Pie 'n' Mash and Prefabs

by Norman Jacobs

  ’Twas a dark and stormy night when me Nelly went away.

  I’ll never forget her till my dying day.

  She was just sixteen and the village queen,

  The prettiest little trick that the village had seen.

  It went on to tell the heart-rending and poignant tale of Little Nell, who was made pregnant by the villain of the piece and then abandoned on the night her little ‘Dumbell’ was born. However, everything turns out well in the end as the villain gets his comeuppance by being fined ‘a dollar and a quarter’.

  After my grandparents and aunt and uncle had gone, there was a bit more telly for us and then bed after a very long and busy day.

  The following day, Boxing Day, we would do it all in reverse, with us visiting Chingford. Mum never saw her family over Christmas. Although Dad was a great believer in family, I think he took this to mean the Jacobs family! Boxing Day followed a similar pattern as far as the visit went, though Nan always had a capon for dinner rather than a turkey. One year, when I was about nine or ten, she had a goose, which for me was a completely novel experience as I’d never had it before. I found it very fatty and wished she’d stuck to the capon!

  BIRTHDAYS

  In some ways, birthdays were like a mini-Christmas except that they were celebrated more with friends than my family. There was the eager anticipation and the thought of receiving presents together with a party. As my birthday is in May, it was also nice to have this to look forward to about halfway between Christmases.

  I can’t remember having a birthday at the weekend, so they all occurred on a school day. The day would start with the usual getting ready for school but with the difference that there would be some cards to open. Mum and Dad’s would be on the kitchen table ready for when I got there for breakfast and there might also be some that had arrived by post. During the 1950s, we had three posts a day and our first one arrived very early, usually before I left for school. I could normally count on receiving cards from John and from my grandparents and sometimes my uncles and aunts if they remembered. When they did remember, these usually contained a postal order for 2/6d or, if I was lucky, sometimes for as much as five shillings.

  The school day passed very slowly as I was always eager to get back home, where Mum had laid on a birthday party for me and my friends – the usual six. Sometimes, under a bit of pressure from my parents, I would invite a couple of girls as I think they thought it would make us behave a bit better and be less rowdy. It never did, though, as I made sure that the girls I invited were the ones who liked to play boys’ games – especially Judith, who I don’t remember ever seeing in a skirt or dress. She always wore blue jeans and loved playing football. As far as we were concerned, she was an honorary boy, but there was no getting away from the fact she was a girl and therefore met my parents’ criteria!

  As my friends arrived, each of them gave me a birthday card and usually a small present such as a toy car or a water pistol – nothing special as for most of my friends money was in short supply in those days. I placed the cards on the mantelpiece with my family cards and then we all sat down around our dining-room table in the big room. There was a lot of chattering and great excitement as we waited for Mum to say we could start. The food at the party was nothing fancy and mainly consisted of jam and fish paste sandwiches, crisps and jelly and ice cream, with some bottles of Tizer bought from over the road. But to us it was a slap-up meal.

  Once the food had all been consumed – and there was never any left as we all tucked in enthusiastically – Mum brought out the birthday cake, normally a chocolate sponge she’d made herself, with the appropriate number of candles on. Everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday’, then I took a deep breath and blew out the candles, while at the same time making a wish, which was usually nothing more profound or earth-shattering than something to the effect that Gloucestershire (the cricket team I supported) would win the County Championship that year. Sadly, that particular wish never came true. The cake was then whisked away and cut into the appropriate number of pieces and put in some tissue paper ready for everyone to take home. We never ate it at the party itself.

  Once the food had gone, we played some party games such as musical chairs, pin the tail on the donkey or squeak, piggy, squeak. After these organised games, we were let loose on the field to play for a while on our own; usually we chose football, though sometimes we would see who could climb the highest up one of the trees. Painful as it is to admit it, the winner of this game was normally Judith. You see, I told you she was an honorary boy!

  And then it was time for everyone to go home. They all picked up their goody bag containing a piece of birthday cake, some sweets and maybe a little toy (Mum’s job at the toy factory came in very handy for this). After they’d all gone, it was just about time for Dad to get home from work and once he’d had his dinner I would get my parents’ presents. This varied from year to year but there was always at least one book, usually Dr Dolittle, Worzel Gummidge or Jennings. I always treasured these as they were now my own and I didn’t have to give them back to the library and could read them over and over again. Quite often I would also get a new board game and some Meccano. One year I was given an Airfix helicopter kit, but I’m afraid making models is not my forte and it wasn’t a great success. (A failing that has stayed with me for the whole of my life as anyone who has ever seen me try to put together flat-pack furniture will agree wholeheartedly.)

  And then it was time for bed after a very happy day.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  KNOCK KNEES, LAUGHING GAS AND NITS

  Before the days of MMR, triple vaccines and the like, all children were prone to getting the normal childhood diseases. In fact, I seem to remember we were encouraged to get them (somehow) when we were young as this gave you immunity for life. Many of them could cause disastrous complications in later life, especially German measles for pregnant women and mumps for reasons young men will understand!

  I have no memory at all of getting measles or whooping cough, though I understand I had both when I was a toddler. Apparently, I had a very mild case of whooping cough as Mum told me later that I just had one whoop and then it was all over.

  I can just about remember having scarlet fever as I can still picture the dark room I had to be kept in. Even though it was my own bedroom, having the curtains drawn and the lights permanently off made it seem very scary. However, this was reckoned to be good for the patient as any light was thought to be able to make you go permanently blind when in the throes of this particular disease.

  I was also vaguely uneasy about the idea that, having a disease with the word fever in it, I might have to be confined to the Fever Hospital, which was down at the other end of Chatsworth Road. It was a stark forbidding building that looked just like a prison from the outside and was certainly a place no child would ever wish to enter. If we walked down that way, we would go to great lengths to avoid going near it, as we feared we might catch some dreadful disease. I still shudder when I think of it, even today.

  In fact, I might have come closer to entering the Fever Hospital than I thought as it did treat cases of scarlet fever. It was opened in December 1870 and housed six typhus wards, two scarlet fever wards, two wards for patients with enteric and two wards for any special cases, catering in all for two hundred patients. In 1871, a specialist smallpox hospital opened next door, made up of four blocks each with eight wards of twelve beds. In the first three days, sixty patients were admitted and by the next month the hospital was filled to capacity. The overflow went to the Fever Hospital, which was increased in size to hold 600 beds. The two hospitals merged in 1921 and became the Eastern Fever Hospital, treating mainly scarlet fever and diphtheria in children, so I could, indeed, have been sent there, if I’d had a more serious case of scarlet fever. It was a lucky escape.

  The other two common childhood diseases, mumps and German measles, came a bit later in my childhood, so I remember them quite well. Of the two, mumps was the worst because it gave me a terr
ible sore throat and I was unable to eat solid food. Again I was confined to bed for several days, which seemed to be the cure for everything. As it was clearing up, Mum gave me some thick vegetable soup. The soup was okay, but I couldn’t eat any of the pieces of vegetable. I shared my bedroom with John, as he must have been on holiday from school at that time. Fortunately for him, he had already had mumps when he was younger so wasn’t in any danger of catching it from me. He saw me getting very frustrated as I tried to eat the soup.

  He said, ‘Are you getting angry because you can’t eat the vegetables?’

  ‘No, I’m angry because Mum gave it to me!’ I replied.

  I’m sure she was only doing what she thought best, though.

  German measles was the mildest of all. In fact, I didn’t even know I was ill until Mum got the doctor out to look at the rash on my neck and face. He diagnosed German measles and, of course, confinement to bed for two weeks. Throughout the whole two weeks, I didn’t actually feel ill at all. Still, it was two weeks off school, so I didn’t complain.

  The other good thing about being confined to bed was that Dad would set up the television in my bedroom so I could watch it, though, of course, for much of the 1950s, there wasn’t a lot on during the day. But I was able to watch Children’s Hour and then the early evening programmes until it was time for sleep. I guess my parents had to go without their night-time viewing, though this thought never occurred to me at the time.

  Fortunately, by the 1950s, some of the more serious and even killer childhood diseases had been conquered by vaccination. Two of the worst had been diphtheria and polio. Although the diphtheria vaccine had been around for some time, it was only in 1955 that Jonas Salk launched his polio vaccine on the world, so I was one of the first to be vaccinated against this dreadful disease. It had no known cure and, if it didn’t kill, it could leave children with severely withered limbs. Although it wasn’t a common sight, it still wasn’t unusual to see children forced to rely on crutches to support their wasted leg muscles. I can remember queuing up at school to receive my diphtheria and polio jabs in a kind of vaccination production line.

  As well as the childhood diseases, there were also the usual colds and flu. On one occasion I can remember us all, Mum, Dad and me, laid up with flu at the same time. I don’t know how long we were in bed together but it was at least a day, maybe two. On the morning we all began to feel a bit better, Dad got up and said, ‘I’m hungry. How about something to eat?’ Mum and I agreed with this sentiment, so a few minutes later Dad brought in three plates of beans on toast, which we all devoured eagerly in bed and then got up and continued with our lives.

  I also fell prey to the 1957–58 flu epidemic. Known as ‘Asian flu’ because it was said to have originated in China, this was the most virulent flu outbreak since the 1918 epidemic. The highest rates were among schoolchildren and well over 50 per cent of all young children were affected. When our school succumbed, I was actually one of the last to become a victim and by the time I did get it there was only a handful of pupils left in my class. Although it was fairly mild, two girls from the nearby Girls Secondary Modern School died from the disease and I told my parents about this. Dad told me it was because they didn’t stay in bed but went out playing. I was quite satisfied by this explanation and ceased to worry about my fate.

  It was while I was laid up in bed that the Munich air disaster happened. Dad had fixed up our television in my bedroom as usual. On the day of the disaster, 6 February 1958, he came home from work at his normal time and came straight in to see me. His first words were: ‘How’s the big fellow?’ I didn’t know what he was talking about as I hadn’t been watching the television and then he explained to me about the plane crash that had killed and seriously injured a number of the Manchester United football team. By ‘the big fellow’ he meant Duncan Edwards, generally recognised as one of England’s best ever footballers, who was critically ill. We immediately put on the television and saw the news unfold. Sadly, Edwards died a few days later. It was a very distressing time for all football fans, not just Manchester United fans.

  As well as taking it easy in bed, colds often necessitated the administration of Vick VapoRub on my chest and sometimes Vick Inhalant, which meant sitting over a bowl of hot water and Vick with a towel over my head, breathing in the health-giving fumes. Both of these were decongestants, which helped ease the symptoms.

  I mentioned earlier that the doctor came out to see me when I had German measles and in those days it was quite normal and common to call out the doctor to see you. It was an expected part of the G.P.’s job to be on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They were called out especially when babies and children were ill. With most people not having their own transport, it was more difficult to get to the doctor’s surgery than it is today, so the twenty-four-hour service was much used.

  That’s not to say that for minor problems and general complaints we didn’t go to the surgery because, of course, we did. There were two local practices: one in Chatsworth Road, the other in Brooksby’s Walk. We signed on with Dr Price, the furthest away of the two, because we were given to understand he was very good with children. He was an old-school doctor, in his fifties, I should guess, when I first got to know him. He had a younger assistant, Dr Klein, who seemed more go-ahead and more up-to-date in his thinking, but most people seemed to trust Dr Price more.

  When you went to the doctor, there was no such thing as making an appointment, you just turned up and queued. The waiting room was set out with chairs all round the wall and a block of something like twenty-five chairs in the centre. You started at the back right chair (nearest to the front door) and worked your way down the centre block.

  When you got to the last seat, you then moved on to the front right and worked your way round the wall until eventually you came to the front left, which meant it was your turn next. A bell would signify that you should go in to see Dr Price on the ground floor and a buzzer meant going upstairs to Dr Klein. Often people would pass on hearing the buzzer, preferring to wait for Dr Price. We always did.

  I visited the doctor’s on a number of occasions and it was nearly always full, which meant a very long wait. The main reason for my many visits was the wax in my ears. On most occasions Dr Price would tell Dad (it was nearly always Dad I went with) to use an ear dropper to put warm olive oil into my ears every day for a fortnight to soften the wax up and then come back and he would syringe them. Because this was what he always said, Dad once took it on himself to start a two-week regime of putting olive oil into my ears so that when we went to see Dr Price he could dispense with this part of the programme and go straight to the syringing.

  Thinking it would be helpful to Dr Price and to the other patients if we went in last, we got there not long before closing time and let the few people that came after us go in front. When we finally got to see Dr Price, Dad told him what we’d done and asked him to syringe my ears.

  Dr Price’s reply was not what Dad wanted to hear: ‘I’m too tired to do it now, I’ve had a long day. Come back tomorrow.’

  But Dad wasn’t having any of this. He said, ‘You’re feeling tired! Well, so am I. I’ve been at work all day and we’ve waited specially while everyone else has been seen to do you a favour and now you tell us to come back tomorrow. My boy needs his ears syringing. He’s had the olive oil for two weeks and we’re not leaving till you’ve done it!’

  In the face of this onslaught, Dr Price had no alternative but to give in and syringe my ears.

  My constant battle against wax culminated in a visit to the Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital on Gray’s Inn Road in London. They stuck some long needles down my ears and scraped hard wax off the sides. After I’d had this done, I could hear amazingly well for a few weeks and then the wax returned again. It was a losing battle!

  I also visited the Children’s Hospital in Hackney several times as Mum thought I was knock-kneed and wanted me to walk straight. All I can remember about those visits is
walking up and down the floor of the room in a straight line; I don’t remember anyone actually doing anything physical to straighten my legs out.

  The only other childhood problem I had was eczema on the back of my right hand. For this I had to visit the Metropolitan Hospital in Dalston, where I had cream applied to my hand until the eczema eventually disappeared.

  There were a lot of hospitals around then. As well as the Hackney Hospital, the Fever Hospital, the Children’s Hospital and the Metropolitan Hospital, there was also the German Hospital in Dalston Road. I never knew why anyone would call a hospital the German Hospital, as of course in the 1950s Germany and Germans were still country and persona non grata. Why they had this special privilege was hard for my young mind to fathom. I subsequently discovered that, when the hospital was first opened in 1845, it catered for the German immigrant population, which, at that time, was the largest immigrant community in the country, numbering some 30,000. Many of them lived and worked in very poor conditions in the East End and this, combined with poverty and the inability to speak English properly, left them unable to use the medical resources available so a German pastor and a doctor made it their mission to build a hospital to meet the needs of their community. Not one of those hospitals is still open today, most of the services having been transferred to the new Homerton University Hospital, opened in 1986.

  When a prescription needed to be filled, my parents mostly collected it from Benjy’s in Chatsworth Road. Sometimes, when the prescription resulted from an out-of-hours doctor’s visit, Dad went by bus to the all-night chemist near Hackney Downs Station, a good fifteen-minute bus ride away. If it was a very out-of-hours visit, he would have to get the night bus.

  Apart from the time we all had ’flu, I don’t remember Mum and Dad being ill except on one occasion when Dad had to go into hospital to have an operation to remove a varicose vein in his leg. In those days, children were not allowed on to the wards even to see their parents so I didn’t see him for over a week. It was the longest I had ever gone without seeing him, so I found it a very difficult time.