| Description | Interview with Ethel Davidson recorded on 6 February 2003 by Jennifer Carter.
Transcript of Interview :
JC So tell me about your school days and where you were schooled and why you came to the University.
ED I was brought up on a farm in Aberdeenshire, 43 miles from Aberdeen, between Huntly and Keith, in a parish called Cairnie, and my father had a farm, Newton of Cairnie. I went for my primary school to Cairnie Public School, which was the type of school where you had three classes in one room. There was just three teachers for the whole school, which went from primary, infants, primary one, to advanced level, they did up to leaving age. But I left after class 5 as it was then and went to Huntly School. Huntly Gordon Schools when I was 12.
JC That was because you were already thinking of an academic career?
ED Well, the academic career was in the family. My mother was one of six girls, all of whom were teachers and her father and her mother were both teachers, and their fathers and mothers had been teachers! And my father's mother had been a teacher! So from the time we were little girls my sister and I used to play at schools and being teachers. We never thought of doing anything else. It was just teaching.
JC So your mother, or your parents, had you removed from the Cairnie School to the Gordon School ….?
ED Because the school didn't do secondary education, and I left school in the 5th year, because by that time the war had started. Most people stayed on until 6th year, but I was impatient and get finished and get out into the world and do something useful. So I left when I had taken my Highers in 5.
JC And you had got your qualifications for university?
ED And remember, that when we took Highers, we had to take the whole group in one year. In one sitting and you had to sit the lot, otherwise you had to resit the whole lot if you failed one. So it was quite heavy going.
JC You must have been a bright child and well taught were you?
ED Well taught. I think, yes, well taught, and then had the advantage of being in the country, you had little diversion. Any spare time I had would have been spent reading a book.
JC Did you help on the farm?
ED Oh yes, we all had worked on the farm, particularly when the war came and you had to get things done quickly when the weather was good and I used to drive the tractor. We did all sorts of things. Oh yes. I have photographs of us taking in the hay and dragging the coals of hay and helping picking potatoes. That was a job we didn't like, because our backs were too long for that.
JC And how long was it from your home to the school?
ED To the primary school, to Cairnie School, it was just under a mile, and we walked. And then when we went to Huntly it was 5 miles. If the weather was good we cycled, which wasn't too easy as you had the Bin Hill in between and once you got to the top it was all down hill, so it was fine. But if it was very wet my father took us in and if he weren't available there was a bus. But the difficulty with taking the bus was that when we finished school at 4 o'clock we didn't get a bus home until 10 minutes to six. So it was a long wait. We were allowed to stay in the school, doing homework, until about 5 o'clock, then we were sort of turfed-out. So we went up and got a bag of chips or something.
JC You say we. Did you travel with other members of your family.
ED I had a brother and a sister at school with me. Both older than I am. Yes, the three of us went. My sister was 2 years older than I am.
JC Because of course in those days, I suppose, it would not have been thought at all unusual for children to be travelling those distances alone.
ED Oh no. You never thought about it.
JC Nowadays they would have a fit about it!
ED Well that's it. As I say if it were bad weather my father picked us up or took us in, but you never thought anything of travelling on your own.
JC So you went up to University at the age of 16. Was that very unusual then, or was it quite a lot of people doing this?
ED I think it was quite unusual, because when I graduated at the age of 19, Colonel Butchart summoned me to his office and suggested that I should maybe take a little time in the Forces or something to learn about life, because I was so young! I didn't just turn round and say what do you want to know! But when I came up to University I took, I don't think it exists today, what they called the concurrent course, and that meant that I did classes at training centre the same time as I was at University. So having said that you couldn't change. I did apply to go to the Forces when I finished University, but they wouldn't have me because I had committed to education. And I had no regrets about that. I was saying to somebody yesterday I think if I had my life to live over again, even knowing the stories I hear about teaching today, I would teach again, because I loved it!
JC Well that's grand. So taking the concurrent course you got your MA and did you also get a B.Ed. or Teaching qualification?
ED No just an MA. But then you did the training centre, instead of doing a year and a term, which was the time for graduates to be at University, you finished at summer time instead of at Christmas time, and it was reckoned easier to get a job in summer time than trying to get a job at Christmas when all the schools were in session.
JC But the piece of paper you came out with, it was simply an MA, and it was accepted as a teaching qualification ?
ED Yes, along with the Teachers Certificate from the Training College. Yes I got a certificate from the college.
JC So all through your undergraduate career, you were having to pop up to the College for classes.
ED That's right, you had to fit in classes at Training Centre too.
JC And that would have been then in the middle of town, behind where Robert Gordons School is?
ED Yes, it was there, in Charlotte Street, or whatever it is called.
JC Did a number of undergraduates do that?
ED Yes, one or two who were thinking of teaching, but I can't really remember if there were any of the crowd that we still see now. I am not very sure.
JD That was the short way into the profession, I suppose?
ED It just cut out that extra term. Because we were following people who had had difficulty finding teaching jobs, and as it was, when I finished there were only 2 of us taken into Aberdeen, in 1944, when we finished Training College.
JC Despite the shortage of teachers?
ED Yes, because the town didn't want teachers, and that is why so many of the friends who still come for the reunions had to go south, go to other places for posts.
JC That's amazing. You would have thought with the wartime teacher shortages, you know, with so many in the services.
ED Well that's right. But they weren't short here. And I was very fortunate and got a job, my first job was at the Grammar School.
JC Oh that was good.
ED Teaching Latin.
JC Was that just, as it were, a chance vacancy, or were they on the look out for the brightest and the best?
ED Well, I think I owed quite a bit to Professor Noble! He was on the committee who interviewd people and I had done Latin under him and the Grammar needed somebody to replace a man who was still away at the War, so I got the job. So it was a good beginning. It was a very good start.
JC That's nice to hear. Of course you stayed in teaching all your life.
ED Yes, and as I say I loved it. I used to say to Miss Bosomworth "The day that I waken and think that I got to go to school, that will be the day I will hand in my resignation". That day was never coming, so I just had to resign!
JC Coming back then to your arrival to Aberdeen University, as a young country girl aged 16, where did you stay? Did you travel in from home to the University?
ED Well, I had relations in town and I stayed, when I came to University, with an aunt in Gray Street, she was a Domestic Science teacher. But when I came in to sit the Bursary Competition, which I did when I was just 15, I stayed with another aunt in Forest Road, so we had relations that we could sort of visit when we were living here. And I stayed with my aunt in Gray Street for over a year. When I was at school I had done quite a lot in sport and I had overused the muscles and I damaged a thigh muscle, so it was giving me a lot of trouble and I was forbidden to take part in sport and that broke my heart as I loved sport.
JC What were your disciplines in sport?
ED Well it was really just athletics. Just running mainly. When I came to University I sort of didn't admit that I had this certificate that said that I shouldn't take part in sport and I did a little gym with Mrs. Campbell, who was the sport lady at that time, and we were playing a netball game against Training Centre and I jumped to get a ball and came down on my knee wrongly and the knee didn't support me and I fell and I broke my ankle. So that was it, I had to give up sport, but it meant that I had difficulty travelling from Gray Street, and then the knee, which had been giving me trouble all the time, began to need attention. So I stayed with her until January of 1942 and then I moved, trying to get near King's College, to Tanfield Avenue in Woodside. But that was awkward because if I walked, it was too far for the leg, and then trying to get on and off trams was difficult, so in another month I moved down to Don Street, in Old Aberdeen. Now I lived in what had been a farm in Don Street! The farmhouse is still there, I went along to have a look at it one day. There was a lady there a Miss Bain, who looked after myself and her brother and that was just her life. And I had a room about the size of this, I suppose, with a gas fire, my bed in it, she gave me all my meals. I could have baths when I wanted it. And if I, and it wasn't very often, but if I were working in the afternoon, because most of my classes were in the forenoon, she would bring through a cup of tea and hot scones. She was marvellous. Three Pounds a week!
JC Incredible! You got all that for three pounds a week!
ED And when I stayed with my aunt I think she got five pounds a month! When you think what the students now have to pay today.
JC And Don Street couldn't have been nearer. That was perfect.
ED No, that was perfect. I could walk, by the time I went to Don Street, I had a plaster on my leg from the ankle up and I had to carry this plaster around for 6 months. At one time they thought I was going to lose my leg, but they did manage to save it with electric treatment I got at the infirmary and then it gradually got better.
JC You said that Miss Bain lived on a farm…
ED Well it wasn't .. It was a farmhouse. The farmhouse was still there, but the actual farm had gone. It had been built upon by that time.
JC Where about was it in Don Street? If you are approaching from St. Machar Drive? On your right now first you would come to Bede House, the old folks home, and then there is a quite high tenement block..
ED Well it is beyond that. I am trying to remember the name of the street that goes off onto King Street…
JC Cheyne Road?
ED That's it down about there.
JC Down at the corner of Cheyne Road?
ED Yes, I think that would be where it is.
JC Is it the one that has a sort of high wall round it, where a retired GP lives now.
ED Yes that's it. Is that who lives there now. Well Miss Bain took ill and landed in hospital, so I moved into a friends house with my sister, because she had finished Training College by that time and we stayed in King's Gate for a while, then we moved down to proper digs again in Polmuir Road, and about a few months after that my mother and father sold the farm and came In to live in Aberdeen, so then we could go home after that. Mrs. Shanks at Training Centre used to tease me saying "Well the lengths you go to save going to training hostel". My sister had been in hostel and didn't like it very much. Nobody did, it's a bit like school dinners! They say they don't like it. But I didn't have to go to hostel because I had an Aberdeen address by that time when I was actually at Training College.
JC You experienced quite a variety of student digs then. About four different ones.
ED I was very lucky in that they were all pretty good. They were all very good. But I am quite convinced that the landladies couldn't have made much off us. You know three pounds a week! And when I mentioned that one time in the presence of the girls that come here, they said these were expensive they were only paying £2.50. But they couldn't have made much, even in those days.
JC I think most of them, who were professional landladies, took in a number of students.
ED Well that was the usual, but I knew myself well enough that if I were in digs with other people I would spend all the time chatting to them and I wouldn't have worked. So I knew I had to be in a place by myself. I had always been accustomed having my own room and doing my work myself and I knew that it would be fatal so I stayed and got on with the work.
JC Apart from working in your own room in the digs, did you work a lot in the University library as many students did.
ED Quite a lot, particularly when I was doing English I used the Library a lot, and I loved the old Library. I feel very sad that it has gone. I know it is a nice restaurant/shop and all the rest of it, but we did like the old one, and the little recessed bits that you could go into and work there quite often.
JC You presumably never had the privilege of having your own desk, because I think these were reserved for Honours people.
ED Probably. No, I didn't have that.
JC Did you have a special place where you went?
ED Well we just went where there was a quiet bit somewhere. The English bay somewhere. It was a beautiful old library.
JC Apart from finding it a conducive place to work, did you find it served your purposes well?
ED Very much so. We got everything we needed there and everybody was helpful in getting what we wanted.
JC Would Douglas Simpson have been the Librarian at that time?
ED Yes, he was the Librarian at the time.
JC Presumably you didn't have much dealing with him?
ED Well, we were on chatting terms with him just. He was usually around.
JC There was a lady who did the sort of front of house work. I can't remember her name. Miss Brown, or something like that.
ED Something like that. I looked this out, because it tells all these things. We used to get these student diaries. Well there should be a bit that tells us all about the various staff. Here we are.
JC I don't know how common those are now, by the way.
ED Well I wondered that.
JC I think Archives might be interested to have the offer of your one when it's going.
ED Let me see. I shall have to find Library. There are so many people. External Examiners…Library ..Maggie Brown, that's right enough.
JC That's it. She is the one that so many people seem to remember, because she was kind of the front of house person.
ED Yes, and if you wanted help she knew where every book was.
JC How interesting. Gosh and people printed their home addresses then!
ED Yes, that's right.
JC You would never get that now. With new privacy and all these ….
ED Even death notices they don't put the address in because people will go and rob the house whilst they are at the funeral.
JC Apparently about half the University staff are ex-directory on the telephone.
ED It is sad really isn't it.
JC So the Library was home in part to you as a student. What actual classes did you do? You mentioned English.
ED I started off when I came first I did school subjects, Maths, French and Latin in my first year, and in my second year I did advanced Latin, English and Logic, and in third year I did advanced English and Psychology.
JC So from a teaching point of view your subjects would have been Latin and the English. And it was the Latin in the end which took over?
ED Yes, I started off teaching Latin at the Grammar School and then they roped me in to do some English and then when the man came back from the war, I was moved on to Hilton School, where I had a qualifying class and then Mr. Robertson, who was headmaster at the Grammar, asked me to go back as they were short again. So I went back and I taught partially English and partially Latin.
JC And it was always Latin, not Latin and Greek?
ED No, I didn't have Greek.
JC And was it taught at all in the schools you were working at?
ED Yes, there was some Greek, but latterly, well St. Margaret's didn't have Greek, so that suited me fine. But as Latin did it begun to get less popular.
JC Was it relatively uncommon for a woman teacher to be teaching Classics? I always think of it, you know, associated with men teachers. Or am I just wrong about that.
ED Well I suppose, pre-war, it would have been the men, but then I am thinking when I was at the Grammar, they were all men, except me there. But when I went to Harlaw, my head of department was a woman. She just accepted that, you see.
JC That department would have been what? Languages or …?
ED Just Latin, I don't think they had Greek there either at that time. And it was all women when I went to Harlaw and then they brought in a man to help out.
JC And what about your Latin class in the University? I suppose it would have been woman dominated anyway because of the war.
ED Well when we started off we had sort of equal men and woman in our first year, but by the end of the 4th term, not just by the end of the first year, but after a year and a term, Easter the following year, we had only 2 men left in the whole year. One had been disabled from the army and one was a conscientious objector. They were all away, you see.
JC So your whole year was about how big? About 24? Something like that maybe?
ED In Latin, you mean?
JC Well, when you said the whole year, I though you meant the whole Arts class.
ED The whole Arts class, yes. The whole Arts class we would have had, oh I don't know, I don't remember how many. I would have thought about 100.
JC As big as that? The Latin class was?
ED The Latin class would have been roughly about 20 I would say. Sorry, that's wrong. Remember, when I went to University, nobody could go to University without having Latin. Everybody had to do Latin in the first year. So the whole of the first year did Latin. So whatever number that was. I really don't know. Everybody did Latin. Which wasn't easy for some people who didn't really like it or hadn't really applied themselves at school, but they had to do it. I still think that Latin was a very good way to weed people out.
JC It is a wonderful subject!
ED Oh yes. Because you get people able to go to university now that wouldn't have been able.. I suppose it has its differences, but you know, I think it kept the standard very high.
JC Do you remember what the kind of difference was between, as it were first and second year Latin. You say the first year was a very big class.
ED A big class and when I went into advanced Latin we had the small classes and we had more tutorials. We had classes with maybe a dozen of us doing tutorials in a morning and probably just about a dozen, 12 to 20, did advanced Latin.
JC Were the tutorials all strictly language work or did you get discussion of you know, classical history, philosophy, etc.
ED We didn't do a lot of what became Classical Studies in schools, that was a … it was mostly language. Reading our Virgil, Livi, Cicero and that sort of thing. Although we did a little … Professor Noble was wonderful. He was a marvellous humanity professor and he chatted to us about the background, but it wasn't as a subject.
JC That was more extra on the top. Was that Noble, although I am a little confused, there are always so many Nobles around. Is that the one who went on to King's College, Oxford.
ED Peter Noble and I taught his son at the Grammar school. Young Peter who has sadly died. He died very young. But Professor Noble was a very human man. Humane and human and he was lovely.
JC Did he live in Humanity Manse?
ED He did. I became quite friendly with the family. They were lovely. I used to pop in for a cup of tea with Mrs. Noble. She was lovely.
JC Was there much coming and going between staff and students. Or was that exceptional?
ED Well they were the only … I don't know about other people, but the Nobles were the only professorial family, if you like, that I became friendly with. Because I took ill in the Logic class in 2nd year and landed in hospital, having an appendix operation, and Professor Noble came up to visit me. You know, he was .. that was just his style and the same year, '42, my sister had a very bad accident, car accident, and I had just gone home early because I had had this appendix operation and my sister was coming out to visit me when she had this crash in the car and was very, very ill and when I came back after the holidays, the Christmas holidays, I am sitting in the advanced Latin class, quite happy with myself, and Professor Noble came in and he said "But I thought you had had an accident!" He had heard that one of us had had an accident, and he didn't know which one it was. He was that sort of person.
JC He showed a personal interest in students. That's good. What about English. That was you other main subject I know.
ED I never became friendly with the English Professor.
JC Who was that then?
ED That was Bickerstaff and I think it was Mr. Taylor we had a lot to do with in the advanced English. I don't really remember much about them, you see, they didn't make the same impact as Professor Noble!
JD Was the English teaching mainly by lectures or did you have tutorials there as well?
ED Lectures and our own written work. We had a lot of work to write for English. Essays and you know comments on some of the reading that we were doing.
JC Were the essays discussed personally with you or were they just given back in class?
ED No, they were just given back in the class.
JC It is interesting how these customs have changed in time. Apart from Professor Noble and Bickerstaff, do any of the other stay in you memory?
ED I remember Professor Wright, a Maths professor.
JC So you did Maths under Wright, did you?
ED Yes I did Maths the 1st year and he was a wonderful professor too.
JC Indeed. He must have gone off shortly after that to serve in the Air Ministry?
ED Yes, I think that would be right. I had him in my 1st year and we had a big mixed class, because we had all the boys at that time, but then they had all gone.
JC They had all been called-up by the time you were in 2nd year. Wright is still well. I had a very nice Christmas card from him.
ED He is still around, that's good.
JC Aged 92 , I think he is now!
ED That's marvellous!
JC Still writing with as firm a hand.
ED He was such a tall man. He was lovely.
JC A lovely wife too. Charming lady.
ED The other one I remember was the Logic professor.
JC Now who would that have been?
ED Fergusson.
JC Fergusson, yes. I don't know anything about him.
ED He was quite, you know, the typical professor. A bit dithery and a bit …..
JC Perhaps not too logical, then?
ED Some of the illogical things he told us I think you remember! French, Professor Rowe
JC Freddie Rowe. Another nice person I believe.
ED I don't think I had an awful lot to do with him. I remember we had a French lady who did orals, you know.
JC Would that have been Mrs. Rowe perhaps?
ED No, she was a young person, from France, just taken on, and really it was a bit of a waste of time, because none of us …. She refused to speak English. She spoke French the whole time. And we just used to sit and think what is she speaking about!
JC I think it is known as the immersion method!
ED It was a bit difficult.
JC So outside your classes you told me about you being very keen to take part in sport, but for physical reasons you couldn't. What else did you do with your time as a student? Were you a very social person, or political person? Or just working like a demon?
ED No! No! Not the latter. I did work fairly well enough, I never had a resit, so I was quite proud of that. The great thing in those days, we went to the pictures. That was really the only entertainment we had. There were dances. You went to the Union to dances.
JC That must have died out a bit when all the men disappeared?
ED Yes. Of course there were still Medical men.
JC Oh I see. So you had the Medicals.
ED Yes.
JC So the Union hops were what, Saturday night?
ED Saturday night, usually, I think. I didn't go very often to them but certainly we went to the pictures and the theatre was marvellous in Aberdeen at that time. Because of the bombing in London as lot of the plays that were to be put on in London were tried out in Aberdeen. So we had some wonderful things.
JC That would have been HM Theatre?
ED Yes.
JC Do you remember what you saw?
ED Because my father was too old to be in the army, he was in the 1st World War, he was too old to do anything, to serve in the 2nd World War, he took a wartime job supervising the egg grading station at the mart, you know, with his farm and all the rest of it, and he stayed, during the week at the Imperial Hotel and that was where many of the actors and actresses lived when they were at the theatre.
JC Well we were speaking of the plays that came to Aberdeen during the war and you said you remembered some of the stars you saw.
ED Well I remember being introduced to Emelyn Williams,
JC Goodness!
ED Yes. I held his coat for him to put on. He was here in the "Light of Heart". I also met Jack Anthony, of course he came to the theatre and also the Tivoli. We had also Lawrence Olivier and Vivien Leigh here in "Doctors Dilemma" and they stayed in the Imperial. Richard Tauber was here in "Blossom Time", but I didn't know where he stayed. We had a company with Donald Wolfitt who did "Othello" and "Macbeth" the Shakespearean plays. We also had the like of Michael Redgrave and Beatrice Lemann in a play here and you had John Clemence and Kay Hammond, you see they all came here.
JC I don't think Aberdeen has ever had theatre like that since!
ED No, they don't have it now, that's for sure. Alastair Sim was here and Angela Badley, but I have not written down what they were in.
JC Interesting, I had no idea that was going on.
ED Ursula Jeans was here in "Watch on the Rhine" so we were very lucky. I was exceptionally lucky as my father had contacts in business and all the rest of it and he used to get two complimentary tickets for the theatre every week. Now he didn't always use them, so he gave them to me and I could take a friend to the theatre. So we were able…. As students we wouldn't have been able to afford to go, but with the complimentary tickets we could go. We saw all these plays that I have mentioned and others, and then sometimes they just had a film at the theatre. So we were well…. as I say, life went on. You just enjoyed these things. There was no use of not enjoying them when they were handed to us. War or not. Although we were often interrupted with air-raid warnings. That was not so pleasant. We were very lucky.
JC We will come back in a minute to the impact of the war as you felt it as a student, but I was thinking there because you mentioned money just then the complimentary tickets, how well off were you as a student? Had you won a bursary in the competition?
ED I had £20 from the Aberdeenshire County Bursary. That was what was a Dick Bequest Bursary. You may have heard of it, and then from the Bursary Competition I had £30.
JC So that was £50 a year.
ED That was £50 a year so that paid fees I presume, yes. But to live on, now I was living away from home, so I had toothpaste, soap and everything to buy, I had 5 shillings a week from my parents. Which would be about 30 pence today, would it?
JC Something like that.
ED Well you had to make it do. But to eek out I used to work, well in 2nd and 3rd year at University, I worked for 2 hours in an afternoon at the Children's Library, at the Central Library, from 4 - 6 pm and I was paid 1 shilling and a ½ penny an hour. I though that was marvellous. 2 shillings and 1 penny you got for your two hours work. But it was a very rewarding job. There was a Mrs. Telford who was excellent at her work and loved the children and I learnt, well it helped me to handle children and guided me in what they liked to read. It was very worth while.
JC So fitted in with your ambition to be a teacher.
ED Yes. It was very worth while. But then things were cheaper. I also worked occasionally at the Central Mart. There was a secretary there who used to ask me to go along sometimes on a Saturday morning to help her clear off the books from the week and sometimes she gave me ten shillings! Because otherwise when we did go out, when I went out with the boyfriend, we used to buy a cup of coffee each and then one cake and half it, because you couldn't afford to buy. Some people at University, we used to sit quite enviously… We were the first people to use the Pavillion and of course the swimming pool had never water in it when we were there.
JC It had just been finished in 1939 I think.
ED That's right and we were there in 1940. So the pool was not used.
JC Because of fuel shortages?
ED That's right. They couldn't afford and I suppose nobody to look after it either. But we had the Pavilion and some people lucky enough could have coffee and a chocolate biscuit, but we were very lucky if we managed a cup of coffee occasionally. Couldn't always get that. Depended how your money had gone. But if I had been to work at the Mart, then I could afford to have my coffee and maybe stand someone else a coffee. And we were really very naughty. When I stayed in Gray Street I had a.. now I don't know how much it cost, but I had a season ticket on the tram from Gray Street to Broad Street, but then I had to pay from Broad Street to King's College. Sometimes if you were early you could maybe walk to save the penny or whatever it was, then sometimes you hung around hoping you would meet some of the boys and they would pay for you! But of course it was only, from the Bridge of Don to the Bridge of Dee in a tram, cost one penny- halfpenny. So you could manage.
JC That was quite a lot of money to pay out of your bursary.
ED Well, yes, I suppose so. Then out of 5 shillings a week when you had everything to buy, but we managed.
JC So some of your landladies gave you lunch. Did they all? Or did you have to sometimes find your own lunch? You always went home?
ED I think I always went home. Or if I didn't go home I had a coffee, but no, we usually had the three meals. They were very good.
JC Was there anywhere in the University area, in King's area, where you could eat? Was Jack's Café, or whatever it was then.
ED Just the Pavilion round the back.
JC Not the café on the High Street?
ED Not as far as I know, I can't remember ever going to any of these.. Not in our day. Maybe again if it was economics we couldn't afford to go.
JC Were you aware of food shortages in wartime. Or was Aberdeen relatively sheltered because it was such an agricultural area.
ED I don't think Aberdeen as a whole were very well off because of the rationing, but we ourselves were very fortunate in that my father working at the Mart, at the egg station, all the chipped eggs, they couldn't do anything with them, so we got them, so my mother could bake, and he had contacts, we were cushioned against all that. But it was difficult. And then my father was an older man, he was 40ish before he got married and as he said, when we tried to tell him, that he couldn't get that amount of sugar in his tea, and we would say that's your ration. "I have always taken it. I will continue taking it" he would say! So we all gave him our ration to keep him happy! I stopped taking sugar in my tea, and never had it since. Probably the best thing I ever did. Yes it was good for me, but at the time and you were always short of butter and jam and things. It wasn't easy.
JC What about the wider effect of the war. You were a wartime student, how did it feel? Or were you just accepting things as they were. I mean did you feel very caught up in the war? Did you have family who were in the forces?
ED Yes, I had brother and cousins. A lot of friends away. We kept in touch and you did feel worried about them.
JC Did you rush home in the evening to listen to the radio to hear what was going on? Was it that sort of situation?
ED Well more just reading the paper in the morning.
JC You probably didn't have radios in your digs then?
ED No. I don't think so, now you mention it. I didn't have a radio in my room, you would have just have picked up the news as you went along. Because on the farm that I lived on, we went home quite often at the weekend to help my mother, because my father was away such a lot, and at the farm where I was brought up we had no electricity, it was just coal fires and a range. So the radio, the wireless we had, was on batteries and inevitably if there was something important the battery was flat and somebody had to dash into Huntly to get another. There was always one in the garage. The big wet battery. Yes the young ones find it very difficult to appreciate that we didn't have electricity. I can remember us all sitting round the radio when Mr. Chamberlain said "We are now at war". I remember that. I was at church and the minister sent us all home early because the announcement was coming, so I just rushed home and we all congregated round the radio to listen to this. Because then the worry was my two cousins and my brother they were … Well my brother had joined the Territorial Army, in order that one of the men who worked on the farm could get half a crown or something for bringing in a new recruit, and of course he was caught up in it. He was called up on the 2nd of September.
JC Straight away, before the beginning of the war.
ED Before the war was actually declared. So it was quite a thought then. And so many of the young students we had known didn't come back.
JC You lost quite a few friends?
ED Yes.
JC Did you have sort of opinions about the war? I mean do you remember whether felt that it was a justified war or triumphant when it ended, or did you really not feel that involved?
ED I think we did feel involved and we did feel that somebody had to stop Hitler. I think that everybody felt it, and the boys went off with that spirit that they were saving the world. I think quite differently now, but at the time we all felt that it was justified and we did try to find out as much as we could. But people say to me today, do I remember that when something is mentioned, and I say we weren't told. We got very little information of what was going on. I had a cousin who was at Dunkirk and of course we all watched in desperation and he never came home and never came home and then suddenly he arrived. He was in the last boat to leave Dunkirk. So that sort of thing you were very anxious at the time. But that was an amazing time when I was out at home at Huntly, because Huntly was a depot where soldiers were sent when they came off the beaches at Dunkirk they were deposited in the camp at Huntly and you would see some boys walking along the street and then they would suddenly spot somebody at the other side that they didn't know was still safe, and the reunions were marvellous, just seeing them on the street. Because nobody knew who had got away and who hadn't. Yes it was a very anxious time.
JC And did you sort of feel that the war was blighting your youth as an undergraduate?
ED Looking back, I think it did. We missed an awful lot. We didn't have a, for example, we didn't have a graduation ball or anything. No graduation ceremony. We did have a ceremony, but no celebration of graduation. A lot of things like that, you know, we missed out quite a bit on things.
JC Graduation would have been in the Elphinstone in the war time would it?
ED Well they didn't have them during the war. No they didn't have them at all. Because again, expense.
JC Did you get caught up in war-work at all? You know, did you have to work for the Red Cross ?
ED Yes, I collected for the Red Cross, along Broomhill Road, and I did Fire watching for the University.
JC What was your beat?
ED I fire watched the Cruickshank Gardens, at the Botany Department, which had a flat roof and I often think, on reflection, we were supposed to…..if firebombs had come down, we were supposed to have used the pump and bucket. I really don't think we knew how to use it! Thank goodness nothing ever happened.
JC That must have been quite tiring actually. I mean staying up at nights to do fire watching. And jolly cold too!
ED We didn't stay up all night though. We did go to sleep. But I always remember it was so cold!
JC You had camp beds?
ED Yes, in the Botany Department and we took turns to sleep. Somebody was always on watch, but some of us got to sleep for a while in between, but it was a bit of fun too. You know, a whole lot of us together.
JC So there were compensations for being a war time student.
ED Oh yes. The black-out was difficult. I had a friend got her nose broken bumping into somebody in the black-out! You were groping along Union Street. It was completely dark. But as it didn't stop us, we all seemed to go out and enjoy ourselves quite well. We had some very good times. We didn't just waste it all together. But then when the boys all went away it made it feel sad. Then you spent your time writing letters.
JC Another lost art!
ED I got myself engaged in my last year, when I was at Training College, with one of the boys who had been in the Maths class with us.
JC How come he was not in uniform at that time?
ED He was away. He had gone to the Fleet Air Arm at the end of the first year, but we stayed in touch. When he came home I saw him. He had no mother and father, just a brother, and he wanted to have somewhere to come home to and so on, so we got engaged, but he sadly was killed in Norway. It all colours your feeling of how things went. That was a bit of a difficulty getting over that, but then you have just got to go on.
JC Well we have covered some very interesting ground. Is there any area of your University experience that you wanted to talk about that we haven't happened upon?
ED I don't think so. I made a few notes. I don't know if it is of any interest, but in 1943 our Rector was Sir Stafford Cripps, Chancellor of the Exchequer. I had forgotten that until I saw it!
JC Was there an rectorial election in your time?
ED Yes, we did have a fight in the Quad at Marischal. I do remember that. I remember being there watching. The boys did it. We didn't. I don't remember clearly, but I am very aware that when I was in my 2nd year, doing advanced Latin, we had to have an extra tutorial for English to Latin, and there weren't enough staff in the University so they employed one of the masters from the Central School at that time, and he taught us at the Grammar School in an evening. I would almost be safe to say about 9 lessons out of 10 there was an air-raid warning and we landed in the shelters at the Grammar School. When I was at Gray Street, 41 and 42 were bad years for warnings and bombings. We had a lot of bombings and my aunt would insist that we went into the cupboard under the stairs. It gave me the "heeby-jeebies" to think that I might be buried under the stairs. I used to say I would go and make a cup of tea and she would be screaming to me to come back in, I couldn't go and make tea! But you had to go the shelters some times. One night, when I was going home, when we stayed in Polmuir Road, there were two or three of us going home, and they were machine-gunning the barracks at Fonthill Road and we landed in the gutter that night, you know, trying to protect ourselves from the machine fire. One of my friends was killed when Bedford Road was bombed. I remember one occasion also, there had been bombing in every district of the city and I knew my father usually stayed in Aberdeen and I went down to the Imperial Hotel in the morning to see that he was alright to be told that his bed had not been slept in! I thought he had been caught coming from the mart, as he often worked late, so I remember cycling up George Street and saw the houses had been bombed and the mess lying around, dead bodies laying around, police and I am trying to cycle through all this broken glass and rubble. I arrived at the mart to hear that he had gone home. He was home in Huntly the night!
JC Well that was fortunate. What a fright you must have got.
ED I did rather. I really thought I was going to have to identify him. But Eva Melville was killed in the Bedford Road bombing .
JC I hadn't realised Aberdeen had suffered quite as much damage.
ED We had a lot of bombing. I wrote down some of it, when I was looking up my old diary. You had bombing, on the 12 July for instance, in 1940, there were 28 people killed when the ice rink was bombed and the Neptune Bar. Torry, Wellington Road, Pitfoddels, Kepplestone , you know they moved round. We were on the route, when they had done their bombing, they were on their route back home to Germany, if they had any bombs they dropped them.
JC So it wasn't a case of targeting the city?
ED No, I think it was just a case of getting rid of their bombs.
JC They had been bombing, what, the airfields?
ED Probably bombing Glasgow or further south and trying to get back to Hamburg or somewhere. Well we used to have guns. They did bring down a plane, one time, out in the bay, but I don't remember why the guns had all to be removed. They had to go some other place, and that very night they came across in force to Aberdeen and did a tremendous damage that night. But that was deliberate and of course of it was a case of who told them, because Lord Haw Haw had a little bit about it that they guns had gone and they were safe to come in that night. And sometimes you were at classes and the siren went and you had to troop out and the all clear came and you had just got back in and settled down when the siren went again as they came over.
JC That was day- time presumably?
ED Day time and night-time. It happened all the time.
JC Yes, Well fortunately these things are, we hope, in the past.
ED Yes. Well I have got it written down here. Every day in November, that was 1941, there was an alert! This was supposed to be one of the towns that had the most air-raid warnings in the whole country, because of them passing over us going home. A wee bit of interest to future generations. From the 2nd of September 1939 to the 5th September 1939, at our farm we had evacuees from Glasgow. They came from Glasgow to Cairnie and we were all there trying to sort them out, because we had a cottage on the farm we gave this to 2 mothers and 6 children to live in, but we fed them at the farm until they got settled, but they stayed only the 3 weeks. They missed the chip shop and the pictures!
JC It must have seemed like absolutely being in the sticks, wasn't it! After coming from the centre of Glasgow.
ED They had come from the Gorbals in Glasgow. Because the first day my mother had made our usual Sunday lunch, with broth and a chicken and a piece of meat, and she had given them the chicken and they didn't know what it was! They went and scrapped it out to the hens outside because they had never seen this stuff.
JC Real food. That gives you a measure of what the Gorbals must have been like in those days.
ED But I always laugh when I think of it, because I had the job of driving them up to the house. I was driving people to their different destinations because I knew the area and other people were working at the school sorting them out, and I had taken this lot up to our cottage and when I went back my mother said "How did you get on?" I said " Well I put the loonies in one bedroom and the girlies in the other" and a Glasgow teacher heard me and she came out and she said "What do you mean loonies! They are not looney!" Then I realised what I had said. I said that is just our Aberdeenshire word for a little boy. I am not being derogatory at all! She was quite indignant. I made a note here that I had written in my diary, that I had bought a cardigan one time from Isaac Benzies for 12/6 and I got a dress for 7 guineas.
JC Those were relatively expensive items, on the budget you talked about.
ED Well I suppose they were. Shoes £2.5/-. I remember saving that up in thru'pennies. Because I was desperate for a new pair of shoes and I saved and saved until I had enough to buy them. And I remember going round saying to everybody "Look at my new shoes!" They had big clumpy soles, they were sensible shoes. I was so proud of them. Bought them myself. What I did note from a comment in one of my diaries, 1944, when I started teaching my salary was £150. I got into my hand £12 per month. I complained to the education authorities here because the other girls who had come through, were getting £15 something, or £14 something, and it turned out that I wasn't getting the bonus that Aberdeen was paying because I wasn't 21. I had started teaching when I was 20 you see. But in 1944 there was an announcement that teachers salaries were to be raised to £240 per annum with increments of £20 to £600. How would they like that today?
JC It is better than the present McCrone settlement, isn't it?
ED Times have changed.
JC They have indeed. Well let's sign off now then. That's been a very nice interview. Thank you very much indeed.
ED That's fine. Thank you.
End of Interview
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