Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Caruana, Rev. Rosemary (O1999.20) |
| Interviewee | Rev Rosemary Caruana (RC); Rev Marion Harding (MH) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 04/08/1999 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O1999.20
Interviewee: Rev Rosemary Caruana (RC); Rev Marion Harding (MH)
Date: 4th August 1999
Venue: The Vestry, St Mary’s Hertingfordbury.
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed with additions by: Marilyn Taylor
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
PR: How is Ruth?
RC: Ruth is fine, she has days when she is absolutely with it, and other days when you know, you go one day and she will say how lovely to see you and knows who you are and what’s what and the next time you go she says who are you or my goodness I haven’t seen you for years.
PR: Right. Shall we go in to the churchyard?
RC: If you want to, yes.
PR: To take a picture.
More distortion and setting up of microphones, etc
PR: I shout much too much and I get told off, sorry let me change that so you have the short one…… Would you like to do your own clipping. Now this is Peter Ruffles speaking from our victim’s own vestry, we have never had a victim in her vestry before, at St Mary’s Hertingfordbury. Wednesday 4th August, the Queen Mother was 99 this morning, she has done her little bit. Here I am with two other ladies, not yet 99, recording for the Museum, something of the life of… are you called the Rector?
RC: No, Priest in Charge
PR: The priest in charge of Hertingfordbury parish which is Hertingfordbury village…
RC: Cole Green, Letty Green, Staines Green, East End Green, Birch Green, Pipers End , that’s it, yes.
PR: And it is the Reverend Rosemary Caruana, extremely well known in Hertford, now we would like this tape really to be about your life, biographical, but, bit in the early stages of a Hertford record really because we are trying to get little glimpses of Hertford in years gone by.
But we would like to sort of trail through how you came to be here because 15 years ago this would have seemed a fairly unlikely event. You wouldn’t have been able to describe yourself in the way you have just done.
RC: Indeed I wouldn’t, I would never have ever dreamt of describing myself in the way that I have just done. I came to Hertford when I was 6 months old, as an “adoptive candidate” or “candidate for adoption” I lived with a family, I think it was one of the Shambrook’s that seemed to be a name that was banded about at the time, for a very short period of time before I was taken in by Leonard and Gwen Fitzjohn. who ultimately adopted me in November 1939.
PR: Oh, pre war?
RC: Yes, I was born on 25th August 1938. When I was 4 years old they actually had a son so I have a brother, David who is four years younger than me. We lived down the old Gaol as it was called because of its history, a hundred years or so before, actually being the town gaol (County gaol) and there were 76 houses in that little community. They were terraced cottages. There was Oak, Ash and Elm Streets and Baker Street, not a tree in sight! And yet they were all named after trees. Baker Street was the obvious one because it faced Wren’s the bakers in Ware Road.
PR: Well that’s easy to start isn’t it.
RC: That’s right.
PR: A cross road, it was really a cross wasn’t it a square and…
RC: That’s right, you came in to Baker Street off the Ware Road and you turned right in to Oak Street, left in to Elm Street and you actually ended in Baker Street and round the back was Ash Street.
PR: Oh I had forgotten the round the back bit.
RC: Yes round the back.
PR: So how did you get round the back then?
RC: You simply entered in to Baker Street from Ware Road and you went straight down. At the end was Addis’ and if you turned into Ash Street went down the bottom, in my day you then looked across into the army barracks which were in London Road.
PR: So was Ash Street built on one side only?
RC: No, They were all built on both, two sides. In fact I started my life as a Fitzjohn in Ash Street, number 3 Ash Street and lived there until 1941 when a landmine blew the two houses next door down and the wall off our house. And my dad had joined the Hertford Fire Brigade as an auxiliary fireman and Mum and I ‘cause my brother hadn’t then arrived moved down into the fire station in Mill Road opposite the East station and we actually lived in the quarters there and that’s where I first met somebody who became very well known to us in those years Jessie Britten.
Jessie was a telephonist cum runner-of-all-things in the fire station and she used to give me my breakfast each morning, and I rode on a Dennis fire engine and rang the bell several times! I also lived for a short time in the fire station which is now Waters Garage in the North Road, because the town had to have two fire stations. One on each side of the town because of the bridge, if the bridge got blown up, Mill Bridge, one side of the town would have been without an emergency service. Having been in the fire station for 6 months we were the…, well my parents were then allocated a house in Elm Street number 12 and that’s where I lived till they pulled them down in 1964, at least that’s where the family lived until 1964 because I joined the Air Force in 1959. So I didn’t….
PR: Right to go back over a few bits, one is the bit about the fire station in North Road, get the position there and there other is when you say “allocated” 14, number 14.
RC: Number 12.
PR: Sorry number 12… was that by the borough council or by a landlord?
RC: By a private landlady, who was dear old “Flannel foot” who lived down in Villiers Street.
PR: Oh she has arrived in this tape!
RC: Yes, oh yes “Flannel foot”. She was a little old lady who lived in Villers Street, who would have been very much a green person today. She would not allow anyone to do anything that would harm animals to the point where she wouldn’t wear shoes because they were made of leather, or animal products, so she wrapped pieces of cloth around her feet, we never ever saw her with shoes on her feet, so we very unkindly called her “Flannel foot” .
PR: Not just you.
RC: Everybody, the whole town knew her. But she was as rich as Croesus, she owned half of Villiers Street, most of the houses in the gaol and large parts of Ware Road as well as properties in London.
PR: So your Dad had applied to her and had remained and applicant as it were since the bomb fell.
RC: Yes, yes,
PR: Then in time one came up …
RC: One came up, that was the one we got, she gave priority because. My Mum was actually born in number 6 Elm Street and my grandparents still lived there. That was Granny Giblenn.
PR: Yes, right, it’s a job managing these tapes, so that people can follow the text easily when they are doing research in the year 2080. They might say why didn’t he keep her on track! Now we are going to lose the Fire Station bit so I am coming back to your grandparents in a minute what about this, was it the sub station, sub fire station would you say in North Crescent.
RC: Yes, that was the sub station, the main fire station in Hertford was the one in Mill Road the sub station was the one, and did only have what would now be called retained crew there but there was always a vehicle there, where Waters Garage is now, waters Garage in North Road.
PR: Used to be a garage before Waters called Sessions
RC: Oh yes, sorry it was Sessions, which became Waters, also on the end of course was the Ebenezer chapel. That fitted on the end.
PR: Right ,so the requisitioned part of Sessions….
RC: They requisitioned the whole of it, yes they took over the whole lot, as the fire station, sub fires station for that end of town.
PR: Was the fire engine then…. You could get out both, you can get out of Waters both ways can’t you, Hertingfordbury Road and North Road …
RC: Yes, it always went in from the North Road side and always went out on the Hertingfordbury side, always, yes. Because of course you already had the double doors and everything for the vehicles that were being serviced there by the garage, so, they didn’t have to do any alterations which was why it was…The other place hey had thought about was down by the Durrant Hall but they decided the archway there probably wouldn’t accommodate a fire engine coming out at speed. So that was……….and that was also rather near the bridge and if the bridge had been hit, chances are the sub fire station would have been as well.
PR: So how long do you think that was in operation?
RC: Throughout the war.
PR: Started at the beginning…
RC: Oh yes, started right at the beginning, yes right at the very beginning…
PR: You were very much a toddler…
RC: Very much, well I was probably still a baby actually yes, my father went in to the Fire Brigade in 1940 and it was certainly a sub station then.
PR: Oh well there you are that’s something …………. We ought to mention there is a Church mouse here, who says things every now and again, called the Reverend Marion Harding. We will hear little squeaks in the far corner without a microphone…
RC: Absolutely.
MH: Well I am going to ask where or what is the Durrant Hall?
RC: Ah, the Durrant Hall is no longer, its now where the new houses are built next to the river, on Mill Bridge, those very horrid looking townhouses that look out on to the Public Library. There used to be a hall at the back there called the Durrant hall and going on a bit further in to my life that’s we would sometimes go on a Friday night for country dancing.
PR: Ah, St. John Ambulance place there.
RC: It was yes, Peggy Bradshaw got shut in there by some children from the St Andrews youth club on one occasion. She got shut in the shed there when ….
MH: In the background something about a Nisson Hut
RC: We used to go down there on a Friday night, if there wasn’t a dance at the Town hall or St Johns Hall or the Corn Exchange, we would go country dancing at the Durrant Hall. All good clean entertainment.
PR: Well so let’s go back to the gaol.
RC: To the gaol?
PR: To the gaol as it were because you have just said that there were antecedents as it were. Your mother had been born there and her…
RC: Her mother yes, my mother was actually born there, her and her sister Gladys Shadbolt as she became, they were both born in Hertford. Mum was actually born in number 6 Elm Street, she was a sudden birth, she was supposed to be born in hospital but she came unexpectedly and Granny and Grandad Giblenn lived there until they both died.
Aunt Glad actually lived at number 10 Elm Street she was living there when we moved in to number 12. As I say there were 76 houses there and two got blasted by a bomb that left 74, it was very much a community and I’d almost go so far as to say it was a family because we all knew one another so well. There was never a locked door, they all had latches and you’d rattle the latch, open the door and you’d shout “It’s me” whoever you were and simply walk in, that’s the way it was.
PR: That was the back door?
RC: No, it was the front door, we didn’t have any back ways, the only people who had 2 doors were those who lived in the four corners of Oak Street, that was Mr Wrangles on the right and the Pausey’s on the left and old Polly Miles on the right and old Mrs Warren on the left of Elm Street and Oak Street and they actually had yards and the Batford’s who moved in to Polly Miles’ house also had a cellar.
They were really well off and we children used to go and hide in the cellar when we wanted to get away from folk. But having yards they didn’t have gardens because the yard wasn’t big enough and there was an outside privy, all the houses had outside privies but those who lived in Oak Street, Elm Street, Ash Street, also had back yards which were probably, I am not very good at distance, but not much more than 20 foot long but they all had gardens and on one side was the flower bed and on the other side were the vegetables.
In all the houses and hanging on the wall was the bungalow bath which came down regularly every Friday night and everybody had a bath whether they needed it or not and we had brick coppers which mum lit to boil the water for the bath, in the scullery. You went straight off the road in to the parlour which in most houses was never used unless somebody died or on Christmas day, then you went in to the kitchen which would be called the living room, the sitting room, the dining room, whatever, where there was always the kitchen table, the radio, however many chairs were needed for members of the family, the stairs behind a door and under the stairwell was the coal hole, that where you kept the coal, the coalman came in and tipped it into the….
PR: You had to come in through the front door.
RC: Had to come in through the front door yes, into the scullery where was the copper, the gas cooker and the kitchen sink, and of course there was only cold water, there was no hot water. Then out the back door, immediately left there was the outside loo, extremely cold in winter. In the kitchen it was a range which most of the cooking was done on, not much cooking was actually done on gas cooker in the kitchen. They were still viewed with a certain amount of suspicion and we didn’t get electricity until 1953.
PR: When you say we…?
RC: The whole area. It was offered to all the residents in 1951 and they all said no no no, then sadly the king died and there was this new thing called television where there was a possibility of actually watching the Coronation, all those miles away in London, so everybody clubbed together, they all got together and electricity was put on early in 1953 in order that two television sets could be purchased for the whole neighbourhood to view the Coronation.
Everybody had to pay for the main electricity cable to be run from Ware Road down to the four streets and I can remember, at the time, people really scratching their heads and being very worried if they were going to be able to afford the sum, I am sorry I can’t remember what the sum was, to actually have that done. Great excitement the first time the lights went on, it was... Our little gas street lamps, they actually managed to keep them, they didn’t have them converted to electricity and they were still there when the houses were pulled down in 1964.
PR: Were there any owner occupiers or were they all rented from someone?
RC: No. They were all rented from someone.
PR: “Flannel foot” was the…
RC: “Flannel Feet” was the major owner but they were actually, in the late 1950’s they were bought out by the council and they all became council tenants in the late 50’s. I can remember my father being absolutely furious because the rent had gone up from £1 18s 6d to £2 14s 10d. It went up just like that, because they were owned by the council, it caused quite a bit of anguish.
They were lovely little cottages, when the tender went out to knock them down, it went to the lowest bidder, the man lost a packet because he thought he was going to go along with his big ball of steel, knock the first one and they would all go down like a pack of cards, but in fact they had to knock down every house, they were so solidly built. They were all three bedroomed houses. Ok the smallest room was no more than a 6ft x 7ft box room but it was three bedrooms. They were warm, sash windows, which you had to be very careful about because if you had a weak sash and you opened it and stuck your head out you were likely to get your head chopped off but they….we loved them, we really all were very upset when they decided to pull them down.
Apparently the original idea was to knock the 74 houses down and put up flats and all sorts but of course it didn’t happen. As I said before it was a community, we all knew each other, I can remember very clearly Mr and Mrs Nott across the road, their son Freddy went down with HMS Hood and I can remember the whole community were there for them and with them and when they said leave us alone, they left them alone and waited for them to come back out. Although Mr Nott never did come back out completely, he’d got another son but his eldest son was… as was often the case.
I can remember the joy when old Harry Head or “Nutty” Head as he was called came home having been released as a prisoner of war. I can see him now if I close my eyes. I can see him walking round the corner from Baker Street in to Elm Street with his kit bag over his shoulder and his Mum sitting on her doorstep with her arms folded. Little round lady she was and the tears just streaming down her face and she just looked at him and said “Do you want a cup of tea boy?” I mean I was, what was I then,7, 8 but I can remember it.
PR: He’s still about isn’t he?
RC: Harry, no, Harry died in …..
PR: Got a wife called Pam?
RC: No that was the younger brother married Pam Field, that was the younger one. Harry was engaged to Elsie Brook for 30 years? She had got a Mum who wouldn’t let her leave home, Harry had got his Mum who didn’t want him to leave home, so they waited until both Mum’s died and then they got married. They actually lived at Bengeo for quite some time before Harry died, I suppose it must have been about 10 years ago now that Harry died. But no the younger brother, his name has gone, he married Pam Field.
PR: Live in Port Vale?
RC: Yes Pam is the same age as Audrey, they were at school together. We had an influx of Londoners, the Bradford’s, the Shellshers, the Plattens, the Adam’s family, the Lewis’s. The Adam’s family were lovely they lived next door to us and Vera Adams still lives up on Sele farm, Vera Abbot she is now. Lives next door to Janet Hemsley.
Round the corner there was another Adam’s family who had the little sweet shop, they turned their… or a little grocer shop… they turned their front room into a shop. On Mondays when the washing was out, everybody took their washing line out first thing in the morning and hooked it up to the house across the road. All the washing went out on a Monday no matter what the weather, the props went out and the delivery vehicle was never allowed down on a Monday. If it came on a Monday it had to stop in Ware Road and everything had to be carried to the shop. Because Monday was washing day.
PR: Describe this putting the line out business again then, you took your own…
RC: You took, you had a washing line in the shed and you took it upstairs to the front bedroom and you leaned out and you put it through the pulley, then somebody went downstairs and threw it up to the window of the person opposite who put it through their pulley, so you had a pulley system and props for the washing lines. If you were a big family you had one each side of the window, so you had two lines and if you were just a family like us, a family of four, you only had one. The sheets and bedding all went out in the back garden washing line first and then clothes went out later. But undies always went in the back garden. No one’s smalls were ever displayed in the main street they all went out in the back garden washing line.
PR: That worked, people co-operated always.
RC: Oh yes I mean there was never any problem. If somebody had a bit of line they would take a neighbour’s if they had a bit over. If somebody was ill they allowed them to use their live because they had got extra bedding or extra things to be done. It really was a family community of the best kind.
I am not saying that nobody ever argued because we did and the kids more so that most. But the parents were very sensible and realised while they were going to be arguing about the children falling out the kids had already gone off down to Hartham with their jam jars and fishing and forgotten what the argument was about in the first place., so they didn’t. Everyone down there did and was prepared and did give a child a clip round the ear or across the backside if they misbehaved or were cheeky and it was accepted and you did not go home and tell mum that Mrs Ball had just smacked your backside because she would give you another one. It was accepted in that way, it really was good.
When people like the Lewis’s, the Shelsher’s and the Platten’s they became absorbed… these were people who had lost their homes or were about to lose their homes in London and people there just said well, here’s the house, you’re moving in, welcome. Then as I said to you at Hannah’s funeral on Friday when Hannah and Bill came they weren’t “German” they weren’t the enemy, they were Bill and Hannah and they became part of the community they really did, as did two other German families, that moved in. One didn’t stay very long they got a house at Bengeo the other ones, George and Eileen they live in Tudor Way, Sele Farm now. We just accepted them.
We played up, the kids played up, there was the old lady Polly Miles, Polly Miles on that side of Elm Street and Mrs Warren on this side and they both wore long black dresses, black button boots, in the summer black button shoes with thick black stockings they never wore anything else except a blue calico apron during the day when they were working. We kids used to draw our cricket stumps or whatever on the wall of a house, and we discovered where the pictures were on their stairways, which were against the walls going up so the greatest fun was to throw the ball as hard as you could to try and dislodge the picture. On one occasion we did and we all had to pay Mrs Warren a farthing out of our pocket money to have the glass replaced in the picture we had broken. A farthing was a lot of money to us in those days.
PR: So the Adams family shop couldn’t have had any passing trade because it was tucked away…
RC: No it was entirely, well not entirely, for people from the Gaol, people from Villiers Street occasionally come but not very often because they had, Townsend Street had Mr Brace’s shop on the corner there, and there was the shop on the corner of Villiers Street, Miss Britten’s paper shop, then Wrens bakers then Mrs Jeffries paper shop on the corner where Concord darts is now.
So yes it was mainly for the people of the gaol but they sold pretty much everything. Not milk because Fred Sparkes wouldn’t let them sell milk because Sparkes dairy was just round the corner. So there was an unwritten agreement they didn’t sell milk and they didn’t actually sell bread, old Josiah Wren would have quite happily sold them bread but there wasn’t much point when you could cross the road and get it there. But they sold sweets, they sold blue bags, they sold washing powder, soap, shoelaces, liquorice allsorts, OXO cubes which you could go and get 4 for a penny. You took a penny you got four oxo cubes for your Sunday meat. It was just the front room, it was like an Aladdins cave and that’s where our farthings went you see we went to Mrs Adams with a farthing and she would fill the bag with sweets for us. I know that was just after the war, to be able to go and get a bag full of sweets yourself, you know, was really quite something.
They didn’t run a slate but if anyone was a bit short there would always be something over at the end of the day. It would be taken out and left, the door was open, whatever it was would just go inside, they knew that by the end of the week whoever it was would go round with their tuppence, or threepence or sixpence whatever it was. They didn’t actually run a slate, you couldn’t actually go in and ask for anything on tick. But they knew and they accommodated you and they stayed their again until they died which was only a short time before the houses were pulled down so the shop was there until certainly the late 50s. We missed that little shop enormously, by then Sparkes had opened up with more, more of a sort of grocer store rather than just a dairy, the two shops across the road were quite happy to accommodate us from our four streets but that personal touch had gone.
PR: Do you know why the one house had a cellar?
RC: Yes it was to do with when it was the gaol, the corner unit, the house on the corner belonged to the chief guard and he had the cellar because that where they kept, I don’t know if it would have been weapons of what it would have been but it was the security of the prison. That was it and when the prison was raised to the ground and all the houses were built they didn’t fill it in. They just left it.
PR: Why were the houses built? In connection with the prison or the army?
RC: It was initially going to be for the army but then they built houses round the old barracks and they didn’t actually need them. They were then sold off to private enterprise and rented out to local… you see people like my father having got married in 1931/32 came from a farming community in Hertford Heath where there weren’t any houses. You either worked on the farm or you went out and found somewhere else.
Daddy came in the Hertford, he married my mother, she lived in Elm Street there was a house going in Ash Street so they were given the house when they married. As a house was emptied so somebody who was either a member of the family or know to the family got it. You went on the list and if your name came up top then you got that house. If you turned it down you went to the bottom of the list and started all over again. Not many people turned them down.
PR: No you can see they were one up on a lot of places that were available.
RC: Oh yes, I mean we had running water, we had got gas, what more did we want?
PR: You heated the water how?
RC: With the old brick copper in the kitchen
PR: Put things on it?
RC: No you filled up the copper itself
PR: If you wanted a bath you filled the copper?
RC: You filled it with buckets of water then you emptied the buckets of water in to the bath. If you were doing your washing you just put your washing in it.
PR: No tap to…
RC: Oh no, no, no, no.
PR: The fire was underneath.
RC: The fire was underneath which you…
PR: Which you had to light specially
RC: Yes that had to be lit specially with wood and coke. Coal was much too expensive we used to go down to the Gas company on a Saturday morning with our wheelbarrows and get sixpenneth of coke or if you had a bag it was sixpence a bag or with a wheelbarrow, you could get a wheelbarrow full for a shilling. Everybody had a barrow!
PR: Everybody had a barrow.
RC: We had two, we had one for the coke and one for the allotment. Because my dad had an allotment down opposite the Kings Mead at the back of Cromwell Road, yes we used to walk down there and he had two pole of allotment and I had half a pole, so he had one and a half and I had half and I grew my own vegetables and sometimes people in the neighbourhood would give me a penny. For my produce very nice thank you.
PR: When you went for coke did you go to the back of Railway Street, down by the Friends’ meeting house there or somewhere else?
RC: No no we used to go down past the East station down to the gas works.
PR: Not the showrooms?
RC: They did have it there sometimes but, no, we used to go down Villiers Street past the East station and round the back down Mead Lane, down where the gasometers were down there. Used to go down there on a Saturday morning.
MH: Now Marshgate Drive.
RC: Gashouse Lane is one of them off…
PR: Marshgate Drive.
RC: Marshgate Drive it is now yes. A lot of the areas got reputations, we were called Gaol birds because we lived in the Gaol people who lived in Bengeo tended to look down on us a bit. People that lived down in Gashouse Lane, they were nothing more than criminals, even we looked down on some of them ….Oh yes and if you lived in Villers Street you were not seen with someone who lived in the gaol.
PR: Yes, because I went in to the Gaol area, from memory, only a very few times, most places we went but because it was a dead end. Would I have been unwelcome if I had gone down there?
RC: No you wouldn’t have been unwelcome because you would have been a stranger so you would have been welcome but these people in Villers Street and Townshend Street they would have been known.
When we had the Coronation party we could have all got together and had the whole of Ware Road all the streets leading off, could have taken over Ware Road and had one super party but oh no each was going to outdo the other. The poor mayor, I can’t remember who the mayor was that year but he dare not say where he had just come from, he would tell you where he was going, but he wouldn’t dare say where he had come from because “Why have you been to see them first” we had Mrs Brace who now lives a couple of doors from me came over on the pretext of wanting something from the shop just to see how our tables were laid out. Mrs Bradford had gone down Villers Street to the station on the pretext of finding out what time a train was coming in, he sister was coming later in the week, to see what Villers Street had got laid out. They were almost identical.
MH: ****
RC: That’s right and we all had a great deal of fun, but, having said that if anyone in Villiers Street they had been in trouble, everyone in the Gaol had been in trouble each would have helped the other.
PR: You mean proper trouble not routine trouble.
RC: No proper trouble and I think ultimately when we all got to school and that, we felt we could go in to one another’s homes and the who thing died a death. But yes, there was real competition
MH: Rivalry?
RC: Yes, rivalry that’s the word, it was good, there was nothing nasty about it, good healthy competition yes.
PR: Now I want to ask you about people, Hannah, and that moving address you gave for her and it would be useful for outsiders land in a place which has already been established, so perhaps you could tell us a little bit about Hannah again in a moment or two and then of course Maudie Mead, one of the customers I was most frightened of in Farnhams shop. I was talking to Joy John a few years about Maudie Mead on tape both she and her mother used to sell firewood.
RC: Yes. They, again they had a barrow, they took it around town, although the old lady had it on her back in a sack.
PR: Did she? I don’t remember the old lady but everyone was frightened of Maudie in the paper shop. She worked at McMullens then in the bottle shop, you didn’t make jokes because she would interpret it as being personal, you understand and there was always this large arm, you know playful but you didn’t want to get it.
RC: Maudie had a loud voice but she was actually quite harmless, she was one of life’s sad people in many ways because she absolutely adored Georgie her son who she… can I say it… had on the loo.
PR: Oh yes Georgie has had some attention before.
RC: Right well Maudie and my Mum were second cousins so I as a child had to call her Auntie Maudie which I absolutely hated but she would have taken good care of me, because George always was thought to be a bit simple therefore if he was simple I had to be simple because it ran in the family.
At the time I couldn’t say no it doesn’t because its not really my family because I didn’t know at that time. But Maudie’s husband, you only ever saw him you never heard him. He used to disappear for long periods of time and nobody was quite sure why he disappeared for long periods, everybody had their suspicions, but nothing could ever be proved. But Maudie would never invite anyone in to the house, if you knocked on the door she would come to the door and the door would be pulled to behind her. It was the one house that had a closed door in the whole area.
If you saw her out you had to speak to her you had to speak to her because if you didn’t as you said, Peter, the arm would come out. Kids would get a clip round the ear or she would say to the adult that had walked past her “What the hell is wrong with you” and you would have to say “nothing I didn’t see you” “Well I’m big enough to be seen aren’t I” and she was really aggressive and she was a big lady. But as I say, again, when my aunt died, Glad Shadbolt, she did all the laying out down there and if Aunt Vi had any difficulties you could knock on the door and say so and so has died and Maudie would roll up here sleeves and she would go with her and Eric, no questions asked. A strange family, almost an unknown quantity, Georgie he went on to get married and in fact I married his daughter here, Diane I married her here three years ago.
PR: He is still local?
RC: Yes, Cecil Road, Diane was still living at home with him when she got married three years ago.
PR: The firewood business, where would she, it was kindling wood she would sell, where did she get it?
RC: She would go all over Hartham and up the Warren and she would pick up from over there or she would go down to the market on a Saturday and she would collect boxes and bring it back and break it up. A lot of the twigs she got for lighting the fire had got this nice aroma with twigs that had got a bit of bark on them.
PR: Lighting the fire things like that.
RC: That’s right, that’s what we used, she would go over Hartham to the Warren and pick up the bits over there and a lot of the wood came from the market, the cattle market she would go to on a Monday and the indoor and outdoor market on a Saturday.
PR: She would sell it on the street as well as hawking it..
RC: Oh yes…
PR: You would see her down Market Street.
RC: End of Market Street that’s right.
MH: Anywhere that she could.
RC: You see she didn’t have a husband at home to go out to work, I mean he just wasn’t there so she bought Georgie up by herself. She worked in McMullens bottling and I think at one point she ran McMullens bottling because they wouldn’t say no to her. She was the most fun character. But one that earned a tremendous amount or respect from people. Whether it was just because we were just frightened of her or we did respect the lady.
PR: Did she die there or did she move…
RC: Yes she died down in Oak Street before the houses were pulled down.
Transcribers Note: Maud Snr maiden name Giblenn died in 1942 in Oak Street, Maud Jnr died in 1976, her husband was George Albon, they had married in 1942 and he died in 1951.
MH: And it was just as well.
RC: Probably because it would have been quite difficult to re-house her because she wouldn’t have moved easily.
PR: No that would have been a really hard thing for a different community, if she was at ease with you.
RC: No, she wouldn’t have settled in to the sort of community we have in Sele Farm or Hornsmill or Bengeo there isn’t the same feeling of neighbourliness as there was down there because although she never opened her front door if you went in to next door, Mrs. Bradford, when they lived in Oak Street, they would always talk over the garden wall.
The walls were that height there was never a barrier, you leaned on the wall and you talked. From the back door in your kitchen you could talk to whoever was in their kitchen over the walls. If there was a shed outside you could still talk to each other. My Mum used to have long conversations kitchen to kitchen or Mum and Effie Lawrence would lean on the wall and talk to each other. It was good.
PR: Just looking I think its about to stop so I will turn it over and ask you just to talk about ….
End side one
Side two
PR: It was a very clear and moving picture of her life you made. I won’t ask you to go in to any great detail but the stepping stones to the arrival of people from another country in to the community already established in the gaol.
RC: Yes Bill and Hannah lived in Hoddesdon, where Bill was working in the nursery which was owned by the Stevens family that was later taken over by Rochford’s.
PR: I had an uncle working for that same nursery…
RC: Oh right, Bill and Hannah had met and they got married, by then they had already got Peter. The reason for that was Bill was actually already married to a lady in Germany to whom he was only married for three days and then war intervened and they never met up again. So although they were technically married he went through all the motions, got himself divorced or whatever, annulled and married Hannah but by then Peter had arrived.
They then decided they wanted to move away from Hoddesdon, Peter …. Bill had become involved in woodwork to some great degree, he found he had a skill for it, he wasn’t really happy in the nursery work so they came to Hertford and they lodged with Buck Wrangles on the corner of…
PR: Wellington Street
RC: No, no his brother who was also known as “Buck” on the corner of Baker Street and Oak Street. (Cecil Wrangles)
PR: Right in your community then?
RC: No, they moved in with him first then the house in Oak Street became vacant, so they moved next door to Number one Oak Street. There Sylvia was born. But this German couple came but as I say no one there saw them as Germans they were just two people, she was pregnant, he was a hard working man they just fitted in with the community, there was no side with them and there was no side with the community.
On the morning of, Coronation morning, I said in the address, and there were a couple of people sitting there who nodded in agreement we children will never forget going out of our houses on Coronation morning and looking up to the four corners of the little square was and sitting high was this most wonderful replica of the Coronation crown what I didn’t say was that on either side of it, it said “God Bless Our Queen” I think it was the “Our” Queen that really touched everyone. Bill had made it, he had made it in Mr Bradford’s back yard and Mr Bradford and Bill put it up just after midnight when they knew all the children, because in those days we children were in bed at respectable hours, we were all in bed so none of us would see it till Coronation morning.
It was absolutely superb and at first nobody knew who had done it and as the day wore on it came about that it had been made by our new friend Mr Vogt because in those days they were Mr and Mrs Vogt not Bill and Hannah (Willhelm and Johannah). Later in the day the Mayor came round Peter and Sylvia won the fancy dress. Everyone and I mean everyone was absolutely thrilled that these two children had won the fancy dress without any bias or coercion at all the Mayor had no idea who these children were, they won and they were the King and Queen. Bill and Hannah just became part of the family and Peter would strut around as a toddler in “lederhosen” always, Sylvia had her very Germanic piglets [pigtails] but there was nothing different about them and at all times spoke English. They were immediately absorbed and Mrs and Mrs Bradford became the unofficial grandparents because their grandparents were in Germany dead or who knew what, so they became the grandparents to the children.
PR: Bill said at the funeral who is going to count the money now because Hannah has counted it for years, door to door collections, money for “Mencap”. I don’t know if she was doing it right at the beginning, we have done 34 annual collections and for a long time now that’s dumped everything off.
RC: Well certainly they have done it since the year after Jason’s accident and that was 27 years ago.
PR: Yes 27, describe Jason’s accident to us, Jason has sneaked out of the house, it was 3 days after his 6th birthday (1972) and he had sneaked out of the house to go on the swings in the playground in Bentley Road and somebody suddenly said there was some children’s programme coming on television and he wanted to see it and he knew he had to get home quickly and he said to his other friend “I am going home now” and he came out of the playground, ran along to the corner of Edmunds Road, Burnett Square was opposite, as he stepped off the kerb poor Brian Hall came round the corner in his mini and touched him, he didn’t run him over, just touched him but tragically Jason fell back and hit his head and that when the damage was done.
Bill and Hannah, like everyone were absolutely devastated, they prayed for him to live and then they prayed for him to die, when they were told there was going to be little or no quality of life, but that boy just bought so much love. I mean heart-breaking, so much hard work for Bill and Hannah and Sylvia in particular and the family but he did bring a tremendous amount of love and through that again as I said last Friday Hannah was instrumental in raising thousands and thousands of pounds for Mencap and 305 ware Road which is where Jason goes on a daily basis.
PR: What will happen to him now without Hannah?
RC: Bill will soldier on more than ably assisted by Sylvia, there is absolutely no way they will allow Jason to go in to care. Sylvia is obviously very worried, she is away on holiday thankfully at the moment. They booked up to go away she and Paul for the first time in 30 odd years, ever since they have been married the first time they have been away by themselves and they have gone for their holiday and Bill is managing but, people like Joan and Harry Walkom he has got wonderful neighbours in Burnett Square and of course people from 305 (Ware Road).
Transcribers Note: Sylvia Vogt married James P McComiskie in 1967
PR: Has his heart…
RC: Well he has, they both had bypass, multiple bypass operations, they never like to be beaten, he had a triple bypass that he survived in his forties, and Hannah 18 months later had the audacity to have a quadruple bypass and he said, I mean it was so funny, he was quite angry with her that she had gone one better than him! Everybody knew about this and this was just Bill and just the way he still is.
PR: He was at the nursery as a prisoner of war.
RC: He came as a prisoner of war, he wasn’t released from that position until 1948 three years after the war ended, he said to me when I was talking to him people condemned the Russians for holding on to prisoners of war but, not many people are aware of how long we held on to prisoners of war for whatever reason.
In fact he showed me his discharge paper. It was November 1948 he was released as a prisoner of war and he decided he did not want to go back to Germany because it was not the Germany that he knew and he felt that he could establish a life here for himself which he did. He still had very mixed feelings about it to the point that neither he or Hannah took British nationality and they still retain their German passports.
PR: How did Hannah arrive here?
RC: Hannah had been applying, since the escape from East Germany into North West Germany which is where she arrived when she was 15, she felt it right then for entry in to England because many of her friends had come over as au pairs and things. This was immediately after the war and because she was so very young and because so many had applied they were closing down the doors on it. Somehow, he mentioned, I have forgotten the man’s name now, Bill mentioned someone who was a solicitor had been dealing with Hannah’s papers and he passed Hannah’s name on to Mrs Stephens and as soon as Mrs Stephens had a vacancy, a job whatever, she said she was prepared to sponsor Hannah. So Hannah came over as her au pair but she became much more family than just au pair and she even vetted Bill as a potential husband.
But Hannah had lost touch with her family you see when she escaped across Germany, what she didn’t know, where she landed up in North West Germany her oldest brother Gerhardt was only 50 or 60 kilometers away and her mother just a short distance beyond that and Hannah didn’t know, she just simply lost touch. The only person that kept in touch was an aunt who was a nun and that’s why she was called “Auntie Nun”. She somehow managed to trace them all and gave each of them news and eventually some years after the war they did have a big family reunion, now of course they visit one another regularly, the German contingent come over here.
PR: Who was here from her family at the funeral?
RC: All three brothers, Gerhardt, Georges and Arnold were here and her sisters in law some nieces and nephews.
PR: She died, fairly quickly, I mean last time I saw her she was showing me all the things she was having to do to keep going.
RC: She was actually doing well from the most recent stroke until the weekend that she actually died and on the Thursday she said she didn’t feel very well and during the night the sent for the doctor and the doctor sent for the ambulance at half past six they sent for Sylvia and at 1 o’clock she slipped away.
PR: You said at a certain point in the tape, at that point you didn’t know that you were adopted. How did you find out?
RC: Ah there hangs a tale, no I didn’t know, Peter, until I was almost 13 and do you remember Bobby Parsley? Do you remember the Parsley family?
PR: Hornsmill family?
RC: Yes. Well Bobby was the youngest, she was the daughter, she was the same age as me, she and I never got on. We went up to Balls Park to play hockey as we did from Longmores, because I was at Longmore school and on the way up we had an argument about something she said “Well that’s all we can expect from you, you’re no good, you’re adopted, your parents didn’t want you. You’re illegitimate” and we got up to Balls Park and I said to her “ What are you talking about?’’
I really had got no idea what she was talking about. She said “Your Mum and Dad didn’t want you. They threw you out so somebody else had to bring you up” and to this day I can feel it now through my hands I pushed her head against a tree and she finished up with four stitches in her head. Miss Binks who was the headmistress at Longmore she told me to go home and ask, to talk about this at home. So I went home that lunchtime and Mum was there and I said to her “Bobby Parsley said I am adopted, am I?” and she said “Ask your father” and when he came in, now in those days he rode a bicycle, he worked at the old Conrad’s electrical down at the Dicker Mill and he would come in and although no one was allowed in the parlour his bike was parked in there every night. He would come in, he’d park his bike, he would take his coat off, roll his sleeves up, go in to the scullery, wash his hands, sit down and there his meal he would be ready for him.
As he picked his knife and fork up so the 6 o’clock news would come on and we were not allowed to speak. I broke all the rules, I said to him “Dad, somebody at school today said I’m adopted, am I?” he said “No. Yes. Now be quiet the news is on” and he never spoke about it again, until he married his second wife, three years after my Mum died. That was when I discovered that I had been adopted and it hurt like hell.
PR: Well would you say it would have been better to have had it, I mean the methodism I can see with the Parsley girl was not ideal, which means they must, how did they know?
RC: Everybody knew about it but nobody dare talk about it, it was that sort of community because Bobby Parsleys grandma used to live down Oak Street.
PR: Right.
RC: So everybody knew about it except me.
PR: Its an unwinnable one I would have thought
RC: Oh yes I wouldn’t want to tell a child, you don’t actually belong to me, you know it must be difficult. I would have thought there could have been a time that something could have been said…
PR: After all its only 150% credit to them.
RC: Well it ruined what little relationship I had with them, it was never brilliant………..
MH: Didn’t you have problems with your birth certificate when you wanted to go in the army?
RC: Yes, well when I joined the Air Force I was 21. We had to show our birth certificates to prove how old we were otherwise we had to have parental consent you see till you were 21 in those days, the good old days. And they asked me for my birth certificate and I said “I haven’t got one I am adopted”. They said “Why haven’t you got one” and I said “My father would never allow me to have one” They said “Well you can send for one” so I sent for one and because I didn’t know where I was going to be stationed I sent it to Elm Street but I never got it and apparently it had turned up and he saw it and destroyed it. So on all my documents while I was in the Air Force it said “Details unknown, adopted” which was pretty awful and unkind.
PR: The Fitzjohn side of it seemed so good and positive that they had given you a home and that they would want to rejoice in it.
RC: Well I have never quite understood that actually. It was obvious they wanted a son and when David came along that was it. But one thing that did fall into place was when I was 7 I had, well you didn’t have rows with your parents, but something had gone wrong and I went to my grannies and whenever I touch a sack I think of my Granny because she used to wear a hessian apron during the day and changed in to a cotton one when grandad came home.
I went along and I said “Why doesn’t anyone love me, why does Mum keep smacking me”, and she wrapped me in her great hessian pinny and she said to me “Don’t worry. All you have got to remember is that when you think nobody loves you, God does.” Now my granny and my Aunt Glad were bonnet-wearing members of the Salvation Army and I have always remembered that Peter, and that’s always been very special and if anyone would say to me “where did your faith begin” I would probably say at that point because when the storm broke that I was adopted it was the only thing that stayed positive in my head was that “God loves me” because as far as I was concerned everybody else had lied to me.
Because nobody was who they said they were, I hadn’t got a Mum and Dad, I hadn’t got a brother, they weren’t my Aunts and Uncles you know I was on my own, but suddenly I wasn’t, because my Granny had said God would always love me. If that’s sounds trite, I am sorry, but that has stayed with me for always. I mean Salvation Army again that was another area, that was brilliant, I loved going there, I went down to the old ragged school in what is now the wretched….
PR: Kate Barbrook.
RC: Kate Barbrook was my Sunday School teacher, as was Nora Payne and Doris Jacobs and Dorothy Cross. Joy John was my young people’s sergeant major, and Jim Roberts was the drummer in the band. We had a Salvation Army band in Hertford then. I was a sunbeam and I was a junior songster and I stayed with the Salvation Army till I was nearly sixteen and then suddenly they couldn’t give me the answers to some of the questions I was beginning to ask.
So I shopped around and on one occasion I went to the Methodist in Ware Road, it was in October and he said “You needn’t think you are coming to the young people’s Christmas party because you won’t have been here long enough.” So I said “ I don’t want to come here anyway” I then went to the Baptist, I didn’t like them. The minister went on for far too long and I finished up at St Andrews. In between time I had gone to Christs Hospital of course.
PR: Nancy Cordery.
RC: Oh Nancy Cordery and the Co-Op choir. Nancy was then the music mistress at Ware Grammar School as it still was and she came from, the end of town she lived in Greenways, off North Road.
PR: Her father was with the Post Office.
RC: Yes Dad was yes was, not exactly postmaster general but he was a postmaster yes or old Joe Cordery. Nancy just had this joy of music she had qualified and trained as a concert pianist but decided she wanted to teach and share her love of music with people much to her mother’s disappointment and when she was at Ware Grammar School she suddenly had this notion that she would form a choir, though she was a pianist not a singer she felt she could do this, she was friendly with Carol Close at Hertford Heath and she said to Carol….
PR: Carol Close, she walks along with a sun shade?
RC: Yes she is still in the London Road nearly opposite the shops.
PR: Obviously got a migraine and will wear a sunshade in all kinds of weather.
RC: Well she asked Carol, they used to go country dancing together that’s how she knew Carol, so she asked Carol if she would be the accompanist if Nancy did the actual singing. So she hired the Pioneer Hall in Ware Road and just put out a notice you know, saying there was going to be a choir of children over the age of 10 and above if they would like to come and sing, and we did, didn’t we Peter Ruffles!
PR: We did.
RC: Absolutely did, we were there a long time, then of course from Ware Grammar school Nancy went to Christs Hospital and she stayed for 32 years and became director of Music and the Co Op choir….
PR: Why did it become the Co Op choir?
RC: It became the Co Op choir because the Pioneer Hall belonged to the Co Op. Part of the agreement was, as was the youth club we used to go to “The Co Op Pioneer youth club” or “The Pioneer Co Op youth club” anything that went on there had to have the name Co Op. Ted Graham who went on to become Sir Ted Graham he agreed that Nancy could have the hall for a reduced rental if she was prepared to put the title Co Op in to the choir title. Nancy said she really didn’t mind so we became the “Hertford Co Operative Junior Choir” and we went on to win medals and shields and all sorts.
PR: Enfield Highway.
RC: Enfield Highway festival we did, I have actually got the records that we made, yes great big…I have still got a head that will play 78s (78 RPM records). The choir went on almost to the period when Nancy had that horrendous accident, she was out for nearly nine months but Yvonne Coler, Helen Maynard, Pauline Sapstead, and I encouraged everybody to continue to come and we kept it going and Alison Clinton came, my godmother ultimately and just to make sure we were behaving ourselves while she was there we were absolutely wonderful, as soon as she’d gone we gave Carol Close absolute hell. Carol just coudn’t control…
PR: No no she wasn’t cut out…
RC: No no she wasn’t bless her, we really were mean to her, but the Co Op choir went on for six years.
PR: It seems longer …
MH: Very long time.
RC: 51 to 57 it went on I have got the records at home, I kept records on it.
PR: Alan Wright from Sandy Close he used to come.
RC: Yes and Peter Mabbitt.
PR: Oh yes from Bengeo.
RC: Bill Blows from Ware and Jean Woodcock from North Road Avenue.
PR: Ghastly solo Greensleeves.
RC: Greensleeves.
PR: I forgot the words.
RC: Yes and your brother came for a while didn’t he, not for long. They were good old days.
PR: How did you come to find yourself at Christs Hospital connected …
RC: Through Nancy.
PR: What did you do there?
RC: I was junior house mistress or junior ward mistress because the houses were then called wards as in hospital and I was the junior ward mistress in ward one with a wonderful old lady called Miss Robertson who I think had been there since Noah built the Ark she really was….. sadly she retired and Miss Miles came along.
Miss Miles and I didn’t see eye to eye so I went and saw Miss West and she said “You are not happy are you Miss Fitzjohn” and I said “No I am not” she said “What are you going to do about it” so I said “Well I would like to leave” she said “I will give you a reference.” She could see there was absolutely no mileage in my staying. So I very very sadly left there and I went to the boys’ boarding school at Rottingdean. But yes it was through Nancy, I was working for Creaseys the printers when they had their place at Bengeo behind the pub on the right hand side the Crown (The Globe). No longer there (now Globe Court) Mr Creasey lived on the left hand side and there was the pub on the right had side …
PR: You mustn’t question the authority, the Globe?
RC: The Globe. That’s it, that’s it, you’re right.
PR: They had some premises, there did they?
RC: Yes he had four big sheds and they did printing and packing and bookbinding there and they had the one down in Hertford running along the back of the old arcade and the one at Bengeo I worked there…
PR: This is when they lived in The Yews.
RC: That’s right, yes it was sort of diagonal to…. The offices were in The Yews and I forget what I was saying, oh I was working there and I wasn’t terribly happy there, I wasn’t happy in all sorts of directions and my romance was going through a bad patch, I was engaged to Clive Bilton at the time.
PR: Don’t think I know him.
RC: You probably didn’t cause he worked at Cowper school and she said have you ever thought about leaving and working with children because that’s what I particularly wanted to do and I said I couldn’t I had left school when I was 14 and I had got no…. so she spoke to Miss West and she said well we have got a vacancy coming up next term and interviewed me and I got the job. Really it sort of went on from there, I mean that was a big step.
PR: This is the best job of all.
RC: Ah!
PR: I mean in your own …..
RC: This is beyond belief, if anyone had said what do you think you will finish up as I would have hoped wife and mother but certainly never priest I mean it came as such a shock 15 years ago for it all to happen well 17 years ago now because it started to happen in 80s I just didn’t believe that people that came from my side of the tracks in any shape or form would ever finish up … you are absolutely right Peter this is quite wonderful.
PR: The parish isn’t it really/
RC: Well I am in a position I am in this parish thanks to the Rev Marion sitting there and Duncan Dormor.
PR: Oh right.
RC: Oh yes, if it hadn’t been for them I would not be here and the bit of history is that the parish, the diocese was desperate for an appointment here after Eric Carson left nobody had come up that met the standards required by the churchwardens and Marion was indirectly offered the job by Bishop John over the telephone which was very bad, sorry Bishop John, it was very bad to be doing it over the telephone and he totally misunderstood Marion’s reply, which was, he was suggesting she kept one foot in St Andrews and one foot here and when Marion rightly said that could be difficult, he said “ Well there are lots of men that are happy to run two or three parishes” and that was not what Marion was saying at all and he got quite shirty about it and Duncan and Marion went over to see, was it Ken Pillar who was Bishop of Hertford then and explained all this and they still couldn’t come up, Marion would have quite happily moved here.
MH: I would rather come here.
RC: Still uncertain what was happening, as they were leaving Duncan and Marion had a word with each other and said what about Rosemary, she’s non-stipendiary at St Andrews and Duncan felt it was time I got kicked out of the nest anyway.
I was at home down at the bottom of the garden, Guy came to the door and yelled “ Mum, telephone” I said “Who is it” “It’s the Bishop of Hertford” so I said “ Don’t be daft Bishops don’t ring people like me” and he said “It is” so I went to the phone and said “Hello” “Hello Rosemary can you …” ha ha ha “ Good evening Bishop” and he asked me to go and see him, which I did, he put it to me there was this vacancy and how did I feel about it and he gave me a week.
Duncan had snuck off to America hadn’t he, that was the year he went off to America and we had got (the American priest) Jim Birtwhistle was in Spain, Salamanca doing a three month sabbatical so it all had to be kept top secret, wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone, I did ask the Bishop if I could talk to Marion about it, he said yes because she knew about it anyway, then we had to wait for Duncan to come back and we had to wait for Jim Birtwhistle to come back and then Joe and I went to Rome because it was our silver wedding anniversary. We came back from Rome on the Thursday, I had my final service at St Andrews on the Sunday which was St Luke’s day and the induction, well it wasn’t induction it was licencing on the Monday and the day after that it was the gales ..
MH: 1987.
RC: 87 and the next day I had to try and get to Harlow Crem for a funeral and we had to go all round the houses because the roads were blocked with fallen trees and some of the slates came off this roof and would you believe when they turned them over what was the name of the tiles that tiled this roof? Rosemary!
PR: Really.
RC: Yes I have got one, they gave me one, Jim Birtwhistle went round and picked up every tile he could find to see if he could find one that said Jim. So I came here as a Deacon in 87 and then had the privilege of being made a priest in 94 and the duly appointed me “Priest in charge” but as I say that was due to Marion and Duncan.
MH: ******
RC: Well there you are here I am happily now and wind and tide permitting I will be here until I retire in four years’ time.
MH: Very likely.
RC: Yes well I shall be 61 in a couple of weeks.
PR: If anyone had the indecency to get the calculator out, well that is absolutely perfect ladies, they will say “Well done Ruffles” you have got a good recording there, well I suppose you knew what you were up to but sometimes people are not quite sure what they are contributing to and why and you have to get very very busy, the jobs much harder than you think steering the conversation so that when it is heard … now what will happen is if you are prepared to fill in the two papers I have either now or later, someone will eventually, a long time in the future because it takes so long to do, type out what you have said.
RC: Right yes.
PR: As I say it is slowly because we have a huge backlog. Then you can say delete this bit or leave that out, if you want to but I don’t think we have been unkind about anybody sometimes you get carried away and say something and think oh…. But anyway we can then delete, the tape stays in the museum so anyone in future years can go and plug in and listen orally as well as read the transcript and if we do an exhibition for instance on Christs Hospital or the Railways I would imagine, we go through the index and say who said something about chiefly it will be the gaol because that’s what we really wanted and they would use some quotes and put some pictures up to illustrate the exhibition in the Museum or of course in Jean’s books like “Courts and Yards” we won’t put “Rosemary said this”
RC: No.
PR: Its your contribution so we have a lot of panels and your photograph would be there and all the people whose photographs are there are the ones who have made this. Their contributions matching up.
MH: That’s it, if you give agreement on that.
RC: Well I have seen the agreement because it’s the same as Ruth so I know what it is. Nothing forbidden on there.
PR: Well that’s a challenge for somebody.
Tape ends