AIP            Some snippet memories of the 1930s                    July 2008

These are just memories that still linger in my grey matter.  Having been born in December 1925, 1930 was the beginnings of real memories.  Some of the dates may be out by a small amount, but not be very much.  Some of my memories are assisted by things my mother told me over the years.  I do wish I had quizzed my mother more than I did, as she was born in July 1901.  Not quite a Victorian, but almost.  Her mother was born way back in the 1800s.  I remember her well.

My granny (Nan) developed the family disease in 1939 just about the time that all the London hospitals were closing in expectation of war-causalities.  My Nan would probably not have qualified for in-patient care with bowel cancer, as there was no treatment and they just waited for the patient to die.  But my Nan passed away shortly after a visit by her doctor, and my mother was convinced that the doc had given her something to ease her on her way.  In the months leading up to the war there was an oppressive feeling of dread among the general population.  The civilian preparations enhanced that feeling of dread.  The newspapers explained ways to proof one room in the house against a gas attack.  The younger men who were in reserved occupations were enrolled into the Local Defence Volunteers (later the 'Home Guard').  Air raid shelters were built in the street, or erected in the back gardens of houses.  EWS tanks were visible in many streets.  These emergency water supplies were for the fire brigade to use if the mains water supplies failed.  Shops and factories enrolled their staff for 'Fire Watching': an all-night stint at work to keep a lookout for possible incendiary bombs.  Everything at that time was sombre to the point of dread.  As a fourteen-year-old, I was fitted for my gas mask at school and had to carry it everywhere when outside the house.

At that time I was living with my Uncle Bill in his house at 10 Lisbon Avenue Twickenham.  He had bought the house a year or so earlier for £450 freehold.  I expect he had a mortgage as his wages would have been about two pounds ten shillings a week.  But a self-employed plumber was aristocracy in the building trade.

My Uncle Bill was our saviour as he took my mother and we two kids into his house after we left 21 Cross Deep Gardens as my mother couldn't keep up the building society payments.  The house was starting to be bought for £1100.  Prices fell dramatically in the 1930s.  My Uncle Bill bought his brand new house at 10 Lisbon Avenue Twickenham for £450 freehold.  So perhaps it was  some sort of luck that my parents didn't pay eleven hundred pounds for a house that would be worth less than half that value in about six years.

At the beginning of the war the bottom dropped out of the market for houses.  My Uncle Sid bought 88 Percy Road Hampton for a song.  My mother and we two kids moved there at a date I cannot remember, but it was early in the war.  My mother acted a housekeeper for her brother as he worked at the Metropolitan Water Board in Hampton.  The job was protected occupation and the only way one could leave was to join the services.  Sid was totally fed up with the job and managed to get away from it by joining the Fleet Air Arm (a sailor working on aircraft).

To be continued