Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Quince, Ellen and Joe (O 1996.33) |
| Interviewee | Joe Quince (JQ) and Ellen Quince (EQ) |
| Interviewer | Jean Riddell Purkis (JRP) |
| Date | 03/09/1996 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell Purkis |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no. O 1996.33
Interviewee Joe Quince (JQ) and Ellen Quince (EQ)
Date 3rd September, l996
Venue 4l The Dell, Cecil Road, Hertford
Interviewers Jean Riddell Purkis (JRP)
Transcriber Jean Riddell Purkis
***** = unclear recording
[discussion] = untranscribed matter
This is Tuesday 3rd September, l996 and this is Jean Riddell speaking and I'm at the home of Joe and Ellen Quince at 4l The Dell, Hertford. Joe is going to talk about his memories as a boy in the centre of town and he tells me he was born in The Green....right, Joe.
JQ: Yes, I was born there in the Green there and then was taken there to Pavitts there, because there, all there my there mother's sisters were sort of there married to different people there, Fitkin, there was Allens down there, there was the Dolleys, all sort of related.
JR: You were related to all of them?
JQ: Yes, yes.
JR: What was your mother's maiden name?
JQ: Kate Susan Fitkin.
JR: She was a Fitkin, right OK.
JQ: Yes, there, she was a Fitkin and there were all the Grumballs and Dolleys, they was all her sisters and then she got, there, married a second time. I had a sister Dolly and then shifted to Bull Plain and lived there until the old war, there, was starting, then I was in the forces then I sort of met, there, my, there, Missus and then we got married, like.
JR: Yes, I see. So do you remember anything at all about the Green in the old days?
JQ: Yes, the old there, Green there, it had got there two entrances, there was one there, by the Diamond pub there, and a entrance by the Lions Head, there. And all the coppers daren't go down the old Green there, because if a person shouted all the neighbours came out and that, and that was a closed circuit. And then about, there, l934 to 5 there, they started pulling the old Green, there, down and there built houses up Horns Mill first and they built some up Hertingfordbury there, and sifted all the people out there like.
JR: Right, so then you went on to Pavitts Yard. Now, can you tell us about living in Pavitts Yard, can you remember anything about living there?
JQ: Well, Pavitts.....there was two there yards there, Pateman had a there yard, there, the old milkman - it was by there Wacketts, there, bike shop, an old bike shop and Pateman kept their cows there, down on that big old field down the back of Pavitts Yard.
JR: Could you get through to the field from the yard?
JQ: Yes, yes. There was the houses there, then there was a spot of garden there, then you had got there a gate, there to the old cow field down the bottom and further up there by the old scrapman's place, there was a there a gateway to the field, down there, that way. And they had there the old school on the corner, that's St. Andrew's Infants' School there. That was Green's there, sweetheart, it was Miss Wood.
JR: Oh!
JQ: She was my infant teacher, she was.
JR: So you went to St. Andrew's - who were the other members of your class?
JQ: There was quite there a few there, Vines, Akers, Rows - I'm getting there, a bit fuddled!
JR: Don't worry, can you remember who the other teachers were?
JQ: Er, Miss Tracey there, I think there, was one of them called, there.......always got a church service for their lessons there. You was marched in the big hall, said there, prayers, then into separate classrooms.
JR: Do you remember Miss Turnbull?
JQ: Yes, yes.
JR: She was the head, was she?
JQ: Yes, yes.
JR: OK, well let's go back to Pavitts Yard, and tell us if you can remember anything about Pavitts Yard. I think Dick Darton lived there, didn't he?
JQ: Yes, there were Dartons, and who was that one....Allen, he there got there a sort of ....£30,000 Irish Sweepstake and there, he bought there a car there, and there he killed someone in the car there, and they sort of all fell there to pieces and Joan Allen, she had the old house up by the big Dr. Barnardo's place, up there - Goldings - on the sort a somthething right hand side there - she had a house - but there, his there, father, he was the old coalman down McMullens coalyard, Allen.
JR: I didn't realise they actually lived in Pavitts Yard. Right, OK. So, what about your relatives that lived there?
EQ: Old Fitkin, with his zoo.
JQ: Who?
EQ: Alf Fitkin.
JQ: Oh, there, Fitkin, he was in Ilotts Mill, there on the MillBridge there....he would there, do night shift, there, but he had all - as some there houses there got pulled down there, he had all the ground there and he started there making bird cages, and he kept parrots, tortoises, budgerigars, all sorts and he sort of done it there, for charity for the Hertford County Hospital.
JR: Oh, is that what he did it for!
JQ: Yes.
JR: Right. So what did people do - they paid him to go and see them like a little zoo, did they?
JQ: No, no, no, - you'd have all these fetes there and there, he would get goldfish bowls and you threw a little plastic ball in the old doings you know. And I just turned five there and he there borrowed a horse and cart and he got there a big tiger from old Seymours the old taxidermist there down at Bull Plain there and he got there branch there and stuck there orange, there lemons on the old there branch there and he painted me there black, like black stuff, he was painted there black and he had a big old Zulu shield and a spear there and he took us to the first there fete in the Garden City - that was about l934 (maybe about l928 actually) or something, and we got first prize for the old fancy dress!
JR: That was ingenious, wasn't it!
JQ: There were several there beds in Hertford Couty Hospital like, from that there.
JR: Yes, pay for them - oh, that was a very good thing to do.
JQ: Then there was a person of the name Pecker Farrah - he was the old game keeper at all the old river there, warden there - he would go there and then spot the pikes there floating and he would shoot them for the fishing all down that back river like, you know.
JR: Who were your friends in the yard when you were little?
JQ: Well, I had several friends from Maidenhead Yard, then a trifle upwards there...who was that shop in Maidenhead Street, got all that crystal glass....
EQ: Oh yes, that yard there - don't know what it's called.
JQ: There was a yard down there.
JR: Was it Dolphin?
JQ: Yes. The Days, the Streets, the old Laws.
JR: Did you go down there much? (yes)...what was it like down there, how many houses were there?
JQ: There was one big house there by the butchers, by the card (guard?) place, then there was about five small ones down there pushed up on the side there.
JR: Were they quite small houses?
JQ: Wooden ones with sort of wooden fronts and door and that there was a single toilet down near the bottom, like.
JR: What, for all these people?
JQ: Yes.
JR: Right. Did they have 2 rooms up or one up?
JQ: That there big one just had a single bottom room and then there was two bedrooms on the top there.
JR: And the little ones had what, one?
JQ: That was a small room in front and a tiny there kitchen in the back there, and a tiny yard....it was very small.
JR: Yes, and two bedrooms in those. Right. All the houses in the yards seem about the same size, the little ones.
JQ: Yes, they was roughly the same as there Maidenhead Yard. They were sort of built on the same side, like.
JR: Maidenhead Yard had more houses in it, though, didn't it. It had quite a lot of houses.
EQ: There was a long row down there. They were still there when I came.
JQ: I should say there was about eight.
EQ: There'd be more than that, Joe.
JQ: Eight there.
JR: At least eight then, yes.
EQ: Because the first one was just where Woolworths Yard is, right down the back of there where that factory is now. I would say there was about twelve but I wouldn't argue - I've not lived here long enough to know all this, but I feel there was about twelve down there.
JR: Did you know anyone living down there?
EQ: Well, when I came here there was Rosie Ball down there. Her married name was Kerr - everybody called her Ball - she was quite a character.
JR: When did they knock the houses down in Dolphin Yard and Maidenhead Yard then?
EQ: Well, they were still down Maidenhead Yard after I came in l946.
JQ: No, wait a minute, I was there, about seven, I was seven, l923......l930....they started there pulling all the Green houses down then. I was down there, Bull Plain, there and I got an old truck there, took it down the Green and I started putting old doors and old timber to take home there.
JR: What, for the fire?
JQ: Yes. Then a bloody big serjeant there about 20 stone got me and took me to the cop shop and he took all the doors, all the wood and bits and pieces broken, and I was sent there to the old juvenile court in the Shire Hall and all the timber got carted in and all the old....there was Mrs. Addis, she was on - she was the old magistrate - she said "you have been a naughty boy, you are going to get three months' supervision"....I was sent up to someone at Bengeo every three weeks to tell him I was a good boy, like.
JR: Reporting to that place...(yes)....right. So, you didn't get the wood then, that you wanted.
JQ: No - all the doings there kept that. The court had it for theirselves, I think.
EQ: I know Maidenhead houses were still here when I came here - they didn't go 'til the late '40s.
JQ: Yes. When I moved into Bull Plain, there was us in 2l there. There was Mrs. Johnson in l9. Taylor, she came here from Lord Doings's up top of Sandy Lane there - she was the housekeeper and her son there started a telly shop round in Cowbridge....Taylor and Popham?
JR: Pike?
JQ: Taylor and Pike there.
JR: It was Pike and Pophams......
EQ: Yes, there was Taylor and Pike and Pike and Pophams!
JR: Oh, that was the same Taylor, then.
JQ: And my mother and Mrs. Johnson next there door....if a person died there they would come and tap on the door, they would go there and scrub 'em and put 'em in the boxes for 2/6d a time.
JR: That was called laying out....oh, they did that, gosh.
JQ: Yes, and Mrs. Johnson - all the market, their boxes, and the bad fruit, she would have it, take it home there and she would make wine with it.
EQ: The cellar was full.
JQ: She had rhubarb there, every sort there, you could think of, blinkin' wine there. And all the old cardboard, in the house you got a back yard there; you got a drain in the middle then a bit of shed. Got a cold tap and there were a big old steel there copper and you could put cardboard, wood, all sorts there and boil it and she would take and starch all these gents' shirts from the Salisbury...you know, all them sort a......................
JR: Dickies?
JQ: Yes, dickies...all polished starch there....she would spend hours - all flat irons mind, rounded irons....
JR: Goffering them?..oh, she sounds quite an enterprising woman.
EQ: A lovely old lady, wasn't she. She was about ninety when whe died, wasn't she, Joe, because she, every night at l0 o'clock, you could set your clock, she'd have 2 dry biscuits and a glass of home made wine and that was it.
JR: Did you have any of the wine?
JQ: Yes. I was there young there - I got a stepfather and in the mornings I would get up at six there, down the Folly to the stables, muck out all the horse droppings , go to school there, come home, get all the horses beded down there previous to going out playing.
JR: Where were those stables exactly, on the Folly?
EQ: You know the bottom of Bull Plain?
JR: Folly Bridge.....
EQ: Well, you just go over the bridge, where Coopers Signwriters - there. Well, Cooper had his stables when he died, didn't they.
JR: They were his stables?
JQ: There were some maltings kept them, and they got a foundry down there...Isaacs from Stevenage come there, Isaacs Foundry and Isaac died, then the foundry, that was vacant and he bought it there for £200 all that what'sname and all that ground.
JR: That was Mr. Wright.
JQ: 'Course, you'd got a scrap yard bloke there and all down there - Mead.
JR: Yes, there's a Mead still around.
JQ: Scrap merchant, yes.
JR: So, when did your father...did he die then?
EQ: He died the day he (JQ?) was born.
JR: Oh, I see.
JQ: He died the same day.
JR: How did that happen?
EQ: He was ill in the hospital. He just knew he had a son, and that was it.
JQ: I was thirteen and I started working in old Cookie's what'sname shop and I was running errands and I left home ......I moved in next door.
EQ: He moved into Mrs. Johnson's!
JQ: Then the old war came and I shot back there, then I got married and moved back again!
He was a blinkin' strict old man.
EQ: I won't tell you what I called him. We had a flat over Bumpy Harwood's....he was a barber on Bull Plain...he got murdered he did, he was murdered.
JR: What happened there then?
EQ: Before you had bookies' shops he used to take bets and he used to take bets for the bookies and the police came and raided him, locked him up one night. Then people heard about this obviously and we went out one night and when we came back we couldn't get in and he'd been murdered by a boy that lived at Brickendon...a boy....I know the family are still up Sele Farm now, one of the boys' sisters and that stil there....there was three of them trying to get money out of him and of course he was a little old boy...could hardly breathe, could he, and they just hit him on the head and killed him....well, they didn't kill him there and then, he went into hospital. He was very good to us wasn't he, Joe, when we lived there?
JQ: And he loved kpppers, he had a passion for kippers.
EQ: A lady down the Folly used to clean for him....Mrs. Long. He was a lovely old boy...used to sit in his shop like this.
JQ: He'd got there a bookie's runner...he was about 75 and he'd got a big old 3-wheeled bike - he would slip into the barbers, come out on the back, climb up a couple of steps there, get on and he'd go very slow ......Hertford and different places.
JR: What was his name?
JQ: Oh, couldn't think of his name.
EQ: Was his name Parker, Joe?
JQ: It could be. He was called Bumpy Harwood because he was short and got a big old belly, he would cut your hair, smoking a fag, and he'd cough and spit there, down your neck.
EQ: People used to go in there and put their bets on and this day it was a Derby Day, these 2 blokes only had a bet on the Derby once a year....they came in and 'course there were 2 detectives sitting there they didn't know about.
JQ: They kept 'em six hours.
EQ: What was Albie's name from the shop 'Greens Stores'?
JQ: Albie Dye.
EQ: He was the manager of Greens Stores.
JR: So who was Albie Dye....a relative of the Mayor?
JQ: The old Mayor - kept the coaches down Railway Street.
EQ: He was the manager of Greens Stores.
JQ: And his daughter...was it at Raynham Road, or.......
EQ: This Albie, he went into Bumpy's to get 5/- worth of coppers for his shop and when he got in, the cops kept him in and he couldn't go back to his shop!
JQ: All those buildings have got massive cellars down the bottom.
JR: In Bull Plain, have they? What number was the barber? (13)
JQ: And there was a small dairy there going back years. The dairy closed then they built Albie's little shop there and then the old Arcade - it got built and Cookie had the big old yard for storing all his fruit in and that.
JR: So, what do you remember about the characters of the town? We're talking about Whisper - Whisper Wright....
JQ: Facing the Citizens' Advice Bureau now, in there, that was called the Band of Hope and Glory place (20 Bull Plain), that was. If you were drunk and they took you in and said a little prayer, they would give you a blinkin' lead medal with a ribbon andsay you were saved. He was always swearing because his sons took all of the money and scarpered because.....
EQ: ....he was illiterate, you see.
JQ: He couldn't read, he couldn't write and so all the sons sorta scarpered and took it. He had a spot there in the old gospel place and instead of swering he would say "messing"...
EQ: ....everybody called him "messing"...
JQ: ...."don't you messing......." and he kept the stables and as soon as he was dead my mother and sister, they was down there pulling out loose bricks - old tins there full of ten bob notes. He sort of hid it down his bloody stables there. But I'd left home there by.....
EQ: He always used to sweep the Arcade, keep the Arcade clean, didn't he....and if the kids went down there on the bike, he used to shove the broom through the wheel.
JQ: He had a horse there, and he'd just brought it. He got it down the stables and he put all the harness on it, he tried to back it in the shafts ......so it wouldn't go, so he punched it and the bloody thing dropped down dead.
EQ: He was a strong old boy.
JQ: He would go knacker carting, like, go and shoot horses there and bring 'em home and take 'em to the knackers' yard.
JR: Where was that, the knackers' yard?
JQ: London Colney, somewhere; he had some photos of it. But he had a house that was full of antique vases and stuffed birds all up on the sideboard there. He had an old pannier movie box and he took steel records in there, but I was disgusted and I said "I don't want nothing" and we just left them.
EQ: I mean, even when he was sort of in his late 80s he used to get up in the morning at 5 a.m. and he'd polish the knocker and the knob on his door 'til it shone. Didn't matter how mucky it was inside. He'd go round to Stallabrasses' butchers and he'd come back with a pound and a half of steak and he had that with mushrooms, tomatoes, eggs and fried bread for his breakfast. And he'd sit there and eat every scrap. And he was over 80 then.
JQ: In the kitchen there, he'd got there a small range...oven, fire, then a top, and then'd got a slaughter house down the......and they would get a big old galvanised can and they would get a pig's head and put it on there Monday and by Friday all you could see was the teeth showing and they made their brawn. She would go there and get a bucket of pigs' innards, put on the old tap there and wash'em, making pigs' chitterlings. And all the people had these little tiny tins that was for the rent, that was for the milkman if he came, that was for the bread, that was for your clothes, that was for the Christmas Club. All people had a Christmas Club in the pub. You could pay a shilling a blinkin' week and get it out at Christmas. A slate club there, that was good, the Corn Exchange or Shire Hall.
EQ: That was a sick club, wasn't it....you used to pay 2d a week, didn't you, and if you was off sick you used to take your sick note with you and they paid you l0 bob a week or whatever it was. Anything that was left at the end of the year was shared between everybody.
JQ: At Christmas you would have a shareout. You always got the old bread charities - you would have so much flour and so much bread.
EQ: Depends who was living in the house...you had so many loaves and flour and whatever. We used to get that where we lived, didn't we....and Grass Money..your mum used to get, didn't she. Didn't that come via the Meads or something?
JR: Yes it did, yes. Oh, so it was quite a life, wasn't it!
EQ: I was quite taken aback when I came to this town. I cried myself to sleep for weeks. I hated it. Well, I'd always lived in a city, you see.
JR: Where were you from?
EQ: Manchester.
JQ: All of us kids from the Folly, we'd get an old plank, stick a box on the back, couple pram wheels back and front, go to the top of Port Hill and give a push and you'd go all the way down there.
JR: Did you ever go swimming in the river?
JQ: Oh yes, yes, down the old Folly there, we'd jump off that there bridge. Then it started getting muddy.
JR: Yes. I heard that there were two brothers called Raw...or three brothers rather.
EQ: Johnny Raw.
JQ: Oh, yeah, yeah......
JR: ....who used to jump in and rescue people...is that right?
JQ: Oh, yeah, yeah. There was a person down the Green - the old Green - he had a false leg. In the Diamond pub - this was wartime - all the old Yanks would come, then they'd start a bit of fighting, he would always take his wooden leg off, hop on his good one and say "send 'em over here"....."send 'em over here"...
JR: Who was that, do you know his name?
JQ: Japper Cole...he was some relative to the Sullivans, I think.
JR: Sullivans?
JQ: Where you went, Les Sullivan.
JR: Oh!
EQ: He was something to do with them, anyway.
JQ: I would always go on a Friday for the free nosh-up down the old car park, the old Sally Army place.
JR: Who ran that, then?
JQ: Thistledo (café – Jim Roberts)
JR: Oh, yes.
JQ: The old Sally Army kept their fish and chip shop there, didn't they.
JR: Who was that?
EQ: Was it Donoughues?
JQ: No, Tovells.
EQ: Donoughues was next door.
JQ: You had a Sally Army Chapel, a wooden chapel by the Earl Haig there and it got pulled down and it shifted to the Green in that Ragged Boys' School, and gave you sausage and mash and onions for a ld. down there.
JR: And that was cooked by Jim Roberts was it? (Yes). Who was this Dickson then (now Dixon?), he was at the Ragged School before...(forgets).
JQ: I had my first job ...I was in the grocers shop there in Maidenhead Lane there by the Coffee House there and I was a skinning their cheeses, getting all the old muslin off.
EQ: That' something slse your whisper used to do...Creaseys used to give all their employees a chicken at Christmas, didn't they...they used to bring them all over your mum's and for them to gut and skin, didn't they....that were Reg Creasey.
JQ: She would do them there for the Salisbury....all these rotten smelly old pheasants ....instead of pluck 'em she would skin 'em...and they stunk horrible. All these hares breathin'....aw gawd!
EQ: She used to have abig table in that little room at the front with a cold slab on. They used to be all round this blinkin' table. I'd never seen anything like it in me life.
JR: She was working for the Salisbury in a way, then?
JQ: They would give her a couple of bob a time. All the kids there, they shot to the Ebenezer School on Sundays because you would always get an outing and free bun every couple of months......Mr. Parker.
JR: Well, what a time it was! Did you go for the stale cakes at Thistledos?
JQ: Oh no. I tell you, laugh......us old kids, they had got a market back of the old Corn Exchange - that was a covered market. There was a door this end and a door that end. All of us kids - there was an old boy, he always sold broken biscuits, he always had them open like -all of us kids, we are going to get some biscuits, so about a dozen of us started running and one would get a couple of biscuits. I am the last blinkin' one and I'm just going to get one and he got me by the nose and he said "I caught you!"...."Oh," I said, "It wasn't me!"
JR: Everybody else had got away with it!
JQ: But all in good fun!
JR: You always seemed to be the one that caught it!
EQ: He was always so slow, that's why!
JQ: If a policeman caught you doing something, he would just get you and give you a clip and that's it, finished. But now all the kids, you mustn't rtouch 'em, blimey, I ws up old Greeny's school there, there was old...litle tiny teacher....he would soon give you the blinkin' whack (Len /green, schoolmaster at the Cowper School and later local historian, author and photographer).
JR: Who was that?
JQ: Oh, I forget now, there was Green, Bludgeon.....(Budgen)
JR: Not somebody Marks?
JQ: No. There was Marks, Budgen, Green, Stalley and this little bloke......(could have been Charlie Booker?)..he had a cane and oh, dear, he couldn't half hit! If you cried he would always slip a ld down the back of your neck. He said "did that hurt?.....don't do it again.."...you'd say"you've hurt me!" and then he'd drop a penny down.
JR: And you stopped crying then, right. Who was in that school with you?
EQ: Les Sullivan was there, wasn't he......
JQ: At Cowper School. All the Johnsons, the Games, all the Folly people, they was up the doings there, Wright........
JR: Did you like it there?
JQ: The Cowper School...that was quite good, because you had sums and you have half a blinkin' day woodwork and then half a blinkin' day gardening like.
JR: Yes. Where did you do the gardening?
JQ: Down by the churchyard there, somewhere down the back there...back of Fentiman had quite a big fence - it was in the back there somewhere. But of course there was three schools there. There was a school down the bottom then there was one, then there was Cowper right up the top. Anything else?
JR: Well, anything slse you remember about Bull Plain or the Green, any people you remember?
JQ: Soon as war started I shot to the old Civil Defence and I was stationed up at the old cricket pitch up at Balls Park. There was some royalty - they was christened or crowned up at Balls Park. All the kids shot up there picking daisies from the blinkin' lawn and they would give us a cake each for doing it.
JR: Oh, I see, just pulling them out?
JQ: Forced labour, that was, but all the kids loved it.
JR: I suppose you could have worse things to do!.......And now you're part of this medical research, aren't you?
JQ: Oh, yes. Have you seen the red book? I've had every Xray, bone doings, and everything.
EQ: They're probably doing some more to you, aren't they?
JQ: Stretched, shortened, an' all!
JR: Where do you have to go for these tests?
JQ: I was sent up there........
EQ: .......Bull Plain to start with, to the clinic, then the County Hospital and then which hospital was it in London you went to?
JQ: North Middlesex...that was blood test every half of an hour, for 24 hours. They sort of put a tap on it...blinkin' needle you got there, a tap and you could fall asleep and they'd come and syphen it off, like. That was quite good there.
JR: So you stayed for the weekend?
JQ: All the silver service come on with the breakfst and you could have toast and marmalade.
JR: Could you move about or were you tied up to this machine?
JQ: No, they got something in the vein, put there the needle, that had a little tap on and they would push it in and draw it out from the doings and they'd flush it like, flush it clean there, but that was good, that was.
JR: How many other people go on this?
JQ: Oh, well it started about 500 people then it gradually dwindled because some of them got fed up and it meant having a day of and that, and now you've got about l00.
EQ: Only four of you went together.
JQ: Yes, they done all these tests then they said "we're going to tell you all the results", then they said "youcan bring your wife" and we shot there andthey said they'd done all the tests and couldn't make nothing of them - so they're going to start some fresh ones....but it took us to .....
EQ: They took us all out to dinner.
JQ: .....dinner there, wine, all the trimmings, took us up Tewin, a big farm there.
EQ: Tewin Trout Farm.
JR: Who else goes from here, who did you go with?
EQ: Lockhead, wasn't it? (Loehead?)
JQ: Lockhead from the Folly - he goes....
EQ: ....and him from Mimram Road, what was his name?
JQ: Len something.
EQ: He had a garage in Mimram Road.
JQ: But there's quite a few of us go.
JR: Bruce Johnson goes, doesn't he? (former Ware Road butcher)
EQ: Don't know him
JR: Oh, right, probably not in the same group then.
JQ: They are coming, I think next month, aren't they, for a skin test. I had all sorts, Xray, what'sname doings test, bone test. Memory test....that was the last time there....give us a small story then they said "now tell us it back again".
JR: I don't think there's anything the matter with your memory!
JQ: Tht was quite good, the old nurses, they check your old lungs, your back, your toenails - they check everything.
JR: How were you chosen for this?
EQ: You had to be born in St. Andrew's parish between January and December l923.
JQ: Someone started rooting in the records and they spotted some midwife's record and it gave all the children's weights, lengths.
EQ: They had to be male and born in St. Andrew's parish in l923 and then they startd a female one. They found those in the archives of this midwife...can't remember her name.
JR: Was it Nurse Burnside...I think so, yes.
JQ: The medical research down the coast somewhere.
JR: Southampton, yes.
JQ: But it's got a depot at Ware.
EQ: That's where it's co-ordinated, but the place is in Southampton.
JR: And when were you born?
JQ: l923, January 6th.
JR: OK then, that's good, thankyou, I think we're almost there!