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Chesham Stories

Kathleen Winifred Flory (nee Webb) - Early Memories - the 1910s

I think the first event which made an impression on me was the birth of my brother Robert (Robin) when I was five years old. Of course in those days the subject was not discussed and I certainly cannot recall feeling any realisation of curiosity about Mother's shape! I was despatched with Mother's two spinster sisters, Minnie and Ethel to stay with another sister in Hove. I clearly remember Auntie Min being instructed how to roll up my hair in rag curlers at bed time, and the importance of having my own suitcase of clothes.

I remember nothing of the journey to Hove and little of Aunt Charlotte's house other than a feeling of strangeness and slight homesickness. The first evening we went to call on a relative who was proprietor of a ladies' dress shop and I was invited to go through a little door into a carpeted area with a big window overlooking the street. It suddenly dawned on me that I was in the shop window with the wax models, being pointed at by the laughing passersby and I beat a hasty retreat with tears very near to the surface.

The date was September 1914 and in Brighton the hospitals were prepared for the reception of the first casualties of the First World War. Local ladies were helping in many ways, particularly with visiting and entertaining the lads and I was persuaded to sing to them! I well remember "When Irish eyes are smiling" and "Shure, a little bit of Heaven fell out the sky one day", and for many years I treasured a little autograph album in which were recorded the names and Army numbers of the wounded, together with a catalogue of their injuries. Those who could walk wore hospital clothes of bright blue, and red ties.

And so home again, to be introduced to the new arrival! No warning! And there was Mother, in bed, with something concealed under the sheet. Apparently when she said "What would you do if I told you that you had a little baby brother?" I promptly replied "I'd put him in the dustbin!"

Secrecy again prevailed when, a few years later, I fell victim to appendicitis. A bath and clean underwear on a Thursday morning? What an upset to the Saturday night bath ritual, when there was a cheerful wood fire in the bathroom to warm the towel and Aunt Min with the week's cuttings of 'Rupert' from the Daily Mail. At last a somewhat tremulous explanation from Mother and an injunction to be a good, brave girl and to put my trust in Jesus, and then the journey to a private nursing home in Upper Wimpole Street (London) where I was to be operated on by Sir Alfred Pearce Gould, following Father's earnest entreaty.

I was indeed a good and cheerful patient, thoroughly enjoying the fuss and the letters and books which were sent to me. When I was taken to the operating room (no 'pre-med' in those days) and told to jump up on the table, I took a running jump at it, causing it to skid into a trolley and rattling all the instruments!

Some years later Dad bought a radio as a Christmas present for the family. I believe it cost £40, a fact referred to in awed tones. In the afternoon a short service was to be relayed from Canterbury cathedral and we gather round in eager anticipation, the children by now being somewhat blasé about the latest scientific wonder, but Granny Dean hardly able to grasp the magic of the occasion.

Christmas Day was always spent at home at South View and was a happy occasion, with various aunts and uncles and cousins joining the party. On Boxing Day we usually went to Rose Mount, the home of Granny Dean and the aunts, who provided a roast suckling pig for dinner. Some different cousins to meet here and a highlight for me was the Charades played during the evening, which involved dressing up and much ingenuity of scenes and circumstances.

Without the distraction of television, the thrills of fetes and fairs were eagerly anticipated. The fairs, which occupied the centre of the town, were 'statutory' fairs (known as 'The Statty') on certain set days of the year. The September one was the Hiring fair when the farmers would take on labour for the following year, the men standing in a row waiting ot be hired.

Sawdust spread thickly on the roadway indicated a severe illness in a nearby house, to quieten the noise of the horses' hooves and the wheels of the carts, and if death followed, the big black hearse, with glass sides, would come out, pulled by a pair of glossy black horses.

Kathleen Winifred Flory (nee Webb) 1909-1994.
This is an extract from some memoirs she wrote for her children. Kathleen was the great-grand-daughter of Robert Webb, who in 1829 founded Webb's Brush Factory.

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