大象传媒

This story concerns the experiences of Mrs Mary Love, her brother Hubert and their parents during WW2. It is recorded by me as a 大象传媒 WW2 Project Information Gatherer and is offered for publication with her consent.

Mary is the daughter of the late Mary and Stanley Stacey and was born in 1926.

Her parents had met some years before while undergoing employment training by the Cardiff Institute For The Blind. Stanley had been born with a turn in his eyes, which an Consultant Eye Surgeon thought could be corrected by an operation. Unfortunately the operation was unsuccessful
and had resulted in total blindness.

As a child Mary's mother had lived in Nantyglo, near Tredegar in Wales. She lived with her parents in one of a small number of houses in an area where there was a lot of grit and gravel. One day while she was outside playing with her friends, one of them threw gravel which hit her in the
face and damaged one of her eyes. It caused the sight problem which led to her later having to undergo training by the Cardiff Blind Institute in Longcross Street. This resulted in a friendship which led to her marrying Stanley and becoming the means of help and support for his blindness.

At the time Stanley and Mary married, they were both working for the Cardiff Blind Institute in their sheltered workshops, which produced cane chairs, mats, fishermens baskets for the trawlers and ships fenders made from canvas and cork. Mary had been taught to build cane chairs.

However, when she married Stanley, whose wages were One Pound Ten Shillings a week, the rules of the blind institute prevented her from continuing to work there, when it became his legal responsibility to support her.

In due course they had a daughter, who they named Mary. Unfortunately she was born with an eyesight problem, which caused her to be partially sighted and required her to attend a special school for partially sighted and blind people until she was sixteen years of age.

As the writer, I asked Mrs Love how her father's wages compared with those of the fit and able in factories and other industries in those days. She replied: 鈥淪heltered workshop pay was always lower, because disabled people could not work as hard, or as fast as fit and healthy people鈥�. So to be competitive and allow for the extra time needed to do the work, the pay was considerabely lower in some places. In those days, there was no National Health Service, or Unemployment Benefits. Family relatives were expected to help and and support each other. I remember my father having to pay sixpence a week to an insurance collector, so that we could see our doctor if needed. In those days, it was better to have a job which paid a smaller wage, rather than not having any money coming in at all. The only financial unemployment help in those days, was from the Parish Fund. The interviews were very probing and degrading and discouraged people from asking them for help. The interviewers always wanted to know about the incomes of individual family members, to discover if they could lend money to the claimant, instead of the Parish Fund giving money to help people in financial difficulties. Some people took in washing, ironing, did cleaning and other menial tasks for the more affluent families, rather than ask for help from the Parish Fund. So secure low pay jobs with a regular wage provided the bread and butter for many a family.

When WW2 started in 1939, Mary was twelve years of age and was attending a special school to train her to cope with her sight handicap. This she would do until she was sixteen, before undergoing job training by the Cardiff Institute For The Blind. The subjects taught were: English Comprehension, Mathematics, Geography, History, Braille and typewriter keyboard skills, Domestic Science which involved home cleanliness, washing, ironing and caring for clothes, preparing and cooking food.

Mary made the point of telling me that she had every opportunitiy to put this into practice at home, adding that she was in the Girl Guides. Unlike her friends and other children, neither her nor her brother had much time to play in the streets, as there always the household chores to be done and errands to run for their parents.

They lived in a two bedroom house with a small back garden in Gwendoline Street near Sanquahar Street Adamsdown. With their back garden being too small for an Anderson air raid shelter, they had a steel table topped Morrison shelter with mesh wire sides in the corner of one of the ground floor rooms. It caused a lot of inconvenience because it was in the corner of two adjacent walls and occupied too much floor space. In addition with its low height and them with their sight problems, they were concerned about being able to quickly crawl out of it in an emergency. They also wanted to move into a house with an extra bedroom, because their seven year old son and daughter, were having to share not only the same bedroom, but also opposite ends of the same bed. This was not uncommon in those days.

Fortunately, the family of one of Mary's school friends living in another nearby street invited them to use their Anderson shelter with them during air raid attacks. Mary commented, 鈥淎nderson shelters could be cold places at night鈥�. One day we had been out as a family and got back home late in the evening when the air raid siren sounded. I got the pair of trousers and belt, together with the other things I needed to wrap myself up in the shelter. But when we arrived there I discovered that I had lost my belt somewhere along the way. Somebody went back to our house looking for it, but they never found it. All the same we walked along to our friends shelter in all weathers, rather than be in the confined space of our Morrison shelter and thinking about getting out of the house if the place got bombed and set on fire. I have not forgotten the sight of the fire red glow in the night sky when Peacocks Store in Queen Street was bombed and also the time the Cardiff Blind Institute was bombed and badly damaged, which resulted in some of the people having to work from premises in the City Road area.

The Germans might likely have considered the stretch of railway line near to Gwendoline Street, on the Cardiff to Newport main line as an important target, as it was not far from the junctions to Cardiff Docks and other important industrial places, including a steel works less than a flying time distance of one minute. On some nights when the glare from the furnace chimneys could be seen in the night sky residents used to remark, 鈥淚f the Germans were to attack now, we wouldn't have a cat in hell's chance鈥�.

Mary was fourteen by the time Cardiff City Council gave them a larger house in Tin Street, Roath. Unfortunately, although this house was in a street on the opposite side of the railway line, it was still faced with the same bombing risks. Shortly after they had moved in, a land mine dropped in Tin Street. With the stress of the increasing number of air attacks and out of concern for their safety, their father decided that the familly should move out of the house in Tin street. He went to live with his brother in Ely on the Western side of Cardiff (as he could not afford to give up his job) and his wife Mary and the two children went to stay with relatives at Abertysswg near Tredegar, which was a mountainous sheep farming area with a coal mine.

It was a boring place for young Mary, because there were no special schools in the area that taught blind and partially sighted people. However, her brother was sent to the local junior school. As much as they were no longer troubled by air raid attacks, life in Abertwsswg was not without its difficulties, as there was a shortage of vegetables, potatoes, fruit and other things, which were more readily available in Cardiff Market. The long tedious weekly journey to Cardiff, at least allowed the family to get together for a few hours and see that everything was alright at their home in Tin Street.

While back at Abertysswg, Mary's mother often expressed her concern to her aunt, about Stanley having to cope with the daily task of travelling from Ely to Cardiff town centre, when the busses or trams were often stopped between places by air raids, with the passengers having to get off and head as quickly as possible to the nearest air raid shelter. However, he as a blind person, could be faced with the problem of having to walk in unfamiliar places, depending on when and where the bombing attack took place. In the poor light of dusk or crossing a road, a person driving a car with shielded headlights might not see a blind person stepping off the pavement into the road until it was too late. Another concern for Stanley having to tap his way along the street in an unfamiliar place, was that he could no longer rely on the sounds of the area and the tap of his stick against the walls of buildings, the unknown sounds would not give him an indication of his location. Whereas, walking along a known route he would be familiar with the sound pattern and the feel of the pavement on which he was walking.

Even to this day, Mary remembers taking her aunt's rent money with her brother to the rent office at the colliery. Rather than walking the long way around, they used to take a short cut by crawling under the coal trucks in the railway sidings before going to the office on the platform.

After six months Stanley and his wife came to the conclusion that as nothing untoward had happened to their house in Tin Street, it would be alright to resume living there. Besides, the costs of travelling and living apart, was more than he could really afford. The travelling was getting too much of an inconvenience and restricting his freedom. In addition, his daughter had lost six months schooling.

A short time after returning to live in Tin Street as a family, there was a night air raid, which bombed the flat across the road from them and the greengrocer's shop. Then in a future night air attack when they were using the Morrison shelter inside the house, an incendiary bomb crashed through the roof and got stuck in the landing floorboards. Fortunately it failed to explode. All the same it shouldn't take much imagination to realise how shocked they must have been. Stan thought it would be best, with the help his wife to cover the bomb with sandbags and then get his son to take him to the Air Raid Warden in one of the nearby streets. In a short time Stanley returned to the house with his son and the Air Raid Wardens, who took the (remarkably as yet still unexploded) bomb away.

The council repair team quickly repaired the roof and the landing floorboards of the house.

The family overcame the food shortages created by rationing, with the help of Mary's brother Hubert taking an interest in gardening and growing potatoes, cabbages and tomatoes. From what Mary can remember of what the rationing allowed each of them:- 2 ozs sugar, 2 ozs butter, 4 ozs margarine, 2 ozs corned beef, a piece of meat costing about One Shilling and sixpence, a packet of powdered egg, and a packet of processed sausages.

It was the end of the war by the time young Mary finished her training with the Cardiff Blind Institute. She was taught to build cane furniture and do the mother of pearl furniture decoration pattern work. She married another blind person who worked there and brought up three children. Unfortunately her marriage was not without the trials and tribulations which led to her divorcing her husband. She later married a Mr Richard Love from Pendarren, Merthyr.

However she has outlived both of her husbands. When her brother grew up, he served his apprenticeship as a carpenter, followed by National Service in the army. He married and they had a son.

The ironic point about this story, is that the family were concerned about using their Morrison shelter for fear of being trapped inside if the house took a hit. As a result of which, they moved away for a time because of the bombing risks. Then having found that nothing untoward had occurred, they returned to the house, only for the house to suffer a direct hit, whilst they were sheltering in the very air raid shelter they had previously moved away to avoid having to use. If ever there was anybody who had a 'Guardian Angel' watching over them that night, they most certainly did!

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.