was born in Chase Side, Enfield on 16th May, 1945 and went to Chase Side Primary School and then to Enfield County, She left at 16 and worked for a firm called Business Publications in Waterloo. After marrying and two children she did part time evening jobs. One was at Autolite’s in Ponders End, which was part of Ford’s, and they made engine parts and the other was at General Electric on the corner of Lincoln Road, testing fluorescent tubes. Becky moved to Hertford and had an evening job in a Chinese restaurant near where she lived; then in a school library for four years which she hated. She left there and after a couple of temporary jobs worked for Hertford County Council in the library service. At first in the main library in the Town and then on the mobile library which she loved. Becky worked for the Council until retirement.
Recording of Becky Coleman’s interview
Transcript of interview between Anthony Fisher and Rebecca Coleman on Wednesday transcribed by Valerie Fisher.
17th May, 2023
Anthony
What is your name?
Becky
My name is Rebecca Coleman née Sewell. My mother’s maiden name was Luck but none of us felt that it was a particularly lucky name.
Anthony
But you are known as Becky?
Becky
Yes.
Anthony
Do you mind telling me when you were born?
Becky
16th May, 1945, at 179 Chase Side, Enfield, opposite St Michael and All Angels Church.
Anthony
And what sort of place was it you lived in?
Becky
Horrible! We had some rooms over a shop, there was four rooms upstairs and downstairs there was a kitchen with one cold tap and an outside lavatory. It was freezing cold because in most houses some of the heat rises but none of the rooms upstairs had any heat underneath them it was just a cold shop. It was a greengrocer’s. It was known as Claud’s, his name was Claud Luke Smyth Emery. His brother also had a greengrocer’s in Silver Street, just before you get to the Town. He was quite a bit younger than Claud and they actually lived in Gordon Hill and Mrs Emery never went to the shop; she had nothing to do with it whatsoever. She had a very nice house , I don’t think she would have wanted to live over the shop.
Anthony
What was your first school?
Becky
Chase Side Infants’ School. It was separate from the Junior School. I liked school because my mum was a bit of a harridan so I found school was miles better than my mum so I quite liked it but it was a typical council school. The lavatories were right across the playground, quite a long way and the dinner ladies had to use those lavatories. The staff, the teaching staff, had inside lavatories but the dinner ladies, the cooks and everything although the food wasn’t cooked there – it used to come on lorries in great big aluminium containers. Everything tasted much the same really, the greens were slimy, but I thought it was disgusting making the dinner ladies go across there. The only thing was they could lock their one, we couldn’t lock our lavatories if you wanted to be really private, I was quite tall and could put my foot on the door so I could be a bit private.
Anthony
And the primary school was on the same site was it?
Becky
The Junior school was next door, yes, but it was managed differently. The Infant School had a head mistress, Miss Farr, and the Junior School had a head master, Mr Casson. Some of the teachers were alright but Mr Casson – to change from pencil to ink you had to go and ask the headmaster’s permission. He had a little room almost in the roof so I went up there, knocked on his door, I said, “I need to ask your permission to change from pencil to pen and ink.” he said, “You can’t possibly do that! Your work is too untidy.” And I stood my ground, which is not a thing I would normally do and I said, “No, it’s not. My writing’s very neat.” “Oh, alright then.” Isn’t it ridiculous? He didn’t know me from any other girl in that school, just said what he thought. Wicked, really. None of the teachers had a car, most of them walked or came on the bus but Mr Casson had a motorised bicycle, it had a little engine on it, it wasn’t like the electric bikes now.
Anthony
That’s right. I remember now, they had little engines and rubber wheels were on either side of the tyre of the rear wheel.
Becky
Yes, that’s it. There was one teacher, Mrs Herringshaw, horrible woman and we had her for two years, she hated me – well not hated me, she disliked me to the day I walked in and we’d all got the results for which secondary school we were going to and she said, “And what about you, Rebecca?” so I said, “Enfield County School,” her face dropped, it nearly hit the floor and for evermore she was really nice to me. Isn’t that strange? But they said that your teacher recommended which school you went to, if Mrs Herringshaw had put in a recommendation she would have said “No”. It’s surprising really.
Anthony
That was the 11+ was it?
Becky
The 11+, yes.
Anthony
So which secondary school did you go to?
Becky
Enfield County School, it was a girls’ grammar school in Holly Walk, just off the market place in Enfield Town. It was built in 1906, I think, and while I was there we had the 50th Anniversary. I forget what they called it but the allocation system was that girls from Palmers Green and Winchmore Hill came to our school and girls from Enfield were sent to schools in Winchmore Hill and Edmonton County and Tottenham High and places like that. It was absolutely ridiculous. I think the boys’ school next door, the old grammar school, it was very, very old, I don’t think they were spread all over the place. I’m fairly sure that they lived locally. Was it to make things fair? I don’t know. But most of the girls were middle class, there were very few working class like me.
Anthony
How old were you when you left?
Becky
16. In 1961.
Anthony
And you had some O Levels?
Becky
Yes, five or six, six I think, and I worked for a publishers in Waterloo called Business Publications. They published magazines like “Motor Cycle Mechanics” and “Car Mechanics”, but there were loads and loads of different magazines. They also did “Who’s Who” and then they had these free magazines that were paid for by the advertising so each of them had their own rep to go out and get advertising for them. Each of the managers had a secretary which you wouldn’t get now, I don’t think; and one of the jobs – because they sent us all round the business – was doing the small ads at the back. We had to do them for “Car Mechanics” and “Motor Cycle Mechanics” and what you can do with a pair of scissors is one thing – they had their own printers called Samuel Temple and he’d ring up and say, “Becky, it just won’t fit! You’re going to have to get rid of some letters!” but we managed it somehow.
The other interesting thing was when I was working for one section – I don’t remember which – and the ‘phone rang so I had to answer it and it said, “The Father of the Chapel wants to speak to Mr So and So” and I thought, “What are they talking about?” so I went and I said, “I don’t know if someone is trying to wind you or me up but the Father of the Chapel wants to come and see you.” He laughed and said, “It’s the printing,” from the printers, Samuel Temple. He said, “They all belong to the printers union and it’s very, very strong, the slightest little thing.” Well apparently, they used to have to sign in their name, we didn’t have to clock in or anything but they had to sign in their name and someone had written a rude word in the space instead and they guessed it was a certain person but that person said it wasn’t him so they all went on strike. The newspaper or magazine would not go out so out they came; like that film, “It’s Alright, Jack”, with Peter Sellers as the union rep. It was very much like that, it was really, really funny, you could hear them coming along with heavy shoes and coming in (laughs). Mr Dick, that’s who it was, really, really, funny. Used to chat all the young women up and try and get them to go out with him. He was married; because one thing about working there was there was lots of young men, there was more young men than young women so we had plenty of young men to go out with which was good fun. At 16, 17, I didn’t want to get a boyfriend and have to stay with him for ever.
Anthony
Before we go on to your work in Enfield, you said something about the job your Mum had in Sangamo Weston.
Becky
Yes, in the War all women, or most women, had to work and my Mum worked in Sangamo Weston, which I don’t think is there now is it?
Anthony
No, it was one of the factories along the Cambridge Road closed by Mrs Thatcher. It wasn’t called the Cambridge Road then.
Becky
It was making aircraft instruments; they put it on the machine and tested it and they had to be 100% otherwise they would chuck it out and keep making them. She quite liked it there, I think. Well, she was a single woman and she lived with her married sister but her married sister’s husband was away in the War. He was a cook, his name was Cook, he was a cook. He was a butcher and he had never actually cooked anything in his life as men tended not to in those days, but they saw him as a cook and his name was Cook which they thought was funny so they made him a cook but when he came home after the War he never cooked anything. Mum worked until she had me; I was born two weeks after the War. She had stopped work by then.
Anthony
You told me earlier that you spent most of the time working in London but you did have a couple of jobs in industry in Enfield.
Becky
Yes, they were evening jobs, we were saving up to buy our own house. One job was at Autolite’s which was part of Ford’s; they made different engine parts. You had to wire them with very, very fine wire but the machine did it for you. You just put the wire on the end of this coil and switched it on and it went but you had to sit there and watch because the wire was very fine and used to break so we had two – not chargehands – two men who had to come along and fix it for you. I think they just stranded it together, I don’t think they put a new one on which probably all of the women could have done themselves and then the coils went on to another place where a woman put a sort of stud thing on each end, there were two thick wires, one at each end, and then they were baked in an oven. I don’t know why but they were baked, so a couple of women used to wait until the men had gone off for their break and they would go round and pick up a couple of ones that were already baked and put them (with theirs) if they were behind with their number. You used to get into trouble if you didn’t do your number but it was good companionship and a laugh, I mean you really, really had a good laugh. It was quarter past five until ten o’clock which were really difficult hours. I’d already got two children and it was really hard to find someone to look after the kids. This was 1969.
Anthony
Autolite, that was in Ponders End wasn’t it?
Becky
Yes.
Anthony
How did you get there? Where were you living?
Becky
The council maisonette; we were given a council maisonette in Enfield in Blossom Lane; very near the cemetery.
Anthony
So it was quite a trek getting from there to Ponders End.
Becky
Yes. I got a bus to the Town and then another bus. Tony used to be home a lot of the time but he went for a drink with his mates on Thursdays, that was pay day, and I had to get a teenage girl to come in and look after the two children while I went to work.
Anthony
So how long were you there?
Becky
About two years, I think. When we moved to our first house in Cheshunt it was harder to get to from Cheshunt than it was from Enfield. It was a train from Ponders End station and it didn’t come along until half past ten and we left at ten. There were a couple of other women, I wasn’t the only one and then I got to Cheshunt station and then I had to walk from Cheshunt station which was that time of night and cold especially in the winter and I really got fed up with it. In the end I said to Tony, “No, I can’t do it any more.”
Anthony
It sounds like a transformer of some sort you wired up; and that’s the only thing you made there?
Becky
Yes. There were other jobs but you got given the job and you stayed there.
Anthony
You say there were a lot of women there, were there a lot of men?
Becky
No, on the bits we did there weren’t but they did a night shift when blokes came on. In those days women weren’t allowed to do a night shift unless they were nurses and doctors and things like that. So they used to come on just before ten o’clock and one of the men – I don’t know what was said, but he said something to one of the women and her friend slapped him round the face. She got the sack because she hit someone. Someone saw her, you see. Simple as that, someone saw her and Ford’s are very strict about some things and that was one of them.
Anthony
Unfortunately that was too typical but how were relationships between the female and male work force?
Becky
A lot of the men, the charge hands and the managers, seemed to have a girl friend amongst the women. They used to get there early, really early, and they would go to the canteen and they’d sit there with them. Whether anything else happened I’ve no idea but they were all married women; you wouldn’t go there if you were unmarried. And a lot of women were there not to save up for a house like I was, they were there so they could buy more shoes and clothes and so on. I couldn’t believe it because most of them used to get someone in to look after the children until their husbands came home.
Anthony
What was the social life like? Did you interact outside of work?
Becky
I didn’t, no. A lot of them did because most of them lived fairly near, or near the station, and most of them came by train and I lived right over the other side of north Enfield.
Anthony
That was interesting because traditionally eastern Enfield had a lot of manufacturing and a lot of people lived in Brimsdown and that area. Did you feel aware of the fact that you came from the more traditional area of Enfield going from the west into the east?. Were you treated differently, do you think?
Becky
Yes, they thought for some reason that I was posh, which I’m not at all. But if you had said, for instance, that you had been to a grammar school and had got O levels, they would have thought you were crackers. I mean they were nice enough, I’m not saying they weren’t but I did feel slightly different from them.
Anthony
Did they know you had O levels?
Becky
No, no, no. Well, I assume not. The manager would have done when (I went for the interview). The other thing with factories is you could only have your holiday when the factory closed, I think it was the last week in July and the first week in August. You could not have your holiday at any other time and you didn’t get anywhere near the amount of holiday you get now. In the last job I had we got six weeks holiday plus all the bank holidays. Luckily it didn’t matter because Tony could have holiday more or less when he wanted but, of course, that makes things more expensive. We didn’t stay in hotels, we couldn’t afford it, we used to go camping but it still made everything more expensive but that’s how it was; there was no argy-bargy.
The only other way you could get time off was to get a doctor’s certificate to say you were ill which I did once when one of my children was ill, only a couple of days, and I didn’t want to go in. Tony was ok with them but I didn’t want to go and leave her so the doctor came and I said, “I hope you don’t think I’m saying the wrong thing; but you couldn’t give me a certificate to say I wasn’t fit for work,” I said, “because if I miss two days I will get the sack for not turning up.” You couldn’t just say you were ill, so he wrote me out a certificate for myself so that was good. I didn’t get any pay for those couple of days, actually it was more like three or four.
Anthony
Communications were primitive then. Did you have a telephone?
Becky
No.
Anthony
So the company only knew you weren’t at work because you didn’t turn up.
Becky
I went to a ‘phone box and rang them up and said I was too ill to come to work but it was difficult because you could be too ill to go to the ‘phone box but I mean even now that happens. I was round my doctor’s a couple of years ago and this woman came into the waiting room (with a child) went up to the counter and she said, “Can I see a doctor?” and the receptionist said, “You can’t just walk in here like that!” It’s awful, isn’t it? Absolutely awful. So she said, “Well, what am I supposed to do?” She said, “Ring up and make an appointment.” She said, “We’re not on the telephone.” and the receptionist looked absolutely dumbfounded as if she’d got two tails and horns growing out. This women said, “He’s special needs; he’s asthmatic.” So she sat down, apparently (I had gone in to see my doctor) she was seen and that’s dreadful. Absolutely dreadful. It happens now, (Tony) rang the doctor and straight away the receptionist said, “You can’t just ring up and make an appointment, you have to do it on line.” Instantly, and if it had been my Mum, my Mum wouldn’t have known what to do. I doubt if my Mum knew what “on line” meant. In fact, when they started changing the analogue television, we were one of the first places to be switched off down here (North Devon) my Mum said, “What’s going to happen to us? Will we have to buy a computer?” I said, “No, Mum, you’ve got a satellite television, you won’t have to do anything at all.”
But when my Dad died, you had to do 101 and my Mum couldn’t, it took too long. So we went out and bought her a new telly and she stopped using the satellite and, she only got the free ones on the satellite anyway because my Dad had already died and he paid for Sky and I rang up Sky and said I wanted to cancel and got, “I need the password.” I said, “I haven’t got the password.” I said, “I’ll tell you what,” and he said, “What?” I said, “I won’t pay you any more, how’s that?” (Laughs). There were a lot of free ones on satellite. She’d just bought a telly – 1, 2, 3 and 4. She couldn’t even do 5, channel 5. But anyway; 1, 2, 3 and 4, she was quite happy with that. She could watch what she wanted.
Anthony
We forget nowadays, the days you are talking about at Autolite, how difficult it was for most people because not everyone had a telephone in the house.
Becky
I would think most of them didn’t.
Anthony
And you say your colleagues thought you were posh because you came from West Enfield, which I can understand. Do you think your voice sounded different? A different accent?
Becky
They thought I did, I didn’t think I did but they thought I did.
Anthony
Did you hear them having a different accent?
Becky
Very slightly. They swore a lot; ever such a lot they swore and myself at the time I didn’t swear but I think I picked it up from them.
Anthony
So it could have been more your language pattern, your vocabulary, rather than anything else?
Becky
It could be, yes.
Anthony
Your choice of words. You probably knew more words.
Becky
I didn’t have so much in common with them. They wouldn’t have – it sounds ever so stuck up – but they probably didn’t read books at all and I’ve always read a lot since I could read and, in fact, I had some picture books with no writing in when I was very tiny. It’s things like that, you know. I mean, their husbands were similar to mine, my husband was an electrician, they were all working men, there was no-one who worked in an office for instance, none of their husbands worked in an office. There as a couple of women I made slight friends with; they weren’t considered posh, they were just considered different. In fact, we bought a car off one of their husbands, he had such bad asthma he used to black out and he wasn’t allowed to drive so we bought a Hillman Minx from him for £30. It was a good car, in fact, if someone along the Hertford Road hadn’t pushed Tony into the car in front so it was a write off, we would probably still have it now. It was really good.
Anthony
So you worked at Autolite – say two years?
Becky
A couple of years, yes. We’d moved, I was still working there when we moved and we moved in the shut down, which was quite convenient because if I’d had to go to work in the evening it would have been pretty awful.
Anthony
But you also worked in GE at the corner of Lincoln Road and the Cambridge Road.
Becky
Yes, General Electric, yes. I had Danielle but she was a baby and I went there and what you had to do was fluorescent tubes that didn’t light up, you had to test them, you had to put them in and test them; if they didn’t light up you had to break the ends off, look at the end and decide what was wrong so that the engineers could come along and change the machine. Well, I would think myself that it was a skilled job but I just went straight in. You had to leave the ends and the engineers would come and say, “You’ve got this down as G, it can’t possibly be G.” It was ridiculous. Well, anyway the woman had shown me what to do. She broke one end off, she’d got a little hammer thing, turned it over, took the other end off, chucked it in the bin whereupon it jumped straight out on to my foot, my left foot – I’ve still got the scar to show it, and blood went everywhere. The nurse was in the other building, so I had to walk across to the other building leaving a bloody trail behind me. She called an ambulance and I went to Chase Farm Hospital and they rang my next door neighbour where we were living at the time, Fotheringham Road, Enfield, and said could they leave a message for Tony. Tony was at evening classes, typical isn’t it? My Mum and Dad were there so my Dad came to the hospital, he had a car, and picked me up and I had two weeks ‘accident at work’ on full pay and I’d only been there half an hour and when I got back, they said, “Are you the one who’s had two weeks off?” and I said, “Yes!” But I had to have it stitched and they did a lot of probing to make sure there was no glass in there and they didn’t like the idea of what’s inside the tubes.
Anthony
Barium sulphate, I think.
Becky
Yes, powdery stuff. They used to implode when you broke the ends off. We didn’t have masks or anything, you know. Terrible, isn’t it? Or gloves.
Anthony
So you went back there after the accident?
Becky
Yes, two weeks after I went back to work.
Anthony
How long did you stay there?
Becky
Not very long, about six months. I found it too hard. I used to have to walk there from Fotheringham Road, don’t know how far it is really.
Anthony
That’s off Southbury Road isn’t it, by George Spicer School?
Becky
Yes, but further down.
Anthony
Do it’s probably three quarters of a mile, perhaps a mile.
Becky
I think I had to walk past the park, Bush Hill Park itself, down to the Cambridge Road and it was on the opposite corner as far as I remember but I found it just too much.
Anthony
It’s a Travelodge Hotel now.
Becky
I didn’t have an automatic washing machine or anything like that so the big things like sheets and towels and Tony’s shirts that sort of thing and the nappies I used to put in a gas copper in the bathroom and boil them up and everything else I washed out by hand. We had a mangle, that’s right. In the shed, our shed because we had the upstairs of a house but we had a shed and the woman living downstairs, she had her shed, there was a wooden mangle and you couldn’t alter in any way the space between the two rollers so I used to get Tony’s jeans, which I washed last, stuck in the mangle and Tony had to (get them out). I used to say, “Your jeans are in the mangle again!” I used to do the washing, carry it downstairs, out the front door, round the side to the back garden and mangle the clothes. If it was raining I had to carry them back upstairs into our flat and dry them somehow.
When you think back, I was telling a chap who came here last week to do a job, I was telling him something about a washing machine – we had two girls and my husband fancied having a son so we could have both so I said, “Only on one condition; I want an automatic washing machine.” So I’m telling the man, you see, and he said, “My wife’s just got a washing machine,” I don’t think he even knew what washing machines were like before automatics. So it was about a week before my son arrived but I thought it was absolutely wonderful, which it was. Absolutely wonderful.
Anthony
Did you work in the daytime at GE?
Becky
No, they were both evening jobs because both times I had the girls.
Anthony
Did they still think you were posh? Or did the fact the factory was in west Enfield mean they didn’t think you were posh?
Becky
No, they definitely thought I was posh, it was worse for me than Autolite’s.
Anthony
I suppose they must have come from Ponders End, that area do you think?
Becky
They lived all at Tottenham and all different areas but a lot of them were from around Ponders End.
Anthony
Did that make it difficult for you?
Becky
It did a bit because they didn’t chat to me the way they chatted to the other women. I mean I’m not posh, I’ve never been posh. I’ve never put on any airs and graces.
Anthony
Did you dress differently, do you think?
Becky
I might have done, very short skirts was the fashion then in the late 60s and they had skirts that just about covered. Although I wore short skirts they weren’t like that, they weren’t as short as theirs. I didn’t really like it there, Autolite’s was much better to work for, if you had to get a job, Autolite’s was the better job and then I didn’t work until I worked in the Chinese take away in Hertford, we’d moved to Hertford by then and I worked there packing the orders, sitting behind the high counter and watching the colour television! She had a colour television! I worked there in the evenings and then I got a job in the library so I dropped the Chinese one because the job in the library was day time. So that was alright. I really liked that.
They say it takes two weeks when you start a new job – you should wait two weeks before you decide whether you like it. Well, my experience is you like it the first day and in the library they couldn’t have been nicer; they were really, really nice. When I went to work for the County Council I worked for four years as a school librarian and hated every minute of it; the teachers looked down on me because they looked down on everyone. The people who worked in the laboratories, the science labs, getting everything ready, they looked down them and the very first day the caretaker introduced himself, I actually knew him already and when I explained who I was and he said, “Don’t leave anything where the teachers can get hold of it,” he said; “they’ll steal it.” I said to him, “Why have you got soft toilet paper in the girls’ toilets but hard toilet paper up in the staff room?” He said, “They pinch it; if I put soft toilet paper up there it gets stolen” and what I’ve always done with jobs, you take your own mug so I took a Denby mug and the first day it disappeared. I put a note on the front of the cubby holes, we all had a cubby hole with our name on, saying, “If the somebody who accidentally took my Denby mug would like to contact me I’ll give them the matching plate.”
The headmaster called me up and I got a rollocking for that but what didn’t help with that job was the first week I was there my son was in detention every night for having a fight and he didn’t have a mark on him but the boy he had a fight with – talk about black eyes! Why his parents didn’t come round I do not know, either he didn’t have parents or what, he was one of those kids who didn’t look right, you know. His shirts weren’t white it was if he wore them for a week or something which is what I had to do when I was a kid, everything including knickers. Can you imagine wearing a pair of knickers for a week! But we did and we just got used to it. I felt really sorry for this boy but his parents never came there so I felt that was good because the whole school knew that my son was in detention and Mrs Coleman, the new librarian, was his mother.
I got rid of loads of stuff. Because I had already worked in the library I knew where I could go and get free books. We had a book store down in Tamworth Road in Hertford so I went there and I said, “Any chance of a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica?” “Oh, yes.” Free. ”What about this and what about that?” There was a junior encyclopaedia, got a new set of them; loads and loads of books, loads of fiction, I mean when I got there half the shelves were empty and when I left they were full up so I was quite proud. There were loads of folders with things like “Pretty Pix” (spelt pix) which I didn’t like so they were in the bin and the woman who I had taken over from, she came back and she didn’t think much of me binning her pictures. Yes, I got on really well with the caretaker, he had the tuck shop and used to sell things like cleaning products which I am pretty sure he was supposed to be cleaning the school with and other things. But he cared about the school. There was a free paper every Thursday and on the back page, of course, there was sport and he’d say, “Look at him! He used to come to the school! And he used to come to the school!” The headmaster would have had no idea, no idea at all.
The headmaster who was there previously to when I was there which both my daughter and son had known; if a kid had run in the hall or something he used to say, “Stop, that boy!” and that boy used to stop. The headmaster that I knew just used to say ,”Oh, stop,” and they just used to laugh and run off so you could never work out who they were. There was no interest in the school whatsoever. I think he was one of those people “Those who can do, those who can’t become headmasters” sort of thing but he might have been one of those that they want to get rid of so they give them a good reference which is all wrong really, isn’t it? It’s really all wrong. I didn’t like working there and I was there four years, I couldn’t believe it. And I had virtually a nervous breakdown. We’d had the school holidays and Tony had gone to work and I sat at the kitchen table and I burst into tears. Tony had come back home for something, he came and he said, “Is it the bloody school?” So I said, “Yes,” and he said, “Right, leave.” So I left that day. I didn’t work the month out, I got paid for the month but I didn’t go there, didn’t leave any explanation whatsoever. I just left. I got Jared there after school, my son, and we tidied the library. It was absolutely immaculate. All the books were soldiered, which means that they are pulled to the front of the book shelves, not pushed any old how; and I just left and I did temporary jobs – some of them very interesting – for about six months and I got a job at the County Council and I stayed there until I retired.
Anthony
One last thing, you said your husband, Tony, worked at Reeves for a while which was next door to GE, the light people, in Lincoln Road.
Becky
Yes, it wasn’t when I was there. It was when I first left school. I hadn’t even been out of school a year and I went to a dance and I met him but he thought he’d met the girl of his dreams and I just thought it was a boyfriend going out with, you see. So, I gave him up to go out with Hugh Garey because Hugh Garey used to keep coming round, knocking on the door and asking me out and in the end I went. I gave up Tony and went out with Hugh and a few months later he gave me up to go out with another girl I didn’t know, called Jackie, and he ended up marrying her. So, interesting really. But it was quite a few years later. Tony got bad bronchitis at the wood factory because he used to make paint brushes.
Anthony
So how long was he at Reeves?
Becky
Four or five years.
Anthony
And that’s where he was working when you met him?
Becky
When I first met him. So then he was invalided out because he got bad bronchitis, permanent bronchitis from wood dust. None of the filters and suckers and face masks they have now, none of that at all.
Anthony
He was making artist’s paint brushes?
Becky
Yes, and easels and they did make paint there but he wasn’t in that department so his Mum didn’t like him being home all the time, not earning and not paying house keeping money, so his Dad saw this job in the paper “Electricians’ mates wanted” so he went for an interview – this was the London Electricity Board – and the bloke said, “Do you know how to lift a floor board?” Well, I know how to lift a floor board – hammer and bolster. So Tony said, “Yes, hammer and bolster.” He said, “Right, you got the job.” That’s all he asked; presumably, he wanted someone who knew one end of a hammer from the other. And we bumped into each other, it’s really strange, just bumped into each other. He’d grown up, he was almost a boy before and now he was a grownup man. He was much, much nicer so we got married. He was willing to take Damaris, actually happy to take Damaris because it was a ‘buy one, get one free’ situation, of course. If he hadn’t have wanted Damaris I wouldn’t have married him. Simple as that.
Anthony
You were married a long time.
Becky
The same month that Tony died, (March 2023) we would have been married fifty-seven years.
Anthony
A long time.
Becky
Yes. I mean a lot of my friends are divorced, in fact most of them I was at school with are divorced. My friend Carol wasn’t but she had M.S. and her husband was one of those who would do anything in the home. You know, cook the meals, do the washing whatever was needed. They told her not to have a baby but she did, a little boy. They told her she would have to have a caesarean but she didn’t. Until he was about six months old she could pick him up but after that she couldn’t so she used to go to her Mum’s, the next door neighbour would come and help her into the car with the baby, she’d drive to her Mum’s, this is Ilford to Roydon and her Mum would come out and help her out of the car and bring her into the house. But she got worse and worse and became bedridden and then she got ‘flu and then she got pneumonia and they said to Philip, her husband, she would always have to be tube fed for the rest of her life. However, we can switch her off so he thought about it and he said, “Yes, switch her off.” She wouldn’t have wanted to be like that. She was on artificial ventilation, just with a mask, she could breathe but she had a mask over her face, oxygen I suppose and she broke off from all her friends, she didn’t want anyone to see her like that, it was really sad. So I hadn’t seen her for a while when she died. It happens, doesn’t it. But I think she would have been divorced if she hadn’t died – after she was married she was carrying on with a bloke which I don’t understand why, myself, but people do, don’t they.
Anthony
Thank you.