Bishop Wilton: Memories of Sunderland & Hull Evacuees she made me walk all the way home, and when we got home I said “Can I take the boots off, Mam, ‘cos my feet’s hurting me?” and me Mother laid on my feet and wept because I had like a chilblain underneath, on top and between every toe. Terrible feet I had. The worst thing about the tatie picking, was that after you’d picked all the taties, they ploughed it all up again and you used to have to pick all the bits up, for the pigs and that. But I wouldn’t alter a thing, me. Mike: So what about schooling: you were up at the big school, weren’t you? Was it divided with a partition? Beaty: No, it was just open, wasn’t it? The little kids was at the right-hand side, and the big kids was at the left-hand side. Mike: Wasn’t that a bit distracting? Beaty: It was very distracting! And I always remember we used to have to have a medical, go on the bus to York to have this medical, maybe only once, I don’t know. They said the Doctor was coming back to Bishop Wilton because so many people wanted examining, and one because she was overweight, and I thought “It’ll be us poor evacuees” – and it was me! Whenever anything happened, they always said it was one of the evacuees that had done it. Mike: [quotes the extract from the Hull Daily Mail “There was some uncertainty about the ownership of apples”] Malcolm: Well, we could go into the orchard and pick apples, but being lads we used to go out, up to the top of the hill where there was crab apples, and we finished up with stomachache, you know. I could even lean out of the bedroom window, because there was sliding windows, and you could pick apples; between the two cottages there was a little orchard. Kate: Yes, at the back – it’s still there. Malcolm: The big orchard was at the back – it went right through to the back lane. When I think of it, it all seemed liked miles and miles to me, but it must have been big because it was all back to the back lane. That was where the toilet was, because we didn’t have flush toilets. We used to go through the passage, like a little arch. Every 6 months I think it was, these men used to drive up with a horse and cart, and they used to dig it all up, and shove it on the back. It used to stink, you know. Beaty: Yes, we had earth toilets – it just literally fell, didn’t it? It wasn’t collected in a bin that was disposed of weekly. It just literally fell in and fell in. Malcolm: Well, theirs had a big drum, and when it got about three-quarters full, Pop used to empty it, and put all this ash and stuff on top of it. Beaty: We used to have to put ash on top, there was a little bucket with ashes in it and a shovel, and you used to have to throw a shovel full of ashes on. Our toilet was a bit bigger than West’s at No 5, because the houses reflected that, you know. But the wood was like that, you know, and you could see through the crack and if you went up to the toilet when Mr West was on, you used to shut the door and come back out again, because you didn’t want to be sat there next to Mr West! We had bits of newspaper on a nail – we used to have to string them together. I tell you what I often used to do as well, was to cut rags for clipped rugs. We used to have to cut all the clips on the table. Aunt Annie used to let us sit and cut all the old clothes into clips, into a certain length – but the sound of the scissors used to drive her barmy. “Don’t cut no more of them!” she used to say. They used to all do the rugs. Malcolm: Yes, and all the knitted jumpers – when they got too small for you they used to take them apart because they could use the wool to make a bigger jumper for you. Beaty: You used to have to pull wool out. The wool used to be in skeins then, if you could get it, and you used to hold it out and they used to roll it round, didn’t they? We didn’t have many clothes – well, we didn’t have many possessions at all. We didn’t get changed much.
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