A CHANCE TO REMEMBER
My elder brother, Charlie, was a Victorian. He was born in 1897, the year of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. The old lady died in January 1901 and I made my first appearance in June of that year in the reign of King Edward VII.
My father was a professional photographer in the comparatively early days of the profession. His family came from Shrewsbury where he and my mother began theirmarried life. But when I was six weeks old we moved to a shop and studio in the main street of Newcastle-under-Lyme to be near my mother's people. The accommodation was typical of that attached to many shops in those days and indeed much of the middle and poorer classes. There was no bathroom and the toilet was outside at the far end of the yard. We were lucky to have a water closet. In those days, especially in the country, it was still a new idea that it could be hygienic to have a toilet in the house. Electric li.ght was still hardly known. Houses and streets were lit by gas, and the lamplighter did his rounds daily to light or put out the street lights.
There were electric trams down the middle of the street. They turned round at the end and the driver had to move the rod that conducted the electric power from one set of overhead wires to those taking you in the opposite direction. The trams connected Newcastle with the pottery towns of Stoke, Hanley and Burslem only two to four miles away.
My earliest memory is of the birth of my younger brother, George, in May just before I was three. He was born at home with the help of a mid-wife. Mrs. Wilshaw was a widow of ample proportions and had a kind heart. Charlie was sent to farmer friends two or three miles away, and Mrs. Wilshaw offered to take me home with her until Mother was about again. She lived in a little house in a row perhaps five minutes' walk away. I remember being taken to see Mother and my new brother. Mrs. Wilshaw saw that Mother would be very tired as Father's receptionist and also in charge of the stationer's shop which she ran in conjunction. So she suggested that her younger daughter Ethel might come in the evenings and take us out for a walk. Ethel was probably about sixteen at that time and for years she came five nights a week after her work at the Enderley Mills where uniforms were made. In the summer she took us out and in winter she played with us at home and always she gave us our nightly wash, made our cocoa and put us to bed. She went home about eight o'clock.
My visit to the Wilshaw home was repeated on a number of occasions with no special reason for it except Mrs. Wilshaw's friendliness. I shared a bed with Ethel, and her mother and sister slept in another bed in the same room. Willie had a little room at the back. T,heir toilet in the yard had to be shared with the people next door. It was attached to the drains but had no water in it. After each use one had to pour down a bucket of water brought from the kitchen.
My first memory of hearing about God was during one of my visits to the Wilshaws. I was warned that God could see me and I must ·therefore be a good girl. I suppose this must have been about the time I first went to school at the age of three. Charlie took me there. His school was attached to the Infants and the Girls School. I have no memory of any religious education in the Infants School though we must have had an assembly with at least a hymn and a prayer. But I remember Ethel teaching me in bed on Sunday morning the words and tune of "There is a green hill". I never heard that the Wilshaws attended church, but I am sure God meant something to them and through them to me.
My chief memories of the Infant School are of being able to read so much better than the others that I could not wait for them. I read on my own and when called
upon to read I had no idea where the class had got to. I suppose I must have been six years old when I was sent up to what we called the "Big Girls School". By this
time George was three and it was my turn to take him to school.
Most Sunday mornings we used to go as a family to visit my grandparents. They lived in the country two miles away. There were, of course, no buses and Mother pushed George in the pram. Her parents must have been about seventy at that time. My grandmother suffered from rheumatism and ate dandelion leaves as a medicine for it. I remember going into the field next to Laburnum Cottage to pick them for her. Charlie also introduced me to pig nuts which also grew in the field and which kept us occupied digging and chewing. Meanwhile, Mother would be helping Grandma with the dinner. .
We loved going to our grandparents but life was quite primitive there. There was no gas so far from town and lamps had to be cleaned and filled with paraffin daily.
There was no water laid on, but outside the back door was a pump. Grandpa had a lean-to built, with a glass roof and panes at the top of the wall, so water could be
pumped regardless of the weather. A sink was placed outside the kitchen window and there the dishes were washed. All hot water had to be produced in a kettle as required. The only heat in the house was from the kitchen range in the living room where all the cooking was done. This was also true for our own home in town.
I suppose it was only during the school holidays that Father went home alone on Sunday evenings
.
Then we stayed the night with Mother so that she could help Grandma with the Monday wash. There was a special washhouse at one corner of the square house. A copper was set into one of its corners. This was a large vessel with a rounded bottom set into bricks with a fireplace below. The water for it had to be carried from the pump or from the rain;.water butt a little nearer. The fire was lit and the white sheets etc. were boiled and stirred with a stick. Meanwhile the coloured clothes were put in a dolly tub. This was a large zinc tub with a 'dolly' which we would wash hand.with the same effect as the electric agitator in a modern washing machine. The dolly was like a small round stool with about six legs. Through the middle of the top there was a stout pole with a cross bar near the top. This cross bar was firmly grasped and turned sharply left and right amongst the clothes till they were clean. The tub was then placed under the mangle whichsqueezed the water out of the clothes when they were rinsed. The excess was channeled into the tub.
1901
Living at 17 Penhill Street
Newcastle-Under-Lyme
ARRIVAL AT ACHIMOTA COLLEGE, ACCRA , GHANA
Next came a letter from the Colonial Office asking me to go to Liverpool for a medical examination. This proved satisfactory, and the appointment was confirmed. I was to sail from Liverpool on 8th December, 1926. I was given an outfit allowance of £60 and with part of it I bought a Singer hand sewing machine. Ursula came up for a number of weekends to help with my outfit.
This, of course, was my first voyage. I had not even crossed the Channel to Europe, and now I was embarking on a journey which would bring me to Africa after a fortnight's steaming. No one else was going to Achimota by this ship, but I was given an introduction to the Bishop of Lagos who was travelling back with his wife after their leave. They invited me to their table so I did not feel quite alone. I do not even remember who my cabin mate was, though we got on well enough.
Our first stop was at Grand Canary, where we stayed all day, unloading cargo and taking on coal, fruit and vegetables for the voyage and potatoes for the West African ports. I joined a small party to explore on land. The sea was an amazing ultramarine and the banana plantations, even in little pockets of flatter land round the town, were an exciting experience.
Our next destination was Freetown on the bulge of Africa. We anchored in the bay, and were thrilled with the beauty of the scene. Freetown is the port and capital of Sierra Leone, which means Lion Mountain. From the bay one sees the mountain rising as a backdrop to the town. The mountain is covered with tropical forest, and was dotted with European bungalows. For this was a British outpost of the Empire.
Charlie had a school friend who was Principal of Fourah Bay College, an old established centre for African education run by the Anglican Mission. It offered the highest education in British West Africa so far. African ministers were trained there, and degrees of the University of Durham could be gained there. Fourah Bay was just outside Freetown, and I was met and whisked away for morning tea, along with the Bishop of Lagos and his wife. We passed through Freetown, with the 'mammies' dressed in long colourful skirts, their heads covered by bright handkerchiefs, all in the style of the old slave days, and the cottonfields of America.
Most of the inhabitants of Freetown are descendants of freed slaves who wished to return to Africa, though few of them knew from which part of the coast they had been abducted. They were brought to Freetown under the protection of the British Government. Their only language was a corrupt form of English, called pidgin or patois. They were resented by the indigenous people of the hinterland who still had their own t ribes, languages and customs, and they have remained two separate communities.
We now steamed on towards our goal, sometimes with the coast in view, sometimes still out of sight of land. But the sea itself was interesting. Schools of porpoise often followed the ship, turning somersaults in their languid graceful way. We sometimes went through a shoal of flying fish, a lovely diversion. One night the wake of the ship was brilliantly phosphorescent.
And so we reached Sekondi, the port of the western Gold Coast. We did not go onshore here as the ship lay well out to sea. There were no natural harbours along this part of the coast, and passengers and cargo all had to be unloaded by surf boat. However, a few miles away, at Takoradi, a great new harbour was in process of building. It was one of Governor Guggisberg's three major schemes for the modernisation of the Gold Coast.
We were now within one night's journey of Accra, my destination. Next morning we anchored two miles out, and swarms of surf boats hastened out to meet us. They were paddled by muscular Africans who brought out bags of cocoa beans and other local produce. This was winched aboard and the boats were then filled with the ship's cargo, containing every conceivable need of African or European which could not be obtained locally.
Now came the great moment which had been described to us by seasoned passengers. A few hardy visitors arrived, including my brother Charlie. They were brought out by surf boat, and the mammy chair was winched overboard and in to the boat rocking in the surf below. The mammy chair was a huge square lidless box with plank seats for four passengers. It was held at the four corners by strong hawsers, gathered together into a cable. Tremendous precision was required on the part of the winchman. The boat was constantly rocking, and the mammy chair had to be lowered into a cleared space in the middle of the boat, and it must be dropped four square. Any mistake could easily kill either paddlers or passengers. However, such was the winchman's skill that accidents were almost unheard of.
So Charlie arrived safely on board, where we had breakfast together and were soon catching up with news from home and of progress in the building at Achimota. It was fifteen months since we had parted as he sailed from Liverpool. He had been allowed to come down from Kumasi to meet me and to spend Christmas at Achimota. It was now 22 December 1926, and the first sixty pupils were to be admitted on 27 January 1927.
It was now my turn to experience the mammy chair. Charlie and I along with two other passengers were safely dropped into the surf boat and the ten paddlers began their hazardous journey to the shore. They were all from Fanti country to the west, and as they paddled they sang their Fanti boat songs. The breakers came to meet us and we were alternately in a trough between the waves, when we could see nothing but a wall of water, and mounting the wave at a terrifying angle. There was a stream of boats in both directions, and we fervently hoped that as we reached the crest of the wave we should not find ourselves in head-on collision with another boat coming towards us. But these boatmen were skilful and alert and we reached the beach in safety. But now came another unexpected experience. There was no landing stage. One of the boatmen jumped out, pulled the boat up to the beach as far as the next wave would carry it, then immediately turned, picked meup round the waist and carried me on to dry sand. I had arrived. I felt myself slipping despite his firm grip. It probably looked less ignominious than it felt, but I had visions of my dress bunched up round my middle. However the whole incident was over in a flash, though it still remains a vivid memory
An education conference was in session in Accra. So Charlie took me - I think in the Achimota lorry, to the hall where it was being held. It was part of the process of advertising Achimota, and explaining its aims. The hall was full of educated Africans, lawyers, teachers, ministers, chiefs, as well as missionaries and European members of the education department. I remember nothing of .what was said, but I was fascinated by two things which claimed my attention. One was the dignity of the African lawyer who wore the traditional 'cloth' with which I soon became fami liar. It was hand woven in narrow four inch strips of many colours incorporating local designs. It was worn like a Roman toga, one end held in the left hand and the other end thrown over the left shoulder, leaving the right shoulder bare. The other fascination was a brightly coloured lizard about nine inches long which ran up and down the wall. Whenever it stopped it nodded its head before proceeding further.
I was taken to lunch at a large house in Accra. The members of the Achimota staff who were teaching at the teacher's training college lived here. The only teaching at Achimota so far was the pilot scheme of six small boys between six and eight who were taught and supervised by the Honourable Margaret Scott. She was the matron designate, getting experience of the African food and general habits and customs of her future charges. She was helped by 'Mammy Ballard', a widow around forty. They all lived together in one of the first bungalows to be completed.
And now I was taken out to Achimota, which was built on a hill seven miles north of Accra. Fred Irvine, the biologist, had been one of the first members of staff appointed, and had planted avenues of tropical trees along all the roads on the compound, which covered a considerable area. The main avenue, leading up to the administration block on the crest of the hill, was of flamboyant or flame of the forest. Shady mango trees had been planted round the circular road on either side of which were staff bungalows with student houses on the inner side. The latter were still in process of building.
The staff houses were not really bungalows according to the English usage of the word. They were of two storeys, with lounge, dining room and study downstairs, with scullery and kitchen and store rooms at the side. Upstairs was one large bedroom, an adjoining dressing room and bathroom and toilet. They were not really family houses, as it was considered unsuitable and unhealthy for Europeans to have children in West Africa. But Achimota staff took their children out there up to school age, and proved that they need not suffer from tropical conditions.
Charlie and I were given one of these bungalows. He had already employed a cook-steward for me, and sent him to market in Accra to buy food for our evening meal. I remember going out into the kitchen to meet him, and not really believing he could produce a well cooked meal without my help, I soon discovered that I had no place in the kitchen. Almost all the cooks at Achimota were Nigerians and all were men. A cook would often import a younger brother or nephew as his minion, and teach him his trade. At that time their wages were about £3 per month, out of which they had to buy their food. A single man or woman member of the staff would employ a cook-steward who would do everything that was needed except the washing. A married couple would need a separate cook and steward. A local washerwoman collected the washing weekly, regardless of quantity, at £1 per person per month, and returned it beautifully ironed. So the mechanics of life were well covered.
This page last modified on Tuesday, April 14, 2020
