大象传媒

It was summer, 1953. I was 17 years old and lived with my mother (who was widowed in 1939), two brothers and four sisters, all of them older than me. Rationing hadn't quite finished but we were climbing out of the austerity years following the second world war.

An official looking letter arrived for my mum. She opened it, read it, and said "At last that's finished!" I asked what had finished and she explained.

In 1939, myself, one brother and two sisters were evaquated, because of the war, from Bow, in London, to Oxford (we were told we were going to the seaside!). As we were a poor family from the east end of London, we were evaquated with our school and not with our parents. I was four years old but can still remember the dark night we arrived, with torches shining in our faces and voices saying "I'll have this one", or "No. I only want a girl", or "I can only take one, not two". I never did get to taste the packet of biscuits and tin of drinking chocolate each of us were given. I suppose we were lucky. At least the selection wasn't taking place in a Jewish ghetto in Germany.

During our stay, I was luckier than my sisters. They were both "interferred" with (as they used to say) by the men of the house, and we were rapidly moved three times. Evacuation was not a happy time for the four of us. My 12 year old brother returned to Bow within a year, at the height of the blitz. My sisters and I returned in 1944, just in time for the "doodlebugs" but this was infinitely better than where we were.

What none of us knew, until my mum received that letter, was that she had to pay ten shillings (50p) a week to the Government for any evacuated children over 10 years old, and eight shillings (40p) a week for any evacuated child under 10 years old. This money was paid to whoever put the children up, and was possibly the only reason why some (only a few, I'm sure) people volunteered to take in evacuees. This added up to one pound eighteen shillings (拢1.90) a week for my mum. In 1939, she had just become a widow and was having to make a living doing home work on her sewing machine. Her income was approx. two pounds ten shillings (拢2.50) a week. Her other children had been redirected away from home to do war work and couldn't contribute, so the then equivalent to the social services agreed that she could spread the cost over a number of years. In fact, it started in 1939 and finished in 1953, eight years after the war ended!!! Most people think the government paid for children to be evacuated. They certainly didn't in our case, though they may have paid our fares to Oxford.

It may well be that my mother could have obtained charity to help with the payments. Once her children started work, we all could have helped with the payments. But my mother was a very proud woman who believed it was her responsibility to pay of the debt, which she kept secret until she had completed it.

Normally the term "Mothers Pride" indicates a mothers pride in her children. In this case it indicates my pride in my mother for the sacrifices she made for us.

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