Interviewed by Eve Sangster and Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Date: 17/03/2000
Transcribed by Eve Sangster
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: 02000.2
Interviewee: Win Titmarsh, nee Neal (WT)
Date: 17 March 2000
Venue: Tudor Way, Hertford
Interviewers: Eve Sangster (ES) and Jean Riddell (JR)
Transcriber: Eve Sangster
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
JR: This is Jean Riddell and Eve Sangster at the home of Win Titmarsh, Tudor Way. It’s Friday 17th March, 2000. We’re here to speak to Win about her memories of West Street.
ES: What was your date of birth?
WT: May 14th 1911.
ES: And where were you born?
WT: Well, we came from Hatfield to here. I was born at Fenny Stratford.
ES: Near Milton Keynes?
WT: Yes. Near Stoney Stratford way, yes.
ES: And when did your family come to Hertford?
WT: When I was 4.
ES: So that’s about 1915.
WT: Cos I’ll be 89.
ES: And where did you live when you first came to Hertford?
WT: West Street.
ES: What number?
WT: 21.
ES; Oh, we live at 25. You lived next-door but one to us.
WT: Yes.
ES: In one of those three cottages in a row.
WT: Miss Tregaskiss lived next-door to us.
ES: What, in our house, 25?
WT: 25.
ES: Was she a Cornish woman?
WT: No, actually. But she had a private school there and she used to have private pupils.
ES: Oh, this is something new.
JR: Was that when you first moved in?
WT: I was 4 years old when we first moved to West Street.
ES: And was this woman running the school then?
WT: Yes.
ES: Right. That’s interesting. We haven’t heard that before. Miss Fountain ran a school there later.
WT: Yes, Miss Fountain’s, and, I’ll always remember it, she used to say, Winnie, if you’re in the garden and you hear the children singing, will you join in because they’ll listen to you and they’ll sing better. (laughs) So I said, Well, I don’t mind. Well, she said, It’ll be such a help with the children. And they were lovely kids, you know.
ES: How long did this Miss Tregaskiss run the school?
WT: No, it was Miss Fountain that run the - but Miss Tregaskiss lived in the same place.
ES: You mean 25?
WT: Yes.
ES: It was divided. You wonder how they managed. It always was in two. There were always 2 families living there.
JR: But when it was Miss Fountain’s, it was surely as one, wasn’t it?
ES: (to Win) This is what you’re saying, isn’t it?
WT: Sister Cutts used to live there as well. Sister Cutts, a Church Army worker.
JR: Did Mrs Tregaskiss have the place before Miss Fountain or at the same time?
WT: At the same time.
JR: Right, they were both there together.
ES: Was Mrs Tregaskiss -. Did she help run the school?
WT: No, she had nothing to do with the school. It was Miss Fountain had the school.
ES: And who were your neighbours at 23 and 19?
WT: Mrs Crane, we lived at 21. Then there was Mrs Dyke.
ES: Miss Dyke and Mrs Crane ... We went there in 1968 and they were both there then. Mrs Crane was a lovely woman. I didn’t know Miss Dyke very well.
WT: I nursed her. She was very ill. Then there was Mr Moodey in the next house. He was lovely. So was Mrs Moodey [the mother]. I nursed her. She had shingles.
ES: Were you a nurse, then?
WT: No, I used to take them all on down West Street. Mrs Tregaskiss had shingles, too. and Mrs Silversides. Funny, three of them.
ES: Mrs Silversides lived over the road?
WT: Over the road, that’s right. I’ve forgotten the number.
ES: I’ve got a picture of over the road .... [they look at a photo and determine that Mrs Silverside lived at 28] Did you ever go down Ivy Passage?
WT: Oh, yes. I used to help an old gentleman down there do his shopping. Cos we had a little shop at the corner of West Street, Miss Fisk, and I used to do his shopping because he couldn’t do it.
ES: You say Miss Fisk. Was that at Camp Stores, what became Camp Stores?
WT: Yes. She had it. On the corner, a little grocers, a little grocery shop, and I helped her when she was ill. Used to take this old gentleman’s shopping for him.
ES: Did you actually help in the shop?
WT: Yes, yes.
ES: How old were you then?
WT: I’d got the kiddies small. They used to come with me. I wouldn’t leave them.
ES: Do you remember the name of the man you helped in Ivy Passage?
WT: No, I can’t think of it. ....
ES: What were they like, the cottages down there?
WT: Oh, lovely.
ES: [surprised] Were they?
WT: Oh, yes. They were very compact little places.
ES: So when you say the children, these were your children, you were married by then?
WT: Oh yes. I was married at 24.
ES: So you were married and never left the street?
WT: They thought I’d joined the Corporation because I used to clean all the fronts of 23, 21, 19, 17. I lived at 17. It was the cottage to the big house the Bensons used to live in.
ES: Do you mean when you were married you moved to 17. It’s a funny house that, isn’t it, with no back windows?
WT: No, there was nothing. It was huge upstairs. I could get 5 single beds up there. Went right across the whole of the place.
ES: Yes, from front to back, with no back windows.
WT: Only a back yard.
ES: I used to play bridge with an elderly woman, Mrs O’Brian a rather aristocratic woman. When you say you worked for the corporation did you get paid?
WT: No No they laughed, they used to say that because I scrubbed it all... and when mother had to come and live with us - she lived with my sister at Cherry Tree Green - I still had to go down, she would have her brass door knocker, I had to go down West Street every morning to make sure her door knob was clean. Lil’s place was all clean.
ES: Lil who?
WT: Lil Crane.
JR: After you lived here, you mean, you used to go down every morning to West Street?
WT: Yes, yes. I used to go and I looked after a little Peke and, oh, he was a shocker. He used... I used to carry him in a basket on the bus and I had to put him this side. If anyone touched his basket he’d go for them.
ES: So when you first moved to 21, how many brothers and sisters were in your family?
WT: Six brothers. Two sisters.
ES: Nine children altogether in that small cottage. Or is it so small? How many rooms?
WT: Three. There was the top bedroom, you know, you had to go up more stairs. The attic. We girls used to have the attic. Mum had to have two double beds in the back bedroom and the boys slept in there. Cos when my brother had diphtheria - all the boys were sleeping together - and the doctor said to me - we had coke in those days to burn on the fire, because my father was a stoker down the gasworks - he said, ‘Take a shovelful of coke, hot coke, pour Jeyes Fluid over it, and do the bedroom every day with that.’ And
none of the boys got it ... We used to have a hundredweight of coke for a shilling. We had to fetch it, mind you, but we had a big truck-full.
ES: Where did you fetch it -
WT: The gasworks ...
JR: Did he have that as part of his wages, then?
WT: Oh no, no. We had to buy the - A shilling a hundredweight. But we had to fetch it. And I wouldn’t push the truck. I used to sit in it any make my brother give me a ride.
ES: Where did you come in this great family?
WT: The third. There was my brother, then my eldest sister - but she died when she was 46. Then I had Ruth, her daughter; she was only 10. She said, I don’t want to come home, Daddy; I’ll stay with auntie. And she’d been with me ever since. She’s married now.
ES: It partly explains all these photos everywhere, You=re a very big family.
WT: Six brothers. We used to do a heck of a lot of church work.
ES: Which church was this? All Saints?
WT: All Saints. The Vicar still comes once a month to give me communion. Not the same vicar, of course ...
ES: When you were a child, did you have any particular friends in Ivy Passage?
WT: No. No, I didn’t, not what you’d call real friends. I used to talk to them all, you know.
ES: Do you recall this?
JR: This is Wallfields Alley we’re showing you now.
ES: Did you know anybody up there?
WT: No. As I say, I used to speak to everybody but I wasn’t what you’d call friendly with any of them.
[they look at photos of Ivy Passage and Anchor Yard] ...
WT: A rag-and-bone man used to live down there.
ES: That’s it!
WT: Anchor yard, there was a little house at the corner, and I can’t think of his name.
ES: Do you remember the Hart, Geoff Hart
WT: Yes
ES: He’s a bit younger than you
WT: He must be, yes.
ES: He used to live in Ivy Passage. His father died when going up Wallfields Alley. Who lived the Ivy passage side of Mrs Silversides. Miss Hilton?
WT: Yes, and somebody else in the cottage there.
ES: You didn’t go to any of these private schools in the street, Miss Hilton’s or Miss Fountain’s? No, I shouldn’t think you could with 9 children.
WT: No ... I used to be at home because I, funny, was always the one to be at home if Mother wasn’t well. My sister had got a good job and, of course, they were glad of the money then, so it was always Win that was at home to nurse them, you know.
ES: Which school did you go to?
WT: ... I went to All Saints but we went to the little school at first, near the alley.
[It is decided that Win went to Abel Smith and her brothers to the Cowper School]
ES: Do you remember anything about the Black Swan? Did your father ever use it?
WT: No, he used to use - There was a Black Swan and a Black Horse.
ES: He was a Black Horse man?
WT: Yes, yes. ... You know, he didn’t drink a lot but he used to have a pint and then he was suddenly taken bad with his eyes and he had to give up drink and that. He went to the doctor’s and he said, ‘You’ve got to give up smoking and drinking’, and I always remember it so well, we’d just bought him a new leather pouch for his tobacco. He used to have thick twist and he used to do it like that [demonstrates] in his hands. He said, ‘Well, if I can’t have me new pouch, nobody’ll have it’, so he threw it in the river, the Castle river. Oh, he was funny.
ES: What brought him, the family, to Hertford in the first place? Was it work?
WT: Yes. He got a job there. We came, as I say. I was only 4 and I was out the back and I was singing Twinkle, twinkle, little star, and there was a ha’penny laying there and I thought that was marvellous, picking a ha’penny up, you know. I was so well off! But, no, his work brought him there. We used to live at Hatfield, you see.
ES: Where did your grandparents live?
WT: Oh, they lived at Stoney Stratford.
ES: And the other grandparents?
WT: They lived at…My grandparents, they came up when the war was on. They slept in the Maltings, one or two nights, opposite. Because the friend from London come -
ES: Just check. Which war are you talking about?
WT: The first. And, as I say, we had a doodlebug drop along Ware Road and it blew my roof right off and dropped it down again. So I had to have tarpaulin all over my roof for a long while.
Transcriber’s Note: In the second world war it was a land mine that dropped in Tamworth Road and a doodlebug in Millbridge. The Millbridge one is more likely to have affected West Street.
JR: When you got married, you stayed in West Street, then where did you go?
WT: They got me, the Bensons, the old Bensons there, they let me have the cottage that belonged to the big house.
JR: How long did you stay there?
WT: Oh, till I had my - till Ruth came.
ES: But when you say the roof lifted and came down, was this the roof of 17?
WT: Yes.
JR: From the Ware Road?
WT: Mother was sleeping with us, of course. And she just got a little cut on her arm from the glass flying.
ES: But this must have been the Second War if it was a doodlebug?
WT: Yes, yes. ... And, as I say, this doodlebug come on a Sunday morning but, as luck happened, nobody was hurt. It was a Sunday morning ... and I remember I’d got a scotsman billeted with us - while my husband was at home I had soldiers billeted with me - and, as I say, this Scotsman - my little boy was only 3 and this doodlebug fell and, of course, it shook the houses naturally. He pushed him over to get out into the shelter. We had an old stable at the back of us where we all used to sit, you know. It belonged to the big house of Bensons and, as I say –
Transcribers Note: this was the V1 on Millbridge July 44.
[a neighbour interrupts]
ES: So, what regiment were these soldiers from, do you remember?
WT: No, I can’t. I know that there was a black boy amongst them and he was lovely.
ES: But you’re saying this other bloke pushed your child aside to get to the shelter.
WT: Oh, that was the one I’d got billeted with me. And he pushed him out the way so’s - As I say, the old stables, we always used to sit in it if there was a raid or anything.
ES: How did you get to the old stables if you hadn’t -
WT: Cos it was my yard. ... You see the cottage belonged to the big house, the Bensons -
ES: Between 17 and 19 there’s an alleyway, isn’t there? A right-of-way, with a door at the back that says 16 something?
WT: A gate, yes, and you go through the gate, there was a passage, rather.
ES: O.K., and that was the stable?
WT: And I could get the back way to mother’s. She lived at 21.
ES: You could go down that passage. There was a right-of-way along the back of those cottages and was there still a pump at the back there?
WT: No, that had gone.
ES: Because you’d got running water in the house ... The Benson who lived next-door to you, wasn’t that a man?
WT: He was a lovely old gentleman.
ES: He was the brother of the sisters across the road.
WT: Oh, they were so funny.
ES: Do you remember anything about them?
WT: Oh, yes. .... Dr Margaret Benson went around across the world when she was 90, went round the world, and she came back and she made a will and left everything she’d got to the neighbours and she’d got thousands. Oh, there was a fuss of it! Mr Alan Benson, he came down and I said, ‘I can’t do anything’, I said. ‘I know nothing about Dr Annette Benson’ and, ooh, they were upset.
ES: So which neighbours benefited? Did you?
WT: No, no. Nor did Miss Irving, the nurse companion to Mr Benson. No, no. Mind you, he was 100. He hadn’t got a lot of money left, really.
ES: No, and hadn’t a lot of time left to spend it.
WT: No. He always used to call us his guardian angels. Because he used to have these turns in the bath and he would have the water hot. His hair was gorgeous. White as white and he’d got such a lot of it and I’d hear the bell go, out of the window in the bathroom - that was above our yard [tape is turned over] Miss Irving would get a big towel and wrap round him and he said, ‘Oh, I knew my guardian angels would be with me’. She said, ‘I’ll give you guardian angels if you - !’ He used to wash his hair, you know, every day. He was such a lovely old gentleman.
ES: What did he do or what had he done when he was younger, when he worked?
WT: I don’t know. Really don’t know.
ES: Weren’t any of them married, them, the Bensons?
WT: No, no.
ES: And what about the other women?
WT: The other sisters? The opposite side? They were most odd and I remember it was a very snowy day and, of course, I’d got Mrs Lee and Mrs Milsom - they lived across the road - we were having such a lovely game, this snowball fight, and my mother opened her door just as Bill threw his snowball through the Bensons window. Of course, it broke but they’d got all shutters up and everything.
She said, ‘it’s too late to go round there now. You go straight round there in the morning and tell Miss Benson that you’d broken it’. And she made them pay up for it. She said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know, Winnie. I didn’t hear anything’. And she sat at the table, as true as I’m here; she’d got green water she cooked once a week. She’d got green water with mould on that she was still drinking and this porridge saucepan, full of porridge. And she cooked on a Saturday and that did her all the week. As true as I’m here. And I know I took her - I went there and she - Oh, she said, ‘You mustn’t do that in war-time’. I took her a cake. I’d baked a cake and took her. And she said, ‘Ooh, that was beautiful’ but, she said, ‘You mustn’t use your stuff anymore’. And her garden went right down to the river and, you know, you’d go down the garden, and you’d see these rats sitting on the top of the trees - as true as anything - and there were, ooh, quite a few, rats sitting at the top of the trees and I used to go like that [she recoils, I suppose] if I went out to put any rubbish out. I used to help them voluntary.
ES: Were they [the rats, I assume] particularly attracted to that property?
WT: Yes, they were, you know - Dr Margaret, when she died and then there was Dr Margaret, Dr Annette and the other one. One did a heck of a lot of books for the blind. She did all this braille work and, ooh, she was marvellous for that.
ES: Do you remember just nearer the Black Swan, was there an off-licence there?
WT: Yes, yes. Miss Fisk. No, she was the other side.
[more muddle and talking at cross-purposes]
WT: ... The Meads used to get flooded and all that and they used to go, you know, skating there. But I never did, no, no.
ES: Did you ever go playing down by the river or in Hertingfordbury Park?
WT: The corner, we went swimming up the corner there, or they did, the boys did. I didn’t go swimming.
ES: What, d’you mean on the way to the football club?
WT: Yes, that’s right.
ES: That must be this Poplars’ Hole?
WT: And the boys used to go swimming at the corner.
JR: There was a bridge there, was there?
WT: Yes ... they used to go swimming a lot.
ES: What sort of river was it? Very much like it is today? ... Was it faster flowing or more of it?
WT: It was a good one for swimming, you know. It was quite clear and that. My brother, being nosey, there was a wasps’ nest there and he poked it with a stick, didn’t he. Oh Lord, I had to rush him to the hospital. I was always the one there when anything happened. Had to rush him to the hospital. He had ice on his head for 2 days. They thought he=d die. They didn’t think he’d live. The wasps had stung all in his mouth and everything.
ES: Did you ever go to the garden parties at Miss McMullens?
WT: Not very often, no, no. I used to know her personally. Used to speak to her, you know, quite a lot, and then we never went, I never went to them. A lot did but I never did.
JR: Do you remember the shoemender, Silbey?
WT: Oh yes, he lived near me ...
ES: He lived at 11, I think ... We were talking to his grand-daughter
WT: Oh, yes?
ES: You don’t know her name, do you? We’ve forgotten it.
Transcribers Note: her name was Dorothy Payne.
WT: Burgess?
ES: No, no. Not the Burgesses.
JR: Her father had the cycle shop in Castle Street.
ES: Stanbridge.
WT: Stanbridge. At the corner, That’s where David got him first bicycle. .......
JR: When did you leave West Street to come here? Did you come straight here from West Street?
WT: Yes, yes. When my sister died and we had Ruth, I was about ten months before I got this house and Councillor Mrs Brooks got it for me.
JR: Was it new?
WT: No, it had been used for about 18 months.
ES: Yes, it can’t have been very old, so when was that?
WT: Well, Ruth’s 53 and she was 10.
ES: So 43 years ago, O.K. So 57, something like that.
JR: So you lived in West Street all that time up till you came here?
WT: Yes, yes.
[confused chat about cottages behind Somerset Terrace]
ES: You didn’t know the Whinnetts?
WT: Oh, yes, course, they lived there. David was friendly with them, the Whinnett family.
ES: Yes, they lived about (number) 40 in a little cottage; you went down a passage. Yes, he was a nice old boy. When we first came - We’ve got an allotment in West Street and when we first came, he had one. He was a dear old boy. And Mrs Whinnett’s still alive, as far as I know. But we never kept up correspondence or anything.
But David was very friendly with the Whinnett’s They used to all go to church together cos all my 6 brothers were in the choir at All Saints Church and we 3 girls went to Christ Church, funnily enough. That used to be at the bottom of - That’s not there now. ... Oh, they played the choir master up. They were little beggars! ... Course, Whinnett’s, we were very friendly with Arthur Whinnett and Mrs Whinnett. And the other one, the other boy, he went to the grammar school. I knew all them. ... Do you remember the Crows?
WT: And the Playle’s. Ella Playle and George Playle. [muddled chat] And the Maltings
were the other side, too, because my family, we used to go down there if we had a raid or anything.
ES: Yes, I was thinking of the houses our side of the street, yours and mine, just when you went passed the Black Horse, then there was the alley up to Wallfield’s and then there was a property that used to be The Reliance Laundry.
WT: Oh, yes. My sister worked there. Barbara worked there for years, in the office.
ES: But, presumably, it was an old-fashioned building. Where did you work? Or did you just have to stay at home and look after your -
WT: I stayed at home mostly always and looked after all the people down West Street.
ES: Where did you meet your husband?
WT: Oh, at school.
ES: Oh, so childhood sweethearts?
WT: Yes, yes.
ES: Do we know what your maiden name is?
WT: Neal, no. Yes, we were married sixty years all but four months.
ES: So how old were you when you married?
WT: 24.
ES: Oh, so you waited a goodish while?
WT: Yes, we got engaged and -
ES: Where did he come from? I mean, you met him at school but -
WT: Davis Street.
ES: Oh, is that off the Ware Road?
WT: Yes, yes. ‘Cos I used to go and help Mrs Cutbush. Do you remember her? No. She was an invalid and I - All voluntary; never got paid for anything.
ES: In 21, did you have gas or electricity?
WT: Gas, yes. Had a great big cellar. Had a huge cellar where we could keep all the coal and I used to preserve eggs, and all that, for the winter.
ES: Did you keep chickens, the?
WT: No, no. My husband used to bring me a boxful of new-laid eggs from Devon when he came home at the weekend. And I did them in isinglass and we bottled all our fruit.
ES: What kind of garden did you have then? I mean, it’s a tiny garden, isn’t it?
WT: I didn’t have a garden at all. [more muddle] I only had the yard but Mr Benson used to let me have their garden-
ES: Oh, of course, you’re talking about 17. I’m still thinking about 21.
JR: Which one had the cellar, then?
WT: 21.
ES: Very steep steps, aren’t they?
WT: Oh, yes, yes.
ES: I mean, almost perpendicular. So when you were at 17 you could - [interviewer is trying to ask if Mr Benson gave her produce from his garden]
WT: Yes, yes. Used to have green figs. Used to bottle every thing in these Kilner jars. Used to do no end of stuff. Never bought tinned fruit or anything.
ES: But when you were 9 children in 21, you couldn’t presumably all get in the kitchen, or could you just about?
WT: Oh, yes. My mum used to - Used to hate washing days, when the copper was on. And it was such a funny incident when we came to Hertford, My father missed us. He’d gone to meet us and we went into Mrs Hines, the neighbour, and she lived at 23 and we daren’t say anything, you know what kids are, you went through and thanked her very much for letting us through but I said to Mum, People don’t have chamber pots on the table? so she said, ‘You be quiet’. I don’t know. And it seemed there were 2 chamber pots on this table and I couldn’t get over that for a long while. And she used to boil them up in the copper after her washing.
ES: Well, very sensible.
WT: Yes, yes. Up the corner. Washdays it used to be on all day. Oh but my mother’s washing was beautiful. White? Used to rinse them, rinse them twice, blue them.
ES: So when you were at 21, that garden was really just a yard?
WT: No, 17 was the yard. Mother had a lovely garden.
ES: Long and thin?
WT: Yes, yes, yes. And when the zeppelin came down at Cuffley, we were up the garden and Mr Dyke, he took me up there and I can remember seeing it and he threw his hat up in the air and he never did find it. When he saw it coming down a-blaze. And it was so funny.
ES: Re 19 Did Miss Dyke run a school there?
WT: No, that was Miss Fountain. - belonged to the convent. We had a heck of a job to get Alice from the convent, her mother did.
ES: Alice who?
WT: Alice Dyke. She wanted to be a nun and then something happened.
ES: Is that the Miss Dyke I remember?
WT: Yes.
ES: Something happened and she wanted to get out?
WT; Yes, yes.
ES: Which convent was this?
WT: A heck of a job. One at the of -, up at the back of West Street.
ES: Oh, what, Leahoe? She got in and couldn’t get out?
WT: She wanted to get out and her mother had a heck of a job but she did in the end.
ES: So she had been a nun?
WT: Yes, yes. So, I always remember, all of us used to go to Sunday School and we only ever had a penny for the collection because that’s all they could afford in those days and instead of me going to Sunday School, Alice said ‘Come to my school, Win.’ I thought, Ooh! And I always remember them - it was so funny – they’d got all the children and they locked the door and they gave us all a sweet and I was frightened to death there was poison in it.
ES: Where was this?
WT: I thought, my mum, my dad, will grumble at me and when we got home I told him. He said, ‘that’s all right, As long as you’re truthful’, he said. ‘Don’t you ever tell me lies’. And I said, ‘they give me a sweet, Dad, and I was frightened to death there was poison in it’ and I wouldn’t come home.
ES: Where was this, then?
WT: Up Pegs Lane, at the top of Pegs Lane way, there was a convent there.
ES: Where was the Sunday School?
WT: Near there ...
ES; You say Sister Cutts belonged to the Church Army. Where did she operate from? Was that connected with All Saints?
WT: Yes, more-or-less. Yes, I know they were very upset over her because I found her and she’d had a stroke. She died.
ES: Where did you find her?
WT: In her flat in Farm Close near where I live. I was always going to see if she was all right. I found her, she’d been to the loo and she was huddled up in the toilet and I rang the ambulance.
She was in hospital some time and I used to go down there every day and take a clean nightie and we thought she hadn’t got any money but she’d got thousands and the nephews used to write to me and I got so fed up I said to Mr. Cull, ‘I don’t know what to do, you’ll have to write them a letter, they are asking me how much their auntie had left’.
ES: But when she was working for the Church Army, what were her duties? Did she go round interfering?
WT: She went round to the houses and talked to them.
ES: Like a social worker?
WT: Yes, she did and the Church Army were so cross with her to think I’d done everything. She’d left the money to the Church Army of course, so they sent me a cheque for £50. I said I didn’t want it but for 6 months I’d looked after her, I didn’t think she’d got any money and we used to cook her a meal and I used to clean her flat.
ES: I don’t think there’s anything else I need to ask you, you’ve been very rewarding.
[a story of Win nursing Sister Cutts through her last illness, when she lived in Farm Close, and the nephews agitating about their inheritance, ends the interview]