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Lifestory Showcase - Chappell
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My father came from a family of two sons and three daughters, (Granddad was always known to us as Chappie and Grandmother as Grandma Chip) our surname being Chappell, but no one ever made pianos to my knowledge. Chappie had been in the First World War as a young man, and then brought up his family by working hard on the farms as a carter with horses.
Grandma Chip was a housewife in every sense of the word; she would not only clean and cook for her own brood but would wash clothes for gentry from morn till night. When I remember her she had to walk backwards and forward across the road many times a day with two buckets to the village well, which was in someone else's garden, drawing up every drop she needed indoors and for her never ending washing. Then the dirty water would have to be carried out again and put on the vegetable garden.
There was no pollution in water or poisonous food in those days, the lavatory buckets were emptied in the garden where grew all the beautiful vegetables, fruit and flowers for every family with often a lot more to give away to family and neighbours. After a day's washing the drying and ironing would be a ritual, with the old flat irons heated on the fire in the old black grate of course. Then the washing had to be returned to the gentry and back would come another lot. It would then begin all over again the following day.
Having known each other for about four years, Herbert and Gladys were married at Kingstone Lacy Church, near Wimborne. When they were first married, mother and father had two rooms to go to. Mother had by then kept a little of her weekly money and had saved £100 up for their home and was paying instalments on six dining room chairs at six shillings each. Each chair was equivalent to her weekly wage.
The day after they were married, father took her hard earned money, bought himself a motorbike and sidecar and away he went. Mother never got on the motorbike or saw the money again. He was drinking and smoking, as he always did, no matter what was to come. However from working on the farm for £1 a week, he got a job working on the roads for £l.10.0 (£1.50) a week. They found a better house on their own paying six shillings a week rent (30p) out of the £1.50.
There was still no water indoors, only a pump just outside the door used by two families, so every drop of water taken indoors, except that which was drunk, had to be brought out again. The chamber pots had to be emptied every morning, also the old lavatory bucket in a little shed right up the other end of the garden. Chappie had a double one, one high for the adults while the children sat beside them. It had text and old calendars around the walls and on the back of the door, with torn up newspaper hung up on a string. There was also the wood and the coal shed always sending out a lovely smell.
The wood and coal had to be got in every day, even on hot summer days before boiling the kettle or cooking anything. If there were no smoke coming out of the chimney someone would always open the door to see if everything was alright. This was the same in every home. There were oil lamps, candles on a candlesticks and paraffin heaters for extra warmth, but most houses were damp and cold in winter and you went to bed with a candle. The chamber pot was under every bed and often froze over before morning in the winter. With feather beds and steam coming from these pots during the night, what did the beds smell like in the morning?
My parents had been married for over two years when I arrived in 1929. No one ever wanted a daughter more than my father and mother. On March 28th, after a lot of struggling for hours on an iron bedstead I was eventually pulled out and I was here. My name was to be Marjorie Joan. Mother almost lost her life through my birth for I was twelve pounds, a bouncer as father bragged that night in the pub. The nurse and doctor had put me on one side for dead, but my grandmother was there, and by the tine the doctor returned, Grandma had washed and dressed me and noticing I wasn't breathing very well, warmed me and I was soon asleep by the fire.
When the doctor returned, he ran upstairs and down again, and said to Grandma, “I think she (mother) will be alright if she lives until the morning.” Then he said, “Shall I take it away?” Grandma said “Take, what away?” He said' “The dead baby, you don't want that left here, do you?” Grandma was horrified, and said, “She's asleep”. With that the doctor went, without saying another word.
When mother saw me, I was not a pretty sight, being rather bruised, with one eye pushed up into my head, but this quickly righted itself. I could not suck as I should and feeding me was a messy business but as time went on I did well, lost a bit of weight, then gained and just ate and slept the long hot summer away. We had very good neighbours who had had a family of their own, who would look after me quite often.
One day when I was about nine months old, she remarked to mother, that I was too good. None of her babies had ever stayed so still as I did, from feed to feed, and for so long. Mum asked the doctor who had helped to bring me into the world about this, he said, “Oh! Some babies take longer than others, to sit up and take notice. Nothing to worry about.” He never said any more about my birth or that anything was wrong with me. But time went on, and my arms and legs were jumping about, while mother was trying to sit me up and stand me up on her lap.
No matter how often Mum asked for help and advice, there were no answers, nothing done or suggested as to how she could help me. I could not sit up or balance like others of my age and under were doing. No other girls of mother’s age, who had their babies around the same time, wanted to know us and would walk by on the other side of the street. By this time, my father would not take me out or talk about me. It became a dark and dreadful secret, not to be mentioned or bragged about any more-
Cousins were beginning to arrive on both sides of the family. But was the family ‘curse’ working again? Other mysteries were soon to come along. Mother's eldest brother's first-born was a girl, with everything wrong with her. No one really knows what happened, but she spent her life on her back, away from home until she died at the age of about 30.
Mother’s middle brother was killed in a motorcycle accident, just before the war, while the youngest son Leonard’s first-born, a daughter again, was deaf and dumb and later found to be autistic. All had sons afterwards, all were alright and Leonard had another daughter. Winnie had three sons, and all was well until her middle son died of leukaemia tragically at the age of 17.
All this was to remind poor Grandma again of her mother's drunkenness and the midwife's curse. She often blamed this for the situation or even herself for marrying a man so much older than herself. She also blamed herself, for having kept me alive in her innocence, not knowing that I had been so badly injured at birth. Grandma would often talk to me about this, and I know she took this self-blame to her grave when she was 88 years old. It just shows how little doctors knew in the thirties, and yet babies are still damaged at birth, just the same, in the nineties.
Right through my childhood I was to spend a lot of time with Grandma while mother was out at work at weekends, earning whatever she could, to buy me any extras that could or might help me. Her wages was never more than 2/6 (12p) for a hard days work as a Waitress at Wedding Receptions. We often, however, had a good feed of broken wedding cake, sandwiches etc. afterwards.
Then came the many years, when mother took me around to many different hospitals and as many different specialists who all gave a different diagnosis, from rickets to mental troubles. She began to worry that I had something very rare, for there was never a name given to it. No one ever mentioned anything like ‘spastic’ (Cerebral Palsy) for that is what I am. Nor did she ever see another child like me in all those years when she took me from hospital to hospital.
After three years, of walking to various hospitals, with no money for the fare on the buses that passed her every few minutes of her 20 mile each way walk, and with train journeys to other hospitals, paid for with money that should have bought food for herself, one particular day, while holding me under a heat-ray lamp, she collapsed and fainted from starvation. The doctor asked when she had had her last meal and when she said “I can't remember.” gave her two shillings and sixpence (which would have bought a banquet in those days), to go and buy a dinner while a nurse looked after the baby. She ate all she could, but quickly lost it all again as her stomach could not take it.
The following week, eight doctors were waiting for her. They led her into a private room, sat her in front of them and told her, that, her baby who was now about three, would never, sit, stand, walk, talk, was blind, could not hear and was mental. Please note, she was always alone. Father never ever took me anywhere. She told them that I was trying with her help to do all this and she knew I could see and hear. She was just told coolly but firmly, that this was just her maternal love and imagination. They made out forms for her to sign to have me put in a Home, forget she had ever had me and to go away and have more children as it could never happen again. Mother grabbed me up into her arms, cried and ran all the way home.
By this time we had moved to a village called Ferndown. Father always had work, of the manual kind, he also had a clean home, bed and a hot meal ready and waiting for him whatever happened. This particular day he wasn't indoors when she got home from the hospital. He was down the garden talking to the neighbours waiting for her to come home and cook his tea. He would not come when mother called him as she was still crying. Father's reaction was always the same from that day on, when told they wanted to put me away, he agreed “That is the best thing to do. Get rid of the little bugger” he said.
I feel very sad for my Dad, even today, in that he could never accept me as the daughter that he had dreamed of. He would never let me get near enough to him to love him. Although Derek was born and there was some happiness, my birth was the end of the marriage and family life they had dreamed of.
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