Wartime for the Sugar Girls
Page 30
She looked Alfie’s brother squarely in the eye. ‘Yeah, we did have a baby,’ she replied proudly. ‘And his name is Terry.’
Joan never spoke to Alfie himself again, but she did see him one more time, when she was out with her kids at the Romford dog track. She was pretty sure he noticed her too, but before they could make eye contact she turned her gaze back to the dogs. She had nothing more to say to Alfie, no desire to have anything to do with him. As far as she was concerned, he no longer existed.
A few years ago a friend asked Joan if she resented her parents for making her give up her baby. ‘No,’ Joan replied. ‘My mother loved me and cared for me for 17 years. Who was I to degrade her like that?’ She had come to feel that her parents and their generation deserved her understanding and respect.
But even now, more than half a century later, she still hopes her son Terry will come to find her.
Once she got used to life without Lenny, Joan found that being a single mum actually suited her rather well. She was fully independent once again, and now with her own house to rule as she saw fit. All the other kids at her children’s school thought she was the coolest mum they knew, driving around in a bright-yellow Volkswagen Beetle. In the 1980s, Joan even went into business, taking over a corner-shop with her friend Dolly – they named it Jolly’s – and running it very successfully.
Nor did she give up her writing habit. She still jots down little rhymes all the time, just as she did at Tate & Lyle, but nowadays she crafts them into stories for children, which she carefully illustrates herself. She has also become a silver surfer, spending her time online in nostalgia forums and reminiscing about the past over the internet.
For many years after Gladys’s reunion, she and her friends would look out for news of Florence Smith. Eva sometimes saw her walking her dog in Barking, with exactly the same stern, upright demeanour with which she had once stalked the corridors of the factory.
After a while, though, Miss Smith disappeared altogether. The girls later learned that she had been moved into a nursing home in Redbridge. When some of her old employees tried to visit, they were told that she didn’t want to see them. Treating them as equals was one thing, but perhaps showing that kind of vulnerability was more than her pride could bear.
She died in 2009, at the age of 92. A handful of old sugar girls attended her funeral.
Acknowledgements
Above all, our thanks are due to the women whose stories form the heart of this book: Ethel Colquhoun, Lilian Clark, Gladys Hudgell and Joan Cook. What we have written is based on interviews both with them and with over 50 other former workers at Tate & Lyle, and we owe a great debt to the following for their generosity, patience and understanding: Eliza Attenborough and her niece Pamela Rozee, Barbara Bailey, Flo Barley, Shirley Benson, Louisa Blaker, Janet and Stanley Copp, Jean Crump, Lily Dalsett, Jean Danrell, Maureen Deeble, Betty Dillon, Joan Dyson, Jim Fittock, Joan Flanders, Betty Foster, Eric Gregory, Pat Griffiths, Win Hardy, Doreen Harris, Jean Hatt, Edna Ashmore, Pat Johnston, Martin Jones, Esther Kennard, Joan Lee, Sylvie Lowe, Jean Mitchell, Lily Moore, Ted Phillips, Anne Purcell, Barbara and Dave Price, Bill Price, Maureen Richfield, Eva Rodwell, Elizabeth and Cyril Rozee, Betty Southgate, Carol Smith, Renie Smith, Clare Sullivan, Frances Swallow, Winnie Taylor, Edie and Peter Wallace, Florence Waller, Win Webster and her son Mike Hardy, and many others who did not give us their full names or who wished to remain anonymous.
Although we have tried to remain faithful to what our interviewees have told us, at a distance of over half a century many memories are understandably incomplete, and where necessary we have used our own research, and our imaginations, to fill in the gaps. We have also changed some names and details to protect anonymity. However, the essence of the stories related here is true, as they were told to us by those who experienced them at first hand.
For Tate & Lyle, Ken Wilson at the Thames Refinery and Ian Clark at Plaistow Wharf have very kindly shared their time and resources, and allowed us to look around the factories and their respective archives. The accounts written by Oliver Lyle and Anthony Hugill, The Plaistow Story and Sugar and All That, provide a wealth of detail on the history of the company.
A number of local experts have also been extremely helpful. Jenni Munro-Collins and the staff at Stratford Library have borne with our enquiries patiently, calling up dozens of editions of the Tate & Lyle Times and Stratford Express at a moment’s notice. Kathy Taylor’s Newham Story website has been an invaluable resource, and the posts from other members on the forums there have been very useful. Staff at the Museum of London, London Metropolitan Archives and Imperial War Museum have also given generous assistance.
Stan Dyson, whose book Silvertown: A Boy’s Story is a fount of local memories and lore, has been generous in answering our questions. His contributions to the Docklands Memories website (www.docklandsmemories.org.uk) are an invaluable resource, as are the short stories of Keith Lloyd, also collected there.
Nadia Atia’s help was much appreciated in the early stages of our own research, while Clare Barrett and Becky Barry made our lives much easier with their precise interview transcriptions. Jolien Harmsen kindly helped with the patois translations.
It was Louise Stanley at HarperCollins who first conceived of the idea for this book, and we are grateful to her and her colleague Iain MacGregor for entrusting it to us. Our agent Jon Elek has offered sterling support throughout the process, and Ruth Petrie has given advice and encouragement. Michèle Barrett, Alex Hayton, Anna Rice and Darren Rugg offered insightful comments on an early draft. Our copy-editor Steve Dobell has provided sage advice and good humour.
Tracking down former Tate & Lyle workers was not always easy, and the staff of many wonderful day centres and lunch clubs have assisted in the search, among them Gary Ewer at the Royal Docks Learning and Activity Centre in Silvertown, Beryl Callison and Sybil Nightingale at the Ascension Centre in Custom House, Anne Cross at the Kitchen Table Café in East Ham, and Jessica Wanamaker at The Hub, Ray Maybe at the Trinity Centre and Sam Clark at The Place, all in Canning Town. Thanks to their hard work and dedication, many of the women we have spoken to are still in touch with former colleagues, and enjoy the company of new and old friends alike.
Our thanks are also due to Terry Abbott at the Silvertown branch of the British Legion, Suki Kula who runs the Cromwell Stores corner-shop opposite the Thames Refinery, and Norma Reeve and Matt Nicholls at the Newham Recorder. Bill and Rose Perry’s Garden Café on Cundy Road, Custom House, is an oasis for the local community, and we are grateful for their assistance and generosity.
Pictures
Ethel (far right) with the Plaistow Wharf netball team
Ethel and Archie (left) at a Tate & Lyle social
Ethel (in her white coat) and fellow sugar girls campaign for the TV show Crossroads
Lilian as a child with siblings Harry, Sylvie (on swing) and Edie. Lilian has holes in her shoes as her parents couldn't afford new ones
Lilian's father Harry and mother Edith, visiting Lilian's sister Edie in Suffolk (where she moved after marrying her wartime boyfriend)
Lilian's sister Edie with Edie's son Brian - the baby she became pregnant with by her married soldier boyfriend during the war
Lilian and Alec's wedding day, 1953
Lilian and husband Alec
Lilian (right) with friends in Trafalgar Square during the Second World War
Lilian (second from right) on a Tate & Lyle beano with her work friends, Old Fat Nell (far right) and Little Lil (to the left of Lilian)
Lilian on a Tate & Lyle beano (third from left). Second on the left is her friend Little Lil and third from right her friend Old Fat Nell
Lilian (third from right, back row) on a can-making beano
Blue Room girls on a beano to Southend
Gladys (second from right) with the Plaistow Wharf netball team, June 1950
Gladys with Derrick De Marney and the Inter-Refinery Shield at the sports day
Gladys (left) and Betty Brightmore on a beano
Gladys (back row, second from left) and other Tate & Lyle workers
Gladys (fifth from right) and friends at a Tate & Lyle dance
Children playing in Otley Road, where Joan grew up
Joan and her brother with their father's motorbike
Joan with her mum and aunt at the dreaded caravan
Joan sunbathing
One of Joan's dad's whippets
Joan's baby Terry - the only photo of him she has
Joan's mother
Joan on her honeymoon in Rimini
A street party in Otley Road, where Joan grew up
A sugar girl from the canteen leaving Tate & Lyle to get married
To see more photographs of the sugar girls,
and read more about them, visit:
www.thesugargirls.com
About the Authors
Duncan Barrett is a writer and editor, specialising in biography and memoir. He recently edited Ronald Skirth’s First World War memoir The Reluctant Tommy and Vitali Vitaliev’s travelogue Passport to Enclavia. He is co-author of Star Trek: The Human Frontier and, with Nuala Calvi, Zippy and Me, the biography of Rainbow’s Ronnie Le Drew.
Nuala Calvi trained as a journalist at London College of Printing and has written for The Times, the Independent, the BBC and CNN, as well as numerous Time Out books. She has a strong interest in community history and took part in the Streatham Stories project to document the lives of people in South London. She is co-author, with Duncan Barrett, of Zippy and Me.
Also by Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi
The Girls Who Went to War
Tap here to buy a copy
GI Brides
Tap here to buy a copy
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