MY MOTHER
My mother was born in 1915 on the Wirral peninsula. Her mother was a nurse from mid Wales. Her father was from a family of Liverpool greengrocers, the black sheep (one brother became aide de camp to Lord Methuen in Malta, another was organist at St. Martin in the Fields, in London) who ran away to sea and spent his life as a type-setter working on menus, the daily newspaper, and other printing jobs on ships of the Cunard fleet of trans Atlantic liners including the Mauretania. He survived the sinking of the Lusitania on 7th May 1915 (three days after my mother was born), and the torpedoing of the Carpathia between the Scillies and the south east coast of Ireland in July 1918. After his wife died my mother looked after him when ashore. He drank very heavily until his death in 1946 which, I'm told, may have been assisted by the local GP, to alleviate the strain upon my mother.
As a child my mother, Elizabeth (known as Betty), was anaemic, delicate, but an avid reader who sucked her thumb so much whilst reading that her two front upper second teeth grew distorted and became very prominent. Because of her persistent tiredness Betty was unable to attend the local state primary school as it was too far for her to walk, so was sent to a nearby Catholic school. She loved most of the nuns and the ritual of the Catholic Church. On leaving school, Betty took a Pitman's Secretarial course in typing and shorthand: her first job, at a surgical limb fitters in Liverpool, involved more than dealing with paperwork; she was often sent out to visit patients to measure them up for artificial limbs or other medical accoutrements. She was a solitary young lady with just one good friend, Rene Elder, who was training to be a singer; and a couple of brothers who lived nearby. Her own brother, Alan, who was three years older, never included her in his social activities.
At the age of 17 Betty's mother died of throat cancer, which meant Betty was virtually on her own, with the responsibility of having to 'do' for her father when he was home from sea every other fortnight. It seems she was frightened of the effects of his alcohol intake but enjoyed their Sunday morning walks followed by Sunday lunch and a beer at a pub, and he often took her to variety and music shows at the famous Birkenhead Argyle Theatre until it was bombed during the 1939 -1945 war. When Betty's mother was dying she wrote to Alan asking him to look after Betty when she was gone, but he never took any interest in her.
After some years working in Liverpool my mother went to work as a personal assistant to one of the managing director sons of Arthur H Lee & Sons Tapestry Works in Birkenhead. The firm was famous for its Jacquard looms, which made brocades and damask materials easier to weave; and was noted for supplying tapestry furnishings all over the world, for the Queen Mary liner, and for the work carried out renovating museum tapestries.