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Lifestory Showcase - Chappell
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These were the traumatic years when father finally left us and went off to lead his own life; but not before taking all the money he reckoned was owed to him and sorting out what belonged to him in worldly goods. He had served in the army during the war, came back, but between us it was still war. He still wanted to hide me away even though I had been to St. Loyes and was now with mother's help earning a small amount of money.
So in the end, after twenty three years of trying to please us both, mother asked him to go. He went with everything he could claim as his, except Derek and me. The last words 1 heard him say were “When that little bugger is dead, I will come back.” Many years later he died a very sick, unhappy man, a diabetic with no one who cared.
When Dad left, Mum was still going out to do housework, helping me with my weaving, doing dressmaking, anything to earn money to keep us. She had a loom of her own, as well, for every penny counted. Derek had left school and was working at a nearby garage where he was learning more about engines and caring for machinery as an apprentice mechanic for a few shillings a week. He had saved up an bought himself a motor cycle before he left school, and he got a well earned boost to his ego when he passed his headmaster who was on a push-like at the school gate.
Derek did this, by going to work at week-ends and evenings for years on an uncle's market garden, the old family business that I mentioned in an earlier chapter. Derek had always known about repairing and maintaining machinery, self-taught by trial and errors no doubt. He had to cycle about twenty miles to Holtwood where his future was fashioned and he took a lot of the responsibility for repairing tractors and other machinery long before leaving school.
Some nights he would get home very late, so tired that mother would undress and wash him and put hint to bed. He did not know much about this until next morning. Other nights, he would have to get his homework done for school. He would take all his books and papers to bed and sit there with his school cap on. He would be found like this in the morning, cap still on the back of his head and books strewn over and under his bed. He passed all the exams that he went in for before leaving Wimborne Grammar School at sixteen.
The day Dad left us, the first thing Derek did was to bring home a Welsh Collie dog. This was something he and I had always wanted but never allowed to have and he has always kept dogs around him ever since. Dad had always kept chickens and rabbits and sold all the eggs that he did not eat himself. The rabbits he bred were kept behind lock and key. There is one nice story which tells how Derek, when about ten years old, was sent to buy a lock and key for the hutch. Derek was then told to keep away from the rabbit hutch and in due time was to be taken to see the little baby rabbits. “That's all right Dad”, said Derek. “I have seen them, as I have another key in my pocket.”
Poor Dad, he never enjoyed his children, he would kick all our toys out of his way, swear if either of us had a book around, and would brag of never having read a hook in his life for he wasn't able to read properly. Before Dad left us, he came home from work one evening, and found me sat in a brand new electric carriage. It was an ‘Argson’, and had a hood with windshield, apron, lights, horn and a mirror, everything you could think of. We had scraped the barrel and bank clean, it had cost £320 (a lot of money in 1951). His first remark was “What did that cost?”- “A hundred pounds, That was his limit for anything. We never told him the correct price. He then said “That's the end of that little bugger, she will soon be under a bus.”. Well I am still here to tell the tale.
We bought this carriage really to prove that I could use it, for it was at the time when the government began to issue Motor chairs and Electric Carriages to disabled people. Everyone else was getting them, why not me? These were issued by the then Ministry of Health (now the DSS). I like others applied for one, was assessed by a man who took one look at me, and mentally said, “hopeless”. Since I had ridden six tricycles, which had got bigger as I got bigger, for over twenty years, I knew a little about road sense and was determined to have a go at this.
A letter arrived die next day, refusing me any help from the Ministry in providing me with anything. In the Bournemouth Evening Echo that very night was the following: ‘For Sale. Electric Carriage only 40 miles on its clock.’ It was exactly what I needed and luckily not far away. so Mum, Derek and I went off to see it. Then I drove it, felt quite confident with it, so we bought it and I think I drove it home the next day.
After emptying the Bank account, drawing out our National Savings, turning out pockets, purses and handbags enough money was found. As I said Father wasn't pleased at all, he never knew we had spent as much as £320. All he could see was me ‘squashed flat’ and out of his life.
I spent the following ten weeks doing nothing but driving around in it, with poor mother on her bicycle behind me. I never knew what she would have done to prevent me from going under a bus. One day, thinking I was alone and sailing along quite happily, I looked in the mirror to turn right across a busy road and there was mum just behind me.
I think this was the last time she followed me. After that I put in for the driving test which I would now have to take. It was ten weeks to the day after buying ‘Monty’, as it had been christened. I had my test with a nice young man and I did all he asked me to do correctly and I went back home with my certificate to get a driving licence. He could not understand why I had been refused a Ministry carriage and told me to apply again.
This I did. Then the fun or fight began. The same man who had refused me, came and was very surprised to learn that I had a driving licence and he said “In that case we will have to grant you one.” But I already had a new carriage. No! they could not buy it from me to become their property. to maintain and supply new batteries when needed.
So in due course, a reconditioned one arrived, the same but for me different as the controls were positioned differently. This caused me problems having just got used to the other one. The man laughed about this, and said, “I told you so”, and pointed out that often he had to drive different cars. This annoyed me. (He wasn’t disabled, was he?)
Three times I went out in it, and three times I had to be rescued by Mum and Derek who had to chase off on the motor bike to get me home. Then someone referred the story of my two chairs to an MP who took this piece of bureaucracy gone mad to the then Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. After a while, I won, and it was settled by a £100 cheque and the carriage was maintained for the next twenty odd years. I went miles and miles, quite safely and happily in my ‘Monty’ in those twenty years.
It wasn't until mother had learnt to drive and we were now living alone, that laws were passed giving a private car allowance for disabled people as an alternative to the provision of Invalid Carriages. This was before the Mobility Allowance. We could not claim both the allowance and have an Invalid Carriage9 so dear old ‘Monty’ was taken away to be broken up and destroyed. I was told many years later, that many other spastic people were given these Electric carriages and even motor chairs after my fight.
We then had the opportunity of buying quite cheaply our new bungalow. It required the payment of another 1/- per week. Dad refused to do this as he would never take any risk or move with the times. He always seemed to be living in the past. The builder and owner, knew mother was already paying the ten shillings a week rent anyway, so he turned his back while mother signed the papers in her name. Illegal, technically in those days but we now had a modern bungalow to sell if ever it became necessary. It was sold when Derek said he wanted to do nothing else, but go into market gardening in a place of his own.
He was now seventeen still doing his garage job and working at his uncle's at weekends. So he took Mum out on his motor bike one evening after making a few enquiries. Coming home after dark. they had found just what he wanted at Henbury the other side of Wimborne. It was fifteen acres of good land and a house, the right price for a mortgage and we had the bungalow to sell. No one had lived there for many years, there was no gas or electricity, one outside tap and of course no sanitation. We were giving up a new bungalow with all mod cons for this in 1952. The move was soon arranged, goodbye Ferndown where I had many friends, where everyone knew me and accepted me as the girl on the tricycle and where I am still remembered as that to this day.
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