大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Elizabeth Perez of Stockport Libraries on behalf of Jean Warhurst and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

"In September 1940 I started at Manchester Central High School for Girls, commonly called Whitworth Street, having passed a scholarship to go there. We had to buy our books, so you were lucky if you knew a girl who attended there in forms higher than yourself so you could buy them second-hand. We also had a uniform of green blouse, navy tunic, navy and green tie which fastened at the back with a press-stud, navy blue gaberdine and a black felt hat with a green and black ribbon round it. We wore long black stockings in the winter. In the summer we wore a green and white check dress, blazer edged with green and black ribbon and a panama hat with a wide green and black band also ankle socks.

On December 22nd 1940 there was "The Manchester Blitz" when bombs rained on the city. After
this, the decision was made to evacuate all school children whose parents were willing for them to go. My parents reluctantly allowed me to go as we were told that there would be no schooling. So on January 1st 1941 100 of us were evacuated to Nelson accompanied by a number of teachers, we were carrying a gas-mask and a small suitcase. The rest of the school did have lessons in the Whitworth Street building after all.

I went to a house on Briarfield Road which was owned by a couple with one daughter. I remember I had to share a bed with this girl whose name was Muriel. The lady was disgusted with me as I wouldn't call her "Auntie". I odn't think I called her by any name. On Fridays she queued for cream horns at the local baker's.

We were taught in wooden huts behind Nelson Secondary School along with girls from Fairfield High School. The huts were heated by coke stoves which in winters of six-foot snow drifts needed stoking up frequently.

While at Nelson our black felt hat could be changed for a navy blue knitted one with bands of green. I remember one Saturday playing in a field which had a stream running through and somehow my knitted hat fell into the stream and we had a job rescuing it.

I went home for the Easter holidays where there was another blitz on Manchester. My father was an A.R.P. Warden and he was kept very busy seeing that houses had no lights showing and that people were in their air-raid shelters. We had an Anderson one in the back garden. Before it was erected in 1940 my younger brother and I put a door mat on the top and used it like a slide and we said that we were going to Belle Vue.

After I returned to Nelson I caught scabies. My mother said I had caught them off Muriel and her mother said that she had caught them off me. Me being the visitor, I was sent to the hospital to be cured, which took about three weeks. As soon as I was discharged in July, a friend of the family came for me by car (a rarity in those days) to take me home to Chorlton-cum-Hardy and that was the end of me being an evacuee."

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