed family with one daughter who went to a private school. This family were inclined to look down on my mother having no husband and always having to go to work. But as the years went by they changed their attitude, and more than once came to mother for help and advice.

I went to St. Thomas' Church, was a brownie and a guide. I was confirmed when I was 10 years old and a Sunday school teacher at 15.

During these days mothers became friendly with a single man lodging next door, where she would work now and again. He was very unhappy there, as the lady took in many borders, but did not really look after them. One day George asked my mother if she had a room he could have as he was fed up at No.10. Anyway after a few months "thinking about it" she told Mrs. Stewart, who needless to say, was not very happy about mum taking one of her lodgers. 'Uncle George' came to live in our house. He always came on holiday with us.

Every year my mother took all four of us to Ramsgate. We had a room with Mrs. Tunnicliff in Ellington Road. She used to have rooms and attendance, which meant that we bought the food and Mrs. Tunnicliff cooked it. George used to have his evening meal with us, but he used to stay in a local pub called The North Star for bed and breakfast.

George coming to live with us made life a bit easier for mum, although she still went to work, and had a regular income from George. He worked at Tate & Lyle in the golden syrup department. He was able to buy 7lb tins of golden syrup cheap, so we always had plenty of treacle tarts and boiled suet puddings with golden syrup on them. Thus the regular incomes made life much easier for us all and we had a very happy childhood.

I went to Wood Street School until I was 12 years old, then on to Maryon Park Senior Girls until I was 14. I did not take the Junior County Scholarship, because I had to look after my little sister when mum was working, and was frequently absent from school. My brother Bill passed his scholarship with honours and went onto Grammar School.

When I left school I wanted to be a nurse, but could not start training until I was 18 years old. I had a couple of jobs as a Nursemaid, then went to "Cuffs", a drapers shop in Woolwich, to do an apprenticeship as a shop assistant. This was a two-year course, and when I had finished I went to "Chessman's", another large store in Lewisham as an assistant in the trimmings department. By the time I was 18 it was crisis time and war was imminent and I was more determined than ever to be a nurse.

I tried several hospitals with no success. Then one day I saw an advertisement I the paper wanting 18 year old girls for Modem Mental Nursing, so I wrote and got an interview at Bexley Hospital in Kent. The matron, a Miss Bevan, who was the sister of "Ernest Bevan" a very important Member of Parliament, he introduced the "Bevan Boys" ho worked in the coal mines during World War II.

The interview went very well and I was accepted. It was August 1938 when I left home and started training to become a nurse. My mother was very worried about it being a Mental Hospital, but I was so keen to become a nurse that I did not care what sort of hospital it was. I said, 'just let me go, and if I find it is too much for me I can always leave". I can remember to this day the thrill I had when I put on my uniform for the first time to present myself at Matron' s office to start my first day. Miss Peglar, The Assistant Matron, took me to my first ward, which was Ward L1. We had long dresses, which had to be 12 inches from the floor, in blue and white striped material, long sleeves with a stiff round collar that almost cut your throat fastened in front with a pearl topped stud. Stiff cuffs round the wrists, black lace up shoes, and black stockings. White caps that had to be made up in a special way. We had to learn to do this - it was pleated on top and made like a butterfly at the back, it was a real work of art. Not everyone could get the knack of making a good job of it. I had always been interested in making things and took to making these caps very efficiently, so I was never without friends. I always had someone knocking on my door asking me to make their cap up for them.

We had no training before hand, and everything was learned on the wards by trial and error. My first ward was a ward for elderly ladies with senile dementia. The two charge nurses were both Irish, one named MacGarry and the other Mannouch. Our hours of duty were 6am to 2pm which was called "A" shift, and 2-m to l0pm was called "B" shift. Then there was "c" shift, which was night duty from 10pm to 6am. But we did not do "nights" while we were in our first year. We had 1 and a half off each week, and it was planned so that we had 3 whole days off every two weeks and on return to duty the shift would change. I enjoyed the work, and made friends with a girl named "Winnie Matthews" She came from Grays in Essex. I had only been there a couple of months when war was declared, and our hospital had to be split by half to give room for general patients. This meant every ward had to double up, so instead of having 50 patients it had to be 100. This was really terrible. The beds were all along both sides and up the middle. Beds were also put in the side rooms, which were usually reserved for nurses. We all had to take a turn of sleeping by the wards in case of trouble at night. These nurses' rooms had to have two and three together instead of a room of your own, because the spare rooms were being used for patients. We also had to double up in the nurses Home to make room for nurses who were joining the Civil Nursing Reserve. Winnie Matthews and I shared a room in the Nurses Home.

To return to my first day on the wards, Nurse MacGarry took me with her and showed me where everything was, and when she was giving injections or doing dressings, explained everything to me. That very first day an old lady passed away. I was so surprised that it was so peaceful. I helped do the "last offices" and was not frightened, and was very interested in everything that was shown to me.

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