Dot's story

School was nice for me. The people were very good. Sometimes I had to do my teacher’s shopping, but only if I got into trouble. She would send me out, and tell me to get all her things for her. I suppose I didn’t mind, but I should have been concentrating on my lessons. 

I went to St. Paul’s School. I was pretty active, and I was always reading and writing. When I finished school, I wanted to do as little as possible. By this, I mean that I wanted to enjoy being young. Back in those days you finished school at 14 years old and then you usually got a job. I wanted to be young and have fun!

After a while though, I wanted to get a job. This was mostly to start earning a wage. There weren’t many places that you could work, so I got a job at the factory. I met a lot of different people working at the chocolate factory. I worked at Terry’s. I worked on the production line and often I couldn’t resist and I would have to have a chocolate. That’s what we did in those days; we made chocolates. It was wonderful, really.

People do take things for granted today. It was very hard in those days.  I came from a big family. We had to share everything, and had a lot of hand-me downs. It was great to have so much family, but I always tried to be the first one in the bath so it was clean!

I was 15 years old when I fell in love for the first time. He was one of my brother’s friends and he fancied me, but we couldn’t tell my brother. He would have been very upset that his friend fancied me, so we hid it from everyone, but back in those days, we didn’t know the facts of life. No one talked about it much.

My father was an engine driver. He went all over the country. This was great for us, because sometimes on a Sunday we could take the train over to the coast and spend the day as a family in Scarborough. I loved the seaside. We had so much fun.