Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue

by Knight, Lynn

  Even if she wanted to, Jessie could not make a permanent home with Frances and her pregnancy may have been a source of some tension between them, older sisters being supposed to look out for younger ones. Nor would Jessie have wished to return to Ireland pregnant. A certain carelessness surrounded illegitimate births. In 1930, one in four illegitimate babies born in Ireland did not survive their first year. Also, in 1930, a Custom House official, a doctor, uncovered an extremely high rate of infant mortality in a Cork home for unmarried mothers: more than 100 of 180 babies born in the previous year died. The matron (a nun) and the Home’s medical officers were entirely complacent about covering up an infection that had the babies in their care dropping like flies. No, Ireland was not her best option. Jessie may have sought spiritual advice from a Catholic priest, but I doubt she sought practical help because, for the time being at least, she remained at Hazelmere Avenue.

  Whatever the circumstances surrounding my mum’s birth, Jessie took pride in her child: she named her after herself. The name by which my mum is known was chosen by Annie and Willie. She also held on to her for as long as she could – the NCAA took babies far younger than Cora.

  Women who placed children for adoption between the wars did not intend to be traced years later, nor did the authorities wish them uncovered. Better by far that they dissolve into the background, their stories swept under the carpet; the slate wiped clean. Funny how such phrases describe domestic acts. How Jessie must have wished it were that simple.

  I don’t know what happened to her in the weeks after she gave up my mum. I try not to think of Jessie’s empty arms, her damp blouse. If she did squeeze in with her sister, she only did so for a very short time – by the autumn of 1930, the Woods had moved again and Jessie was not with them. Within a year or so, she was back in Ireland and, although I don’t know the full story of her life, I do know how it ended.

  I was right to cry on reading Emily Ball’s death certificate. She was not alone in her ghastly fate. Jessie Mee also died in childbirth, another young woman who gave up her life too soon, and left behind young children. This was a discovery I had not wanted or expected to make.

  She is lying in a small graveyard now, with some members of her family beside her. Two sides of the cemetery are bounded by trees; hills and further trees shape the horizon. Those green hills that hold centuries of secrets hold Jessie’s secrets too. Though not unkempt, the graveyard is gently overgrown and lacks distinct paths between gravestones. Dotted among the long grass on the day that I was there, were clusters of the deepest purple clover I have ever seen, groups of slender ‘chimney sweeps’ and richly yellow vetches. When I stood before the grave with my brother and my mum, I heard the distinctive notes of birdsong. It is quiet there, peaceful. Finding Jessie is about leaving her be.

  Except that it is hard for me to do exactly that. I think of all the difficulties Jessie must have faced, and how closely she was required to guard the story of her time in London. And, knowing a little more about Jessie now, my thoughts return to Mrs Sedgwick, who may not have been the chance employer I’d always assumed her to be. Mrs Sedgwick was herself Irish, and shortly before she and her husband settled in London, occupied a sturdy villa in one of the better parts of Belfast, with a gabled window and room for a servant girl. Did one of the Mee sisters work there? Young women from small towns and villages made their way to Belfast and Dublin, as well as London, and sometimes tested the shorter distance before embarking on the longer, saltier journey. Who knows? Perhaps one of the Mee girls knelt beneath that gabled roof to say her prayers. Perhaps, perhaps. It is a tempting and not wholly implausible thought, especially considering what came later. A prior connection provides a more solid foundation for Mrs Sedgwick’s understanding than the story of a pregnant-young-servant-who-confessed-to-her-employer (although there were plenty of those).

  And, thinking again of Mrs Sedgwick, I am drawn back to the mystery lady who came to Racecourse Road – for surely it was she who appeared all those years later? Until now, I’ve not felt able to make sufficient sense of the gap. What brought her to Chesterfield when my mum was six, if not a letter from Jessie? Jessie had other children by that stage, each one a reminder of the child who was not with her, each birthday cake (if the family ran to birthday cakes) a reminder of the date she could not acknowledge. Blow out the candles. Make a wish.

  I write Mrs Sedgwick’s reply – imagine her describing all the colourful books on my mum’s bookshelves; her Minnie Mouse bag, doll’s house and motorcycle man, and all the photographs of her which Annie proudly displayed on the piano, and dusted every week. I think of Jessie receiving this letter. I want that for her, and of course I want it for Cora.

  My grandma will always be Annie, and my great-grandparents and great-aunt Betsy, Dick and Eva. If I could choose my relatives, I’d choose them, but discovering the identity of the woman I’ve called Jessie Mee closes the circle, and makes me consider all over again what complex layers of loving, losing, wanting – and leaving – children underpin my family story.

  My mum is the last link with this vanished world, but, in my mind’s eye, all these stories continue. Cora and I will always be talking of Dick sitting in his wood with a small dog at his heels, and Betsy standing behind her counter. Annie will be forever seated at the table in the back room, fashioning a new dress with her pinking shears, and young Eva will be beside her, peeling an apple in one long straggling piece to see which letter forms when she flings the peel over her left shoulder.

  IN DERRY VALE, BESIDE THE SINGING RIVER

  In Derry Vale, beside the singing river,

  so oft I strayed, ah, many years ago,

  and culled at morn the golden daffodillies,

  that came with spring to set the world aglow.

  Oh, Derry Vale, my thoughts are ever turning

  to your broad stream and fairycircled lea,

  for your green isles my exiled heart is yearning,

  so far away across the sea.

  In Derry Vale, amid the Foyle’s dark waters,

  the salmon leap above the surging weir,

  the seabirds call – I still can hear them calling

  in night’s long dreams of those so dear.

  Oh, tarrying years, fly faster, ever faster,

  I long to see the vale belov’d so well,

  I long to know that I am not forgotten,

  and there at home in peace to dwell.

  – Lyrics written by W. G. Rothery to the tune of ‘Londonderry Air’, and sung by Cora at the Cavendish Junior School

  Sources

  p.12 ‘We found Derbyshire…’: The Diaries of Mrs Philip Lybbe Powys, of Hardwick House, Oxon, edited by Emily J. Climenson, Longmans, Green & Co., 1899, pp.24–5.

  p.22 ‘NURSE CHILD WANTED, OR TO ADOPT: James Greenwood, The Seven Curses of London, Basil Blackwell, 1869, p.24, quoted by Dorothy L. Haller, ‘Bastardy and Baby Farming in Victorian England’, http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1989-0/haller.htm; ‘ADOPTION… a good home’, an advertisement placed by Sarah Ellis, Brixton baby farmer, in Lloyd’s Weekly Paper, 5 June 1870; Lionel Rose, The Massacre of the Innocents: Infanticide in Britain 1800–1939, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986, p.98.

  p.28 ‘Besides the fumes and the gases…’: Florence Bell, At the Works: A Study of a Manufacturing Town, Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1911 (2nd edition), pp.58–9.

  p.43 ‘It must be remembered…’: Maud Pember Reeves, Round About a Pound a Week, G. Bell & Sons Limited, 1913; Virago edition, 1979, pp.143–4.

  p.46 December 7, 1910…: Example of Mrs E’s household budget, from Maud Pember Reeves, Round About a Pound a Week, pp.135–6.

  p.52 ‘Families too large…’: Elizabeth Dean, interviewed aged 101: Angela Holdsworth, Out of the Doll’s House: The Story of Women in the Twentieth Century, BBC Books, 1988, p.184.

  p.64 ‘My mother died…’: Elizabeth Dean, in Angela Holdsworth, Out of the Doll’s House, p.184.

  p.66 ‘The New Industrial Schools of the
Chesterfield Union’, Derbyshire Times, 26 March 1881.

  p.67–77 Information relating to the Chesterfield Children’s Homes during the 1900s: D522/C/W/5/1, Children’s Homes Committee Minute Book, Derbyshire Record Office, Matlock.

  p.98 ‘Q. What illustrious lady…’: Simple Catechism of the History of England, from the Invasion of the Romans to the Present Time, Adapted to the Capacities of Young Children, from ‘Mrs Gibbon’s Simple Catechisms of’, Relfe Brothers, School Booksellers & General School Stationers, Charter-House Buildings, Aldersgate, 1890.

  p.116 ‘In the early twentieth century, stillborn babies…’: based on an interview with Rose Ashton; Angela Holdsworth, Out of the Doll’s House, p.112. See also ‘Out of the Doll’s House’, 80DH/02/, The Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University.

  p.118 ‘It is more dangerous…’: Slogan for the UK’s first National Baby Week, 1917: Jenny Keating, A Child for Keeps: The History of Adoption in England, 1918–45, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p.22.

  p.124 ‘Xmas Day and such a sad one…’: Extracts from Maria Gyte’s Diary: Gerald Phizackerley (ed.), The Diaries of Maria Gyte of Sheldon, Derbyshire, 1913–1920, Scarthin Books, Cromford, 1999, pp.156–7.

  p.160 ‘Big strong men cried…’: Veteran Collier, Coalville, Leicestershire: Gerard Noel, The Great Lock-Out of 1926, Constable, 1976, p.206.

  p.174 ‘Lately in the press…’: Beatrice Harraden, Foreword, The National Children Adoption Association Report 1927–28 (with ‘1928–29’ handwritten on the cover), author’s own.

  p.176 ‘They enter our offices…’: Clara Andrew, founder of the National Children Adoption Association, NCAA booklet c.1919, p.10; quoted by Jenny Keating, A Child for Keeps, p.50.

  p.178, 180 ‘Until the 1926 Act was passed…’: taped interview by Brian Harrison, 8SUF/B/099, 2 July 1976, Hodgson, Mrs Mary, The Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University; ‘The underlying idea was experimental…’: Ethel Smyth, Female Pipings in Eden, Peter Davies Ltd, 1933, pp.237–8. For further information, see David Mitchell, Queen Christabel: A Biography of Christabel Pankhurst, Macdonald & Jane’s, 1977, and June Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography, Routledge, 2002.

  p.179 ‘including the professional classes…’: Clara Andrew, evidence to the Hopkinson Committee, 5 October 1920, in Jenny Keating, ‘Struggle for Identity: Issues Underlying the Enactment of the 1926 Adoption of Children Act’, University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 3 (2001), p.5.

  p.181 ‘insist on the strictest medical examination…’: typed copy of undated article for Good Housekeeping by Susan Musson, head of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Child; 50PF/04/01, c.1927, Adoption Act 1926, The Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University.

  p.181 ‘destitute or orphaned or friendless or neglected children’: 50PF/04/01/1, Voluntary Social Services Handbook, 27 September 1929, The Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University.

  p.185 ‘a menial, a nobody’: Winifred Foley, general maid, quoted in John Burnett (ed.), Useful Toil: Autobiographies of Working People from the 1820s to the 1920s, Allen Lane, 1974, Penguin Books, 1984, p.227.

  p.185 ‘Do not speak unless necessary…’: Mrs C. C. Peel, Waiting at Table: A Practical Guide, Frederick Warne and Co. Ltd, 1929, p.23.

  p.186 ‘You must remember…’: ‘Nursery Routine: The Threshold of Motherhood’, Home Management, Daily Express Publications, 1934, p.499.

  p.189 ‘huge private house…’: ‘Finding Homes for Babies!’ Woman’s Own, 25 April 1936.

  p.218 ‘Mrs D of Derby is 35 years old …’: Household budget quoted in Margery Spring Rice, Working-Class Wives: Their Health and Conditions, Penguin, 1939; Virago edition 1981, pp.176–7.

  p.230 ‘In the modern house…’: ‘House Decoration: The Kitchen’, Home Management, p.433.

  p.264 ‘Does Detective Fiction Lower our Ethical Standards?’: Helena Normanton, Good Housekeeping, July 1931: 7HLN/C/03, Articles from ‘Good Housekeeping’ by Helena Normanton, 1924–1939, The Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University.

  p.288 ‘Do not feel that you must have an elaborate display of cakes…’: ‘Entertaining (With information on Weddings and Christenings)’, Home Management, p.587.

  p.304 ‘Floss stood at one window…’, Up to London to See the King, A Story for Six-Year-Olds, Nelson’s Supplementary Infant Readers I, Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1904, pp.40–41.

  p.312 ‘Yours is a full time job…’: Good Housekeeping, August 1941, quoted by Juliet Gardiner, Wartime: Britain 1939–1945, Headline, 2004, p.182.

  p.322 ‘Mr Churchill’: author’s own.

  p.340 ‘Today we nearly caught a Doodle Bug…’: Vere Hodgson, Few Eggs and No Oranges, a Diary showing how Unimportant People in London and Birmingham Lived through the War Years, 1939–1945, Dobson Books Ltd, 1976; reprinted by Persephone Books, 1999.

  Select Bibliography

  I’ve drawn on numerous family sources to write this memoir – documents, newspapers cuttings, photographs and notebooks, even a partial stocklist from the corner shop, as well as my own recollections of childhood stories and many, many conversations with my mum. The public sources I’ve found most useful include the following:

  ARCHIVES, LIBRARIES AND MUSEUMS

  The British Library; The British Newspaper Library at Colindale; Chesterfield Library, Local Studies; Chesterfield Museum; Derbyshire Record Office; The Foundling Museum; Kensington Central Library, Local Studies; The London Library; London Metropolitan Archives; The Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising; Library Archives, London School of Economics; The National Fairground Archive, Sheffield University; Royal Free Hospital Archives Centre; The Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University.

  DIRECTORIES, NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES

  Debryshire Courier; Derbyshire Times; Directory of Sheffield; The Era; Good Housekeeping; History and Gazeteer of Derbyshire; Home Chat; Kelly’s Directory of Derbyshire; Modern Home; Punch; Reflections; The Times; T. P. Wood’s Almanac; Woman’s Weekly; Yorkshire Telegraph & Star.

  BOOKS ON CHESTERFIELD & DERBYSHIRE

  Boden, F. C., Miner, J. M. Dent & Sons, 1932.

  Brelsford, Vernon, A History of Brimington from the Doomsday Survey to 1937; with new illustrations and an update by Mandy Hicken, Brimington Parish Council, 1989.

  Cousins, Philip J., Brimington: The Changing Face of a Derbyshire Village, Brimington Parish Council, 1994.

  Dimbleby, David, A Picture of Britain, Tate Publishing, 2007.

  Jenkins, David E., Sheepbridge: A History of the Sheepbridge Coal & Iron Co. Ltd, Bannister, 1995.

  Markham, Violet, Return Passage: The Autobiography of Violet Markham, Oxford University Press, 1953.

  Pendleton, John and Jacques, William, Modern Chesterfield: Its History, Legends and Progress, The Derbyshire Courier Co. Ltd, 1903.

  Phizackerley, Gerald (ed.), The Diaries of Maria Gyte of Sheldon, Derbyshire, 1913–1920, Scarthin Books, Cromford, 1999.

  Priestley, J. B., English Journey, 1934; Folio Society, 1997.

  ‘Tatler’ [Pendleton, John], Old and New Chesterfield: Its People and Steeple, J. Toplis, Derbyshire Courier Office, 1882.

  Williams, J. E., The Derbyshire Miners, George Allen & Unwin, 1962.

  ON ADOPTION, BABY FARMING, ILLEGITIMACY, INFANT MORTALITY

  Behlmer, George K., Friends of the Family: The English Home and its Guardians, 1850–1940, Stanford University Press, 1998.

  Brookes, Barbara, ‘Women and Reproduction 1860–1919’, in Lewis, Jane (ed.), Labour and Love, Women’s Experience of Home and Family 1850– 1940, Basil Blackwell, 1986.

  Davies, Hunter, Relative Strangers: A History of Adoption and a Tale of Triplets, Time Warner Books, 2003.

  Llewelyn Davies, Margaret (ed.), Maternity: Letters from Working Women, G. Bell & Sons Ltd, 1915; Virago Ltd, 1978.

  Greenwood, James, The Seven Curses of London, Basil Blackwell, 1869.

  Keating, Jenny, ‘Struggle for Identity: Issues Underlying the Enactme
nt of the 1926 Adoption of Children Act’, University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 3 (2001).

  Keating, Jenny, A Child for Keeps: The History of Adoption in England, 1918–45, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

  Moore, George, Esther Waters, 1894; J. M. Dent, Everyman’s Library edition, 1977.

  Rose, Lionel, The Massacre of the Innocents: Infanticide in Britain 1800– 1939, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.

  Smyth, Ethel, Female Pipings in Eden, Peter Davies Ltd, 1933.

  Swift, Rebecca (ed.), Letters from Margaret: Correspondence between Bernard Shaw and Margaret Wheeler, 1944–1950, Chatto & Windus Ltd, 1992.

  ON DOMESTIC SERVICE

  Light, Alison, Mrs Woolf and the Servants, Fig Tree, Penguin, 2007.

  Peel, Mrs C. S., Waiting at Table: A Practical Guide, Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd, 1929.

  Powell, Margaret, Below Stairs, Peter Davies, 1968.

  Taylor, Pam, ‘Daughters and mothers – maids and mistresses: domestic service between the wars’, from J. Clarke et al. (eds), Working-Class Culture: Studies in History and Theory, Hutchinson, 1979.

  Woolf, Virginia, A Moment’s Liberty: The Shorter Diary, abridged and edited by Anne Olivier Bell, Hogarth Press, 1990.

  AUTOBIOGRAPHY, MEMOIRS, DIARIES

  Arthur, Max, Lost Voices of the Edwardians, Harper Press, 2006.

  Broad, Richard and Fleming, Suzie (eds.), Nella Last’s War: The Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49, Profile Books Limited, 2006.

  Burnett, John (ed.), Useful Toil: Autobiographies of Working People from the 1820s to the 1920s, Allen Lane, 1974; Destiny Obscure: Autobiographies of Childhood, Education and Family from the 1820s to the 1920s, Allen Lane, 1982.

  Cookson, Catherine, Our Kate: An Autobiography, Macdonald & Co. Ltd, 1969.

  Davies, Margaret Llewelyn (ed.), Life As We Have Known It by Co-Operative Working Women, Hogarth Press, 1931; Virago Ltd, 1977.