| Description | Interview with Miss Winifred Black recorded on 30 January 1986 by Elizabeth Olsen.
Transcript of Interview :
O Have you always lived in this house Miss Black?
B Always. I always came back here no matter where I had gone to work.
O You say it was your family home?
B This was the family home.
O What did your father do may I ask?
B My father was a pharmacist
O In Aberdeen?
B Not half in Aberdeen believe me. You know Rosehill [Rosemount?] Place, well the shop on the corner is now a grocer's shop, that was my father's pharmacy and in those days they always gave post offices to chemists because they thought they were reliable people. The single window down into Westfield Road was the post office and the other two windows into Rosemount Place were by father's and the door was my father's too. I've got a very clear photograph, he was a very good photographer and I've got very clear photographs of all that. I've put them there so that we could look at them this afternoon if it helped you.
O That's interesting. Were you the only child in the family?
B No, my sister is three years younger than I am. Her name is Gertrude May Black. She is now practically totally blind and is in Ashley Lodge. The minister who has just gone as a matter of fact he has already been visiting her because we still belong to the same old kirk.
O Was she a graduate as well?
B Yes. She got third class honours in science and I got first class honours in French and German. In those days Aberdeen was the only university where you could do French and German to the same high degree and when I went down to teach in Dumfries I discovered that there were people there who would be as good as myself or probably better but their people didn't want to send them away to Aberdeen and Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews, none of them did French and German to the same degree.
O Which school did you go to?
B High School for Girls for twelve solid years, so was my sister.
O Who was the headmistress at that time?
B It was a headmaster to begin with, Mr McBain who lived in Hamilton Place followed by Miss Ward, followed by Miss Rose
O But she wouldn't have been headmistress till after, she would have been at university when you were a student?
B Yes it was when I came back to teach here she would have been in charge.
O Who taught you French at the High School?
B The person who taught me French, Miss Bisset, who ultimately became Mrs Dawson. She married a builder's son up in what was then the last house in Westburn Drive. All these streets have grown since then. Her name was Miss Bisset when she taught me and she said when you go into class four you'll take German and then you'll go right on to the university and you'll do honours French and German and I said yes Miss Bisset because if she said that to me I worshipped her so much, it was a case of heroine worship, I can't say hero worship as she was a women. I loved her with my whole sole, I still do although she's dead now. She really was great. If she'd said you'll put your head in the fire I would have done that without any hesitation and she became Mrs Dawson. Upstairs in what was my bedroom when I could climb stairs, I can still go but I don't risk it too much now, there is a brooch and her son sent it to me when she died.
O Was it a wise decision for you? Did you enjoy doing French and German?
B Yes I loved it.
O Were many of your contemporaries at the High School going on to university, was that the usual thing for a girl like you in those days?
B Quite a number yes.
O Was it hard for your family to support you doing that?
B If I hadn't taken a decent place in the bursary competition I wouldn't have gone because I would have thought that I was putting too much of a strain on my father because he wasn't really a wealthy man and he was a very generous and helpful man. This mighty table for example, that is not the original dining table of this room, it's up in the loft and it's a mahogany one with one drawer at the end. But there was a man down in Westburn Road who had fallen on evil days with regard to money and he owed my father quite a bit of money and he was going to be going abroad and my father said to him have you got anything you're not taking, anything you can't take and he said yes I once bought a very good dining room table, it's got a leaf at the side. When Christmas and things like that were coming off I used to invite my German classes here to sing and so on and so forth and I could seat ten of them counting me at this table.
O When you say you had a considerable bursary, may I ask how much that was?
B Now that's the kind of thing I can't remember and I'm not good at money, I'm always happy to give it away.
O You studied French and German and English and …?
B Well first year had to do ordinary French and then the next year you did second year French and usually different people teaching you. The third year you had third year French and then your fourth year that was the end and you sat your finals.
O Did you choose all the subjects you did at university or were there some that they said you must take?
B No you could choose. As far as I remember you had to have done Latin before you were allowed to move in, but I was very fond of Latin but it always clashed with something else so I couldn't take it at the university so I took English, I was very fond of English. I took English in my first year along with my ordinary French and German and next year I took Logic and then I took Zoology, I think that's right.
O Did you take Political Economy as well? It's in your record but it may not be right.
B I can't remember.
O Did you enjoy doing Zoology?
B Yes.
O Who was the lecturer? Was it Professor Arthur Thomson?
B Yes.
O Was he fun as a lecturer and interesting to listen to? He was said to be a good lecturer.
B He was. It was Prof Jack I had for English.
O Did you like him?
B Yes.
O Do you remember what any of them looked like?
B A little, especially recently since you've communicated with me. I'm a very bad sleeper so at night I try to picture the people, they help me to tell you what you want to know.
O I was looking at the list of books that you read for your first year English and I was amused that they're very similar to the ones that I read in 1958 or so in first year English. There were more added to them by my time but the same collection of poetry and so on was being used by the students at both dates. Did you have Miss Rose as a lecturer in English?
B I don't think so.
O Perhaps I think she took the advanced class. Professor Jack took first year and then Miss Rose took the advanced class I think. Who taught you French? Dr Schole or something?
B Schole.
O Schole is that how you say it?
B Yes that's it.
O Was he a nice man?
B Yes.
O What was his interest, do you remember? Did he teach you about books or the language or … It's written here that he was a phoneticist, are you interested in phonetics now or would that have been a small thing that finished a long time ago?
B I just can't remember.
O Was it a good department, the French department? Do you remember?
B I think so.
O You enjoyed the people teaching you?
B Yes. I said to the crowd in the cloakroom one day, look we're going to have to travel or either a) we won't get our degree and b) we won't get a job and they said well you go and speak about it to, and I forget who the person was that they told me to go and speak to, the person who was the head of the department.
O An Ennemund Cassatti or something, it's not a name I know? It's written down as Ennemund Cassatti was the head from 1921.
B Oh Cassatti yes.
O Were you the first to be allowed to go abroad for a time as a student before you sat your degree exam? When you sat your degree exam you had been abroad had you?
B Yes in 1920.
O Where did you go?
B The town of Tours in France.
O Did you like that?
B Yes.
O How long did you spend there, about?
B The greater part of the summer holidays.
O Did you have a time in Germany as well?
B You couldn't go to Germany to begin with, it was too near the war.
O Did you prefer French or German at that time?
B No preference, I liked them both.
O Who was in charge of the German department, a John Lees?
B Lees, yes.
O And then a Walter Bruford? Do you remember them?
B Yes I remember him.
O Do you remember anything special about them?
B He was a nice person but he didn't sort of strike one, I don't mean that with a whip
O He was just a pleasant, competent person?
B Yes.
O There were about forty people in first year French with you and ten of those went on to do an honours degree and I think three or four got first class honours and about three got third class honours and the others got seconds. Was it a very good year, your year, it seems a lot of firsts out of ten people? You must have all been very clever?
B I'm forgetting now. I remember the crowd coming here to our garden and there's a photograph there of the whole bunch of us. My mother said, sitting at the table here in this room, this is the dining room, she said do you know if I had failed my finals do you know whom I would have blamed and my mother said no and this person, Elsie Park was her name said her.
O Why?
B My mother thought that was terribly rude.
O So do I, why did she say that?
B She said every time when I was stuck for something to write I looked up and saw her writing.
O So you put her off did you?
B After she went out my mother said I didn't like that remark of Elsie Park's. I said well I could have said the same, that when I was stuck I could see her but I wouldn't have done it. Apart from that I enjoyed varsity very very much.
O When you were in Tours were you there as a teacher working or were you just visiting? Did you live with a family?
B No. Lots of people did take jobs but I didn't do that. I was a student. I was staying in a convent called the Convent des Soeurs de l'Adoration, (Convent of the Sisters of the Adoration), and my mother knew that my father I discussed religion downstairs in the kitchen where we ate as a family and when she heard that I was staying in a convent when I sent my address home she nearly had a fit because she thought I was going to turn Roman Catholic. Our next door neighbour, a lady called Mrs Wallace who came from the Midlands, not from the Midlands she came from the Borders near England, she said to my mother, look here and when I heard the story when I came home I said to my mum here Mrs Wallace had more faith in me than you had. Because Mrs Wallace said to my mother in 1919 she joined the west church of St Nicholas as a member and she's not going to change over just because she happens to be in the town of Tours for a few weeks.
O Did you have much contact with the nuns or was that just your boarding house?
B We came quite a lot in contact with them. One of the first things they did was to take us up to see the mother superior.
O Was it a college as well? Did you study there?
B It's difficult to say. Right opposite the convent there was a place called, I think it was called St Martins but I'm not sure about that, and three priests used to eat with us every day, they didn't sit beside us but they came across and actually that is the bit of France from which we in Scotland first got the reformation. I must say I was very happy there.
O Who did you speak French with?
B We had to speak French to the sisters and nuns because they didn't know English.
O So you would have been forced to improve your French from that point of view. When you were a student did you have friends in other faculties or were all your friends in your own crowd? Did the university mix is what I'm getting at, did you know medical students and science students and everyone or did you stay with a small group that were studying the same as you?
B I just can't remember.
O Were you a sports women?
B I didn't really have time to do any sports because I had certain jobs at home. For example I couldn't go to anything on a Friday night because Friday night was the night that I had to scrub my bedroom.
O Did you have much social life at the university? Were there clubs you belonged to? Did you belong to the student christian movement?
B I can't remember. I think most of the things that I enjoyed afterwards and worked in, youth things and so on was mostly after I left university. My university time was taken up with my studies.
O You didn't go to the hops? Flora Campbell remembers the hops with amusement on Saturday nights in Bridge Street in a dance hall somewhere?
B I can't remember.
O Perhaps you didn't like that?
B I became very fond of dancing later on. Especially country dancing. Last night I was thinking in my bed because I knew I was going to be asked about sport. I became later on very keen on tennis, swimming. My sister never learned to swim. I was really quite keen. I went down to the baths and learned to swim there so I became ultimately keen on swimming. When I was teaching in Banff and I knew if we were going to have a meeting that night that I wouldn't be free to swim at the end of the day because the meeting would be at 4'o clock so I used to get up in the morning and go down into the water in the morning. Later on I got very keen on tennis, swimming, badminton. We have a badminton table up in the loft that I got and that was at the tail end of the second world war that I got that table because I learned to play in Dumfries or Banff I forget which one and I wanted to be able to do it at home.
O When you were at university did the staff invite you to their homes at all?
B I remember being asked to somebody's home once. It must have been the logic person I think.
O He was said to be a very nice man, Professor Davidson who used to be the minister at Bourtie was your professor of logic? You remember him? The students were said to call him Bourtie because he had been a Church of Scotland minister. You don't remember that?
B No.
O But he's said to have been very kind to his students and to have taken a personal interest in them which was I think unusual at the time.
B Quite.
O Do you remember the Principal, George Adam Smith?
B Yes.
O Did he talk to the students or you just knew him as someone who's name you knew?
B Anytime that we came across him at any function he did talk to us.
O What sort of functions would that be?
B Things connected with our classes but I just can't remember.
O Did you belong to the university choir?
B No, but I'm always very interested in singing.
O But if you were in your own church you wouldn't have gone to the chapel, would you? You would have gone to church at St Nicholas, you wouldn't have gone to King's College Chapel
B I used to go to the Chapel sometimes.
O But perhaps not regularly, when there was something special on?
B Yes
O It's a beautiful building isn't it?
B Yes.
O You lived here at home when you were a student and you told me that sometimes you brought your friends home. Did you ever go to their digs, was that a common thing to do?
B It wasn't terribly common. I'm thinking just now of King's, there was a student who lodged in Esslemont Avenue but she wouldn't sing anything that wasn't holy. I just can't get that one right.
O Was there a student's union where you could have coffee at a break time?
B I suppose there was but I don't remember ever having any.
O Did you come home for your lunch in the middle of the day?
B Yes. I walked home.
O I've read about a women's students union in the Cromwell Tower at King's set aside for women, you don't remember that?
B That doesn't mean I didn't go, I just don't remember.
O Do you remember the Auld Toon Café, did you ever go to Jack's café for a break?
B No.
O No you don't remember that. You went up to university just at the end of the first world war. How did the war affect you as a child? Do you remember being depressed by it or how did it feel?
B No I was quite keen.
O Did you have many friends who had been called up as soldiers, any men who had been at the war?
B No certainly we didn't.
O Now when we read poetry about the first world war we think about how wasteful it was. They didn't get very far and so many men died. Did it feel like that at the time or did it feel that it was important to win? Do you remember thinking about it?
B It's very difficult, I really can't remember.
O You were very young at the time. Do you remember when the Armistice Day came?
B Yes.
O Where were you when you heard the war was over? Do you remember that?
B I must have been in a class.
O It would have been just one of the days you were working. Someone must have told the class about it. Was there a big celebration?
B I remember Armistice Day but I can't really remember very much about what we did or what happened. I always get the term right even yet I always speak about Armistice Day when it comes round.
O A lot of people would have come back to university from the war?
B Yes.
O Did any of them join your class to study French and German? Do you remember?
B There could have been.
O Perhaps they might have come the next year, 1918 year you might have been just ahead of them?
B One thing that I had forgotten was when I was at the training centre I took Spanish.
O At the training centre were you taught there or were you taught at the university? You were studying at the training centre, yes? What are you looking for?
B I'm looking for my prize. It's called the Soul of Spain by Davidson, CD he was always called CD.
O He was at the College of Education lecturing in Spanish? Is that right?
B I was at the college of education ?
O And he taught at the college or did you have to go to King's for the classes?
B There were certain classes that were taught at Marischal and I'm almost certain CD's one was one of them. That was all the distance you could go. I was looking for the prize. It's got my name written on it.
O There will be a bookplate in it is there. Yes, my goodness. Third prize in Spanish and given to you by Carolus Davidson the professor in 1923. The Latin for Charles was Carolus and that was how he signed it.
B That was the year I was at the training centre, 1923
O What other subjects did you take at the training centre? French and German and educational psychology things like that?
B I didn't do French and German.
O Teaching methods though?
B The TC is those days was down town in St Andrews Street.
O Yes that's where I went to. Did you enjoy being at TC?
B Yes.
O We didn't, we were very bored by it. We liked being out in the schools but the lectures we found very … but perhaps your more polite than me.
B Its true some of them weren't very good.
O Some of them were good but after the honours year I think it was an anti-climax we were all tired of studying. Did you have to go to schools to practice teaching?
B I suppose I did. Yes.
O You didn't go back to your own French teacher's class did you?
B She was married and away by that time.
O You were a personality, always. Did you take an active part in student life, in politics or … Did you see yourself wanting to be on the SRC or any of the committees?
B I just can't remember.
O Perhaps it didn't interest you, you'd been more interested in your own topics. Did you have many women lecturers at the university?
B I can't remember, I must have had.
O Maybe not many. There are about two names in the Arts Faculty, Miss Rose is one of them and the rest are almost all men.
B I never had Miss Rose.
O You didn't think you'd like a university career yourself, after all you had a brilliant degree.
B No I wanted to teach.
O You wanted to teach children?
B Yes and I wanted to teach senior pupils. It wasn't that I wasn't interested in small children but I didn't want to teach them.
O No, you wanted to teach the intelligent older children as you had been.
B You said what classes did you take, well I've spoken about that as far as I could.
O Yes and how large were they, well I think we've mention that bit too, about thirty people at the beginning.
B I would say yes but I can't be sure about that.
O And we talked about who taught you?
B Yes I remembered as many as I could.
O Do you remember anyone who was with you at the time?
B Flo Campbell was one and Peg Beaumont was another, we were in alphabetical order. Prof Jack always had the English … you see I remember the English places first most easily. He had the men in the front.
O How uncivilised of him.
B The men were down in the front and we sat behind. We were in alphabetical order, once he got in his few men …
O There were only a few men?
B There weren't so very many.
O I suppose they were mostly in the army?
B Yes. A brother of somebody that we knew very well, that would have been a brother of Miss Rose's came in ultimately. I don't think any of the women began with A. B, Peg Beaumont, her father was an ironmonger in King Street.
O Had she been at the High School with you as well?
B No.
O She must have been at the Academy then?
B Yes. Then Flo Campbell, she was the person whose father wrote for the Press & Journal, the Buchan Farmer. It was really her mother that wrote most of the stuff.
O She said her mother wrote but not that. They both wrote. The mother wrote plays for the radio and that sort of thing but her father did write his own stuff and I think perhaps enjoyed that more than farming, it was his real interest so they were maligning him I think.
B Flo was already chummy with somebody that we all thought she was going to marry and she got appointed down to Dumfries, so did I. I taught temporarily to complete my session in Gordon's College and then I got this job and when Flo realised that I was going down she wrote to me and said I would be very pleased to show you how to get there quickly and well. So I went down with Flo and very soon after she up to the north again. I think in the end she married her cousin.
O She did indeed and he's very well. They're still well and happy in Cumrie.
B What's her name now?
O Flora Garrie. She writes poetry, its called Bennygoak and other poems, she writes Scots poetry. Have you got it?
B I've got some stuff of hers.
O Did she write poetry as a young girl?
B Yes.
O What did you enjoy at university? Did you like the library?
B Everything.
O Yes, so did I. Did you use the library a lot? What could have been improved?
B I can't think of anything.
O Where were your classes, were they at King's or Marischal?
B Most of our classes, French and German and our finals were certainly at New King's and we had orals. I was told that I had got first class honours just in time to catch the post office, so I ran across the street to the post office in King Street, opposite New King's and rang my father's number which in those days was 1593. I rang my father and I said that's 1593, we were taught not to waste time and not to waste the other persons time so I said I've got first I'm coming home and banged down the thing.
O I bet he was delighted.
B My sister was playing tiddlywinks here at this table with my mother. She didn't really work very seriously, and when I came home she'd made up a song to welcome me at the door and it goes like this 'Miss Win B so dear to me got first class hons for lang and when her friends the good news heard her neck would really rang'.
O That's lovely isn't it?
B I sang that in my bed last night and I thought I must remember to say that tomorrow afternoon.
O What did your mother do? Did your mother work as a young woman?
B No. My mother worked in a draper's shop in Woodside then she trained as a dressmaker and she was a superb dressmaker, but never in public. Nowadays it's very common, I have a few very nice nurse friends and their husbands are working and so are they. My father did the earning and my mother looked after us and looked after the house.
O So, where did you come from, where did you live, well you lived at home and you liked student life and I said were there many women students and you said they were nearly all women, very few men.
B Yes that's right. I would say there were more women students because the men were trickling back gradually.
O Then I asked about societies and clubs and you said it didn't interest you very much and sport as well at that time.
B I don't think so I can't remember.
O Well there wasn't very much, it was much less common. Did you have to go abroad to study and you said yes and you went to Tours in France.
B Yes. I said to the crowd in the cloakroom one day we'll have to tell seriously, well you go to the person who was our lecturer in second year because it was coming on for our time in second year then and he said yes that's right you go to the town of Tours because that's where the purest French is spoken.
O Really, did he arrange it or did you arrange it?
B We had to arrange it. He told us there were three or four, not more than four, maybe only three men who had just come home from the war and he said they'll tell you the cheapest way to get there. He said don't try Dover Calais that's the dearest, it's the shortest therefore it's the dearest and the reason why it's the shortest from the time point of view. Because it was so quick, people who were travelling, not like us as students, but who were travelling just for fun would always go Dover-Calais, so we went Southampton-Le Havre.
O That would have taken a long time I should think? Were you sick?
B Yes and it was dearer.
O Was it, dearer after all?
B We bought postcards at some place there and they overcharged us and there were quite a few things like that and when we were booking our train fare down to Tours from Le Havre, my old schoolfriend Rosabelle Stables who was High School and lived in 240 Union Grove, Rosabelle and I were together and they told her that …
B It was all rather extraordinary, and yet it hasn't made me dislike the people. We visited all the castles on the Loire. They were especially cheap.
O You took your sister to France afterwards, and showed her where you had been and the castles of the Loire?
B Yes, because I had seen these places and she hadn't. When I got a proper job down in Dumfries, my mother knew that my father and I used to discuss religion and things downstairs in the kitchen. What happened on this occasion was that I knew that my mother's people were all seafaring and my mother was a modern traveller really. I can't remember a time when she was terribly fit but she was a modern traveller. So one time when we had been discussing this upstairs and I came down, I said to my father we've been discussing travelling now that I've got a job down in Dumfries. And my father said well - and he didn't use bad language usually - well you can take her to hell if you like so long as you bring her back. I said, now then Pop, you know perfectly well that she doesn't like excessive heat, and secondly you also know I'm sure that you don't get return tickets from that place that you have just mentioned. So I said, do you mind if we go to Switzerland? So we went to Switzerland and she loved it. And then, a year to two later, I took her to Rome because I was awfully keen on Rome myself. That's why I say my life was a very wide and pleasant one.
O So we were talking of the impact of the Great War on the university. Did you have any thoughts about that?
B The Great War?
O Did it change the university scene? Would the lecturers have gone to the war? Would you have known about that?
B Yes, that's true. I think it was a brother of Miss Rose's who came back into English when I was there. I can't be sure. But there were people who came back.
O I wonder if they liked university.
B I suppose that if we were enjoying university ourselves we just assumed that everyone else did.
O A pleasant change from the trenches anyway. How long were you at the Training College - one year or six months?
B A whole year.
O Then you were in Dumfries for a few years?
B Six years.
O Then where did you go after that?
B I came up to Banff after that.
O And were you there for a long time?
B Fifteen years as head of the department.
O Then you came back to Aberdeen?
B Back to the High School, but to tell the truth I got the job because of taking people abroad because Miss MacGregor who had been made the head of department did not always want to go abroad.
O So you were the active member of staff?
B Yes. I was quite pleased to … But I remember one time my sister and I were really going to London because it was Miss MacGregor's turn to take people abroad, but I had to do that, so we had to put off our holiday until the next year.
O Would your sister be able to tell me about being a science student at the university?
End of Interview
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