大象传媒

This story appears courtesy of and with thanks to The Liverpool Diocesan Care and Repair Association and James Taylor

I had this house, in Heath Street off Myrtle Street and it was a big four bedroomed house with a cellar, a nice parlour and a nice big kitchen, and downstairs was the basement with water and that. The rent was four shillings, I think. Oh, it was an old man that owned the house, and he lived in furnished rooms. There were two brothers and they both had houses. Well, fourteen shillings a week I gave him for his house. It should have been more, but he reduced it for me because my husband had gone into the Air Force and all I was getting was two pound eight and sixpence and that was for me and ten children. It was a very, very old house, but I lived in it for twenty one years. Well, then he went to work in Scotts in Bootle and he used to go to work of a night when the war was on. I used to go mad, 鈥榗ause I was frightened. There was a woman who lived down the street, who was left a widow and I used to go down to her house without Kathleen, John, Margaret, Chris and the baby. The other girl; Esther didn鈥檛 come home from Wales, she was in a nice place and the woman she was with had a daughter the same age as Esther. She was very happy and she was there till after the war. Anyway, we went around to this woman, who lived in a basement. We put the kids on a bed on the floor. She had a full size palliasse and that was put down and sometimes we鈥檇 get on the floor with the kids. One night we heard this noise and we were thinking all kinds and it turned out to be the trains running underneath from Lime Street Station. Then I used to go up to a place in Myrtle Street and I鈥檇 put the kids in, three of them, in a big pram. Every night my oldest girl would get the blankets and everything and lay them down for the kids. One night my husband came in his uniform, he was still in the Air Force at the time, and he said 鈥淐ome on, get out of there. If you鈥檝e got to go, you鈥檝e got to go.鈥� I didn鈥檛 want to 鈥榗ause I felt safe in the shelter. Anyway as soon as his back was turned I was in another one.
Over the road in Bedford Street, near Abercromby Square, by the University. Abercromby was always a posh place and years ago, when I went to school, that park was for all the rich people, ship-owners and that. The park was used by their children and they all had keys. No commoner could go in it, but after the war was on it was opened to us. It looks like a band-stand in the middle, but underneath that was an air-raid shelter and after the war they made it private again.

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