David Mitchell's Story
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David Mitchell's Story |
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updated 4/23/09 |
Dear Friends, What a shame I didn't know of this way of uniting old evacuees before now. But I too was an evacuee on that never to be forgotten day, 1st September 1939, when we all gathered at Woolmore Street School early in the morning. I remember it well and recall the upset parents who were more upset at the fact that nobody knew where we were going. I lost my brother, Lenny, who was a little older than me and so went on a different bus. Waterloo Station was simply bursting with thousands upon thousands of kids all over the place. How chaotic it was and how they managed to rescue some form of order from this turmoil is still a mystery. But they did - and I too eventually found myself at Windsor. We trooped around the streets but our teacher, a wonderful man named Mr 'Jock' Williams, who was working from a list handed to him, faced a very difficult task as earlier volunteers had either changed their minds, or could only take one instead of two, or only wanted a blue eyed blonde little girl - trouble was, we didn't have one ! I was worried when with only 8 of us left I still hadn't been selected - but Lady Luck eventually came to my rescue and I was finally chosen by a very nice couple who ran a small grocery shop in Alexandra Road. I'll tell more stories about Windsor later on but for now - who can recall those fateful words of Neville Chamberlain on the following Sunday morning, 3rd September ? I can remember some of them. It started THIS MORNING THE BRITISH AMBASSADOR HANDED A NOTE TO THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT STATING THAT UNLESS WE HEARD FROM THEM BY 11 AM TODAY THAT THEY ARE PREPARED TO WITHDRAW THEIR TROOPS FROM POLAND A STATE OF WAR WOULD EXIST BETWEEN US. I HAVE TO TELL YOU NOW THAT NO SUCH UNDERTAKING HAS BEEN RECEIVED AND THAT, THEREFORE, A STATE OF WAR EXISTS BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY. I remember that we sat in silence for a few moments but I believe we all knew we had witnessed a moment in history. That's all for now folks ! But I'll be back with more reminiscences of that period. However, for this moment I am very anxious to locate ED COWLEY who wrote about his experiences of Prestage Street, Poplar, and before the war he too was evacuated to Windsor. Well my family, The Mitchells, lived next door at No 1, and so we knew The Cowleys very well. I cannot recall Ed but I knew his brothers ALFIE and BERTIE very well. Especially Alfie and it was his death on Sunday, 24th September 1944, at the tender age of just 19, that Alfie was killed at OOSTERBEEK in Holland during the tragic but very brave OPERATION MARKET GARDEN. ALfie is now buried at The OOSTERBEEK WAR CEMETERY and when I heard about this I made it my business to thoroughly research OMG and try to analyse why it went wrong. I would like to share my findings and thoughts on OMG with ED COWLEY and so I hope either he will contact me, or that someone who knows him will tell him I am searching for him. Many thanks folks ! David Mitchell
Mornin' Folks Some time ago I think I told the story of Little Henry and me. Henry came from a German family by the name of Muller and for some reason he clung to me and followed me around like a little lamb. This happened in 1934 and he was about 18 months younger than I was - and that is a big difference at that age. When they planned the East End End docklands they forgot about us kids so we didn't have a single blade of grass to play on. So we had to wander far and wide to different parks where we could play. Those were truly the days of innocence because our mothers never minded when we, a gang of little boys and girls, went off chattering excitedly into the unknown armed with 2 thick doorsteps of bread & margarine, wrapped in newspaper, and a bottle of water flavoured with cheap lemonade crystals. On this day I was hungry so I ate my bread n' marge up quite early. By the afternoon I was ravenous and so announced to the gang that I was off home and maybe my mother would take pity on me and I might give me a bite to eat. As usual Little Henry tagged on behind - and so off we went in the direction of home and as we trudged wearily along we came to a church with a statue of Jesus Christ outside. At that moment I had a brilliant idea and announced to Little Henry that we were going to kneel before the statue and pray for something to eat and drink. So these two little boys - aged 6 and 5 - knelt before Jesus and began to pray most earnestly. After a few minutes we were diverted from our prayers by a friendly voice which said "HALLO BOYS - I SEE YOU ARE PRAYING TO DEAR JESUS - ARE YOU HUNGRY AND THIRSTY ?" We nodded away furiously whereupon he Vicar, for that was who it was, took us into the vicarage where a rosy cheeked housekeeper welcomed us and with minutes a steaming pot of tea and a large plate filled with the most scrumptious pastries and cream cakes (we never saw such things at home). The vicar urged us to tuck in and do you know - we polished off the lot ! We thanked the vicar and his housekeeper very much indeed - we may have been poor but in those days we knew our manners. Walking home from the church I told Little Henry "THERE YOU ARE HENRY - YOU STICK WITH ME AND YOU'LL BE ALRIGHT !" David
Hallo Folks ! I was lucky enough to be chosen, at long last, by a Mr & Mrs Maxwell who ran the small grocery shop at 10 Alexandra Road, next door to the sweets & tobacconist. They were nice people but having a shop they were of course very busy and therefore I had to spend a lot of my time with Mrs Maxwell's sister, a Mrs Hunt, who lived at 235 St Leonards Road. To my delight Mrs Hunt had a son, Kenneth, and although he was about 2 years older than I we became pals. To the rear of Mrs Hunt's house was (1)Windsor Great Park, and (2)the Windsor & Eton Football Club. Kenneth introduced me to both and I shall never forget the great area of primroses in the park or the deer that roamed the area in those days. Kenneth was, would you believe, Captain of The Eton College Choristers and so I went to that famous place a number of times and trod the same steps as Kings, Princes, Dukes and Earls, Prime Ministers etc., and me of course ! As a little Cockney urchin I felt very proud indeed. Especially I loved attending their Christmas Carol concerts which introduced me a kind of music and singing that I had never heard before - to me it was truly beautiful. And when possible I began to join in and sing along lustily. I was apparently heard by those around me and it was suggested that I too should be an Eton chorister as, they said, I had a nice voice. (What ever happened ?). So Kenneth arranged that I should sing before Dr Lee (or Leigh) who was Music Master at the College. Can you imagine how this little boy from the backstreets of the East End Dockland felt at that moment ? This would really have made headlines back home and I began to imagine the headlines "LOCAL BOY MAKES GOOD AT ETON ". But it all ended in disaster as a couple of weeks before my audition it was discovered that the rules did not allow evacuees to be Eton choristers and so everything was cancelled !! Well, I thought, what was I thinking of to believe I could become a toff too ! The main attraction to me was that, apart from singing lovely music, the choristers enjoyed the same education and curriculum as the Eton boys themselves and were taught ny the same masters. Events conspired in such a way that in the absence of A Central School, or any school come to that, I ended my education, if you can call it that, at a temporary Elementary School in Poplar High Street, and left at 14 to go out to work without a single qualification of any kind. Now that WAS an obstacle to overcome as I would find out in due course ! I was there at Windsor up to the Autumn of 1941 when after much pleading with my parents they allowed me home again. Why I wanted to come back home to the slums and poor conditions of The East End when I was living in comparitive luxury puzzles me. But however it may be - home is home after all ! Many thought the bombing was over and that Hitler had OPERATION BARBAROSSA to concern himself with - they were wrong as we all know, the Luftwaffe came back again ! But it was a deep shock to me when I arrived back in 'our street' to find that 60% of it had been smashed to smithereens during the Blitz. As Prestage Street lay sandwiched between the East India Docks and the Green, Siley, Weir shipyard what else could we expect ? In my book A BOY FROM NOWHERE (which plots the progress of of a Cockney boy, thats me, from poverty to reasonable affluence and how I managed to do it) I relate a lot of stories of Old London as it used to be, and my experiences before the war, during the war, and of course after the war. It will bring back some nostalgic memories, both happy and sad, of a London that has gone and which we shall never see again. Best regards to everybody. David Mitchell
Mornin' Folks Some time ago I think I told the story of Little Henry and me. Henry came from a German family by the name of Muller and for some reason he clung to me and followed me around like a little lamb. This happened in 1934 and he was about 18 months younger than I was - and that is a big difference at that age. When they planned the East End End docklands they forgot about us kids so we didn't have a single blade of grass to play on. So we had to wander far and wide to different parks where we could play. Those were truly the days of innocence because our mothers never minded when we, a gang of little boys and girls, went off chattering excitedly into the unknown armed with 2 thick doorsteps of bread & margarine, wrapped in newspaper, and a bottle of water flavoured with cheap lemonade crystals. On this day I was hungry so I ate my bread n' marge up quite early. By the afternoon I was ravenous and so announced to the gang that I was off home and maybe my mother would take pity on me and I might give me a bite to eat. As usual Little Henry tagged on behind - and so off we went in the direction of home and as we trudged wearily along we came to a church with a statue of Jesus Christ outside. At that moment I had a brilliant idea and announced to Little Henry that we were going to kneel before the statue and pray for something to eat and drink. So these two little boys - aged 6 and 5 - knelt before Jesus and began to pray most earnestly. After a few minutes we were diverted from our prayers by a friendly voice which said "HALLO BOYS - I SEE YOU ARE PRAYING TO DEAR JESUS - ARE YOU HUNGRY AND THIRSTY ?" We nodded away furiously whereupon he Vicar, for that was who it was, took us into the vicarage where a rosy cheeked housekeeper welcomed us and with minutes a steaming pot of tea and a large plate filled with the most scrumptious pastries and cream cakes (we never saw such things at home). The vicar urged us to tuck in and do you know - we polished off the lot ! We thanked the vicar and his housekeeper very much indeed - we may have been poor but in those days we knew our manners. Walking home from the church I told Little Henry "THERE YOU ARE HENRY - YOU STICK WITH ME AND YOU'LL BE ALRIGHT !" David
Hallo Folks, Those who came from the East End will surely know and probably visited The Queens in Poplar High Street. Well I worked there quite illegally as a 13 year old boy shining the spotlights. My brother, Lenny, worked the lights on the opposite side of the stage. As you may know many a bright star trod the boards at The Queens and I witnessed the house being brought down twice. I write about those elsewhere. But what I wanted to tell you about revolves around KATE CARNEY. Kate was born in London, almost certainly in the East End somewhere, and began her career singing Irish songs in the old Albert Music Hall, Canning Town - a theatre now long gone - but she quickly became the favourite singer/comedian in Cockneyland. My story about her occurs in 1946 - 4 years before her death. I was in the Army and had been granted a few days leave. After the war, when money was still a problem but not comparable to the 30's when it was ALWAYS a problem, my parents used to go to The Queens every Thursday night. Then you could get a good seat in the stalls for 1/- or 5p in today's money. On this occasion they asked me to go with them; so I enquired who was on the bill and they told me it was Kate Carney. As a Cockney I had heard of her and as I had nothing else to do I agreed. The bar in The Queens stretched the whole length of the stalls and so one could see who was drinking there from your seat. I noticed an old lady with bright orange hair enter the bar surrounded by pearly kings and queens. My mother nudged me and said "Thats Kate Carney". The show was OK and the last act was Kate. She entered, or rather hobbled, on to the stage to rapturous applause and it was evident she was a huge favourite. And then she started to sing - but she could only croak ! She sounded more like a frog ! But the audience didn't seem to mind that at all and cheered each song louder than the one before. I looked around me - it seemed this old lady with her bright orange hair who couldn't sing had this audience in raptures ! She had such a command over these people and when the end of her act came they just would not let her go. She sang her old favourites ARE WE TO PART LIKE THIS BILL ? and THREE POTS A SHILLING and invited the audience to sing along with her. They did - and what a happy crowd honoured The Queens that night. It seemed to me to be a moment in theatrical history and I was so glad I was there to witness this wonderful old lady holding the audience in the palm of her hand. Again and again she sang extra songs for them and when she finally ended the whole house rocked with applause, and stamping, and cheering until I thought the ceiling might collapse. It was a great experience and in later years I rued, and still rue the day, when the provincial theatres and music halls all over the country began to close their doors in the 1950s. The existence of the hundreds of such theatres was nursery for so many where they could hone and improve their skills and learn how to captivate their audiences and many of our later TV stars who became famous and entertained the nation had their beginnings on that circuit. We don't make them like Kate, and many others, any more and I for one think that is a tragedy. David Mitchell
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