| Description | Interview with Margaret Heald (nee Taylor) (MA 1943) recorded on 12 September 2003 and the interviewer is Jennifer Carter.
Transcription:-
JC This one of a series of interviews with the graduates of 1943 and I am talking to Margaret Heald, known as "Bunty", she tells me, all her life. Well thank you very much Bunty. You have told me a little bit about your career which we will come back to later because it is fairly unusual for this group of graduates. But just to start at the beginning about your days in university. Tell me why you came up to Aberdeen and what school you had come from and so forth. You are an Aberdeen person are you?
MH I was born, brought up in Aberdeen, yes. I went first of all to Kittybrewster School, then to the Central School, where my mother had been a pupil in the past and somehow or other no other university every featured. I had always been brought up with the understanding that I would aim for university.
JC Were your parents graduates?
MH No my father was an engineer and my mother should have been, she was a bright lady.
JC She was a bright lady who never got the chance.
MH Yes. Her parents had been from a well educated family, her Grandfather was a Professor of English in Augsburg, Bavaria. But of course it was the male side of the family who had been educated, but there were problems because mother's grandfather was German. So while I had realised that my mother did have problems during the First World War they were never spoken of, which I have regretted ever since, I really don't know a lot of the things I should have known. But being born, brought up in Aberdeen, going to school in Aberdeen, no other university featured at all, except Aberdeen. It was just never thought of. And in fact of my generation I really didn't know anyone who went to one of the other Scottish universities.
JC Not even St. Andrews, or somewhere as near as that?
MH Not even, no, our horizons were around Aberdeen and the North-East.
JC Did you know much about the University before you started? I mean had you spoken to anyone about it?
MH Not a lot. My mother ..
JC Teachers at school?
MH School, yes. I went to the Central School, you see which was very… everybody there was very educational, we were all aiming in that direction. I was in the top form. Jock Robertson who was headmaster then was a very influential chap. Because I remember my father going to see him and saying did he think was I University material. And Oh yes! And in fact I got my Highers and got all that was required at the end of my 5th year. So went on from the 5th year to University.
JC So you would have been quite young.
MH So, no I was then 17. I had my eighteenth birthday soon after, because I had wasted a year at the Intermediate School having been ill at the time and my parents felt that they didn't want to be feeling that I was going to be pushed before it was wise to do so. This was really partly why my father went down to see John Robertson.
JC To see if you could go up after 5th year?
HM Yes, he said that providing that I got all my necessary qualifications, which I did, I got my Maths and all the various subjects which would be required. Very different nowadays of course.
JC Was finance an issue, I mean, about going to university?
MH It had to be considered, yes. I applied for a Watt Bursary, oh, . that was at school I got the Watt Bursary. What was the grant I got? The Carnegie Grant at Aberdeen, so that paid my fees. I think it was £9.00 every year, which I got from the Carnegie Grant, which was of course was marvellous. £9.00 really counted in those days.
JC The bursary you got would have been what about £20?
MH When I was at school? Yes. And of course this was always dependant on doing well enough all the way through. I had to sit a separate examination at the Central School to get this bursary. I think there were ten. The first one, the Watt Bursary.
JC Did you get a bursary for University?
MH I didn't sit the Bursary Comp at all. Going out of the 5th year I think they felt, you know.
JC You didn't really have a chance.
MH Wasn't really going to be much chance, but anyway I got all the Highers I needed. I got my Maths and I don't know why and how I managed to get Maths, because I hadn't done any Calculus you see! But anyhow I got my Maths, I got English. I had the three Highers, and I took Art. This was another thing. It was the first year that Art was included in one of the University admission Highers groups. They introduced a written art paper for the first time. So this was all really rather experimental but I got the first of the A Level written papers in Art. So everything else they were quite happy about.
JC So you arrive up at University.
MH So I arrived up at University ..
JC Not knowing a lot about it ..
MH Not knowing a lot about it at all.
JC Were you given much guidance in which subjects you should choose?
MH Not a lot, no, but I don't know, I have been an only child and I think I have always been encouraged to make my decisions, not to make snap decisions, you know, to consider well and make sure I was making the correct decisions. Providing that my parents felt that I had thought about it well, they were happy to go along with my decisions really.
JC Did you have an Adviser of Studies or a Regent or anyone who could guide you as to what to what was required?
MH No. We had a women's adviser, a Mrs. Campbell, but she was more on the welfare side, I had quite a bit to do with her because she also taught Physical Education and I took my certificate in Physical Education while I was doing my MA as well. I had to go down to the "drain". Is there still a "drain"? for the anatomy people?
JC Still there I think.
MH Had to go down to the gym once a week and go through all the various exercises to keep myself fit.
JC And this was a certificate with a view to teaching it?
MH Yes, it was. So I still have my certificate of Physical Education!
JC Apart from Mrs. Campbell nobody advised you then?
MH We didn't have a women's adviser at all. I think this would have been one of her official capacities as well. Yes. I found in those days that the professors were all very approachable really.
JC You had small classes I suspect?
MH Yes, and for our Maths, the Prof. was really taking the Maths class, we had lecturers who took tutorials, which were small groups.
JC Who was the Professor of Maths?
MH Prof. Wright.
JC It was Wright. He hadn't gone away to the war?
MH No, but talking about Professor Wright .. I am side-tracking now, but during the time when I was in the Civil Service, before I had been evacuating children and billeting workmen in wartime, I went down to London on a training course and we were sleeping in the bunks under Whitehall, you know, Churchill's Bunker, under Downing Street, we were sleeping down there but we would be allowed to go to the Air Ministry canteen which was on the roof of the Air Ministry, so I went up there on my first morning for breakfast and who should I meet - Prof. Wright, on the roof. Yes.
JC Did he recognise you?
MH Yes, which was lovely, a familiar face. So we spoke again then and also he did come down to talk in Leith to an Aberdeen Graduates Association so I did get to meet him again more recently, but where I have got to … approachable professors and any one…
JC He was one of them?
MH Yes, he was one of them.
JC Interesting …
MH Yes he was very interested because I hadn't done any calculus at school so it meant there was a very big jump and my father had thought it would be perhaps better if somebody could give me a little bit of, you know, coaching on this and Prof. Wright suggested one of the older students. So Margaret Rhodes who was a brilliant mathematician at school too, a few years in front of me, she came down and gave me a little help at home and filled in some of the gaps for me. So I took Maths in my first year and Latin and French. Now Latin was… I had my Latin in my Highers which we had to have. I had a very, very good memory in those days (I wish I still had!)
JC You did it all my memorisation!
MH But Latin at school was very, very largely remembering Latin proverbs, which are still all there and come at appropriate moments, when I think of yes, Mr. Bowie, and I got by a lot on my memory ability, but committed an unforgivable mistake of course when I recognised the first sentence and translated the wrong piece of Latin! So I missed out on my Latin to begin with. I went and had some tuition from one of my former Latin teachers from the Central School, so got brushed up on things and did get through on the re-sit. And French I didn't get, so I had quite a bit of catching up to do in my next two years, because I was quite determined that I had got to have a Summer graduation, I didn't want to be tagging along later. So in my next year I took Moral Philosophy, Economics, Psychology , repeated …
JC French?
MH No, because I had decided to I wasn't going to . Yes I think I abandoned French in the end. I liked my Economic History tremendously ..
JC Henry Hamilton?
MH Henry Hamilton. It was very inspired. I was very inspired by him. I spent a lot of time talking with him. I had met him …My parents were Fabian Society members and I had met him at some of our gatherings and I had a lot of talks with him, because I had realised by then that this was the path I wanted to follow. I was very, very taken by Owenism and Robert Owen you see, and pursuing the line of making working days better for the people who were doing the work.
JC You were like the sort of young servicemen. You were contemporaries. You were thinking of the post-war world.
MH I was thinking of the Post-War world yes, very much so then, and my family had been very politically inclined always, so I had been brought up in ..
JC In that sort of background.
MH That sort of background where I had attended a lot of the Fabian Society meetings with them and came away inspired by the various people who had been talking.
JC So did you play a political role at all at university. Did you join the Labour Society or go on rallies?
MH I must have had a connection because I remember, because I was one of the people to meet Sir Stafford Cripps when he came along… Now that was probably in my capacity as an SRC representative.
JC So you joined the SRC?
MH Yes, I was first year women's Arts representative.
JC Did you have just one year as an SRC official?
MH Yes, one year as I realised I had a lot of catching up to do.
JC That was one of the reasons you had problems in first year!
MH It was, oh yes, because I was very involved with all the extra mural things. I realised where my interests were lying, because at school all our studies were very well documented. The Central School was very academically inclined, and I found getting into University there were absolutely new horizons opening, wonderful things to study, which ..
JC So you felt you had reign back a bit ….
MH I had to reign back and get on with the studying and having attended some of Rex Knight's lectures, when he had lectured to our society which my parents had been to, I felt that I must take Psychology because his lectures I found so inspiring and went on to do advanced Psychology where both and he and his wife were involved and it was only a very small class.
JC Was it very experimentally based?
MH We did quite a lot of experiments. I was very, very keen on experimenting on square pegs and round holes! We did a lot of this by getting all the students to say the work which they expected they would do when they graduated and was this the work which they felt they would like to do or were they just doing it because they were academically qualified to do it? I used to pursue this sort of ad nausium I would think.
JC What was the outcome of your investigations?
MH Oh, the people who were doing what they wanted to do, or were happy doing what they wanted to do, they succeeded in that, regardless of financial benefits. They were happier persons and they were more fulfilled in what they were doing.
JC Your own career choice was relatively unusual, wasn't it, as everybody tended to go for the teaching?
MH Yes, the teaching and in fact my parents had quite decided that I would teach and I would teach in a country school, they would retire and buy a cottage in the country ..
JC I see and that you would support them in their old-age?
MH And I would support them in their old-age. So I had quite a battle in my final year when I said that I didn't want to go to teacher training college ..
JC You were not doing the con-current degree, even then.
MH Not even then. We had to do an extra year. I really didn't want to teach. I did want to do welfare work if at all possible to do this and I remember having long talks with both Rex Knight and Henry Hamilton then and saying, you know, that neither of my parents are happy about me doing this, that I was feeling guilty about doing this, because I didn't know what success I might achieve. It was going to mean working away from home, whereas all their future had been planned around me being at home. Prof. Hamilton was very keen for me to be doing the work which obviously I was very enthusiastic about. Rex Knight also felt I would be doing work which I would be very much happier about. That would reflect on my parents as well as me.
JC How did you hear about the Civil Service? I mean was there a Careers Advisory Service ?
MH They had a notice in the Quad. I can see it now. Going through the main gates on the right hand side, where our Sacrist's Office was, there was a notice, in the glass fronted notice-board, applying for people who expected to graduate in the Summer to consider employment as temporary assistant principals in the Civil Service and with opportunities to work in the Ministry of Health and various . .. and of course I talked with Henry Hamilton and Rex Knight again about this and they said go for it. So I went to London for an interview and actually among the people who went I alone came back with a job, providing I graduated in the June, and a lot of them went to the Foreign Office, you know to Bletchley, and I think I was the only one who went to a separate ministry where I more or less said the sort of work I wanted to do. So I felt very pleased about that and it was of course the great fillip, then. I had to graduate. So I had to make sure that I did get everything, including the Advanced Psychology and I think they had a look at my thesis in the end as well.
JC That was a very good step from your point of view.
MH It really was and of course I was able in a way to bring it into teaching..
JC Later on when you reverted to teaching for family reasons.
MH Yes. I was happy teaching. I mean I could have made it my career, but I was very, very happy in work, when I first left university. And of course all my work with the SRC had meant that I was meeting up with a lot of other people other than just my school friends.
JC But you must have been also relatively rather unusual for your group of people that you knew at least one or two or your lecturers socially. As I don't think that's true of any one else.
MH I don't think so. I really don't think so. It was a big help. The Fabian Society then was very much, although my father was a working man, it very much consisted of the local intelligencia, you know, people who were interested in this sort of development too.
JC Because most of these classroom relationships at the University were very formal, I understand?
MH Yes, to a large extent. I think the approaches had to be brought from the students.
JC So if you made a bit of an effort…
MH Yes, yes, and I think this helped. I felt it is always better to know the person you are studying with as a person, rather than just ….
JC A figure on the platform ..
MH A figure on the platform.
JC Did you go to any of their homes, any of your teachers' homes?
MH Not at all, no. Oh I did go to the French Prof… Professor Rowe in those days, down in Old Aberdeen and said that I would have to eventually give up the French. He did agree with me. Yes. Every time I had to write anything in free French I always wrote about Autumn!! My horizons were perhaps a little limited!
JC You knew the words for Autumn?
MH Oh yes, oh yes! But I enjoyed university life because I did feel that I had a good social life too..
JC In spite of the lack of funds?
MH In spite of the lack of that too and oh yes and I ran for the University too. I had always been athletic and very keen on running and I remember fire-watching at King's you see and some of the young men were out running with the OTC physical training instructor and I thought oh gosh I still have my running shoes from school and apart from having to run quickly to come back from the tennis courts because I had to be in by half-past nine or something, I hadn't been doing any running for a long time. So I took my tennis shoes, my running shoes, down fire-watching ..
JC And went running with the men in the morning.
MH I went running. No, in the evening, when I was fire-watching. Because I was still near enough you see to know when an air-raid siren went.
JC And run back inside.
MH Yes. I had been running well enough to get some training from him and then ran in 200's and 440's.
JC Did this take you round Scotland competing against other universities?
MH No, they.. we were competing with the St. Andrews people and they came up and that it was it. But I was always very athletically inclined at tennis and running.
JC So sport and the SRC for one year.
MH Sport and SRC.
JC What else outside the classroom?
MH Quite a lot of socialising. I did go Fabian Society meetings in the end myself on Saturday nights as well as the student hops. I used to do that. I got quite involved in .. while I didn't do any of the grad shows, I was always very involved in the collecting for charities. Yes.
JC What did you do in the vacations round about Aberdeen?
MH I used to get a job. Again, this one of the things that interested me in the Civil Service. When I left school I thought I must find something to do, because I have school clothes and I have Sunday clothes but I might need something else. I had nothing much in between and I thought I might need something else. I have got to try and earn some money myself you see, so I signed on with Assistance Board, the Employment Exchange down near the harbour. I remember my mother was quite appalled when I said I have been down, I have signed on. She said "No one is going to employ you. You have no experience at all". I said "Well I have taken a step anyhow so I will see what comes of it". She said "What do you think you might earn?" I said "I would be very happy with £1, but I would take a little less". I went to have an interview and straight away was offered a job at the Unemployment Assistance Board at Regent Quay!
JC So they employed you!
MH So they employed me and I got nearly 30 shillings a week because I could do a little bit of overtime. They were writing the new order books for people who were getting unemployment assistance and I realised that this was very interesting work, not just the writing of the book, but the whole how and why. Because I remember I was given a lot of notes .. because I was interested in finding out what the books were for and not just writing names on them you see, but that these were people who had proved real need and that this money was there to help them with their needs.
JC Did you go back to them every holidays. Did they employ you again?
MH No. I only went .. This was only a one off whilst these new books were being issued, you see, and not only did it acquaint me with another side of Aberdeen and the people who were requiring this assistance, but also I was writing all the addresses on the new books and anywhere .. I had a very good knowledge of Aberdeen because my father knew everywhere in Aberdeen, and anytime I didn't know, I thought that's a street I haven't heard of and made a mental note and say to my father "Do you know where so and so is? I have never heard of it before" and I think at that time I could almost have said I knew where every street, road and place and avenue in Aberdeen was. So this also encouraged my interest in the help for the needy and how necessary this was. So it was this sort of spiel I gave them when I went to my interview in London, you see, and of course the new health scheme, the new insurance scheme was such a wonderful thing, which of course I had studied in my last year with Henry Hamilton and it was all just before this came in.
JC So what jobs did you take in subsequent university vacations?
MH I worked in a bread shop. I lived in Belmont Road, which was beside the cattle market in Kittybrewster railway station, you know, and my father happened to know the person who owned our local bakery shop because my father had made a little engine for him, a miniature, which would drive some equipment for waterfalls in his garden. Apparently he had been saying something to my father how difficult it was getting somebody in to sell the rolls in the morning now. My father said "Oh I am sure my daughter would do it". Getting up in the morning wasn't a problem so I went and sold the rolls in the morning.
JC What time did you have to be there?
MH Well the shop opened and ready for selling the rolls at 6 am. and then continued selling rolls and whatever else.
JC And did you do this each vacation?
MH I did that for one vacation and then I went to the Coal Board and was doing some fuel rationing for fuel people. So I always earned some money during the holidays.
JC And you lived at home?
MH Lived at home. I was lucky in most respects except I was subject to all the necessary parental disciplines! And being an only child it was, in those days, very strict really.
JC Did you go home for lunch, or did you get that at the University?
MH No I went home for lunch. Of course my father went home for lunch too.
JC So people did it in those days. Was it the main meal?
MH Yes.
JC So you went home, and sat down with your parents for a proper knives and forks meal.
MH Yes and then straight back for a 2.00pm. lecture, you see, if I had an early afternoon. I frequently had. It was a discipline.
JC And you walked did you?
MH Oh Yes. I walked up and down Bedford Road , but what is the little road you turn off?
JC Towards the right ? Sunnybank?
MH No. It came out immediately opposite the gates at King's?
JC Meston Walk?
MH Yes, Meston Walk!
JC So down Bedford Road and turn right into Meston Walk?
MH Yes, and of course walked down Bedford Road in the morning after the houses had been bombed. I expect you have been told by some of my contemporaries about the two girls. And of course the other thing too which was a source of income to me was fire-watching. So if people were going to be going on holiday I was always to do an extra fire-watching duty, which was very good, because I learned to play monopoly when I was fire-watching. As well as following on my running career.
JC Were your parents able to keep you free at home, or were you able to give your mother something for your keep?
MH No.
JC So the small amount of money you earned, and got from scholarships ….
MH They kept me going. Yes. I bought what I would regard as gifts for my mother, you know, made sure perhaps that she had plenty of nice slippers, nighties,
things of this sort.
JC Things she wouldn't have bought for herself?
MH She wouldn't have bought. No. I never felt deprived at all. My father actually was a very clever man…. They should both have… My mother did go to the Central School. She should have been educated more than she had been. They had very stiff examinations at that time and she was of a very, well learned, family, but they fell on hard-times you see.
JC Like many did between the wars.
MH Like many did, yes. My father was a fully skilled engineer, who did agricultural engineering, and toured all around the North-East area.
JC Mending tractors and things?
MC Not tractors, but oil engines. In fact someone in Perth has been doing a history of the company my father worked for and had been given my address by some of the people from Allan Bros. who are still alive, so that I could provide him with some of the details.
JC Interesting. Have you kept any of your father's working books or anything?
MH I got, sadly my father married again, my mother died the year I married, she was only 61 so was really too young. My father married again and he did marry someone who had three children and although I was still involved with the family and the still came down to me, after my father's funeral I had to return quickly because my boys were young and a lot of the clearing out was done by my step-mother.
JC So things that you might have ….
MH My father had a wonderful logbook, which he treasured and I…
JC So we are just starting the second half of this tape I have turned over and I was just hearing about the family papers which alas Bunty wasn't able to retrieve for the benefit of the historians now working on her father's firm. Never mind. So, what else do you recall about your university times that we haven't put on the record?
MH I feel they were wonderful times of expansion. Mental expansion, physical expansion, just growing up. As an only child I hadn't led a … I wasn't kept in too sheltered a life, but I was meeting a lot of interesting people at the university. Of the students of course we always put the world right, we spent a lot of time doing this.
JC Have any of your contemporaries gone on to political careers or other careers that you have followed?
MH None in political careers. You see we lost a lot of the men unfortunately.
JC You mentioned some people went to Bletchley. Did you keep up with any of them?
MH Oh Yes. In fact I still do. I had hoped that one of the friends who went to Bletchley would have been here today. Kathleen Shirras. Kathleen went to Bletchley and she is now living in Glasgow and not doing very well. Her husband had been ill. But while Kathleen was in Bletchley she came up to Nottingham where I first went in the Civil Service and spent her weekends off with me and I went down to Bletchley and spent an occasional weekend off with Kathleen.
JC So were you student friends?
MH Yes, we were student friends. Kathleen has been at the Girls' High School but we were doing quite a few of the same lectures and we were very good friends all the way through university. In fact I made a lot of friends who are here today and a few sadly who have gone.
JC What about the bright mathematician who coached you, was she one of the Bletchley?
MH Yes, Oh no. Margaret Rhodes she was going on to teach and sadly died when she was very young. Yes it was very sad because she could have had a wonderful career. She might have continued teaching because she was very good at imparting her knowledge to … as you know so many mathematicians can get steeped in what they are doing and think that everyone should be at the same level and ready to move on. But she could meet me and fill the gaps adequately! Couldn't fill them now, but ….. But yes, Margaret Rhodes she was called. She had been Dux of our school, the Central School, and to Dux of mathematics was quite something in the Central School, because Jock our headmaster ..
JC He was a mathematician was he?
MH Yes he was a mathematician. He wrote Milne & Robertson's Algebra for Schools, which was our bible and when I first moved to Leeds I found that Professor Milne, who had collaborated with him in the writing of the book, lived at the bottom of the street where I lived and in fact my husband who had had a foot-balling accident was on crutches and slipped on the ice and it was Professor Milne who was then Professor of Mathematics at Leeds who came out to help him to his feet! So there was coincidence!
JC Anything else that we have not touched on about your university days that you would like to recall?
MH I shall think of all sorts afterwards!
JC Nevermind.
MH I think these reunions which we have now were started by Muriel Hamilton and myself. We chanced to meet up in Craigendarroch and didn't know one another at that time, hadn't met since out student days, but we shared a table with them after our evening meal for a coffee and my husband, Roy, was sitting next to the lady and I was sitting next to the husband of the partnership, when suddenly Muriel and I looked at each other and " I know you", she said "You are Bunty Taylor" and I said "Yes and you are Muriel Hamilton" and we then said that we had thought so often about trying to have a reunion with the people who graduated with us. I said " Look I will draft a letter" and she said "I will take it back" she was going home before me, " I will get my husband's secretary to do copies and we will get them out" And that was how it all started. And they have continued ever since.
JC Tell me about your actual graduation ceremony. I imagine it being wartime it was fairly austere?
MH Fairly austere. I don't remember an awful lot about it.
JC Did you hire a gown from Esslemonts?
MH Hired gowns from E & M's, oh yes. Of course I had a red toga which I wore during my student days. They required us to wear them for any of the SRC official gatherings, which I have got on in the big SRC photograph. There are two SRC photographs, I don't know if they would be of interest or not?
JC They would indeed.
MH I wore the red toga and wore it quite a lot and I liked it. It was a nice warm outer garment too. I was lent that by a neighbour who had also gone to university and had kept .. she had her own toga and had kept it and then I returned it to her family when I had finished with it. We all hired, as far as I know, we all hired graduation cap and gown and of course kept them to go and have our photographs taken.
JC Perhaps people who were going into teaching kept them to wear in the classroom?
MH They kept them, I should imagine so, and then all the family, and aunt and uncle came along and had a celebratory meal in the West End Café.
JC Splendid. The graduation ceremony was in the Mitchell Hall was it?
MH Yes, that was in the Mitchell Hall.
JC It was probably the only time you went to Marischal, except for physical education was it?
MH No, I went there for Psychology. The labs were there too so I was there for the two years. I went regularly to the gym which was down in the "drain".
JC That's what I was remembering, you said about the gym and the drain.
MH Yes, that's right. But all the other lectures were at King's. I love when I get the King's cards from the college, because it is a very special place. I can remember the first days going in there and seeing all these red togas.
JC So the majority of students wore togas then in your days?
MH A lot of us did, certainly at the beginning. I didn't wear mine so much over the years, but certainly in the first year it was nice. I will remember all sorts later!
JC Well thank you very much for your time now then. It has been very good.
Thank you.
End of Interview.
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