Britain in Crisis

A war time evacuee from Birmingham

“I was a frail, sickly child, and it appeared that I needed a tonsillectomy, but doctors said I was not strong enough to withstand the operation and that if my parents did not get me out of industrial Birmingham I would not live for another year.”

Finding anyone with information about the evacuees brought from Birmingham to the East Midlands during the Second World War was clearly going to be a difficult task, Snippets of information appeared from here and there, and then the jackpot was hit when a local resident produced a book about evacuees, and a document that contained the memoirs of a woman who had come to Groby from Birmingham at the age of four.

A brief reference written by the late Sybil Waldron was found in the Groby Book, a compilation held in the local history section at Groby Community Library. Sybil’s father was Head Teacher at the village school until he retired in 1942 and Mr A. Morris took over. She wrote that in 1939 Groby was allocated 140 evacuee children and their teachers to be billeted in the village.

“They arrived one September afternoon and sat in groups in the playground with their names and addresses on pieces of cardboard hanging down their backs, waiting to be taken to the people who had agreed to look after them. It was a pathetic sight, they all looked so homeless, but they soon adapted themselves to our way of life, and most of them lived quite happily among us. It was also a unique experience for the Groby parents who took them in.

For the first few weeks, there being no accommodation for them in the school, the Groby children had lessons each day from 9 to 1pm, and the Birmingham children from 1 to 5 pm, until October when the Birmingham children were housed in the old school and normal lessons were resumed for the Groby children. I believe one or two evacuee children stayed on with their foster parents after the war.”

Maggie Quinn was one of those who arrived in Groby in September, 1939, two days before the outbreak of the Second World War. Just four years old, she had started at Hope Street school in Birmingham on the Monday of that week. Most of the pupils were evacuated to Groby and other villages nearby, and Maggie was accompanied by John, her nine year old brother, and her mother, temporarily, as a special concession as Maggie was so young.

“My years at Groby were very happy and the memories filled with sunshine,” she said when she later wrote about her wartime experiences in Groby. Here’s the first part of her fascinating story.

Destination Groby

It seemed quite exciting, travelling by train and I can quite distinctly remember wearing my brown luggage label, and being given a white canvas bag. We stopped at a railway station (later on in life I learned this was Nuneaton) and walked around a big room having our bag filled with emergency rations, of which I can only remember the chocolate and biscuits. When we got to Groby we all went into the school and people came round and said I will have this one or that one. Because there were three of us we got left until almost the end and were finally taken by Mrs. Morris of Grey Lodge, Markfield Road, to their farm run by the Tweddle family. There we were given lot of lovely fresh farm milk and to my shame I can remember crying because it did not taste like the sterilised milk I was used to.

This was only a very temporary arrangement. My Mother could not stay long with us and she was anxious to try and get us a billet in the village nearer to the school. She was concerned that John and I should stay together so this was not a particularly easy matter to arrange. However, we finally moved in with Mr. Cyril Burdett, his wife Louisa and their daughters Betty and Joyce, who lived in The Rookery. Louisa’s sister, Amelia also lived with them. Like so many ofthe men in the village Cyril worked in the quarry. He had a most beautiful tenor voice and I can remember going to a special concert at the Club and hearing him sing some of his repertoire.

Unfortunately I was a frail, sickly child, and after a couple of months I went home to my Mom and Dad. It appeared that I needed a tonsillectomy but doctors said I was not strong enough to withstand the operation and that if my parents did not get me out of industrial Birmingham I would not live for another year.

So back I came to Groby but this time to live with Cyril’s parents, Mark and Sarah Ann Burdett and their daughter Amy and her husband Ernest Sedgley, who all lived together in the house in Markfield Road, now known as Penny Cottage. They became my dear Grandad, Grandma, Uncle Ern and Aunty Amy and they gave me as much affection as if I had been their own, so I had the privilege of having two loving families. I prospered under their care and stayed with them until 1944 when the few remaining evacuees were collected up and returned home.

School days

When I first came to Groby there were of course a lot of us evacuees and our teachers came too and set up school in the old school next to the schoolhouse where Mr. Waldron lived. The room I was in was heated by the one old furnace (shades of the wild west films) surrounded by a strong metal fence so that we should not burn ourselves. The room was freezing cold most of the time and our mid-moming milk was frozen many a time during the winter months. The little 1 /3rd pint bottles were brought in by the fire but it seemed to have little effect on them. Later on when a lot of the children went back to Birmingham the teachers also returned and those of us who were left joined the village school next door in the new building.

As a granite man, Grandad was very proud of the old school. He taught me to see how every stone matched in colour and said that it was the finest bit of granite facing in the whole of Leicestershire, as so many of the stone buildings were constructed of stones of many hues - pink, blue, purple, etc.

Next month – read about the shops and farms, and Groby life in 1939.

Over 90% of the elementary children were back in Birmingham by the end of January 1940, but this was premature. The first major air raid took place in August 1940, with the most severe attack during the entire war coming in late November. When the air raids finally started, around 50,000 children were taken out of the city, half of them by their parents, rather than by means of any official system.

The mixed experiences of evacuees

Although the internet shares many recollections of evacuation from Birmingham to places such as Gloucestershire, Stratford, South Wales, Monmouth and Mansfield, references to Leicestershire are rarer. Josie Smith, however, ended up in Loughborough because of unexpected events.

“Arrangements were made for my brother and I to be evacuated on the S.S. Athenia to an aunt in Canada,” she said. “Two days before departure we were told that the Athenia was full and that we would be on the next ship. Part way across the Atlantic the Athenia was sunk. After that our parents wouldn't let us go. Later we were evacuated to Loughborough, and one of the worst things was being herded into the Town Hall, where people came and chose the children they wanted, rather like goods on a supermarket shelf. My brother and I were sent to separate places. Jim hated it and ran away several times, until finally mother came and took us both back home.”

The evacuated children had different experiences – some good and some not so good. Peter Lewis was one of the hundreds evacuated to Monmouth. It was a resounding success and the students stayed there for nearly five years.

“I lived in a fish and chip shop for the first 18 months,” he told Birmingham Live. “We had great food – fresh fish from the docks three times a week – a free meal from a coupons point of view. When I came home during the holidays my mother would hang every piece of my clothing on the line – I stank to high heaven of fish!”

Valerie Beasley was evacuated three times during the war, including a happy stay on a farm in Gloucestershire and then a less happy stay with a couple at Worksop. “When my mum came to visit at Christmas and saw how we were dressed she was devastated – my black stockings with holes in them and their daughter with some of my clothes on. Mrs Cole used to send us out carol singing and then had the money off us. My mum said she cried all the way home. She came back the next day by bus to pick us up. The woman said: ‘You can’t do that!’ and my mum replied You just watch me.”

ROSE Gillett, aged eight, was transported from Ross on Wye village hall to a local farm in a cattle truck. “We were made to do duties, like black-leading grates and sewing. We spent three years with them and would write letters home because we were unhappy, but they wouldn’t let us post them – they received 10/6d [52½p] for the first child and 8/6d [42½p] for the second.”

The Groby connection

A Spotlight reader recalls that some evacuees came to Groby, hosted by local residents that included his mother. He wonders if anyone locally has more information. His recollections are correct, as Groby was mentioned in this connection around 14 years ago on the Birmingham History Forum. One contributor writes that he had been speaking to his uncle about his evacuation to Groby in 1939, whilst another says that Irene Smith, his late Mother in Law, was also sent to Groby about the same time.

Email grobynews@gmail.com if you can add to the story and would like to share any information that you have about evacuees from Birmingham to Groby.

March 2020  George West taped his father's memories of his childhood during First World War whilst George's grandfather was away in the army for 4 years.  His father would often go very hungry but he spoke very highly of a local butcher who used to make a cauldron of hot soup to feed local children. An act of kindness in adversity.

George is one of the many elderly Groby residents who fall into the 'most vulnerable' group for whom contracting Coronavirus Covid -19 is potentially life threatening.  Social distancing is critical for this group and George, like most of the over 70's in the village, is humbled by the kindness and generosity of those around them who are in a position to help.  The lives of the vulnerable and elderly may  depend on the rest of the community making sacrifices in order to halt  the transmission of the virus.                                                                             67 died in one night in South Shields air raid

The current threat and hardships have invoked memories of an earlier crisis when he was a child – living through the Second World War.  He has kindly provided his recollections. 

George's story

When I was five years old and the German army was expected to arrive any moment to sweep up the country with little   opposition my mother would go to extraordinary lengths to make sure my younger sister and I ate every scrap of food put before us.

My mother made a large looking spider out of a misshapen potato using matchsticks for legs. She placed that on top of the dresser and told me that if I did not eat everything the spider would come down to get me. She also told me that Hitler flew overhead in a plane with a trap door open looking for children who did not eat their food. She went to such drastic lengths because she simply did not know where the next meal would come from. 

We lived close to the Vickers Armstrong Weybridge aerodrome and later became used to standing in the garden as doodle bugs came over our house with engines cutting out,  hearing my parents (my father in a reserved occupation) whispering "Keep going keep going" as the German V1 rockets dropped and exploded.

My mother was from South Shields. Wanting to be with her family (my grandfather and one of her brothers had been killed in the First World War leaving my grandmother to bring nine children on her own with no money).  We travelled 12 hours by train from London to South Shields with the train overloaded mainly by families, and service people.  The train was on blackout and had to stop frequently because of air raids.

People were  even sleeping in luggage racks and even in the lavatories. To go to the toilet meant clambering over people in the corridors and asking those in the toilet to leave for a few minutes. All we had to drink through those 12 hours was warm sickly tasting orange juice.  I can remember  the horrible taste to this day

 In those days people had little money but shared what they had with one another. My grandmother's front door was always open and the kettle  always on the stove. What little money my grandmother received from the government was payable only by taking her children to the police station regularly to prove the children were under the age of 14. Above that age......no money payable. To supplement, like so many women at that time, my grandmother went to work helping in the ship yards.

Once again in my lifetime we now  see the best and worst of human behaviour.

George West (March 2020)