Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Dye, Lydia (O1994.30) |
| Interviewee | Lydia Dye (LD) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 27/08/1994 |
| Transcriber by |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O 1994.30
Interviewee: Lydia Dye (LD)
Venue: 1 Riverside, Hertford
Date: 27th August, 1994
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR)
2015 - saved digitally from scanned version by Geoff Cordingley and proof read by Peter Ruffles
************** = unclear recording
[discussion] = untranscribed material
PR: I have just come into the lovely home at Number 1 Riverside of Lydia Dye, who is an old star of the oral history group from the times when we first began in Thora's Place, Ware Road. Jack Doyle who did not hear a thing, could not hear anything that was going on could he, poor old chap.
LD: He didn't stop talking, did he? Now who was the other chap. I can't remember his name. I was not acquainted with him really.
PR: It was not Jim Morris was it, from Hornsmill?
LD: I think it might be, but, of course, he is no longer with us, is he?
PR: Yes, Jim is. It might have been someone else. I will have to have a look. But we have done quite a few groups, and what we thought we would do is now talk to one or two people on their own just to sketch in.
LD: Is Thora mentally all right?
PR: Yes, yes, she is. She is in Western House.
LD: I often talk to Eileen, her sister.
PR: She is perfectly happy there but very frail, because the stroke really did clobber her, didn't it?
LD: As long as it kept her mentally all right, because there is poor old Mrs. Rose who used to know it all over Sele Road didn't she? Yes, Ron was right when he said, “Mum you ought to put it down.” Is this all right?
PR: Yes. The tape recorder isn't behaving itself so it won't be a very clear tape, but someone will listen to it and just write out bits of it. I will just say what I have done. It is Saturday afternoon, 27th August, the end of the week of Lydia's birthday, hence the gladioli, the carnations, the chrysanthemums, pot plants everywhere and a lovely bouquet on the table. And next to the bouquet is a glass of sherry, a very large glass, I might say, and a biscuit which one almost might expect from Lydia but one shouldn't. And I have just taken Lydia's photograph. She very reluctantly came to the door. I almost had to drag her there. It won't be a very good photograph because of the light. There is actually too much sun and Lydia will be very white. So here we are just going back over one or two little bits earlier. Lydia could I ask you to say what you just said about the dates when you met and married.
LD: When Jim and I got married in 1928 we moved into 28, Railway Street. That belonged then to Mrs Clara Dye. She was then living in 15, Green Street, and, of course, when they started demolishing Green Street to build the new complex we had to find somewhere to live because Clara wanted her accommodation naturally, and so we were offered a Council house in 102, Hertingfordbury Road, and that was in 1933 we moved there. The houses were new then. We stayed there until we came down here on to the Riverside in 1968. So we have been here 26 years.
PR: Did Jim come here with you?
LD: He was here 7 years with me. He died in 1977. So we had those few years together, which we liked very much because he was handy for the Evergreen and it was so much nicer than hin catching buses down to Hertingfordbury, you know. Yes, enjoyed it, but there you go.
PR: It is right in the town centre. It is where everybody wants to live.
LD: Lovely! I have only got to go over the bridge and I am at Waitrose.
PRL It is a big house really, isn't it?
LD: Yes, it has two bedrooms with a bathroom extension.
PR: And good size rooms.
LD: They are, yes. Some have knocked the centre wall down, but I think it is much more cosy to have it like this. Now, don't let’ s talk about me - you want to know things.
PR: No, you are very important. Now, right outside the window is The Barge and there are people today sitting on benches the other side.
LD: I haven't looked on the car park but there are going to be bands or something tonight, but the donations are going to the Imperial Cancer.
PR: Do you get disturbed a lot?
LD: Well, on the whole, no. I don't know about tonight because there are live bands and it could be noisy, but on the whole they do try and I don't have any aggro with them really, no. There have been occasions when they messed up down the passage but I mean you can't guarantee it is him or can't see. I wouldn't dare go out, but on the whole I cannot say there has been bother.
PR: You mentioned 28 Railway Street where Joan still lives.
PR: The Crews lived in there before we did, you remember? They lived in North Road, Jack Crew, didn't they? Now that house is still, because Joan lives there, about the last one in the middle of the town, and Joan, like you, lives next door to a pub and suffers more than you with what happens around.
LD: Well you see she has got activity both sides. She has got where Molly Warner had her shop, a paint shop, and she has got the Duncombe, and you see Harveys, which they call now. They had live music and that in the background.
PR: But she obviously enjoys living there because she had a chance to move a year or so ago didn't she?
LD: Well she thought she would like to, and then they had repairs done which are rather nice, so she seems more settled. She has fortunately, I think it was through Sylvia*, got one of these piper things (Emergency personal alarm). You see she is on her own, there are no real neighbours
*Sylvia Mear - see other HOHG recordings.
PR: No no-one at all. That's right, Molly was.
LD: Well that's right, they were good friends together.
PR: Now tell us where 15, Green Street would be, roughly.
LD: Now let's get it right. Well I would say somewhere near where the opticians are.
PR: Right. You would come round the corner by what was the Diamond.
LD: That's right, and then there were two houses. There was a Mrs Spinks and a Mrs Costain lived in the old houses. I think there was two there.
PR: Was that the Arcade side?
LD: As you were coming in by Pearces that was on the left hand side and 15, Green Street was a little bit further on. There was sheds or something after the cottages. 15, Green Street, yes. Opposite was the soot yard.
PR: Right now, when you say opposite, let's place that then.
LD: I would think that was probably getting towards Boots, or getting that way. On the right hand side was what they called the soot yard.
PR: Why did they call it the soot yard?
LD: Well, that's because that's where they stored all the soot when they did the chimneys.
PR: Did they just make a big pile of it and then sell it off?
LD: Yes. There used to be a lorry to a farmer out at Braughing. I can't recall his name now. There used to be an old fellow come for it and they used to throw it then of course. Yes, they used to collect it.
PR: Was it Dan Dye that started that business?
LD: Dan and Will, the two brothers. See Dan's family was Reg* (that's Mary's Reg). I think Evelyn comes next. I still see her. She still comes to see me. She sent me those carnations for my birthday. Evelyn was the second one. Oh no, Doris was the second one who married Charlie Game and Charlie is the one that helps Mary out now, 'cos Mary must be getting on, I think she would be 89 this year. That's Reg, Doris, then Eric that died, married Florrie Dye. He contracted something through the war because she used to draw the war pension I think and she is no longer with us, and then Evelyn. That's right, two boys and two girls, yes. That was Dan's family. Will's family also lived there. There was two houses there. There was 28, 30 and 32. Auntie Gert and Uncle Will, that's what we used to call them, lived next door and Dan on the end by the archway, you know. You go into Joan’s Alley. Now Will had Gertie and they lost a little boy. Gertie, that is Bill Rose's wife. She's no longer with us. And Ronald, he is no longer with us, and Kathleen. She has gone as well, you see. Now this house belonged to Kathleen and that is how we got it. You understand, and believe you me, it has been 3½ years over since Kathleen's gone and it is still not settled. Still have to pay her money into the Solicitors.
*Reg and Mary Dye of 36 Parkhurst Road
Trancriber’s Note: Evelyn died Nov 2014 the day before her 97th birthday.
PR: Kathleen had a lot of property that they bought up.
LD: All these, well not next door because she had already sold hers, but the rest were hers and then of course there was the bungalow at Ware. Did you ever go over there?
PR: Yes, several times, to see Kathleen.
LD: Yes, that's right, at the bungalow at Ware. At one time they had the house at Greenways where an old aunt lived, but she got rid of that.
PR: Was it Will and Dan that set up the business and then they bought up various cottage properties when they became vacant in their home area?
LD: Yes. I am going back now, but can you remember Fowler's the estate agents in the corner of South Street? Well there was a chappie there named Jirnmy O??? and he lodged with Clara. Well, he was in the estate agents. Well I'm not saying any more. I guess perhaps they only paid £100 for these.
PR: Well he would have the opportunity to know what was coming up.
LD: I'm not being malicious or anything, but you know its business isn't it? Yes, Will and Dan started it, because there used to be old Ernie Day, Sweeney, he used to help out.
PR: Where did they come from?
LD: Ernie Day lived in Pavitts Yard. They were all local, and Ernie had David the sweep in with them, but they used to go pony and carting in the early hours of the morning. They used to go to Hatfield House sweeping, and through the night more or less. They did the big jobs and they kept busy. Then of course after a while when Joan got married her husband helped with the sweeping and he carried on for a while until his health played up.
PR: So they bought up property down here. Did they have some on the Green as well before it was demolished, or hadn't they started buying then?
PR: No, they owned Railway Street. I'm not sure who owned those on the Green. I know 15 belonged to the Dye's, but I don't know who they paid their rent to - old Mrs Dunnage or Mrs Hart. His son now looks after the cattle. They did have cattle by North Station, you know on that bit of ground there.
PR: Do they live at the end of Chelmsford Road? Charles, I think the son has got the same name as the father.
Trancribers Note: Charles Carlton the son died in January 2015, Charles snr many years before that and Ted Carlton about 2004
LD: He has.
PR: So Dan stayed there in Railway Street, but Will moved.
LD: To be very honest Dan Dye's wife and Will Dye's wife, they clashed. Lizzie, that was Dan's wife, did one or two naughty things and so they moved up to Manitoba, 60, Hertingfordbury Road, much to Will's disgust. He did not want to move, but they moved up there and Dan took over Will's house so Lizzie and Dan lived in 30. 28 is Joan's, well 30 and 32.
PR: Now you say Lizzie.
LD: That's Dan's wife. She was an Ambrose from Ware Road.
PR: Right. I get muddled up now with Clara and Lizzie.
LD: Clara was Clara Dye, she married a Dye. They were cousins, so she did not alter her name.
PR: That does get confusing, doesn't it, if you don't know. So Lizzie was mayoress for several years because Dan was mayor for 2½ years.
LD: Mind you, Jim used to say Dan was not mayor or on the Council for his gain. He didn't do it for his gain. Well what happened, he helped put the Evergreen together didn't he?
PR: He knew the people of the town, didn't he?
LD: His brother Wi11 and his wife, they didn't take part in that side of the town. You know: they didn't. It was Dan and Lizzie.
PR: He was central to so much that happened in the town in the war years and just immediately after.
LD: That's right. Jim always had a good word for him.
PR: Did Charlie Game then work for Dan?
LD: Yes, he drove the coaches with my Jim.
PR: All his working life really, I suppose.
LD: Well for the early part, but when I first got to know Charlie he was on crutches. He had some sort of disability with his legs, but he overcame that and then he went to work for Dye's, and that is how he got in with Doris you see. Well that's history and I must not talk about it. We were at Railway Street at the time. We had not then had to move out and Doris was with Charlie, you know. The next we knew there was a child, and that's Alan who lives at Ware, and then of course they have had two sons since then, David and John.
PR: Old Golly Game, Charlie Game's son, who we used to call Golly because he had crinkly hair. Golly, like a gollywog, and he used to carry the cross at All Saints Church.
LD: Was he Reg?
PR: No, Charlie's son. I have forgotten which one. He was always called by the boys Golly because of his dark hair.
LD: Can you recall who he married?
PR: No, he was Charlie Game's son, one of the three boys. David, I suppose, was it?
LD: I would think it was David. I do not think the other two were religious-minded. That will be David.
PR: One thing you can tell me about Gertie Dye, next door to us at home. Never ever went out shopping in all the time I knew her.
LD: No, she had a big disability. She had a very bad operation. That was all started with Lizzie when she was in Railway Street. They took her to hospital and she had a very bad operation on her stomach and the muscles of her stomach all went. No, she always got somebody to do it, because my John used to do it. I know the first thing on the list would be Ex-lax. She didn't go out but she was a big influence on the family.
PR: A lovely strong character.
LD: Yes. She would go to bed and she would think, because I am going away from it. But you know they purchased the land by the police houses. Did you know that? They are not police houses now. What do they call the estate that is built by Hertingfordbury Road? Now there were two police houses. Reg Carter lived near in one of the flats, and the boy Perry will owns a little bit, he managed to buy a little strip and he still owns that. He hasn't got rid of it.
PR: I had forgotten all about those police houses.
Transcriber’s Note: The two houses are still there in 2015 – numbers 136 and 138 Hertingfordbury Road
LD: Well Dan and Clara bought that bit of land, because John managed to have a goat and they let John have this goat up this field. Well the next, Auntie Gert was a big influence here, Gilbys wanted to buy it.
PR: Yes I know. They built a big house there didn't they?
LD: In the green belt, and Gertie did not want to sell it. She got an idea that Will could have a piece of allotment because he did have a piece of allotment over the wall gardens*, didn't he? He was a gardener, and it caused a little bit of friction between Joan's mother, Clara, because she was a sister of Will and Dan, but they did sell it in the end and the next we knew, of course, was house going up there.
*Opposite the houses in Hertingfordbury Road where Riversmeet stands in 2015
PR: That did cause a ripple because Horace was working for Hertford Rural. He was on the Borough Council as a councillor at the time, I think, and a surveyor.
*Jean Gilby, Horace’s daughter-in-law, died in January 2015, funeral at All Saints Church, Hertford.
LD: I mean it should not really have been allowed, but there you go.
PR: It's gone now and they have built Valeside on the land.
LD: That's the name, Valeside, and I couldn't remember.
PR: Is Bill Rose still alive?
LD: Yes. It's funny you should say that, but it must be nearly a year now he is on his own over there in his big house, and he had a fall and broke his hip. Well he was in the hospital for a few weeks and now he is home and, funny you should bring that up because on Monday Ron took me to Carol and Don's who were next door at the Silver Fox, Hertford Heath. We had a meal there and Carol and Don were there and they said they had been up there six years. Time flies, doesn't it.
End of Side A
Side B
LD: I only want to be just a matter of minutes, just to say hallo. I used to get a bus up to the hospital and walk back when he was in the County. They moved him to the County from Garden City and I used to, you know, go up there once a week, and so I said I had not seen Bill Rose*. I would like to just go and see him. Well he has got very, very feeble now. He is a lot younger than me, I think he is 83 or something, and he is walking with a walking frame. He has carers to go in in the morning to get him up and in the evening to put him to bed, and he has got an intercom on his door so you say who you are and the door opens. He has really aged.
*Bill Rose widower of Gertrude Dye
PR: Well I suppose supporting Gertie for so long. She needed a great deal of back-up didn't she.
LD: Yes. I know he used to grumble about her but on the other hand she was a child. Then, of course, we lost Kathleen, all within a year.
PR: The biggest surprise was Kathleen, who had been very bright hadn't she.
LD: Well the thing was, truthfully Peter, Kathleen knocked herself up over them because she had had warning signs that she should have gone to the doctor before, but she would not because Gertie needed her. Bill Rose went on a mini cruise and she even organised that and in the end it got the better of her.
PR: Left it too late.
LD: Yes she had. If she had gone in the first place I am convinced that something could have been done, but no you see.
PR: It is a wonderful family isn't it, because with Kathleen at the Telephone Exchange, so bright and got on so well with the younger ones, and Gertie in business and Ronald in a big way abroad.
LD: Because Gertie still owns one of the Canvas houses*. I expect you have seen where there have been applications for 7, 9 and 11 Bull Plain to convert into retail shops and flats above, and it all came about because we were talking about where was Maidenhead Yard and, of course, it is that yard that goes up next to where Dewhurst the butchers were and where the Co-op is, and that's Maidenhead Yard.
*Canvas holiday formerly at 7,9 and 11 Bull Plain.
PR: Ties in at the back with the seed warehouse bit doesn't it?
LD: Yes, because Ethel Sell you remember her being at Young's, she still goes to Joan's, still does her scones and bread. I said I could not remember what the name of the yard where Young's were, and that is Maidenhead Yard, and she said they used to be able to go right down to the river or something. Well, going back, Bill Rose, of course, was left with this house, that was old Harry Harwood (also known as Bumpy Harwood on some tapes), the barber, and he had this house, its number 13. Well Canvas now only own a low office because they are four storey there. So when Gertie died Bill Rose left that Canvas Holiday to Michael who lives at number 5*. Kathleen left him that house, and also Peter who owns number 9, but he has let it furnished at the moment because Peter is the one that is in Austria. He married an Austrian girl, and he is a nice lad. Michael is more reserved and doesn't say very much, but Bill Rose when he used to call in on a Sunday evening sometimes when Michael had him over to lunch, he would come here and have a drink and that and he said that he felt sorry that he had passed this house over to the boys because Canvas had moved up to Scotland and there was nothing but trouble. I haven't heard since about it but Michael has put it up as commercial shop because Bill Rose had got an idea
perhaps Michael might set up as a shop, but you have got to think twice about setting a shop up these days, haven't you? I mean what are three retail shops going to do?
* Numbers 5 and 9 Riverside on The Folly in the same row as Lydia was living at the time of the recording.
PR: No, I think their idea is the best one, to get residential use.
LD: Then can you remember Botsfords had a big shed at the back*. Well they reckon they can build more there. They have asked permission to do so. That extends quite a little way there.
*Behind 11 Bull Plain
PR: There is quite an area of land at the back there.
LD: That’s right, but I am talking too much and you are not asking what you want to know.
PR: No, well we have done really what I wanted to know because it is untangling relationships. All the time people mention the Dye family and you forget who is married to who and then you get
LD: someone who marries with the same surname. You see what happened, how Jim comes into it. Jim's father, John, was blind. Jim used to push him about. They lived down Mead Lane. Well his wife left him and that is how Jim come to live with Clara and Jim's dad also lived with Clara. That is when I first got to know him, that was where they lived, 15, Green Street. Jim's dad and, can you remember Ethel Lucy? She was then Cromwell Road, now her mother was a Tomlin, well married a Tomlin, but her mother and my Jim's dad were brother and sister by old Daniel Dye's first marriage, and then there was Will, Dan and Clara by the second. So thats how it all complicated things.
PR: Speaking to Michael, we would have a job to put that all together without talking to you.
LD: Yes, I suppose so. Well you can remember the old boy that got to 100 down here. He was at number 8 or 9, 9 I think. Well it was his son was to do with Joan's dad, that's right. Dave we called him. He was to do with the old boy here.
PR: He died very soon after his birthday.
LD: He only just made it. I went to see him and he seemed he was quite bright.
PR: Who was he then? He got the Dye's surname. Where did he link in?
LD: Well there was several brothers. There was David, Cary, they were all on Joan's dad's side. That's how come the cousins married. Clara married Dave, and that was the cousins.
PR: So your earliest memories were just at the very end of the pulling down of the Green Street properties when you first looked at Hertford. So where were you living as a girl then?
LD: Brickendon. Next to the Farmer’s Boy at Brickendon.
PR: We have that on record somewhere.
LD: I came into Hertford when I married Jim. I tell you where we met. Buck was with him and I was with a girl from Brickendon who is no longer with us, and we sat in the Premier Theatre in Market Street. Jim and Buck Wrangles, he isn't with us now. He used to come down to see me every Friday, because he was our best man, and that is where we met, in the old Premier Theatre.
PR: The buildings that we know today have been occupied by so many different shops. What is the Premier now?
LD: The hairdressers next to Ilotts.
Transcribers note: All in Market Street on the corner of Railway Street
PR: Next door the betting office. Was that anything to do with the Premier?
LD: That was more or less where it was.
PR: I do not know how big the entrance to the Premier was.
LD: Well it wasn't. There was no back to it. I think that was taken up by the White Hart. I think it was only the frontage. That is all I can remember going into.
PR: Next door of course used to be Coppins. Above that was a chapel where the Salvation Army were in. At some point, before they moved across to The Green. All these old characters like Rosie Dunnage.
LD: You have got that down where I found her. That was on a Whit Monday and my Jim said, “I don't think I should be too late back"'. He had not got such a long run, so he said, "If you like to go down to Clara' s and I will come down". Well to get down Clara's there was this Dunnage lying drunk all across the path. I was frightened to death. Carlton, that’s the name.
PR: That’s the name of the people that had the cattle on the land by the North Station. It goes down to Minns field off Wareham’s Lane. I sometimes see one or other in their wellies. They have got the two places. Now we must talk about Minn Baxter in a minute, but in the street the other day you remembered the name of the old girl.
LD: Palmer. Old Mrs Palmer. She had old bits of cloth for her feet. She had a sweet shop in St Andrew Street, as near as I could say, you know the big house which Partridge had. Then there was Mills who had a jeweller's shop, it was somewhere there.
PR: Didn't she live in Ware Road or somewhere. I thought I remembered her walking round Railway Street towards the station.
LD: That's a possibility.
PR: And she advertised in the window for a bit of company.
LD: It was quite a joke at the time. Well now, we mustn't go wrong because I used to go and have my hair done, that was in a shop there as well, Doris Shadbolt. She used to iron wave my hair. I bet there's not many that can do that today. Gertie used to do it at Ware.
Transcribers Note: Aforementioned Gertie Dye was a hairdresser in Ware.
PR: Can you remember, you were living in Hertingfordbury Road then, I used to go round the back in Railway Street between Colemans immediately opposite Joan's.
LD: There was two sisters lived there. I can see them now, or one of them, standing at the top of the alley. I will ask Joan if she can remember.
PR: When you had a paper round you get into nooks and crannies. We had a lovely talk in the museum the other day to Cliff North.
LD: Oh Cliff North. He doesn't alter. You hear his voice sometimes on a Tuesday when I go down to Castle Hall. He will be at the end of Maidenhead Street and I hear him. He must be getting on.
PR: He is 82.
LD: Is he really? He is very active isn't he? In his cravat very often.
PR: The other one that used to shout a lot was Bill Ball of Port Vale. He used to echo off the houses.
LD: He did. Now he drove a dray for McMullen's. He used to have the old shire horse.
PR: We have done well on our talks and we have been talking to Mrs Ruby Henry, who was a Watts and they had a fish and chip shop somewhere in Green Street I think.
LD: No, it was the end of Railway Street I think.
PR: Well they had two. She told me she had one, if I understand her properly, she is 93/94 now.
LD: Because there was a sweet shop owned by Hopkins.
PR: Oh was there? I am sure she had one just beyond Molly Warner's on that side and another one just into Green Street beyond the Diamond, the Arcade side I think. But she talks all about her marriage there when she was 17 and the events of the day there and she had 60 years of married life, but it was a bit of an exciting wedding day, they couldn't find the groom half the time it seems.
LD: They were good old days, weren't they?
PR: She is very interesting, Mrs Henry, because she smokes her fags and drinks her lager and has a banana before she goes to bed. 93 or 94.
LD: She lived in Chelmsford Road.
PR: That’s right, she is still there on her own. No home help, no meals on wheels. Yesterday I went to see Winn Johnson in Chelmsford Road - 93. She came from your end of things, she was a Bayford girl, and she married Len and had Margaret and Jim, and she had been married earlier to someone called Mumford. I didn't quite know that until she mentioned it yesterday, I knew she talked about Doug or someone, I have forgotten his name now. I think he was at Botsfords. She has been there more or less since the house was built as well. She lives on her own.
LD: That’s why I know Ron was 3 years old when we moved up there. He was born in 1930. He was born in Railway Street because poor old Ada Mills, well her name is Mrs Fletcher, she lived in the house that we called Barbers House opposite Molly Warner's.
PR: A very tall, thin house.
LD: Yes, that’s right. Stood on its own and she was awfully good old Ada Mills to me, because I lived next door to Mrs Mills who had the second-hand shop and that was next to Joan's. That was before they altered the Duncombe, that was a shop next to Joan's. She was wonderful, old Mrs. Mills, because she brought up such a big family there, and Ada who married a Fletcher, she lived in this house at Barbers and she came over and she was with me when Ron was born because I did not go into hospital. I had him at home. She was very good to me.
PR: That was a very big house wasn't it? It looked a tall, thin house. It was always empty.
LD: To be truthful I did not go in it but she came over and helped me. She was very good to me when I had Ron because old Tommy Allen worked at Barber's over the road when he won that money, but I mean I am going into the 40's and he worked at Barber's at that yard.
PR: The sweepstake or something wasn't it?
LD: Yes, that’s right. April 5th it was called. Tom Walls owned it. I mean that was £30,000 then, but it seemed as though it never brought a bit of luck. It didn't. I mean, first of all there was Bill. He worked at Morris's* round by the memorial. He was a nice lad. He did a lot for the church round at St Andrew's. He was really a lovely fella. He married a nursemaid from Longmore's up by Balls Park College, and he had an operation for an ulcer and they did not in those days seem to get you moving and he had a blood clot and he died and he was only just over 30. Left his wife and she never married again. They lived in St Kilda, what I call and Jim called Pemberton Billings's Estate*. So that was the eldest son.Well Wynn, she marred a fellow that worked at the Home & Colonial in Maidenhead Street. Then there was Reg, well Reg was the one who married the beauty queen at Ware, and then of course they came into this money because they could not draw the money for a start because it was in his name. They called him Cocker, and it was in his name because they lived down Pavitts Yard* then, and they could not draw the money because he was not of age so they had to wait. And then they went over to Ireland to draw it. Well after a little while what did he do? He had a car you know. Funnily enough he worked at Jim's. He had this car and, of course, what happened, he killed that girl of Cook* in Ware Road and then did a prison sentence, but I don't know, it never brought them any luck.
*Morris’s furniature shop on Parliament Square. Pemberton Billings estate was the houses in Farquhar Street Bengeo. Pavitts Yard was off St Andrew Street. The girl that was killed was the daughter of Mr Cook a well-known rag and bone man.
PR: A lot of people have remembered how Mrs AlIen nearly fainted when she got the news.
LD: She was a hard working woman. I was quite friendly with the Allens. We used to go up there Christmas time and that and up Molewood and had some thoroughly enjoyable times. And because at Railway Street I did not have any garden and she used to come and collect my sheets and wash them for me, Mrs AlIen. That's how I really got friendly with her you know. She was good to me when I had the children. She used to do things and there was no bragging about what she did.
PR: Who was the Mrs Foster up by the war memorial that died in the fire and had those dolls in the window? Do you remember, next to Ketteridges?
LD: I can remember the shop there.
PR: Well Morris's, then there was the Colour Studio and there was Ketteridges and then two cottages before you came to the yard opposite Cook and Dranes, and in one of those cottages when I was a little boy, you were a bit older, there were gollywogs in the window and dolls that an old lady had knitted called Mrs Foster and she died, she was bedridden, in the fire in that cottage when I was about 12 or 14, but I keep meaning to look it up in the Mercury and see if there was something printed but I don't know whether she has got relations in the town. You know now?
LD: No I cannot recall.
PR: On the end cottage next to her there was an old bloke with a tricycle, and I don't know his name. He might have been a Wren.
LD: He was, he was a Wren.
PR: Was that to do with the Bakers, or just happened to have the same name.
LD: I don't think so. He had a nick name, and then Jim used to talk about another one who had a cycle and they used to do a paper round. There was two brothers and they lived on Castle Bridges.
PR: They were not the same two, Chitty Wren?
LD: Chitty Wren, you're right.
PR: What did he do then? I only remember him as ever so, ever so old, and you remember him at the same stage I suppose.
LD: Yes I do.
PR: He used to get on and very very slowly roll off down towards the war memorial.
LD: That's right. That's going back. I had forgotten about that. I had really.
PR: One of these days I want to get Charlie Game talking but I don't want to twist his arm. But you know you met him at a football match at Hertford Town or Ware Town. He is full of stories of driving a charabanc. But he talks about driving a charabanc the wrong way along Maidenhead Street, you know, when it was a two way street.
LD: I can believe it because he talks to me about how they went to Southend and one broke down and he went down and they towed the charabanc back because when we were first married I can remember stitching, I had my mother's old machine, the celluloid windows in the old charabanc. The hood came over and then slotted in was this sort of celluloid and, of course, that used to get broken and we had to repair it. Oh dear, what we used to do.
End of tape