Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Smithers, Joan (O2003.17) |
| Interviewee | Joan Smithers (JS) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 25/06/2003 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording No: O2003.17
Interviewee: Joan Smithers (JS)
Date: 25th June 2003
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR)
Venue: Maisonette behind the Eastern Tavern, Railway Street, Hertford
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Freda Joshua
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
(Joan’s voice fluctuates during the recording)
PR: On the 25th June 2003, just kicking the tape off before going to church first of all,10.30 am on a Wednesday morning, and then on to Joan Smithers in Railway Street, and it’s an absolutely beautiful June day.
JS: I was doing so I would impress the ladies…
PR: Well, you’ll have to impress ----
JS: I hope I impress the gentlemen tonight – you’re going, aren’t you?
PR: What’s tonight? Oh, the Civic Society, no, I’ve got a council meeting.
JS: You’re like the vicar, he’s a man you know [then fast, unintelligible talking]
PR: I don’t know whether I’ve got 15 quid.
JS: I tell you what they are, they’re a pair of flip-flops and they’re Japanese, and I’ve got a ‘pershont’ [penchant] about the Japs.
PR: Yes, there you are.
JS: Oh, I’ll owe you for it, I’ll give it value [?] [Joan has asked Peter to lend her £15 to buy Japanese flip-flops to wear at the Civic Society Summer Party that evening]
PR: [Overtalking] -- have you got your Equity rights though?
JS: My what?
PR: Equity, the actors’ union -- [overtalking] You were being rude, I was just trying to bring you back.
JS: Let me concentrate, let me concentrate. Do you take sugar?
PR: No sugar, Joan. It’s a lovely flat.
JS: I’ll let you see over everywhere but the ‘sacrasont’ [sacrosanct?] – the bedrooms. Sure you don’t do your garden?
PR: Yes!
JS: You can’t work the hours you work and do that garden.
PR: Just manage to achieve it.
JS: Do you want it strong ---
PR: As it comes.
JS: I said to my neighbour, ‘watch this space, keep your eyes open on Wednesday morning, the 25th’, but they’re not in, but if they had I’d have said, ‘the Queen’s coming’
PR: Well, she hasn’t turned up yet.
JS: I understand there’s a possibility of her coming – Jane?
PR: Jean, Jean Riddell.
JS: Someone told me she’d been divorced, is that right?
PR: Yes?
JS: Oh well, so have I, not once but twice, I’ve managed it twice, yeah. The thing is, the twice ones are a breed, you know.
PR: Special class. It’s a lovely flat with all these ----
JS: I think, actually, I’ve got the best aspect of the 8, 4 and 4. There are 3 original tenants who moved in in 1960. I moved in in April ’62 and I think the gentleman who took it, I think he had a choice and he picked this one because I look at the garden out there and of course now we haven’t got the old scrapyard [overtalking]. I rather liked that car park and I never drew my curtains and, of course, I use old-fashioned curtains. I don’t feel the need, you know.
PR: No, it’s wonderful because you’ve got so many bits and pieces, but it’s not cluttered is it?
JS: What do you mean ‘bits and pieces’?
PR: Well, there are the ornaments and the pictures and the photographs [overtalking].
JS: Well, the photographs are my parents you see. I’m the matriarch now [inaudible comments about her sisters]. Silence is gold, I’m not compromising – my sister’s not a well girl really [the next passage is only partly transcribed due to very fast delivery, possibly while eating and also appears to be coming from a distance]. We were away on holiday in Kingston? last week and my brother-in-law phoned up, Les, No.1 Warren Terrace? And he said, ‘I said, oh you didn’t send me a card’. We don’t send cards. [Inaudible]. A month ago, she [her sister] went to the doctor. I don’t know if it was a woman or a man, but whoever it was they weren’t a bit sympathetic. I said, ‘well, what’s wrong with you, Sylve?’ She said, ‘I don’t get any sympathy from the doctor’. So now, whoever the doctor is, the matter’s in hand. She’s not mental or anything, she is just run down, so it’s all been resolved
PR: Well, are you the oldest of the 3 then?
JS: Yes, there’s only 4½ years between the 3 of us. My father was in both wars, the second one he shouldn’t have been in and my mother more or less issued an ultimatum and he got a job as [inaudible]. Now, I remember your father, a rather aquiline gentleman.
PR; Yes.
JS: And your mother was the good-looking one. Are they both alive?
PR: No, both died. I inherited his aquiline – not quite the same proportions.
JS: Now, have you any brothers or sisters?
PR: Yes, they’re younger. They live in Bury St Edmunds.
JS: Oh, I had relations there, rich relations. In most families you get some upper class and some lower class.
PR: Yes, what was the bakery called?
JS: Childs. And, of course, when they came down to visit, I was about 8 or 9 I suppose [inaudible]
PR: Yes. So were they always in Bury, that part of your family?
JS: Yes, they had a car, which was very unusual at that time of day, people didn’t have cars then. The daughter married and there was a son who was a philanderer – what was his name now? Claude/Paul. I found that out when my father had a little old car, it all came out in the wash. Something might interest you. She showed us round the premises you see. I was with my first husband, we were a nice little couple. We used to spend our evenings watching the telly and in those days, when you had a car, you had to go places you know. So we visited these relations and there was my father, my mother, my sister, my husband and I, 5 of us that’s right. I married in 1950 and my sister married in ’55 and the other one was a late starter. She was a spinster and she married a bachelor and they were in their mid-thirties, and she was introduced to him throu.gh his association with the Bengeo Cricket Club. He’s always lived in Bengeo
PR: That’s the Pryors of 21 Warren Terrace is it?
JS: Oh, do you know them?
PR: I’m not sure whether I do.
JS: You can’t be all things to all men, can you. So we got up to the bedrooms and she said, ‘This is the master’s bedroom’ and I looked at my husband and said, ‘Aren’t we 2 little innocents!’ [perhaps she actually said, ‘This is the master, ie: the biggest bedroom!’] I was very impressed when they came to Hertford and you know how girls get a pash on men when they’re about 11, I had a pash on Claude. I had a pash on another one the other side of the family. I would have married my cousin but he always considered me a youngster. First cousins do marry, you know.
PR: Yes. I’ve lost which one was the master’s bedroom.
JS: The Bury St Edmunds, that was my mother’s side of the family.
PR: Called Childs?
JS: Childs, yes [Peter’s own grandmother was a Childs but he doesn’t mention it] Julia was the mother, and Uncle Ollie. My mother talks about them but I can’t remember much. If they were my mother’s uncle and aunt, they’d be old people to me, wouldn’t they? [then the furniture]
I’ve updated some of the things. I bought this at a shop along Ware High Street, and this was my mother’s ---
PR: A gate-legged, yes.
JS: And I did swap with my sister a three-one, you know. I don’t like those where you push and pull one out different heights, that’s much better.
PR: Oh yes, yes, those nest things.
JS: That and that’s the second one I bought. I haven’t used that, I went to Potters Bar for that. I bought a very nice upholstered one from Fishpools. I got rid of it because I didn’t like the shape. That’s like a gentleman, I got rid of him because I got the 7-year itch. So my sister that lived up Fordwich and went to Harleston in Norfolk, they retired there in August ’92. I lent her a bridging loan and I’ve got a chitty, you know.
PR: So did they spend their married working years in Fordwich?
JS: When they married they got a mortgage, they did all the right things, they had the 2 sons and they made all the right noises. I feel now that, although they were always churchgoers, now they’re doing the lip service really.
PR: Where did they live then?
JS: They lived at 74 Fordwich and I was at 91 opposite, but that was unintentional, we were never in each other’s laps. Leaches put up 58 [houses] in 1974 and my husband and I that week, we had a week off and didn’t do anything, and my father had just got a little car and [overtalking] by him wanting a garage for his car – parents lived at 35 Sele Road. So because he wanted a garage for his car, we bought a house in Fordwich! No, my first husband, he wanted to tape-record the history of Hertford with my mother but she wouldn’t agree to it. Excuse my great fat legs – I used to be proud of my legs but I’m not anymore. I’ve got 4 things today, I’ve got Sound Bites at 1 o’clock, I don’t think I shall go down for eats beforehand. Well, I’m stook, don’t know if that’s the right word but I haven’t got any cash, then the Womans [sic] Fellowship, I attend that because they only get about a dozen, if that. Mary Geering, who’s in charge, I support her. The Sound Bites [finishes] about quarter to 2 and that doesn’t start ‘til quarter past. I can be here there and everywhere in half an hour, and then this evening I’ve got something different again.
PR: Civic Society tonight.
JS: They say the Director’s House. Now who is the Director?
PR: I think the house was called the Director’s House. It’s the Institute, John Innes Institute.
JS: Oh, that’s where it is. Is any part of the Convent there now?
PR: Are you not going to Bayfordbury? (Yes) So you go through Hornsmill.
JS: Oh, of course, that’s up Brickendon Lane.
PR: No, Brickendonbury’s up Brickendon Lane.
JS: Oh, you go along the lower road and up there. My brother-in-law they used to live at Bayford.
PR: Well, you go along the lower road until about where the nursery is, then you turn left opposite the nursery – that’s the way up.
JS: Do you ever entertain ladies in your garden (No) Well, I see you’re a church warden.
PR: Oh yes, quite a lot to do. Can we start off with how long you’ve been in Hertford, your family and where you’ve lived?
JS: Oh, you want my history.
PR: Yes a little bit and then memories.
JS: I was born in Hertford, in 2 rooms in Stanstead Road. I was trying to get some pictures together but the more I got involved the less I seemed to do, so you won’t get any pictures at the moment. I’ve got a photograph of Stanstead Road by the way, in those days and I was born about 5 in the morning. My father raced down the hill on my mother’s bike. I don’t know how good the brakes were.
PR: So, what were they doing there, your parents?
JS: They had recently married and they did something that the middle classes do, they got married by special licence at Walthamstow and his aunt and uncle were the witnesses, and actually they were a little bit naughty because you have to establish 15 days residence. My father actually was in digs at Hertford and he put 35 York Road Walthamstow as his address. He didn’t tell his mother. He was a 33 year old bachelor, I think she thought she’d got him for life and the family told my mother afterwards that she went to bed for 3 days with the sulks. But she was a very nice woman really. That’s Sheba, her husband called her Shebie.
PR: She was living in Walthamstow was she?
JS: No, that was my father’s uncle, the Carrolls, Robert and Alice¸ they were first cousins, but they had 3 perfect daughters. Two of them lived to a ripe old age, the third one died in her 40’s because she was a chain smoker. And the last time my father met her [she] was gasping for breath. She was a very pretty girl and the way she met her husband – she used to go to whist drives and she met an older woman there who’d got a bachelor son, and she introduced them. Bert wasn’t a very handsome chap but once he’d met Marjie she was his whole life. They never had their own accommodation – he moved in and she was still mother’s girl. [overtalking]
PR: So he [J’s father] turned up in Hertford because of work?
JS: He left the forces after the first World War. He and his brother didn’t go back to Norfolk and, being labourers, but actually my father was never a labourer because when he left school, I’ve got a reference that he had from his employer, he was a footman at some big country house, and the headed paper hasn’t got a transfer [?] on it. All I know is that he had his 21st birthday in the trenches.
He and his brother went through the war and came out whole, he was about 2 years younger. In those days, they used to go to different members of the family to be set up because they weren’t going to be country boys any more`, the war had changed everything. So one went to my grandad’s younger brother, Robert – policeman. He worked off the docks, a big burly chap. He went to Walthamstow, and Clifton went to the country cousins at Attleborough, which is near Norwich, Snettisham [where father came from] is near Hunstanton.
We always had a yearly holiday, my father worked on the railway and he used to get the pass through to Hunstanton. My grandmother used to take in other people’s washing and I always remember the steps up to her cottage, they were scrubbed white. I’ve been about since 3 o’clock – not through you, and I’ve been on the go since 3 o’clock and I get a little giddy. But I’m 100% fit actually.
PR: So what was the reason for getting to Hertford?
JS: My father got a job on the railway. He worked for the railway all his life. Clifton got a job at Gaymers, the cider people, and he worked there all his life. But, whereas my father educated himself. First of all he had a menial job, he had to clean out the carriages and then he came to Hertford, then he worked on the passenger van, two of them, a Mr Clinch and my father. Mr Clinch was a bit older and taught my father how to drive and they used to deliver things like pigeons, and my father, at Christmas, used to take up things to Haileybury College, and the cook would give him a nice Christmas pudding and all sorts of little perks. It was called passenger services. They both lived at Pearson Avenue, Hornsmill. They cleared out the back streets of Bircherley Court [Green] and put everybody up there, went up there when I was 4½ coming 5
PR: So you had sisters by then?
JS: I was born 18th November 1927, Phyllis was born 20th February 1930, Sylvia was born 19th July 1932. My mother used to say, ‘I had 3 children in 4½ years.’ And she had a feeling that she might have lost one child, that would have been a boy and, of course, my father never had a boy. Your parents, they had both sexes, didn’t they? My father was always a man’s man. He joined the Territorial Army and when war broke out [WW2] – my mother had an inkling there was going to be a war, other people did, as well, didn’t they, and apparently there was someone called Bonheffer [Dietrich Bonhoeffer] – the Reverend Kemm’s got 2 books on it, ever such a nice looking man with glasses, not unlike our vicar actually. He was instrumental in trying to whip up the German people into realising what a menace Hitler was going to be.
Anyway, Hitler let him have his head for a long while and then, of course, he got aggravated by him and put him in prison and had him put to death and 3 weeks later apparently, Hitler himself was dead. If the man had lived 3 weeks longer he’d still be alive.
PR: Let’s go back – so you’re in Pearson Avenue, do you remember the number?
JS: 50.
PR: So that’s on the steep bit of the hill is it?
JS: Well, I used to use my bicycle to whip up and down the hill and I realised I could have got killed any time, but there weren’t many cars about then. But you come up Bullocks Lane, you come up Pearson Avenue and shoot round up the hill!
PR: So was yours actually on the flat bit at the top?
JS: Yes, and everybody knew everybody and nobody moved in those days, now they move after 2 or 3 years [Her mother had lodged in Stanstead Road with Mrs Newland of the nursery next to Addises and she “was a character”] She came from Walthamstow, my mother and father, they were a young couple, well my mother was 32, 13 years [months?] between my 2 parents’ age, they were contemporaries. And to begin with the poor husband never – of course in those days you always used to have dinner, you didn’t talk about lunch and dinner, when I talk about dinner, I don’t know whether I’m talking about lunch or dinner, I belong to that generation, now everybody has a hot meal in the evening, people go out to work all day and they have to have the meal in the evening, whereas in my parents day you had a main meal, meat and 2 veg, and my friend Lorna, that’s the only woman friend I’ve got, she’s a very dyed in the wool spinster.
PR: Lorna Peet.
JS: Oh, you know her. She still cooks cabbage and what not, you don’t get a smell here because I never cook cabbage. Some days I go out to eat every day. When I’m short of money I eat one meal a day, I’m healthy, I’m a nice weight now and I’m a nice size. I can wear young people’s or old people’s clothes and I can get away with my age which I’m told ----..
PR: So Lorna still does the cabbage does she?
JS: Oh yes, if I go up to Lorna’s I always know I’m going to get a nice – she always says, ‘I’m a plain cook’. She’s always demeaning herself about everything. I can’t get her to use lipstick, but of course women of her age, they don’t use lipstick. I’ve come full circle rather late in the day. I had 20 years when I was out in the wilderness.
PR: So you were saying about Mrs Newland.
JS: Oh yes, what she used to do about mid-morning – my mother would be busying herself around, she’d be getting the meal ready – I’m fed up, I’m going up to see my mother - she’d go off to Walthamstow and her poor husband, my mother hadn’t got enough food to give him a meal, poor Mr Newland had to survive on bread and cheese. But, of course, he thought the world of her.
They had 2 children – there was a daughter and a younger son, Billy, who was my age. But they got on, my mother and father were determined to get on. Another funny thing was there was gas laid on at Stanstead Road. My parents were hard put to afford the rent, but she’d never got any money, like me, and her husband got a good job and she’d never got any money, so she thought of ways that she could make a lot more., She said to my parents they were using too much gas and she wanted more money. Well, my parents were equal to the occasion, so my mother bought a double stove with oil in it and she got my father a hot meal on this double stove and she bought a nice powerful oil lamp [the story didn’t conclude]…
PR: What was the nursery like then?
JS: They used to sell a few apples.
PR: So there was an orchard?
JS: Not like the wonderful place at the Lower Hatfield Road. They always talk about Van Hages, but now it’s a fantastic place. I spent £20 on serviettes there.
PR: Oh gosh.
JS: Yes, when I do, I do.
PR: We’ve got your father coming because of the railway – where was your mother’s beginnings?
JS: They weren’t dysfunctional because I know what dysfunctional means, but they were of their time. They lived at 14 Nelson Street, actually they did live at Mead Lane but I don’t know much about that.
PR: What was the family name?
JS: Copse.
PR: And was she one of a big family?
JS: No, there were 3 girls and a boy. There was a late daughter and that’s half responsible for why I’m stuck with my sister. She caused a rift in the family that goes back before my marriage in 1950 [sic]. And it meant that my mother had heartbreak for years. And she went to her grave still with the heartbreak, because two of the people were still alive. They’ve since died and I’ve taken on the mantle.
PR: So your mum was living at 14 Nelson Street, so where was she in the line-up of the family
JS: She was no. 2 daughter. There was Ada, then there was either Will – his wife, she was supposed to be my mother’s best friend but she would stab her in the back at the first throw, then there was my mother, then there was a sister 2 years younger called Ethel, she was the beauty of the family, my second name is Ethel. This young lady I’ve got in touch with who’s Skipp, Brooks Court at the Ridgeway – she’s the only one left who knows anything about it. She’s 62, your age and she still remembers Uncle Will.
PR: Oh! And then you said there was someone born later.
JS: She was born 15 years after my mother and my grandmother had an operation at a London hospital, Woman’s trouble. She was told not to have any more children so, guess what happened. My grandmother was ill and I can only remember her on a sofa. She always managed somehow to have her daughter at home to look after her. So my mother got married.
PR: Did they meet locally?
JS: Oh yes, she was always able to attract the gentlemen, my father used to say about her ‘you’re all hats and chaps’. So in those days they couldn’t afford suits so she always had a new hat. There was a shop called Sindens…
PR: So your mum was a girl about town even though she was coming up 30.
JS: Girl about town? Don’t quite know what you mean by that?
PR: Did they meet at dances?
JS: No, she was courting another chap and they went over to Ware and my father was taught the slide trombone. But he played a big drum in the Ware Town Band and I’ve got a picture of him taken with the mayor and mayoress of Ware. Anyway, she went with this other chap to this concert. My father always helped out afterwards. They came home on the bus from Ware and my father, instead of allowing this other gentleman to sit next to my mother, he sat next to her and paid her fare. This other chap got off the bus in disgust. Anyway, they had a falling out and they split up for 6 weeks, I think it was Easter time, and she’d bought a new hat and he’s got a new suit and they met again and they decided that they liked each other.
PR: So what about people in Hertford that you know?
JS: I know nothing compared with the people my mother knew. And the characters! The people I know are no-nos. You can take that for your lunch.
PR: Oh, thank you.
JS: I always throw things at men. My “perchonts” are 62 year olds, so you’ll have to watch it. I bought this at Age Concern, they have Tuesday and Friday at the River Room. That was £2.50 and of course I’ve been on my own for so long I’ll have a drink at the drop of a hat, but I only drink cider – course you’ve got a car – where did you leave your car?
PR: I’ve walked.
JS: Oh well, you can have a drink then can’t you.
PR: I mustn’t because I’m out this afternoon . That looks tempting but it’s too early in the day – if I could have a little sleep this afternoon it would be lovely. Yes, so you’ve got a well-stocked drinks cupboard.
JS: How about this one?
PR: Oh gosh.
JS: My first husband got me [to like?] Grand Marnier and Dijon mustard.
PR: So when you met your husband were they in Hertford here?
JS: No, I was never wanted, nobody ever fancied me. I went to one dance and I thought, ‘Stop being a wallflower, that’s me finished with dances’, so I got myself an education between 14 and 18, very lucky because I worked with women of all classes up to MA’s. I was very lucky, I got a job at County Hall at 14, they were taking Grammar School and Convent girls and I got the job because I was shy.
PR: Oh!
JS: Yes, quite. Need I say more. Anyway £2, that’s a nice one.
PR: Oh, aren’t they good.
JS: And this one.
PR: Where did you get these?
JS: I got that at the sales table at the Age Concern – that’s on Tuesday and Friday morning from ½ past 9 to about ½ past 11 and I always go in there for a coffee. I always say I’m not going to buy anything, I’m left with about £10 and I spend £5 of that. Now you know where the British Heart Foundation shop is, Maidenhead Street, well next to that is a gent’s shop and next to that is a ladies fashion shop, £2 you can get them black or white [then hairdresser talk] I go to Mr Robert’s and it happens to be the cheapest in the town, and there are 2 young girls, 20’s, there’s Christine who lives at 37 Sele Road, who does shampoo and there’s Margaret who owns it. Now her name was Margaret Bent and she altered it to Brent because she didn’t like being called Bent. They’re churchgoers but they’re All Saints and you’re St Andrews. I had a conversation last night with Doreen Wingate and I thought they were tied up with All Saints but she said they were St Andrews.
PR: Some of the women in the family – she’s All Saints.
JS: I shall impress the vicar because I shall say she says you’re not a mean hand at bridge. And another – I go there for Tuesday, they do a marvellous Tuesday lunch – most people spend 30 bob £2 – spend about £4 – I have 2 desserts. A lot of us bring something back and you take the plate or dish back the next day. Hope she likes this, it cost me enough
PR: Who’s that for?
JS: It’s for the young lady who does my hair.
PR: It’s a lovely belt.
JS: It ought to be for what it cost. I kept the ticket. I thought it came in one size but it’s small, medium and large.
PR: Is that Christine?
JS: Christine washes the hair.
PR: Top of Sele Road, next door to your old –
JS: There’s Margaret, she lives at Brookside – they’re all tied up with All Saints and her mother is a Mrs Beale and her husband, he helped raise £400 for some special unit at the hospital and, of course, it’s a responsibility, that business.
PR: You were going to tell me where you met your first --
JS: No, we won’t talk about that, we’ll talk about husband 2. What do you want to know?
PR: Well, just like to see ---
JS: I was quite passable looking but I didn’t seem to have any oomph. I don’t know what it was. Sylvia had a couple of boyfriends and Phyllis, the Norfolk one, she’s more complicated. She only had 2 jobs, she left school at 14 and she used to be the sort of girl who’d go out in a foursome, not a twosome, and when she left school she went to work at the County Hospital under Mr Percy Brooks, she’s a bright girl.
In those days there was a gentleman, he took the girls under his wing and taught them shorthand. My first experience of shorthand and typewriting was with Miss Mabel Owen who lived at Nelson Street, a Victorian sort of lady, organdie gowns down to the ground, that generation. I used to go to her on a Saturday afternoon. When I first went out to work I earned 15/6, 12/- basic and 3/6 cost of living because of the war. The first payment I got I was so proud to give to my mother 10/- because we needed it. [Her sister] She was like me, not only did we do our own work, we found time to do other people’s work.
When I worked at Sovereign House, which was called Crown Hall originally – it was altered to Sovereign House because there was a Crown Court at St Albans and they used to get our mail. I also helped on the switchboard. I used to think, ‘Oh well, it’s another string to my bow’. Phyllis loved bookkeeping so she was a very talented girl. So my father, he always made the real decisions in the family, he said Mr Brooks should pay her more money, so Percy Brooks, he demured [demurred?]. So, in the meantime, she got a job in Stephen Austin’s, a comparable job, and then Percy Brooks said, ‘Oh yes, I’ll .....’ too late [so he must have refused earlier!], so Phyllis got the job – they wouldn’t default, obviously, and she went to work at Stephen Austin’s. I think she worked in the town at that time. Eventually she went up to Caxton Hill. She worked up to the Works Manager’s Secretary, but when her wedding was put in the paper she didn’t mind, but my parents objected a bit, they put she worked at Stephen Austin’s but they didn’t put Secretary to the Works Manager.
PR: Was Percy Brooks a good employer?
JS: Oh yes, he was. She was there about 3 years. [She stayed at Stephen Austin’s for a year after her marriage].
PR: And All Saints church has been important to you?
JS: Oh yes, I got married at All Saints church. My other sister, she got married at All Saints church, yes. And my father was just about alive then because she got married in ’67. They were both married in June. I got married 16th September 1950, 1960 I got married Whit Saturday. That was a 3-day thing because my husband had got 2 children, so I had 2 step-children for 3 months – that’s how long I stayed. And my mother-in-law looked after them and we went on honeymoon on the Saturday and had to be back first thing on the Tuesday. We got married at Leahoe, up the driveway at the bottom of Pegs Lane. My brother-in-law, Bill Murphy, he took photos and my husband had them and I never asked him for them back, so I’ve got no record at all. I’ve got a picture of him in a cameo but it’s faded and I’ve got a picture of the 2 children
PR: And their names?
JS: Well, one was Smith and one was Smithers, that’s why I changed my name [?] But when we were Smith, we were married, but, of course, when you’re Smith and you register at a hotel ----- [overtalking].
PR: So your first married name was Smith and that was for ---
JS: 6 years and I got the 7-year itch and progressed from living with mother-in-law for 6 weeks to a very nice bay window in Alexandra Park Road at Wood Green, a bedsitter, but it was very nice.
There were 2 single beds so that wasn’t much of a married life. But it was very nice, it had wardrobes and a mirror and Mrs Zander her name was, she was German. She was a widow, she’d got a little boy but she’d made 2 orange boxes to make a platform to put the washing up, a gas oven. So I said to my father there are two things I want to make the room wholesome, a chest of drawers and I’d like that cabinet my mother got that’s got a water jug underneath and the top opens to a basin, can use that as a sink.
So my father was allowed to use the passenger van to bring these two goods home. So that was my dad, to bring these two things up to me, so I was complete. I should have been happy there but my husband was [of] a rather funny make-up so, oh and I only had a week’s honeymoon and I was always thinking of the next [inaudible], not that I’m money minded but, of course, money was always tight.
I started off at County Hall and I ended up at Simson Pimm. My husband lived at Southgate so I applied for a job in that area. I got a very good class of job with the Transport and General Workers Union at a big house called Woods-something, in Lordship Lane. I didn’t realise ‘til I was at Finsbury that Lordship Lane runs through 3 areas. Anyway there was me, a little country girl from Hertford. Of course, I only had a week’s honeymoon - I’ve got to be back on the Sunday to earn money, start a new job on the Monday, so eventually I found this place and it was 3 stations from Shrewsbury Road, Bounds Green, something else – I had to get off at a stop, it was ever so easy. So that was when I became, as I thought, a housewife. I did think I was clever, I was married, I was working in town.
PR: So what years were they – the first marriage was ---
JS: 1950 to 1956, then I married again a year after my husband lost his first wife. He buried her on the Saturday as I started work at Great Amwell on the Monday. The thing once I realised I’d met him, I couldn’t do that job so I left after 6 weeks. It was too much of a temptation and then kept in touch with him because when I was at County Hall the second time, after I’d left my husband, I heard he’d re-married and I thought, ‘If you can re-marry, I can do so’.
So I chucked in the shorthand typing job and started off as a housekeeper for a colonel and his son. I didn’t meet the son or I wouldn’t have taken the job. I used to have to empty the waste-paper baskets and I found a letter there more or less implying that he was looking for another housekeeper, so I thought, ‘Blow you, I’m going to use your phone to get another job’. I wasn’t used to being a skivvy, I’d always worked in an office.
One job I did take in a shop, I only lasted a week because I had a disagreement with a customer. That was a job at a stationers in Ware [then an inaudible passage]. I went to Gilbertson and Pages, I went to Creaseys, they’d got a big new office up Gascoyne Way. They weren’t there for long, bitten off more than they could chew. I went there to have my typewriter mended and I said, ‘I’m not going to buy any more, I just want this one mended’, and the chap said, ‘Oh, do let me show you the latest typewriter that we’ve got’. ‘Oh’, I said, ‘It’s tempting but the thing is I’ve got a little typewriter that is perfect’. My husband decided to buy himself a Grundig typewriter with a Grundig recorder. I’m going back to the first husband. What stage are we now?
PR: You got the 7-year itch, then you went to Concrete Utilities.
JS: No, the 7-year itch, I did a lot after that. I left him – no there was more to it than that. He was a Walter Mitty character, Peter Sellars sort of person and he used to write jokes and he was the sort of bloke, we used to go to my mother-in-law’s on Sunday afternoons, have a cup of tea with her, both my mothers-in-law, talk about characters. Anyway, we used to come home and our TV came out, in September/October 1954 we were going to get it, we’d got a nice television and we were tempted and a month after it came out we bought one. And we used to come home and watch the London :Palladium, Tommy Trinder, and my husband used to send him up jokes.
PR: Now this is husband number 1.
JS: This is the real one, the other isn’t worth talking about, he was naughty, he’s dead, God rest his soul. He got drummed out of the police force for pinching cigarettes, but he didn’t tell me about that. In his defence, and of course, they had to splash it all over the front page of the Mercury. They put he’d got 3 children,, when in fact he’d got 2 children, a boy of 7, Michael, and a girl of 2, Dawn.
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