by Sue Taylor
Later on, brides were unable to buy traditional wedding dresses with trains because the amount of material they required had been rationed.
I had one of those collars that stood up at the back, stiff, Queen Anne style, and all little buttons along the sleeves, which came down in points over my hands. And, at the bottom, I had a little frill, all the way round. And I had a twisted silver cord around me waist with tassels.
When my sister got married, my mother waited at the tables. When I got married, I said ‘You don’t do that. You’re equal to us.’ My Mum was lovely. She bought a big tin of ham. She cooked sausages and all that and sliced them. We had jelly and blancmange, you know. She bought the stuff and stored it before the wedding. And the lady upstairs waited on the tables. We all sat down. I borrowed the trestles and the stools from the church around the corner and brought them round to our home on a trolley. I managed to buy the last white wedding cake from Hayes, the baker - he was one of the old-fashioned bakers. It was a two-tier one. One of the girls from upstairs, Mary, who got married after me, had to have a chocolate one, ‘cos I went to her wedding. (Many later had to make do with cardboard wedding cakes). Everybody went home at nine o’clock because of the air raids.
1940: Ethel on honeymoon at Cheddar Gorge
I got fish knives and forks and my chap got a bedside lamp as wedding presents. The lamp was all crystal pink. I had been due to collect a wedding present from some ex-neighbours of ours. I had visited them some two weeks before and it had been time for me to leave, ‘cos I had to catch the tram in order to be home on time.
Unfortunately, the bus was late - probably due to an air raid - so I ran all the way from my stop home all in the pitch black, because I knew I would be in trouble with Dad for being late. I arrived home with one minute to spare, completely breathless. Dad was sitting in the front room with his watch in hand! I later discovered that the family I had been visiting, had been killed by a bomb, which dropped on their house while they were sheltering in the cellar. The girl was a pretty little thing. I used to push her in her pram when she was little. She had wanted to be a bridesmaid at my wedding.
We got married on the Saturday and went back to work on the Monday, though we did have a few days honeymoon in Cheddar Gorge a little later - by motor bike, of course.’
It was to be one of their last outings for a while, for Joe had to sell his bike because of the petrol rationing. In 1942, people had to prove that driving was essential to either their work or health, in order to obtain petrol coupons.
1940: Joe Elvin on honeymoon at Cheddar Gorge
Fifteen
Boots, Bugs and Knickers!
‘We only spent the first night of our marriage in our rented flat in Courtenay Road - it took me a year to make the mats for it. We had two bombs after that, within days of each other. One was almost a direct hit - it landed in our back garden and took out our back windows; the second landed farther up the road and took out our front windows. So, we had no windows, just boards up. For a while, we lived with Mum and Dad, but spent most of the time, when we weren’t working, in their dugout.
Then on the 20th April 1941, Hitler’s birthday, we had the ‘land mine’ (even more than a terror weapon than the doodlebugs, the huge naval mine or ‘land mine’ as it was known, fell slowly and silently by parachute and always came in pairs. The blast from it could blow a man a quarter of a mile. The mine of which Ethel speaks exploded in Cornwallis Road at 3.50am. The gardens of the houses in Courtenay and Cornwallis Roads backed onto one another. Ethel and Joe’s flat was situated just a couple of houses down from where the mine landed).
Bomb damage at Cornwallis road reproduced with kind permission of the Walthamstow Historical Society
It was very early in the morning and Joe was sick of sitting in the dugout and was just going to go back to bed, when we heard this swinging sort of noise. ‘Get back in quick!’ I said, ‘There’s something comin’ down!’ There was this almighty explosion and I said ‘That’s our flat gone!’ Joe wouldn’t believe it. Then, when the all clear sounded, we went to see. All the houses had collapsed. The crater was so big, a bus had fallen into it. Our neighbours’ house was flattened and we saw the remains of their bodies in the trees. Her and her husband - he was a taxi driver - you never forget a sight like that. (According to records, the blast killed four people and injured 24. The twin was never found, but it was thought to have fallen in the reservoir).
Returning from Reading one day, I also saw the terrible aftermath of a Hoe Street bomb, which killed a bus-load of people and others queuing outside a fish and chip shop.
We’d been living with Mum and Dad for a while, and then a friend of mine who I worked with, got us a flat in Woodford. Luckily, most of our furniture had been put into storage after the first two bombs, though we lost all the curtains I’d made. Our flat in Woodford was in a big house made into four flats. The air raids eased up a bit then. We had a sort of gap. But we had to move from there because they had a big water tank over our bedroom and it kept leaking - I used to go into me bedroom with Wellington boots at the side of me bed, ‘cos of the water. Once, we got called home from work, ‘cos our room was all flooded.
Then, my other friend, Doris, told me about another upstairs flat in Roberts Road, Walthamstow, next to her flat. The funny thing was, the day we moved, as the van drew up, my friend came running out and she said ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you - this flat is riddled with bugs!’
The following weekend, my hubby sent me out to my Mum’s for the day and he got a blowlamp to burn out the bugs. He went up into the loft and killed them all. Trouble was, he set fire to the loft by catching a window frame alight too! We thought that being a fireman, he knew what he was doing! The damage wasn’t too bad, thank goodness, and we lived there for about three or four years ‘til the end of the war.
We had more raids then, ‘cos I used to sit on the stairs there with me tin hat on and a tin on me lap with all me papers in, ‘cos the lady downstairs wouldn’t let me go in the dugout. She had four children, so there was no room for me until they were evacuated. Mum was half an hour away then, so I couldn’t use her dugout. So, when Joe went on duty, I would sit on the stairs on me own. I could hear the anti-aircraft guns going by, but, although I wanted to see one, I never did in all those years.
It was also when we were at Roberts Road that I can remember when Cousin Flo and I had just got on the bus along the Arterial Road going towards Edmonton and they dropped a bomb. We knew it was at The Billet somewhere and I was thinking of my chap, wondering if he was all right. I always used to sit underneath the stairs on the bus - I thought it was safer. When they dropped this bomb at The Billet, we were standing on the platform waiting to get off. The bus was swaying all over the road to avoid where the bomb had dropped. Then it stopped and poor Flo fell in a bed of nettles!
My sister lived out in the country a bit, Stoke Row near Henley-on-Thames, and Cousin Flo lived with her for a while. With all the upset of the war an’ all, going to work, trying to do housework, looking after my grandfather and rushing in and out of the dugouts, and all the upset of the bombs, I did get ill. I was being so violently sick in the end, that I was bringing up solids. The doctor put me on a special diet of steamed fish and egg custards for six weeks. He told me to get away for a while - ‘It will do you good,’ he said. I did write to my sister, but because she had also taken in two evacuees as well as Cousin Flo, there was no room. That was just after we were married. My Mum never got ill, she was pretty good - perhaps she was able to cope with it a bit better.’
Shortly after Ethel and Joe’s wedding, an amusing - if not embarrassing - incident occurred:
‘I hadn’t been married for very long and I had me crêpe de chine pants on - French knickers they were called. I’d bought meself a whole new set of underclothes for me wedding. They was only kept up by two little buttons at the side. I’d worn them to work and had just got off the tram at The Billet and was walking up Blackhorse Road, when I co
uld feel somethin’ slippin’. As I was walking up the slope to go down the turning where I lived, me pants fell down - luckily I had some little ones underneath. I kicked them off, rolled ‘em up and tucked them under me arm and walked down the other side of the station where nobody was and went home! I was so embarrassed. Ever since then, no matter where I go, I always fasten me pants with a little pin and I’ve done that for donkeys’ years!’
Sixteen
Rissoles, Swedes and Rhubarb Wine
At the start of the war, a national register was established and everyone was issued with an identity card. One of the reasons for this was that the government was worried about spies. The national register number was printed on the front of the ration book along with a serial number and local office number.
‘I certainly didn’t like the national loaf - it was much too gritty. But it was amazing how far you could stretch a tin of meat. My Dad had an allotment and he grew what he could from seedlings - potatoes and all that. I used to make potato pie and we had mashed potato sandwiches. And sometimes, I would make rissoles from a tiny bit of mince from our rations, an egg, if I was lucky enough to get one, and potatoes. I would mix it all up, make it in pats and roll them in flour and fry them. They were lovely. I tried horsemeat once. I couldn’t eat it. I’d rather do without.
We would sometimes have mashed swede as a change from potato. We used to eat a lot of swedes - pigs like them, you know. When we kept pigs later on, my chap would buy sacks of them, chop ‘em all up and put them in the meal and they used to love ‘em. (During the war, people were encouraged to empty their kitchen scraps into ‘pig bins’ situated along the streets. Many also joined ‘pig clubs’, where members bought and then fattened up a pig).
You were lucky to get one proper egg a week, but if you went to the doctor with tummy trouble, you got an extra ration of egg. I used to have to line up for bread. And they used to give the children orange juice and cod liver oil, I remember that.
The dried milk used to be nice. I used to get dried milk and cocoa and make chocolate for my grandfather (paternal). He used to say ‘I’ll give you my sweet coupons, girl.’ He liked my chocolate better than the bought stuff - said that was too sweet. Grandfather was really lovely. He was so appreciative of what you did for him. I used to get all his shopping for him and Mum would get me to drop his meals in and do his cleaning. She would visit on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and I would go on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, when I would get his pension - sometimes, I would get him some corned beef. On Sunday, my Mum would do a roast dinner and Dad would take it to him with a pint of beer.
I would make him an apple tart every week too, and Dad would give me the rhubarb he’d grown on his allotment and I’d make wine with it. I used to make a gallon of rhubarb wine and every week would take Grandfather a pint bottle. He swore that’s what made him live ‘til 92! Grandfather died just after I got married. Gran died before the war.
During the war, my grandfather had been shopping in the market in Walthamstow and, just as he walked past the Lord Palmerston Pub on the corner, a German fighter plane flew down with its guns firing. Grandfather ran and hid behind the wall of the pub to escape, but, after it had gone, he stood out in the middle of the road and shook his fist at it. Cor, was he mad! He was flaming!!’
Clothes too were rationed from 1941. Everyone was allocated ‘points’ in the form of coupons to purchase whatever they needed and there were posters proclaiming ‘Make Do And Mend’:
‘I used to use a black pen to draw a line down the back of my legs, so it looked as if I had stockings on. I thought it was a bit too messy to use brown cream or gravy powder and water.’
Seventeen
Big Bands and Booby Traps
During World War I, there had been no radio or television. In the Second World War, the wireless became both a source of information and entertainment. Music provided a distraction from the realities of deprivation and conflict and dance halls vibrated with the sounds of the Big Bands.
‘Henry Hall and his Orchestra were my favourite. A girl I used to work with, her brother used to play the saxophone in his band. I also used to like Billy Cotton and Geraldo. I used to like dancing to all the Big Band music. I liked Gracie Fields - I would go and see her films before the war - and I thought that Vera Lynn’s ‘The White Cliffs Of Dover’ was wonderful.
I used to love listening to all the music on the wireless, but sometimes, when you switched on the radio, you would hear the voice of Lord Haw Haw - ‘This is Haw Haw talking, Germany calling’. (William Joyce, known as Lord Haw Haw, was a Nazi broadcaster. He was born in the USA of Irish parents and became a supporter of the British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley. He obtained a British passport and, in 1939, went to Germany and broadcast Nazi propaganda to Britain during the Second World War. After the war, he was tried and executed for treason).
Haw Haw used to say ‘We’re going to bomb you tonight’ and other such threats. I can still hear his voice even now. I think that he even told us when the buzz-bombing was going to start. It was a bad thing to do, because it put the wind up you. It certainly did me. I was learning typing in the evenings on the top floor of this big college in Forest Road, Walthamstow at the time, and it put me off going - I thought they were going to drop a bomb on it.
When you turned the wireless on and you heard Churchill giving his speech, you would look at people’s faces as they went to work the next day and they would say ‘Did you hear him? Wasn’t he marvellous?’ Churchill kept us going all those years - he was a wonderful man.’
Just as Churchill stirred the patriotic emotions in the British, Hitler became the reason for German hatred:
‘Cousin Flo could really swear when she wanted to and when a lorry-load of German prisoners-of-war drove by us in Walthamstow one day, she really let rip at them. But then her younger brother, Herbert, had just been killed. Herbert was a motor bike courier. He’d got blown off his motorcycle and had been home on leave. He hadn’t long been back, when they heard before the rest of us, that the war had ended. Despite warnings, he and three friends got into a booby-trapped motor vehicle and it exploded. Three were killed, including Herbert, and the other one was badly injured. Two days later we heard that the war was over.’
Eighteen
Fancy Dress and Fireworks
The end of the Second World War was a relief for everyone. VE-Day on May 8th 1945, was a day filled with parties, fireworks and Union Jacks flying everywhere:
‘I paid in for my two nephews - I think I paid in about five shillings a week for about three months - ‘cos I didn’t have any children of my own and they lived in the country. Our Peace Tea was a lovely turn out.
We dressed the eldest one, Alf, in my friend’s dress and put all this fruit on his head, ‘cos he was tall. He was Carmen Miranda. The other one, Colin, we dressed as Aladdin. They had to parade in their fancy costumes. Alf had a good voice and sang ‘When I love, I love.’ He was so good. The judge said if he’d known he was a boy, he would have awarded him first prize! The boys really enjoyed it. There was some lovely music playing and it was a really lovely show.’
Ethel’s nephews at the peace tea
Nineteen
Jews and Views
‘I always thought what an awful thing it was how Hitler treated those poor Jews - it was wicked and they were the nicest people you could meet. They were lovely people. All those that I ever came across treated you fairly and were very generous. They ran a lot of businesses down our High Street.
Before the Second World War, my Dad’s middle brother, Fred, used to work for the General Bus Company in Hoe Street - he used to drive the buses. When he was made redundant, he was out of work for some time and he had two boys. He couldn’t get any work, so his wife turned him out and he went to London and strolled around for months and months - my Dad never knew where he was.
Well, what happened, he was going down Petticoat Lane and ‘e never ‘ad a penny in his pocket and it was pouring w
ith rain. He was watching a Jew organise boots and shoes on his stall. He had been standing on the corner all the morning and I suppose he was tired and had got nowhere to sleep. At lunchtime, the Jew called over to him ‘Hello mate! Could you look after my stall for me? I’ll trust yer. I’ll be back in an hour.’ So of course, Uncle Fred looked after the stall and, when the stallholder came back, he gave him some money and said ‘Here you are mate. Go and get yourself a decent meal and then come back to help me,’ which Uncle Fred did.
Uncle Fred (2nd from right) standing in front of an old general bus
And that man took ‘im home, fed ‘im, clothed ‘im, found ‘im a flat and found ‘im some furniture. Uncle Fred worked for that man and lived in that flat right up until he died.
The King and Queen in the Second World War were pretty good. She was always around people when they lost their homes; and the family decided to stay in London despite the bombs. I thought she was a lovely queen. About the best one we’ve ever ‘ad, though the Queen Elizabeth we have now has done very well. Her mother thought a lot of George VI. He didn’t seem to do a lot, but she used to support him, ‘cos he was a nervous type and used to stutter a lot. Wonderful woman, she was. She done well in her lifetime.
