大象传媒

During 1940 when I was working as a Methodist deaconess at St. George鈥檚, Cable Street in the East End Mission in London, the manse for London Mission East was situated in 61, Cawley Road, E9, a short road along the north side of Victoria Park. It was occupied by the Rev. William Richard Gilbert, whose wife and four children had been evacuated. Sister Evelyn Palmer, Sister Evelyn Harrison and her sister, together with the matron of the East End Mission, were also living there because, since the bombing, the rooms at the Mission in Commercial Road were no longer suitable.

Mr. Gilbert was a man who ignored the fact that there was a war on, and he used his house as he would have done if everything had been normal, going to bed upstairs each night. The ladies slept downstairs on the floor in the sitting room.

On Thursday 5th December I was invited to go and spend the evening with the other deaconesses and to stay the night there. During the night of the following Sunday December 8th the house was bombed and all the occupants killed. There was, in fact a basement, and had those in the house used it, they might well have survived.

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