My Second World War childhood: ‘We were poor but we never went hungry’

WAR BABY: Kathleen Hartley

Now & Then, a column by Angus Young

As the country marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a Hull woman recalls what life was like at the time

Kathleen Hartley was born in February 1941 when the intensity of German bombing raids on Hull was starting to increase.

In that same month 20 people were killed in the city during attacks by the Luftwaffe.

Kathleen’s mother Evelyn gave birth to her at the family home in Great Thornton Street. She joined three older sisters and a brother.

A younger sister would be born in tragic circumstances two years later.

Kathleen explained: “Before the war my Dad worked on the trawlers. When the war started he became part of the Merchant Navy and in 1943 he was killed when a torpedo sank his ship.”

Gilbert Edwards was just 42 when he lost his life. He had been a bosun on the Ellerman Wilson Line steamship Runo when a U-boat attacked a small convoy of ships 60 miles off the coast of Libya.

Sixteen crew members were lost but 15 others and four gunners were rescued and later safely landed at Alexandria.

GIFTS FROM AMERICA: Kathleen centre, aged five or six, with two of her sisters, Patricia, left, and Christine, right, wearing dresses donated through a wartime aid programme

Back in Hull, it was decided to send a heavily-pregnant Evelyn to Gainsborough in Lincolnshire to give birth.

“I never knew why my Mum was sent there although I suppose it was probably safer than staying in Hull. I later heard a few other women from Hull also went to Gainsborough to give birth,” said Kathleen, 84.

Although she has no memory of it, she was about to be evacuated.

“Two of my sisters and my brother were sent to live in Scarborough. They had a terrible time because the family they were with weren’t very nice. They ended up sleeping in a cellar.

“My other sister went to Huddersfield and I was sent to Malton. I was just a baby really so I can’t really remember it. I’ve always wondered who looked after me but I never got to know.”

After the war, the family were reunited back in Hull.

“Our old house had suffered bomb damage so we couldn’t go back there, I think all the windows had been blown out.

DEADLY: Queen Victoria Square on May 8, 1941, after a Luftwaffe bombing raid, with Hull City Hall on the left and the soon-to-be demolished Prudential tower

“Instead, we moved into a house in Cambridge Street – six of us and Mum.

“That’s where I grew up. The house had two bedrooms, an attic, a front room and a scullery / kitchen. That was it. There was no hot water and we had an outside toilet and a tin bath. We all got washed in it once a week on a Saturday.”

To support her young family, Evelyn worked in a nearby soft drinks factory. She also washed trawlermens’ kits when they were back onshore, for two shillings a bag, and sold some of her own home baking to make ends meet.

“We were definitely poor but we didn’t feel like that. Mum was a great cook and I don’t ever remember being hungry.”

Even so, she says the family were grateful for the support of the close-knit fishing community they were part of.

“Mum and Dad were both from Hessle Road. Everyone seemed to know each other back then and I remember we got regular deliveries of free fish which I think came from the Fishermen’s Mission. We ate a lot of fish and drank cups of water.

“All of the furniture was given. One armchair had no back in it.”

Her childhood playground was the bombed ruins of St Luke’s Church at the top of the street.

“All the kids used to play there. We used to play ‘houses’, pretending it was really a big house. There was never any trouble. We would play out until the man came along to turn the gas lights on, that was the signal for us to go home.”

With their mother constantly busy, Kathleen and her sisters would also help out at home.

“Every Saturday we would clean the house from top to bottom when she was at work. There were no vacuum cleaners back then, it was all done by hand with brushes.

“We didn’t complain because we all knew it was our job to do it. We just got on with it and made sure we did the best we could.

“We also cleaned the front step. Everyone did in those days, there was a real pride in keeping the front of your house clean and tidy.”

One day a parcel arrived at the house. Inside were a number of dresses. They were from America, donated as part of an extended wartime charity aid programme.

PUB LIFE: The Grafton Hotel in Grafton Street, which Kathleen ran with her husband for 15 years

“They were the most beautiful things I had ever seen,” recalls Kathleen, who thinks she was five or six at the time.

“Mum was so proud of how we looked in them that she insisted on getting a photograph taken of us wearing them.”

Her mother worked for the rest of her life. Her last job was washing pots and cleaning at the Lantern restaurant in Whitefriargate.

“She really instilled the work ethic in me,” says Kathleen, who left school at 15 and started her first job at Reckitts factory on the company’s famous blue laundry soap production line.

“I hated it,” she admits. “I was stood eight hours a day breathing in blue and the foreman was horrible but I stuck it out for three years because it was money. I would give every pay packet I got straight to my mother.

“Then I got a job as a waitress at the Gainsborough restaurant in the city centre and I loved it. I was in my element because I’ve always been quite a social person and just love being around people.”

She worked there on and off for several years but also turned her hand to spot welding during a spell at Armstrong’s factory in Beverley before marrying and, along with her husband, running the Grafton pub in Grafton Street for 15 years and the former Smugglers bar on Hull Marina.

‘MUM INSTILLED A WORK ETHIC IN ME’: Kathleen outside the Hull Women’s Aid charity shop where she volunteers in Chanterlands Avenue

A subsequent 27-year stint as a care worker at the Fern Lea residential home in Pearson Park was, she says, “wonderful from start to finish”. She added: “I can’t think of one girl there that I didn’t like. They were all good lasses.”

Kathleen retired from there aged 80 but soon got itchy feet.

“I did not want to just sit at home and watch television all day so I came here.”

She now volunteers three mornings a week at the Hull Women’s Aid charity shop in Chanterlands Avenue.

“It’s a really good cause and it’s a great charity to work for. All the girls here are lovely and I just love talking to the people who come in.

“When I think back to when I was a little girl, I would never have thought I would have done the jobs I have but I’ve always loved working and I definitely get that from my mother.

“It’s a very different world now. We had very little when we were young but, in a way, I think we learned to appreciate what we did have a lot more than perhaps younger people do these days.”