大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from London Volunteers on behalf of Dot of Clerkenwell and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

Dot was prompted to contribute her story when she noticed that one piece of information in the exhibition tent was incorrect. Bananas were not available, she says, to holders of blue ration books: they were not available to anyone until after the war. She remembers how the first bananas and chocolate after the war were cause for celebration.

Dot was evacuated from Clerkenwell in London in September 1939 when she was 11 years old. With her 7 year old brother she was sent to Chesham, Buckinghamshire. They did not have enough money to buy a suitcase so packed their belongings in a pillowcase. They left from Aldersgate Station (now the Barbican). All the workers leaned out the windows to wave goodbye. When they arrived in Chesham they assembled in a school and then were chosen by a woman who lived in one of three farmworkers鈥� cottages. Dot鈥檚 friend Rose moved into the second cottage in the row and her brother in the third. But it turned out that the woman in Dot鈥檚 cottage (Mrs Hill) had had a row with the woman in the third cottage and was not on speaking terms. So whenever Dot went to see her brother, the woman got annoyed and hit her brother for talking to Dot. Dot used to walk past her window on the way to the outside toilet and would sing, 鈥淚 get along without you very well,鈥� to get her own back.

School was either in the mornings or afternoons and they walked three miles a day to get to school. Dot noticed that even though Chesham was only 28 miles from London, the accent was quite different.

Dot knew other children from Clerkenwell who were taken in by a wealthy family in a big house. She went to visit them and found them in the playroom, which was a room bigger than her family鈥檚 two room flat in Islington.

They went home at Christmas and afterwards were taken by another Chesham couple in a bigger house. She also visited her mother in Oxted, where she had gone to work at the Kensitas tobacco factory. Her mother was lodging in a big house in Oxted where Canadian soldiers were billeted. The wife of one of the soldiers came to live there and also worked at Kensitas. The couple wanted to adopt Dot and take her to Canada with them but Dot鈥檚 mother refused.

Dot鈥檚 mother used to cry when she heard 鈥淕oodnight, Children鈥� , the song, on the radio.

Dot stayed in Chesham until she was about 13. She was visited by her Dad every Sunday. He arrived at the station and would pay 6d to anyone there to borrow a bike to cycle to the house where she was staying.

When Dot returned to London people would shelter in the basements of Lady Owen鈥檚 school in Islington. When it was hit by a bomb, the basement was flooded and those who were sheltering drowned. The same happened at Moorfields Eye Hospital where people sheltered in the basement.

Identity cards were carried at all times. The prefix for the London identity card was AFS, for Buckinghamshire it was DW: these were later used on NHS numbers.

Postscript after the war: Dot went on holiday to Belgium and returned with items unavailable in Britain: nylons, Nestle tins of cream, Libby鈥檚 tinned fruit.

Dot says that nonetheless they never went hungry during the war, even though they were living on rations. 鈥淎 marvellous generation made of iron鈥�, she describes them.
鈥淚t was a different atmosphere.鈥�

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