Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Camp, Daphne (O2000.9) |
| Interviewee | Daphne Camp (DC) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR), Trish Goldsmith (TG) |
| Date | 01/07/2000 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2000.9
Interviewee: Daphne Camp (DC)
Date: July 2000
Venue: 33, Frampton Street
Interviewers: Peter Ruffles (PR), Trish Goldsmith (TG)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Freda Joshua
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
PAR: This is Peter Ruffles and Trish Goldsmith at number 33 Frampton Street, on a very hot afternoon in July, first bit of summer, with Daphne Camp, famous resident, and we’re going to talk a bit about the Folly life as you’ve known it for a long time.
DC: I’m too ordinary, but I’ll be eighty in September!
PR: So where were you born?
DC: 19 Thornton Street.
PR: That’s not on the shop side?
DC: No. Then we moved to 24. There were three bedrooms in number 24 you see. And when we moved to 24 the brothers all started getting married.
PR: Let’s go back to your parents and how they came to be here.
DC: Well, my mother’s parents lived in the ‘gaol’, Ware Road. Ash Street I think it was. I think there was a big laundry down there. The thing is, and a lot of people say this, my parents never used to tell you a lot. (The steam laundry closed in 1919 and the site was taken over by Addis). As for my father’s parents, I used to think I’ve got grandparents on my mother’s side, I haven’t got grandparents on my father’s side.
When my parents died my brother was looking through their marriage certificate and father’s profession was a blank, unknown, but his address was Bull Plain. His mother, the old lady next door used to tell me, they used to call her Granny Foster. And she (the old lady) was 96 when she died, or 97, and she seemed to think she was a nurse, apparently. There used to be a military hospital (Crimean War I think, hospital in a barn on Folly Island) over the bridge, it used to be up on stilts more.
PR: This is the Bull Plain bridge.
DC: That’s right.
PR: Was that on the right hand side?
DC: It would be on that side. That’s where my grandmother would have lived, in those cottages, they belonged to McMullens I think, (still there on the left before you cross the bridge to the Folly). Then over the bridge by The Barge there was a field, used to be allotments years ago and our Jack Jones, you remember Jack, said they use to call it the Quoits Field because the army convalescents used to play quoits there. (His son, now 73, is also Jack, so she means Jack the father who worked at Barber’s Seed Shop, who lived at 46 Thornton Street).
PR: We’re coming down Bull Plain, over the bridge to The Folly, Meads Yard.
DC: Mr Dale, he wanted to put garages on that allotment. (Bill Dale was the agent for Thornton Investments (Andrews Family) who owned many Folly properties still in 2000).
PR: The back of Thornton Street where there’s a car parking now?
DC: Yes, used to be allotments.
PR: -and that’s where Jack Jones…
DC: Quoits Field. So this hospital must have been where the works are now. Marshall Panelcraft
they moved out, then Mead’s Scrapyard. It’s been there as long as I can remember (the scrapyard).
PR: Now, let’s get Mrs Foster in, she was…
DC: Her name was Ansell.
PR: Right. Where did she live?
DC: They lived in Ware Road, they named it The Gaol. There was Ash Street, Oak Street, Elm Street,…
PR: .. and Baker Street. Now, let’s get that one straight…
TG: This is your mum, Mrs Foster.
DC: She was Ansell before she was married.
TG: She was Ansell and then she was Foster. So where did your dad come into the picture?
………..overtalking………I mean your father.
PR: So do you think he was born in that…
DC: He give me a copy of the marriage certificate but not the birth certificate, but I think he must have been. The old lady, Mrs Smith, I looked after her until she had to go into a home, she was a slight relative of ours and she told us more than we knew from our own parents. We always called her Granny Foster. I can remember when I was young, one Sunday afternoon, once a month or probably a bit more, we had to have our best clothes on and behave ourselves because visitors were coming.
This couple used to come on a motor-bike and side car which was, well they were Rolls Royces in those days, and apparently they were builders from Hitchin – Foster’s Builders at Hitchin. We was just told to be on our best behaviour and when they went they gave us sixpence, and that was like giving anybody two or three pounds! That must have been his relatives, probably his mother’s sister or whatever.
PR: You don’t get told when you’re young and you don’t really want to bother to ask because it just happens.
DC: And if you did ask they’d probably say it’s nothing to do with you! Now there was a Gran and Grandfather on my mother’s side, they were a dear old couple, and there was nothing on my father’s side, no aunts and uncles on his side at all. And there was seven of us born in that little – 19 Thornton Street.
PR: You don’t know where they met, your mum and dad?
DC: Not really, no. He was a bricklayer that’s all. I should imagine he was born in those cottages.
PR: They may presumably have known each other for some time, being a small town in those days. Did they marry and move into Thornton Street?
DC: I should imagine so. I think we were all born there. I know I was because my elder sister (she’s unfortunately died) she used to say when I was born my mother was very ill. The doctor came down the stairs and gave her a shilling and said you must run up to The Barge my dear and get me some brandy. Tell them it’s for your mother, tell them I sent you. We didn’t know the people at The Barge in those days, Garner I think the name was, and she come back and he come down and he patted her on the head and said “You’ve saved your mother’s life my dear”.
PR: What a story!
DC: I know she was really very ill and we went to - was it Hastings – the nursing home?
PR: St Leonards.
DC: That’s right, for a fortnight. So I started off life in St Leonards.
TG: So where were you the second in the family?
DC: No, I was the fourth; Sam, Dorothy, Harry, I was the fourth.
TG: And how many were there?
DC: Seven, four brothers and two sisters I had. In the back bedroom there was a double bed that my two elder brothers had and a single bed and I shared that with my younger brother Harry, who unfortunately got killed in the war, and in the front room my mother and father and a little crib for one and a single bed for another, and my sister, she had a camp bed in the front room and the front room was kept as a front room, not a sitting room.
PR: But that’s how it had to be.
DC: I think it was relays at Sunday lunchtime, in the summer some of us used to have a chair and table outside.
PR: What about the house itself, it wouldn’t have been a modern house?
DC: Oh no, I remember my parents saying about it. The toilet originally was down the bottom of the garden and you shared the next door alleyway. I can’t remember that, the toilets (in her childhood) were outside but you didn’t go down the bottom of the garden. The cistern was all inside so if you had an overflow it would come in the kitchen! And just the gas and the copper you had for boiling the water. I can’t remember gas coming, but we did have gas. I can’t remember them putting the gas on, but I can remember the oil lamps on the table.
PR: Not many people can say that any more, and what about washing. How did you manage to… -did you have a Saturday night bath night?
DC: I can’t actually remember that. We must have done, with an ordinary tin bath, not a great big one. Well, when Cliff (husband) and I started here we didn’t have hot water. We did get one of the bigger baths but I think over there we had the ordinary little baths, because my sister, probably why I didn’t get on with her very much, I was always told “Look after your sister!”
And we were fishing down The Riverside, it used to slope down to the river in places, where the barges used to come up, and I told her to stand up near the fence while I was fishing, but she suddenly made a rush and come down and into the river she went. She didn’t go out that far, I never learned to swim. Anyway I hauled her out and took her home and did I get a hiding! She (mother) got the bath out and put some warm water in it and put my sister in it and as I stood there she got this towel and she kept slashing me with this towel “You should have been looking after her.” I hadn’t got the sense to move out of her way!
But for all the rivers around here there was only one little boy from Thornton Street, four doors from us; he was only a little toddler and he was over with us playing on Hartham and he must have wandered off. They did find him drowned. It wasn’t that deep. Because there was two rivers.
PR: Yes, there were two side by side.
DC: Paper Mill Ditch they called it.
PR: Oh, he fell in one of those, did he?
DC: He must have done, yes. He could only have been six or so.
PR: It’s never flooded though, has it?
DC: No, when we had them terrible floods that time somebody rang up and said “Are you in a state?” – it was Shirley Frood, ‘cos I was her Nanny. ‘Cos when I went in there I said ‘I used to rock you in my arms, look at you now!” She rang up when we had them terrible floods that year and she said “Pete and I were wondering if you were alright. If it gets that bad you’d better come up to us.” But no, my older brothers said that – never known it to flood down here. It came over the road one year before they built that brick wall. And I think that was the first year Coopers …(inaudible) cos we had chickens. We brought them all up here and it came (inaudible) back garden but not up here. (overtalking).
PR: And you’re only a few feet from…
DC: I don’t know why.
PR: It gets distributed. But they’re not damp are they, the houses?
DC: Well, they are really.
PR: The water table must just be a little bit below.
DC: This floor had dry rot, we had new floor put in here, the landlord put it in, but when you looked underneath it was all yucky.
PR: Oh (pause). So how did you meet Cliff?
DC: Half a crown bet! We both belonged to All Saints’ Church Youth Club, there was badminton and whatnot there. His cousin was going with Ruby, Ruby Welch from Ware Road, and he said to Cliff “I bet you daren’t take Daphne home tonight. He says “How much do you bet?” and he said
“Well, I could run to half a crown.” So he says “Right, you’re on!” And that’s how it got started.
PR: Well worth losing that one! (overtalking) And you were married how long?
DC: 58. Married in (19)41.
PR: A good half-crown’s worth.
DC: Six years of that was in the army. He didn’t actually go abroad. He often used to say he wished he had. He used to come home and say “I don’t know how you stick this boring life, you’re on guard all day, often, at night, rather, and you’re working in the workshops, ‘cos he used to do the tanks and the lorries, getting all the repairs and that, it’s a terrible life, you’d be much better off if you was abroad.” But you see he was called up with the Harfudshire (Hertfordshire) Regiment - he was in the Territorial Army you see, so as soon as war was declared they were more or less called up. He went down to Dovercourt at first.
PR: He did an awful lot for all sorts of things but the British Legion was his main..
DC: He was Chairman.
TG: So did he stay in Hertford during the war?
DC: No, I stayed in Hertford.
TG: Did he move round the country? He didn’t go abroad.
DC: No, he was at Leicester. I went to Leicester myself for a couple of weeks. No he was all over the place, he started with the Hertfordshire Regiment and then he went into hospital while he was up in Northumberland, over a year they were up in Northumberland. He had to go into hospital up there and the regiment moved off so he had to come back to Hertford. We were married in 1941. It was the Beds and Herts then, Kimpton Barracks.
PR: So was it an All Saints wedding?
DC: Oh yes.
PR: Even in the wartime.
DC: We were confirmed there. The Reverend Ducker, he was a lovely vicar, he was there during the war then he moved on and he come back and had a reunion. When I talk to the vicar there now you can’t compare them. Because when he came back on that reunion he’d got some memoirs of what it was like during the war with the church, how he used to do fire-watching from the school and he said I’ve left it with the vicar and you’re all in it. Ask him and he’ll let you have it and have a read of it. He says “Um…I suppose it’s about somewhere”, he says “I will look it out,” but he never has and I did speak to one of the church wardens, Derek Westwood, and he said “I’ll enquire about that”, and then he said “I think it’s gone up to County Hall. There was Sylvia Sandford down there, snoring away… (Sylvia’s birthday at the time of this transcription - 25th July 2020 – now Sylvia Norman, 98 and still driving). I should love to read it because we use to do this fire-watching, we used to go round all those steps with the stirrup pumps, all those steps to the church, right to the top, particularly when there was a raid on because there were fire bombs.
(It’s unclear where the fire-watching took place, at the school, or in the church tower).
The dental people had the St John’s Hall. The dental regiment because we were naughty – if we saw a little chink of light we said we ought to tell them about that. They’d say “Oh, come in!” All these dental plates and teeth. (She means the dental technicians would welcome the girls inside!)
PR: Were they making them?
DC: Yes, they must have been.
PR: Presumably making them for the army?
DC: There was an awful lot of soldiers went through Hertford mostly overnight. One of the Hampshire Regiments stayed for quite a while but mostly it was overnight. You’d come home from work and it would be just thronging with soldiers.
PR: So did you get a house of your own quickly after you got married?
DC: No. Well this house my brother had and his wife and sadly he was killed. He’s got no known grave. It was peculiar really because he was on this troop ship going out to Java and one of the soldiers on this troop ship came from Hertford, Don Hawkins from Ware Road.
I had a letter from him saying I’ve met someone who knows you on here. He was friendly with Shirley Teale and that’s how we knew because he was home on leave one time and he said to her “Well, if it’s any consolation to you I don’t think he was ever a prisoner of war,” because my sister-in-law used to say “He’s not dead, he’s been captured,” she wouldn’t believe he’d been killed. That’s how she met her second husband going round all the hospitals when they were all repatriated. She was so sure he was still alive, lost his memory or something. And he said it was criminal of us to make them disembark, those soldiers, because there was so much fighting going on in Java, bombs were dropping. If we’d had our way we’d have turned round and took them all back but orders were orders in wartime.
PR: So although it was bad news it was…
DC: Well that’s what he said “I can assure you I don’t think half of them ever reached the shore”. So she got this house when they were first married and we were in rooms in George Street and she said well. I mean, that took, to give the house up. So she cleared some of the furniture out and we started off in two rooms here, and then Mr Hall (probably means Bill Dale) the one who was doing the renting, he reluctantly let us take it over. That’s how we come to get it. Actually he was an estate agent or something, Jimmy Hall, wasn’t he?
PR: Yes.
DC: He was talking once to Cliff and Cliff was asking if we could have the rent put into our name. And he said ”If you do me a favour I’ll do you a favour.” He said “What favour is that?” He said “You work at Singer’s (sewing machine shop) don’t you?” He said “Yes.” “Well, there’s something going on there, whether they’re going to sell it or what, so if you could find out what’s happening.” So they done a bit of bartering.
PR: That would have been interesting, Singers was in Fore Street, Dyes were right behind in Railway Street, useful bit of information. (Bill Dale got an office/studio for portrait painting behind Dyes in Railway Street and Singers in Fore Street. It was who you knew. Mr Septimus Teale, PR thinks, ran Singer’s shop in Fore Street and lived at 24 The Folly).
So what would a wartime wedding have been like, did you get presents and things?
DC: Yes, we had presents, we had a wedding cake ‘cos we knew Jack Skinner. I used to do some work for him, you know, the baker. Bridens made the wedding cake, two tier it was. We had a reception at the Mayflower, it’s not there now is it? (Then in North Road, next to The Sele Arms).
PR: No.
DC: It’s up in Hertingfordbury, isn’t it?
TG: And presumably your wedding dress would have been got on coupons?
DC: No, I don’t think coupons had come in then. (Clothing rationing began 2/6/1941)
PR: It lasted a long time afterwards.
DC: We sent the cake out like they do, in little boxes. We were lucky to get a wedding cake.
TG: Did you have a wedding dress as such?
DC: Yes, but we didn’t have a photographer in those days. I don’t know who took the photographs.
PR: And then, you had a family.
DC: After the war, when he got back, yes, two girls and a boy.
PR: And there are still island connections with them?
DC: My son did start off with a house down there. We got him a house on Thornton Street and then he moved up to Mandeville Road. Jean’s at Stevenage and Helen’s got a little cottage on Port Hill, 55. We’ve got to sort out some money. Cliff had put some money in a TESSA and I didn’t realise about that and we had to go and see them and they said “Oh, you’ve got a mortgage with us, Hertford Branch. Not Hertford Branch, Enfield Branch.” “What made you go to Enfield?” he said. She said
“Hertford branch wouldn’t give me one” (she’s single you see) “and on my wage alone they wouldn’t give me one,” and one of the fellows in the office said “You go and try at Enfield,” which she did That’s how she got her mortgage.
PR: I didn’t know she was thinking of landing at Port Hill. (Helen sadly died in 2018).
TG: So are there grandchildren?
DC: Yes, three grandsons and two granddaughters.
TG: And they’re all in Hertford?
DC: No. The eldest granddaughter Sarah, she’s doing drama, she’s at Edinburgh University, doing very well, keeping her father poor and the other two at school. And the others, my daughter’s two sons, (don’t they get tall these days!) they’re six foot now so they’re all growing up. One 25 and one 22.
PR: It’s always been a community in a way. People tend to know (each other) not always getting on.
DC: Old Jim Rist, he’s been very poorly.
PR: Yes, the shingles is it?
DC: Betty said she saw him the other day, he’s just wasting away. (Betty Camp - Daphne’s sister-in-law, also in Frampton Street – married to Ken Camp).
PR: Fairly suddenly really.
DC: I know, there’s been an epidemic of it hasn’t there? Ken Camp’s got it, Tim’s parents lived opposite us in Thornton Street, in the bigger ones, and when his mother was very ill…..
SIDE B
…the corner shop.
PR: People used that, did they, rather than…
DC: They did, because on a Monday morning I’d get given a dish and mother’d say “Go out and get a few pen’oth of mustard pickle …she weighed the dish…she’d get this great big spoon…(very hard to hear but the shopkeeper would spoon the pickle into a dish brought by the customer).
TG: When you were first married, living here did you have a routine - Monday was washday and things like that? I mean, washday took all day probably?
DC: My mother, however did she manage seven of us? The old copper used to be going on for clothes, burning all the rubbish. Well I know my mother had some hard times because I had an aunt,
one of my mother’s sisters, she worked in London and she used to come down for the day. She said I feel sorry for her because when I’ve been here she’s been I tears because it’s been wet weather and the boys’ shoes wanted mending and they couldn’t afford to have them mended, they put cardboard in them and allsorts. If it was really bad and they couldn’t go to school because their shoes were in such a state. I think they must have had a hard time, always used to seem to be hungry. You didn’t have fruit and stuff. Especially that girl of Ellis (the Tobacconist) on Bull Plain. She’d come down Hartham when we were having a picnic, and she’d have this, and that, and we’d envy her. “Can I have your core when you’re finished?”
PR: There was nobody that you were frightened of when you were out?
DC: No, nobody.
PR: When I used to come down from Farnham’s shop collecting the money on Saturday mornings some of the older ones, I didn’t know anything about them. I just knocked at the door and got the money. Number 13, Tilly Claydon, did you know her? (yes) That was one where you knocked on the door, opened it and you took the money from a bowl on the sideboard.
DC: There was a Miss Ginn, I think her brother used to have a wet fish shop on …Harry Foster’s…
PR: Cowbridge.
DC: Motor cycle shop. Well his sister, she had one of those little houses (cannot be verbatim – her sister had to go to this lady to keep her company at night, then Daphne had to go – she didn’t want to).
DC: I thought it was luxury – climbed up on this great bed with feathers, cup of tea in the morning, I thought ‘I don’t mind this!’ You wouldn’t get people to do that today, would you?
PR: Another world, really.
DC: It’s sad really, apparently she was screwing up a paper with some fish bones in it, and one of them must have pierced her, and she got blood poisoning and she died.
PR: What age would she be then?
DC: Well, I don’t know, probably in her fifties. She wasn’t what I’d call old, old.
PR: Who was the blind lady at number 14 Old Hall Street, near the end?
DC: Opposite where Mrs Dorothy Slater used to live?
PR: Yes, I think she was completely blind – she may have had a brother living with her.
DC: I can remember talking to her because we used to do a Folly Island Gazette thing, Residents’ Association. In Riverside there was a Mr Bates – in his shed he used to mend all the shoes. You took your shoes to be repaired and he done the cobbling. Then there was Mr Smith, he’d do a ‘short back and sides’ for all the men on a Friday night in his front room. Yes, it was a community, really.
PR: That’s important to record.
DC: Then there was Ray Saunders, he was deaf and dumb wasn’t he? He tied me to a tree once and his mother must have called him and he just left me there. Good job it was in the street there. We were playing cowboys and Indians – somebody came along and untied me. (Talk, not transcribed about a boy with Special Educational Needs, Deaf and Dumb education).
DC: Cliff (husband) was on the grounds staff at (inaudible) gardeners at Hoddesdon and he was working away there and one week they said “We hear you’re leaving us” (he didn’t understand). His father had died meanwhile. (They said) Haileybury College want you to take over the grounds staff.
He said “I don’t want that” and they said I’m afraid you’ve got to, Haileybury College are such good customers to us, they’ve particularly asked that you go and work there. So he said I had to go. This was just before the war. Gardeners used to do all the pitches and squash courts and grass. I suppose it was because his father did work there. Gardeners used to do all the work, re-stringing rackets.
PR: (pause) Are you about the oldest continuous inhabitant, then?
DC: Jim’s two years older than me. I suppose I am. (Jim Rist).
PR: There’s distinction for you.
TG: Are there many Folly Islanders who’ve been here a long time?
DC: It used to be when you got married and wanted a house they used to let them pass them on to people. Even now, Betty, her daughter’s got a house down here. Quite a few did, my son had one until he moved.
PR: I thought he was still here, I didn’t know he’d gone to Mandeville,
DC: It was a bit lonely up there or she didn’t get on with them or whatever, then they got this one at Hoddesdon.
PR: So what about Mrs Dorothy Hayden, now Slater, was she an old islander? She lived just round the corner in Old Hall Street.
DC: She wasn’t down there when she first married. She lived in North Road in a flat, you know, in one of the big houses. She was Hertford…
PR: Yes, she lived in a yard off St Andrew Street.
DC: Pateman’s yard – the milk. Yes, she remembered all that. She used to say they’ve got that all wrong; it wasn’t Pavitt’s Yard because we had a talk at the Museum once. “That’s wrong,” she said, “that’s not right.”
PR: Yes, people say things, it depends where you are. Bits and pieces… (pause) Is there anything else we ought to cover?
TG: Where did you go to school?
DC: I went to Faudel Phillips School, next to All Saints’ Church, and then you went up the hill when you were about 7 to Abel Smith. And then we had a lot of rearrangement after I went to Abel Smith’s. You had a choice of Longmore which was a mixed school, or Port Vale Girls’ School and I went to Port Vale, with Kate Davis. She lived in the cottage (no location) and she even had a maid, because that was my sister-in-law’s sister that was her maid.
PR: Did she actually live next door to the school then?
DC: There’s a little adjoining – the caretakers had it after that. There was all the Almshouses wasn’t there (so the school house must have been in Churchfields, part of Abel Smith)
PR: Yes, I think she taught in more than one school, she was at Abel Smith for a long time. Did she go to Port Vale?
DC: Yes, I think she did. (At Abel Smith) Mrs Owen was the teacher and she used to inspect our hands and that, and this girl, I used to feel sorry for her, this girl had a dirty neck and she took her jumper off, got a bowl of water and in front of us all scrubbed her neck. It was Kathleen Want, I can remember that. And the next day apparently this mother came up and said “Don’t you dare do this to my child again.” But it wasn’t nice to do that, she could have sent a note home. (pause)
PR: So Cliff, he’d done the Haileybury and he went to Northumberland. What did he do then, was he in one job for the rest –
DC: He went to Ekins when he first came out the army, doing his repairs on lorries. He didn’t really want to carry on with that smelly petrol, he wanted to be an engineer. I worked at Singers - well not during the war ‘cos I went to Garratts’ Flour Mill for my war work.
TG: So what did you do at Garratts’.
DC: Packed the flour. I was down on the river there, unloading the barges (Garrats had a wharf near McMullens – barges were operating on the river Lea)
TG: I don’t know much about Garratts’ Flour Mill, down by the river, was it a water mill at any stage?
DC: It was North Road, wasn’t it?
PR: Did the stuff get transported by road to…
DC: No by boat, barges come up the river with the corn.
PR: How did it get to Garratts Mill in North Road.
DC: By lorry.
PR: Because although there was water up there it wasn’t deep enough.
DC: Once or twice they were a bit short and said “You go and help,” and they were laughing and
someone said “Wait till you get to the bottom lot and then you’ll hear the screaming,” because the rats get down the bottom you see. You just put the chain round the top of the sack and the hoist took it out.
(Overtalking - debating the relationship between Garratts Warehouse at Bircherley Green by the navigation – and their mill at North Road. Barge to Warehouse, lorry to the Mill).
There used to be two old (women?) Hannah and Florrie who used to clean the sacks, they lived in Port Vale I think, and repair them by sewing machine if they needed it.
PR: The slipper baths were there weren’t they? I didn’t know what a slipper bath was but there used to be signs over the door and in the street.
DC: Well there were no baths around here when we were first here, we didn’t have a bathroom.
PR: Did the towns people (go?) with a towel?
DC: They did I suppose, I don’t remember. I didn’t go. (The slipper baths weren’t built ‘til the mid 1950s – rather late, the town could have done with them earlier!)
Then there was the old Salvation Army, wasn’t there? My mother actually went to what they called the Ragged School. She used to work at a big house before she went to school, scrubbing the step and cleaning the shoes, where Bejam’s is (now M&S Food) - a big house near there, used to clean the shoes and they paid her schooling (overtalking). My brother who got killed, my younger brother – he was a bit of a rebel, a nice rebel (he had a fight with someone at Hartham) – he broke into Cook’s (green grocers), they used to have a barrow on Bull Plain and they broke into there (probably the shop) and had a good go with the fruit and stuff. He always seemed to get in with the wrong crowd. The older brother, Stanley, I often think I wonder who grandfather on that side was because he was different (I think she means posh but has used a strange phrase which I don’t recognise). He worked for Skipps – Hertford Motor Company and he was trying to be a chauffeur. I remember him with his leggings all polished, so whether he was a throwback. He didn’t seem ‘one of us’.
PR: Yes, you did pick that sort of manner up.
DC: He used to go hammer and tongues with my sister ‘cos she worked at Webb’s (Horns Mill Glove factory). “You’re nothing but a guttersnipe,” he said. “Common.”
PR: What happened to him? Did he stay at Skipps?
DC: And then they moved to Ware. He worked hard really, I think that’s how he managed to get up in the world more. He bought his own house, one of the green topped ones (Woodland Road area) and Sunday lunchtime a basket would all be packed –“ Don’t dawdle on the way, take it to your brother, it’s his dinner and (I) used to take it to the Motor Co, (end of Fore Street) then go back and pick up all the crocks.
Recording ends with Peter telling Daphne what it might be used for, taking photos etc.