大象传媒

P.O.W.?

This story was submitted to the People's War site by K. Turner on behalf of Pat Ruaune and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

On one day in 1943, I was imprisoned, I escaped and I was recaptured. From then on I had a reputation for bad behaviour, which I could not shake off until finally I was released, probably a couple of months later. It could have been longer. I am unsure of the dates because I was only three years old at the time.

I had been washed and dressed in outdoor clothes by my mother and we set off from our house in Mill Lane, Reddish. In those days, it was a quiet road and the only traffic you would see regularly would be horse-drawn milk floats or drays. From where we lived on the old terrace called Mount View, it was a short walk to the Dairy farm on Mill Lane, which there became a leafy, cobbled road into Reddish Vale. That day, however, we walked in the opposite direction, towards the main road. We boarded a tram outside what was then the CWS Emporium and is now Taylor鈥檚 Glass Works and alighted at the railway station. We walked up Midland Road, which is on the other side of the railway from the station approach, and entered a large building, which was, and still is today, North Reddish Working Men鈥檚 Club.
I have a hazy recollection of passing through an iron gateway, which I see as a turnstile, though I think it unlikely that a turnstile was there. We must have climbed a staircase, though I do not remember doing so.
My clearest memory of what happened next was being shown a rocking horse standing at the other side of a large room. I do not remember seeing other children but there was at least one other adult as well as my mother. I was invited to ride the horse and, naturally, I went over to investigate. When I looked round, my mother had gone.
Anyone who ever became lost as a child knows the feeling of desolation and fear. But I had not been lost. I had been abandoned, by trickery. This much I knew. She had gone without saying goodbye.
The next thing I remember was going out through the gate, which seemed to me to be a different gate from the one we came in by. I made my way towards the main road, Gorton Road, and crossed over the railway bridge. I do not remember looking for a tram but this is what I later told my parents I did. No tram was coming, I told them, so I decided to walk.
How long would it have taken me to walk back along Gorton Road, past the shops, then the park, crossing five side streets before I came to the corner of Mill Lane?
Did I take any wrong turnings?
Did anyone speak to me en route?
Would anyone notice today?
I do remember arriving home and knocking at the front door. No one answered. My mother was not there. I cried at the letterbox to be let in and by now was thoroughly frightened. Eventually, the next-door neighbour, who, incidentally was completely ignorant as to the whereabouts of my mother, took me in and set me to play in the back garden with her own son, whom, of course, I knew well. I had probably an hour or so of respite from agony, but the worst was yet to come.
The police arrived with two nurses in navy blue capes with red linings. What was said I cannot remember; but then I was carried away to a car by these strangers. Oddly, I do not remember the car.
It must have caused a stir. A car in Mill Lane was not a common sight, and the sight of one bearing policemen and nurses was even rarer.
The clearest image in my memory is of the blue tiles, which, in those days paved the paths up to the front door of our houses in Mill Lane. I remember them passing beneath me as I was carried down the path kicking and screaming. I loved those tiles and it seemed to me at that moment that I just wanted to grab them and hold on to them.

There is a simple explanation for what happened to me. My mother had decided to go to work on munitions at Cravens, which was a large engineering firm on Greg Street, as part of the war effort. The money was good and she was undoubtedly following the crowd.

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Working Mothers

During the year 1942, five day nurseries had been established in the town to enable women with children to do work of national importance. Today we take child-care by agencies outside the family for granted as part of everyday existence, but in 1942 this was a new concept for working-class families.
My two-year-old grandson has recently started nursery school. He is quite accustomed to Mummy and Daddy going off to work whilst he is cared for by one or the other of his sets of grandparents. He too is enrolled at a nursery controlled by the Local Authority. Like most children nowadays he was gradually introduced to the place and his mother stayed with him on the first two or three occasions as he made friends with other children. Even so, parting can sometimes be tearful and upsetting for both mother and child. However, checking up is actively encouraged and a bulletin on progress is just a phone call away. Today, we understand that it is better for the child to see his parent go and to wave goodbye because this suggests that there will be a return especially so if this pattern already exists.
It seems so obvious to us today, but prior to 1942, a married woman with a child expected to stay in the home and keep house whilst her husband went out to work. The child was with her constantly unless there was an extended family involved in the care of the children. In our case this was not so. My mother hailed from Gorton, her mother was dead and her sisters all had families of their own. Nevertheless, later in the war, her sister鈥檚 daughter came to live with my family as an evacuee. It seems strange to me because there were a number of munitions factories in the Reddish area, which could have been the target of German bombs. Perhaps it was as far away as her mother wanted her to be and also, at that time, Reddish was still regarded as the countryside by Mancunians.

In 1943, I had not been separated from my mother for even an hour. Her absence was unimaginable until the day I was taken to one of the first wartime nurseries to be established in the country. The moment of parting must have been dreaded by her. However much she had looked forward to time away from her toddler and to being with other women and to earning money once again, it seems obvious now that she could not bite the bullet and try to explain what would happen. Or did she? Perhaps it was that being a child who had never known what separation meant, I just could not understand. I do know that there was no goodbye.

My father, who was a cotton-spinner in Reddish Spinning Company, used to collect me from nursery each evening after that. My mother was told that, if I escaped again, she would not be able to take me there and would have to give up work. This made her angry because it seemed to her that the carers were not taking proper care to secure the gate and therefore were failing in their responsibilities. I could have come to harm on my way home and they seemed to be shifting the blame on to her.

I do not remember being taken to nursery except for that first day. I remember being there regularly and standing for what seemed a very long time, on a number of occasions, in 鈥渢he naughty corner鈥�.
I obviously needed to be watched. One other recollection is of throwing my cabbage under the table. I did this because the other children were doing it. I loved cabbage at home and it would never have occurred to me to waste food in that way. Maybe that is why I remember it. Was this my first experience of peer pressure? The best part though was when my father came each day to collect me. There seemed to be many days of being carried shoulder-high and triumphant over the railway bridge, along the station approach, up the steps leading to Criterion Street and home. I remember the joy, the exhilaration of being so high up and knowing I was going home.

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Altruism Versus Expediency

鈥淎n ideal day in a nursery reflects as nearly as possible the kind of day which makes a
contented child at home. Whether he is rich or poor, the happiest child is one who
lives in a home in which he feels safe, because he knows without doubt that he
belongs to it and that he is welcome there.鈥�

Extract from a 21 page booklet on Wartime Nurseries
(published in January 1943 by the Ministry of Information)
called 鈥淣ot Yet Five鈥�

It is clear from the above quotation that the interests of the child were not being ignored by the government of the day, but the fact remained that a different type of workforce had to be mobilised as rapidly as possible. On 1st March 1943 the Medical Officer of Health in Stockport took to committee a letter dated 2nd Feb 1943 from Stockport Trades Council and Labour Party. This asked the Maternity and Child Welfare sub-committee of the Public Health and Assistance Committee to consider the opening of 24hour nurseries 7 days a week. This was clearly a move on behalf of the prospective workforce, who, once established would become part of the Labour movement.

At almost the same time, pressure was being exerted from a different direction. Educationists were, as always, aware that the home was not always the ideal place for children to learn values. For example, concern was being expressed that leisure time, when it existed, was not ideally spent at the dog-track. It was felt that the younger the child who could be influenced by educational principles and the better. These sentiments were expressed at a meeting of the Stockport and District Association of the N.U.T. in Greek Street High School on Wednesday 20th January 1943. Mr Garside, the then president, stressed the need for extension of Nursery School Provision.

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Home Cooking

Men went to work and women stayed home. This was the accepted pattern. Furthermore, most men came home in their dinner-hour and, if their wives were furnished with housekeeping money and were good managers, there was a hot meal on the table. In our home, even as late as the fifties, there seemed always to be a hot meal at 鈥渄inner-time鈥� and at 鈥渢ea-time.鈥� What then was to be the pattern when wives as well were out at work?
In the period 1st to 27th February 1943 inclusive, there were 838 children being cared for in North Reddish Wartime Nursery. At Edgeley there were 748, at Daw Bank 1,285, and at Portwood 949. This was at a time when more nursery provision was being urged by at least two powerful organisations. There is some evidence that factory owners were attempting to solve the problem as well. Bukta, for example, opened a day nursery for their workers but it was clearly not as successful as the state run nurseries, because it closed in 1943 for lack of use. Daw Bank Nursery had to be extended to cope and the extension was opened in January 1943, which accounts for the jump in numbers from 658 in December 1942 to 1,820 in the period 1st March to 3rd April 1943. Belmont Nursery was opened in August 1943 with an intake of 102 in the first month rising to 395 in September.

The children were being fed. Who was preparing the food for the men and women working hard in the factories who had to be kept healthy if we were to win the war?

The following article was printed in
The Stockport Advertiser on 1st January 1943
(A review of 1942)
鈥淭he year began with the establishment in the borough of day nurseries where babies are cared for while their mothers do work of national importance. Another development arising out of the same problem has been the provision of midday meals in the schools and the opening in various parts of the town of British Restaurants where workers are able to get a midday meal at a very modest charge. The first British Restaurant was opened in Burton鈥檚 Buildings, Princes Street. Since then further British Restaurants have been opened in Reddish, Portwood and Great Moor. 鈥�
I clearly remember being taken into the British Restaurant in Reddish. It was just at the end of Mill Lane on the other side of Gorton Road. It was the upper floor of the C.W.S. Emporium. This was a very happy memory, because I was with my mother and father. It must have been after my mother gave up working at Cravens as she had to within three months after starting work because she was pregnant and suffered with morning sickness.
It was reported in Stockport Advertiser on Friday 22nd January 1943 that the 5th wartime nursery was opened at Daw Bank on 14th January 1943. This one is likely to be the separate section for children under two. There were two more to be established. The one at Adswood was 鈥渨ell on the way鈥� and the next one to be built was at Heaton Norris close to Belmont School.
By June 1943, it seems that the working mothers of Reddish were becoming more discerning about their new nursery. There was a petition brought to committee with two points of dissatisfaction. One was an objection to the rule of having to surrender one clothing coupon per month, as part of the fee, for replacement clothing. The other was about the unsatisfactory state of the playground. It was resolved that tenders for asphalting were to be obtained and the cheapest one accepted.
I do not remember being in the playground. I wonder if it was out of bounds to me. After all, it did back on to the railway line at the station and I was a desperate character.
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New Patterns

The speed with which people adapted to these new patterns of daily life amazes me even today, when speed seems sometimes to be an end in itself. The novelty of the new situation is clear from a newspaper report on the opening of North Reddish Wartime Nursery on 20th January 1942, my nursery. The upper floor of North Reddish Working Men鈥檚 Club, the ballroom, had been transformed. According to the reporter for the Stockport Advertiser in 23rd January edition,
鈥淭hey (the children) were playing with woolly toys at a low table and looked most serene and happy.鈥�
It went on to explain that the first child to be admitted was just under two, the second was 18months and the third was 14months. They were expecting to take a child of 12 months and a baby of six and a half months the following week.

By December 1942 there were 743 children at North Reddish nursery, 726 at Edgeley, 658 at Daw Bank and 610 at Portwood. Daw Bank needed an extension in order to offer facilities for children under 2 yrs and the committee minutes say it was estimated to cost 拢60. Considering that the ceiling cost for repairs to the playground at North Reddish was 拢32. 13s. 3d, 拢60 does not seem very much for an extension.
It is interesting to notice the fluctuations in the numbers, which were reported to the Public Health and Assistance Committee via the Maternity and Child Welfare Sub-Committee on a monthly basis. North Reddish鈥檚 highest number in 1943 was October to November when there were 1,390 children in attendance. I find these figures very interesting because they offer a clue as to when my escape took place. I will never know exactly. However, according to committee minutes, there was a visit scheduled by the Mayor and Mayoress for 5th October 1943. My mother was told that important visitors had arrived at the nursery on the day of my arrival and escape and that the change of routine had resulted in the gate being left unlocked. Another clue is the birth certificate of my first brother, born on 7th August 1944. I found it amongst my mother鈥檚 and father鈥檚 effects, after they had died. The baby lived just three weeks.
In the month of October 1943, the nursery seems to have been at bursting point.
In the seventies, I have danced in that ballroom on New Year鈥檚 Day when there were, and maybe still are, regular, well-attended dances. It is a large room and there must have been a high level of staffing, when it was a nursery. Even so, 1,390 still seems a lot of toddlers to me. Was 5th October 1943 the day when my absolute trust was shattered? We never seem to ask for details such as these until the people who could tell us have died. Would they remember? It was, after all, one small incident, concerning one small child, but the upheaval, which took place within my family, does reflect, in microcosm, the rapidly changing lifestyles of the period, not just in Stockport, but also in the whole of Europe.

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