From schoolgirl to factory worker

At the start of the war I was a schoolgirl living with my family in Arnold Road, Bow E3 but soon after the war began the school that I attended St Agnes in Devons Road was bombed and was closed down, as I was then 14 years old I was encouraged to find a job. I worked at the paper mills in Old Ford Road, Bow Bridge where various paper products were produced including toilet paper, greaseproof paper and carrier
bags . It was a friendly place and a good introduction to the world of work and we would all sing along to the songs on the wireless.

In 1941 our home was bombed but fortunately none of the family was at home at the time, the property was so badly damaged that my mother decided the family would move to her parents home in Rainham, Essex. We salvaged all that we could and my parents, 2 sisters, 1 brother and myself complete with the dog, cat and budgie, set off by train. The cottage had been a holiday home and was very basic and was without electricity or running water, we relied on oil lamps and buckets of water collected from the standpipe at the end of Lambs Lane. Before the war we children stayed there for holidays it was my job together with one of my sisters to go and collect water we had to avoid falling into the ditches that were at both sides of the road and we would run past the cemetery which for some reason always scared us! I think we spilt more water than we managed to bring back. It was terribly cramped in the cottage with all of us living there but we made the best of it until while we looked for somewhere else.

We eventually rented a bungalow also in Rainham not far from my grandparents and after a while the cottage next door became vacant and my eldest sister together with her husband and young daughter moved in. One day during an air raid my sister went into labour in the Anderson shelter and my mother who was an A.R.P. warden and who never took shelter had to be with her but as luck would have it the all clear was sounded and my nephew managed to wait until his mother got back into the house and the midwife arrived before he made his appearance.

While living in Rainham I continued to travel to the paper mills. It was quite a long journey but the foreman gave me an extra half a crown a week towards my fares, which enabled me to continue working there. I really wanted to join the land army with my friend Gladys, when I was old enough but my mother wouldn't hear of it so I eventually went to work at Pritchett and Gold in Dagenham making batteries for planes, tanks and other transport vehicles, we also made toilet cisterns! We worked around the clock in shifts and often having to walk both ways in the dark and sometimes during bombing raids while ignoring shouts from her mother to "come back and wait in the Anderson shelter until the all clear!" More often than not I pretended not to hear and just ran up the road and hoped a bomb wasn't dropped near me!

While working in the factory I met my husband he had been an in the auxiliary fire service stationed at Limehouse East London, he had wanted to join the Royal Marines but as he failed the medical he went to work in the factory where he stayed until retirement many years later. After we married we were living with my parents for a couple of years until we were re-housed in a prefab by the council, near the Cherrytree in Rainham but that's another story.

Many people talk of the good old days but I'd never wish to live through it all again.

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