| Description | An interview with Iris DEATHRIDGE, a widow woman with one son, one daughter, who is a retired health visitor, born in Wales and now living in Birmingham. Iris DEATHRIDGE’s father was a Miner, born in Wales and her mother a Housewife born in Wales. In the interview, she talks about …
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3” I was born in 1912 and I always tell people ‘It was the year the Titanic sank.’
10” Discovered she was born a month after her parents were married, pretended she was a year younger than she really was because she was ashamed.
2.00” Bright at school.
2.24” Developed TB and missed school for two years.
3.56” My father was unemployed…1921, 1922, 1923…a very bad time for miners.
4.16” My father was a miner…always had been a miner, always was. He taught me a lot of my political ideas…he used to point out the injustice of the Government at that time…
4.33” Hard times, little money.
4.45” 1926 came along, I was 14…
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Leaving school early.
36” Went to London to work in domestic service.
1.03” It was 1928 when I went to London…
1.10” Always wanted to be a nurse.
1.29” I stayed in this job as an under-house maid and I couldn’t even clean a bath because we’d never had a bath, you see, we didn’t have a bathroom…
4.08” Applying for nursing college.
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Exams and first work experiences.
53” I didn’t tell you the date when I started nursing did I, which was 1930…
1.02” So in 1937 I went off to Colwyn Bay as a Assistant Matron to a fever hospital. My sole intention was to learn Welsh because I was ashamed of the fact that I couldn’t speak Welsh.
1.52” …War was imminent, so I left in 1938.
2.00” She went to Birmingham to train to be a Health Visitor.
4.31” I came to Birmingham on the 4th September, 1939, the day War was declared.
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6” Memories of her school master, regrets at leaving school early.
1.1” The day of 1939 was an eventful day…my father came to the station with me and he said ‘Don’t worry, there’s not going to be a War..’
2.41” First day at college.
3.40” …then war starts, the bombs started to drop, didn’t they?
4.15” Volunteered for the emergency hospital in Erdington.
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Re-start, Dead Track.
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Much to my horror, bombs did start to drop in Birmingham…
8” Casualties from a bomb dropped on a factory.
39” Three bombs were dropped on the hospital too, one a direct hit.
1.32” Women and children casualties from London docks bombing, they had scabies.
3.40” After a bit I decided I didn’t want to go back to hospital ever again, I changed my mind completely, I’d had enough…
4.19” Found digs in Kings Heath.
4.32” Boyfriend visited, a bomb fell.
4.49” I went to the back to boil a kettle…at the back of the house, he was in the front. The bomb dropped right in the middle of the house, so it had cut it in half! …when I appeared, poor Lesley, he nearly had a fit because my hair was white, the ceiling dropped on me…
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1.21” Courting, going to the cinema.
2.00” Prince of Wales Theatre in Broad St was bombed the night they were due to go there.
2.58” Don’t forget, I had no intentions of marrying him…I’d had quite an intense love affair earlier on, 1936, which was a momentous year really…
3.18” Wanted a baby, so got married.
3.51” In 1942…we married in September the 5th…
4.55” Colleagues were horrified because she got married in a registry office.
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2” I did make a precedent here. They would not employ married health visitors…in the hospitals you couldn’t be a Sister if you were married…
30” Kept her job despite being married.
2.28” He was born in 1944…this War was still on…
2.45” Difficulties in finding a house to live in, second daughter born.
3.23” No houses to rent, bossy landlady anecdote.
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8” …the very next day he went out and decided to buy a house…I said ‘You’ve bought a house and I haven’t seen it yet.’ …do you know the War was still on, bombs were still dropping and yet, people were buying houses, wasn’t that amazing, the courage of people in a way, or the optimism of people, I don’t know…
40” …we lived there from 1943 to 1954.
1.33” It was built in 1928, it was modern then.
1.47” ...John was born there in 1944…
1.54” Pregnancy, in labour for three days.
3.39” In hospital for three weeks.
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Back at home.
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1.26” (Her husband) He was really handsome…and I thought, ‘I’ll give my children a chance’…fancy thinking things like this…if I had been passionately in love, love is illogical, isn’t it? I wouldn’t have thought of things like that…
1.50” Her husband was a singer. Work details.
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Memories of meeting her husband.
3.26” Memories as a child of singing in a choir.
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Christmas concert, sang a solo, discovered she could sing well.
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57” Joined the Midland Institute in Paradise Street, sang in a choir, performed in musicals.
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4.30” When I had my babies I had no intention at all of going back to work, I maintain now that it was the happiest time of my life bringing up my two babies…
4.58” About 1954…they rang me up from the public health, was it possible for me to do any clinics?
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Worked in a baby clinic, worked part time health visiting because her husband thought the children needed her.
3.04” Against smacking children. Anecdote about a woman smacking her son.
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Anecdote on the views of a student who accompanied her on a job, discussing that children smack one another because they copy their parents, and if the parents were taught not to smack peoples nature may become better. “where does violence start, it does start from one person smacking another…do you agree?”.
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Her children’s lives, her son’s scholarship in Munich, studied in Oxford.
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2” When my father, when I was a little girl, he used to think I was a clever little girl you know, he was great…he used to tell me about the mines and the injustice of it all, he used to say about Pontyprith… Lord Aberdaire, for every ton of coal that goes through Pontyprith, he gets sixpence for every ton, and he doesn’t touch the coal…
2.10” Joined the choir in a Methodist Church, although not religious.
4.59” …The sermons from the pulpit used to really make me furious, particularly when they spoke to children about the virgin birth…
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A new minister with Socialist ideas arrived, gave a sermon sympathetic to homosexuals. He stopped the choir, and she left the church.
2.27” When I applied, (for sheltered accommodation) my husband had died in March 1984…
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3.36” Regrets about having worked part time.
3.51” When I retired, which was 1977, I was given a pension of twelve pounds a month.
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Got involved in politics, campaigning for local MP Albert Bore.
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1.24” …I am 88 nearly. |