大象传媒

This contribution to People鈥檚 War was received by the Action Desk at 大象传媒 Radio Norfolk and submitted to the website with the permission and on behalf of Patricia Honor Taylor

Patricia's Tale

My mind goes back to when I was seven years old. We weren't poor but not rich and so I walked around for two weeks with a sore throat and feeling very unwell. Mum finally took me to the doctors which cost five shillings in those days. Mum was told I had diphtheria and I would have to go away from the surgery and an ambulance was called for. I can remember thinking I was going on holiday because 'going away' meant that to me and I could not understand why my mum was crying.

I had been in Southgate Isolation Hospital for two weeks when war broke out. I remember the siren going and two nurses rushed into the ward and put me under the bed on a mattress and placed another mattress on the bed. One nurse laid under the bed with me because I was too ill to go to the shelter. This happened often and my gas mask was put on each time. I was really frightened. I remained in hospital for another eleven weeks.

When I came home I found that all of my friends had been evacuated. My mum did not send my brother to be evacuated so we stayed in Tottenham. Listening to others that were evacuated I think we had a better time staying at home.

We lived alongside a railway line and a train used to go backwards and forwards with a large gun on board so we were a good target when the aeroplanes came over.

As a child we had quite a good time because we very seldom got told off by adults because I suppose they never knew if we would be alive next day. My friend lived next door to us her name was Joyce and in her garden was a factory that made pianos. Behind our garden was another factory that made pianos. We used to run through one factory out of the side door into the next factory and out of the main door. We did this several times a day and we never got told off. Imagine doing this today.

For three years we slept in an Anderson Shelter every night. Joyce, my brother and myself had a telephone wired up from her shelter to ours. We used to talk to one another after being put to bed in the shelter it was great fun. Some nights were not so good. We used to listen to the aeroplanes and hope we would find our houses still standing in the morning. When it rained we had to take turns to bale out the sump hole in the middle of the shelter. One night we woke to find the shelter alight. The night light had fallen off the ledge and caught the bedding alight. Without the water in the sump hole we would have all burned to death was we were truly closed in by a great iron door and barred across for safety from the enemy.

There was very little schooling, we were mostly self taught. We spent a lot of time in a brick shelter. I wasn't a very happy child at school. Well not at Seven Sisters School. I was bullied by one girl who became a friend at the secondary school. When a siren went and we were not quite at the school gates of the secondary school I would run all the way home to my shelter where I felt safe. It was at least a mile from school to home. It was nothing for us to wake in the morning and find a whole road gone, houses and friends. My auntie Pat was bombed out twice. My mothers brother who had been confined to a wheel chair since the first world war was was killed outside a pub.

Joyce my friend was an only child and she used to get spoilt, she always had cream cakes where as we had Chelsea buns. Strawberries and cream I cannot ever member having these but Joyce did when they were in season. My brother Fred, Joyce and myself played together every day. Our gardens were unfenced and we used to run in and out all of the time. Joyce's dad had a greenhouse which he let us make into our shop. We had packets of sugar, and tea etc all filled with pieces of wood and we would play every day. This went on for a few years. I can remember having about three dustbins full when we got rid of all the packets we had collected over the years.

I was fourteen when the war finished and I remember having my first holiday before I started work. I stayed with a relative of my dad's in Poole, Dorset. Poole was my grandmothers home town and my granddad was born in Fording Bridge but they had moved to Tottenham years before. When I was fifteen or sixteen I was having another holiday in Poole with my friend Doreen. We were actually on Poole Quay when VJ day came. We danced along the front with everyone. I can remember my aunt and uncle coming down to look for us as it was getting late.

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