| Description | Interview with Miss Isabel Middleton, recorded on 19 December 2002 by Jennifer Carter.
Transcript of Interview :
JC So thank you for inviting me into your home. You were telling me, before we started the tape running, a little bit about your background and how you came to live here. Because it is fairly unusual, these days, to talk to people who have lived in one house almost since birth.
IM Yes, I gather that.
JC I gather you were born in England. Is that right?
IM I was born in England that is right. I have very Scottish parents, father from Keith and mother from Macduff and Banff. Then from England they moved up to Edinburgh because of mother's mother's failing health and I went to school there. Young's School in Edinburgh, a Morningside public school. I really wanted to go to James Gillespie's School because I like their hats better! They wore much nicer hats, but anyway father persuaded me that if I took this navy uniform with hat it would be useful and handy later on if I aspired to go to Burghmuir. So we didn't go to James Gillespie's, we went to Morningside Public School instead. Then after a few holidays in Aberdeen when father's health seemed to be better, he was a 1st World War casualty, it was decided to move up to Aberdeen and this we did. I went to the nearest school, just one garden removed from our own, Old Aberdeen Primary School.
JC That is what is now called Sinclair House.
IM That is Sinclair House beyond the games hall that's right and Old Aberdeen School it was. But it is Old Aberdeen House now I understand.
JM Oh, they have changed the name recently have they?
IM Housing the Archivist and the Analyst and various other things for the city. People like that. So it is local government offices. So I resumed my education there.
JC So you would have been what age when you began there?
IM Well, when I began at Old Aberdeen I was between 6 and 7 years old. Unfortunate thing was that we had only been here strangers in a strange town more or less, we had only been here less than 6 months when father died, landing my mother in quite a predicament, financially and otherwise.
JC Indeed, because there was very little Social Security or any support.
IM There was no outside help of that kind whatsoever.
JC Did she get a Widows Pension?
IM She did eventually and the Widows Pension, it was a long time ago, it was 10 shillings a week for herself and 5 shillings for the child and I was a 5 shilling a week child for many a day.
JC You were the only child in your family?
IM It makes me think when I hear of all these child poverty and these ails and things of the present day. But anyway mother quickly sized up the position and thought that if she could just somehow get from January to May/June she could take in Summer visitors. There was a lot of them in those days and then in the Autumn she would be a students landlady and take in students, which she did for many a year. So in fullness of time I progressed from Old Aberdeen School to the Central Secondary School in Belmont Street. I was very happy there. One worked very hard. One had to. You either got on or you got out there!
JC Where would you have got out to?
IM Well that was for you to sort out. There was not the soul-searching and wrangling over behavioural problems and learning difficulties and all this sort of thing. You did your work and you got on. I was all set to leave school at the age of 14 in those days, sit the Civil Service clerical examination and proceed from there. But the headmaster of the Central School, Mr. John Robertson, known as Jock, he had other ideas and just wouldn't hear of this. Mother was sent for and at the end of what I gather must have been quite a strain of an interview it was decided that I would compromise a little bit and maybe come back for the 4th year. But of course the camel's head was in at the door and it carried on from there. Then the quite impossible idea loomed up of university and that would have just been utterly out if it hadn't been for Mr. Robertson.
JC Would that have been at the end of your 5th year or half-way through when you began to think about university?
IM Yes, that is right. The end of 4th year going into 5th year and then of course you didn't have any years out or capers like that, you did a 6th year, which was really quite necessary for the German. It was pointed out, by the headmaster, you see that I would sit every available examination and competition for bursaries and scholarships and we would get money that way. Which we did, to everyone's great surprise. At least I was anyway.
JC Well that was very well done. I am not quite clear about this business of the 5th and 6th though. Did you take whatever the exams were? Were there Highers in those days?
IM Highers and Lowers.
JC So you took the Lowers in 5th and the Highers in 6th?
IM Oh no, you took the Highers in 5 with Lower German, because you started it later and Mathematics. Mr. Robertson was a mathematical genius! It was a bit of a worry always. Geometrical deduction and things, it had to hit me in the eye right away or I would have never seen through it this side of time. Never! But anyway these capers just had to stop and you got on with it and you sat Higher Maths. You were not educated without Higher Maths.
JC So you took some of these exams in 5th year and some in 6th?
IM Yes, I took most of them in 5th and in those days History and English were clumped in together. It was a group system. You had to get so many subjects or you didn't get your group pass. You didn't get your certificate at all. History was an indispensable part of English, which I though was a great pity. Still do. I had English, French, German and Latin, of course. And Maths, can't forget the maths. They were all Highers except German and that Higher was postponed until the 6th year and you had to work very hard to get yourself up to 6th year. Then the next hurdle on the horizon was the bursary competition.
JC Could you sit that in Languages? Or had it to be Latin ?
IM You could pick your 4 subjects, I remember, so I had English, French, German, Latin. I didn't do Maths.
JC It wasn't pure Classics, at least it was modern languages!
IM No. In a way at the Central the Latin was very well taught, but I don't know why or how there was no Greek offered. I used to sometimes think that was a pity I would have liked Greek! But later on I thought thank goodness I didn't have Greek, because to have lost out on German. A lovely subject and a wonderful literature, the musical background, the cultural background. To have lost that for Greek, no. Things did work out for the best.
JC That's great. Thinking of what led up to this big step of your mother being persuaded and you being persuaded to go to university, do you think it was because of where you lived and having students in the house as lodgers? I mean the idea was domesticated in a sense for you, which otherwise it might not have been.
IM Not to any great extent I wouldn't think. No I wouldn't think so.
JC Because you live practically under the tower of King's you know.
IM Yes, there was that great boon about when I was at university you didn't have bus fares or tram fares and of course you were living at home.
JC So that made it more accessible for you?
IM More accessible in many ways, that's right. But as you say, I have literally lived in the shadow of the crown of King's practically all my life and it was of great grief to me of recent years because I could look out from the upstairs window, as I so often did and you had this lovely of the crown. Gradually that was just whittled away with buildings. I wish they would stop. But I still see a bit of the crown and floodlit. The whole crown floodlit is really beautiful.
JC Sorry to have interrupted you there but I was rather interested in the way in which you have described your background and the feeling that you know, money was so very tight. It is interesting that you were able to aspire to university and I wondered whether, as I said, partially due to proximity. Sounds from what you say, that it was not that, but a rather ambitious teacher.
IM No, because if I hadn't been so reasonably good at school, the idea wouldn't have arisen.
JC Where did you stand in the bursary competition? Were you high in the order?
IM Quite high. In the top half I think I was if I remember rightly.
JC So you got something like £100 a year?
IM Oh no, that was one of the very first ones. The very top one was £100. No I think I had £40 and that was a huge sum of money. Huge sum of money! Then of course there was that wonderful institution, shall I call it, the Carnegie Trust.
JC They paid you fees?
IM They paid fees, they also paid out merit money.
JC Did they? I didn't know they did that. Based on your university performance?
IM You had to have a first class certificate or a second- class certificate in your class work and they paid out accordingly. They were most generous and it was wonderful. It really was.
JC So as a student you felt in a sense quite well off?
IM Much better off than I ever dreamed I would be or could be. Much better off.
JC Did you spend that money on yourself? Or did you give your mother money for food and lodging?
IM Mother got some, and again the necessities of life like clothing and shoes and winter coat and all the rest of it. Mother of course was strictly against debt of any kind. Of any kind. And of course she had very good hands and she knitted and sewed and things like that. So that's how we got along.
JC Was she pleased at you doing so well, getting bursaries and things. By that time she had accepted the idea.
IM Oh yes, she did. And also she acquired a new interest and liking for students and student life, you know.
JC How interesting, as a landlady, she was the looking after kind was she?
IM She was! That's right. Even now some number of years after mum passed away, her former students keep in touch.
JC Isn't that nice.
IM Very nice. That gave her great pleasure always.
JC What did she do? Give them breakfast and evening meal?
IM Lunch too! It was full board!
JC Living so near the university.
IM Exactly, you see, no snack bars at the Union and all the rest of it.
JC Did she do their washing for them or not?
IM She did. Clean their shoes.
JC Cleaned their shoes even! Goodness they must have been very well looked after students!
IM Yes, but I don't think she was unique in these respects as a landlady. I don't think so. It is just what was done.
JC Did you help out in the house with all the chores? How many students did she have at a time?
IM Well of course you see, we have got two bedrooms in this house and the upstairs is perfectly useable. We used it, she and I slept upstairs. We couldn't have more than four.
JC Four was your maximum.
IM Three was comfortable. Four if they were absolutely stuck.
JC And summer visitors as well? Or did she just concentrate on students?
IM The students were away in the summer you see, so she took summer visitors. She became quite well known that way too.
JC Did you become involved in the running of the household?
IM A little bit, yes, a little. But nothing was allowed to interfere with my studies. Absolutely nothing.
JC It is very interesting isn't it that, I think it is a thing very much of that generation, the emphasis on the studies.
IM I wouldn't say that I was unusual or unique in any way, anything but…. I was just thinking of a family in Cheyne Road and the lady was left in much the same position as mother only she had a son and she used to say to mother you see "what a pity you have got that lassie, had it been a laddie it would have been much easier for you!" The laddie in question in common with other, of course, qualified for scholarships and bursaries help at Gordons, which didn't exist elsewhere, and widows children were specially favoured.
JC So he was able to sail through Gordons?
IM So he got through Gordons, that's right. But anyway the lassie did not too badly after all. Maybe it was less easy, but she got there.
JC That's great. Sorry I interrupted. So you started at University in 1940, is that right?
IM In 1940.
JC So the war had been running a year?
IM The war had been running a year. When you think back, the Central School right in the middle of the town was evacuated to make room for a good part of Woodend Hospital. Now could you picture that at any time, peace time or war time, so peaceful! Right in the middle of Schoolhill, Belmont Street, the trains in Union Terrace and goodness knows what all! It was an amazing weekend of evacuation that. Everything had to be cleared out of school. In those days it didn't matter what day of the week it was practically, you went back on the 1st September.
JC This was of course your last year at school we are talking about.
IM My last year of school and it was the first year when free books were issued and it took me two journeys in the tram to get my 6th year books all home. All, including myself, received with great suspicion where did all this stuff come from! Who gave you that, who pays for this? And it was quite difficult to convince mother that this was perfectly legal! No criminal offence had been committed!
JC Free books! Where was the school evacuated to then?
IM Oh! We shared with the Grammar School!
JC Yes, I have heard this from somebody else. So you did ½ days on and ½ days off as it were.
IM That's right. It was an 8 - 12, or 8 - 1 of a morning and the other school was in from 2 - 6, or 1 - 5, whatever it was. And we worked it week about you see. If you were mornings one week, it was afternoons the next week. Mr. Robertson wasn't at all pleased with this and he got the use of an old mill in Leadside Road and there were some classes held there I remember. That was one afternoon anyway a week, but we were always grousing about the dilapidated state of the Central. We needed a new school. But we stopped grousing when we went into the Grammar School.
JC Because it was worse! So on the days when you weren't on school times, did you come home to work? Was that the deal? They gave you homework to do at home?
IM They certainly did! Of course, we were getting to the stage where they were encouraging us more to consult in libraries and do library work.
JC Did you have admission to the Univeristy Library.
IM No, not until you matriculated.
JC So you would have had to use the city's Central library?
IM Yes, mind you the Old Town House up here we had a super little library.
JC I had forgotten that that was once a library.
IM It was a lovely little library we still regret its passing. It was really very nice and of course very hand again.
JC Indeed. So your transition to University in a sense was smooth because you had already been working a bit like student in your last year at school.
IM A wee bit, yes. That was the whole point that was always drummed into us, you see, that this was the bridge between school and university. And it was very true. It was! As we found out later.
JC So you began in 1940.
IM In 1940, now the war broke out in 1939 in September and the first air-raid in Aberdeen was in the summer of 1940 and of course I never go upstairs without looking out the window and this particular day, I did exactly what I knew was wrong to do. I heard a funny whistling sound, quite shrill, which seemed to becoming nearer and nearer and so to investigate you opened the window! This was of course when the bombs fell in the grounds of King's College. Bashed up a window in the library and this sort of thing. And made craters in the sacred playing fields! The smoke and the debris that came up I really thought that King's had gone.
JC It was a near miss.
IM It was a near miss, absolutely. That was our first experience of shrapnel about the place and casualties.
JC This was when you were a student of course not when you were at school?
IM I hadn't started actually. Just before I began. An interesting attitude that started here, not just here, but it spread in the town too. The attitude towards that German pilot. Now it was thought that his bombs were aimed at and landed on King's grounds. He knew what he was doing, he saw what he was doing to avoid houses, schools and things like that. There was a fair amount sympathy for that lad. Well of course in next to no time the Torry battery was in action and the services in Aberdeen and up came the planes from, I think Dyce, and he was chased and he was brought down on what was to have been the wonderful, brand new skating rink at the Bridge of Dee. And that laddie was killed and there was a fair amount of sadness for him. That was a shame. It is interesting the attitude to people. So then in the fullness of time we got started in October at the University and when you had day-time air-raids you went down to subterranean places below Elphinstone Hall.
JC That was what was called the Compactus.
IM So that happened a few times, but far worse for the interrupted nights of sleep when you had them during the night.
JC And did you do fire-watch duties or any other wartime duties?
IM Yes. I forget when that started, but I would have been at least in my second year, if not my third, before the fire-watching compulsory duty came out and I was assigned to the botanic gardens, where you socialised and ate what ever you were going to eat, last thing at night and all the rest of it in one part of the building and then you had to cross these absolutely pitch-black grounds to reach sleeping quarters.
JC So what were you actually guarding in the botanic gardens ?
IM Difficult to say really! I think it was just in case of fires being started anywhere.
JC In like the Cruickshank Building or somewhere?
IM Exactly.
JC So what other effect did being a wartime student have? I mean, it must have affected your mother's business for example. Did it? No holiday visitors, or fewer. Fewer students?
IM That's right but again the holidays were curtailed. I remember the Medics protesting loudly and they didn't have the same long holidays. That was shortened and they had lectures and extra studies there.
JC In the summer. Particularly the Medics, as they wanted them to graduate quickly.
IM Yes and the science people too. They just wanted a faster throughput.
JC But that didn't affect you as an Arts student?
IM No, it didn't.
JC Did it affect you in the sense that a lot of the staff immediately vanished?
IM Yes.
JC Teachers you had been expecting to hear lecture were just not there?
IM Yes, some very good people.
JC So who in fact were you taught by?
IM Well Professor Rowe, "Daddy Rowe",was the Professor of French, who lived in the Dower House, was it, in Don Street and he was a dear soul. He was a military man too, in the sort of part-time sense and he had a charming French wife, Claire, and she took a close personal interest in the students. It was very nice.
JC Did you have official Regents?
IM Oh no.
JC Nobody sort of allocated to look after you?
IM No, that system is quite new since my day. Much later than my time. In German it was just a senior lecturership in those days and it was the wonderful Dr. Witte.
JC The wonderful Bill Witte. He became a great friend of mine later on.
IM An absolutely wonderful man.
JC A tremendous teacher.
IM And he was married to Edith Witte, Edith Melvin, and she was the eldest sister in quite a remarkable family. I think Turriff based originally. But three sisters, all did extremely well in Modern Languages and I know for a fact, two of them, including Edith, were absolutely born teachers. I would say that really she was a girl's inspiration to become a teacher. Some of the lessons that she taught at school, I had her at school too, I can remember them still yet so vividly. After all these years. She was absolutely wonderful. Now it wasn't really so wonderful when in our 4th year at school, she, Edith, and Bill Witte did a dreadful thing. They ran away one Tuesday afternoon when it was our games afternoon at school, and they were married!
JC Really! Just like that. In a Registry Office?
IM A Registry Office. I think in Perth, or somewhere. It wasn't Aberdeen anyway. Well that was absolutely scandalous! And of course you couldn't have married women on the staff.
JC She had to stop teaching
IM She was away by Friday!
JC Goodness. I never knew that.
IM That was a heartbreak! Who is this Bill Witte who has upset everything! But we caught up with her again, or she caught up with us, later on at the University, when she came in to help him with the lectures.
JC Because somebody or other was away at war?
IM Oh yes. They were cleared out very, very, quickly. Professor Bickersteth was the man in English and Ralph Walker, No. 1 High Street, was the senior lecturer. Then in the second year, we were extremely fortunate to get Rex Knight for Psychology.
JC First Psychology in second year?
IM That's right. There were two main subjects you were specializing in, but you had to have two outside subjects. So this was Psych and English of course. But his wife Margaret did the more practical side of things.
JC Did you enjoy the Psychology?
IM Very much!
JC He was, I gather, a charismatic teacher.
IM Oh very, very. An excellent lecturer. He was a remarkable man. Choosing to go into Psychology threw up another crisis in my life. You had to get yourself to Marischal for part of the time and to training college, because it was combined with the Teachers Training School there. This just couldn't be done between one and two o'clock. You couldn't come out early from a lecture or anything like that. So early on I had to start saving for my bicycle and I just managed it and no more, to get my bike, which took me to Marischal. Even worse was getting across to St. Andrews Street, you know to old training college there. Anyway we managed and my bike gave me many, many days and weeks of pleasure. And it went with me to Stirling, it went with me to Fraserburgh, where it became nicknamed "Pegasus"! The winged horse! So we got safely through that and then it was French and German just all the time.
JC And of course being war-time you couldn't do any period of time abroad with your modern languages.
IM Oh no. And trying to get German books was extremely difficult.
JC For language students the inability to go and study in either France or Germany, was that in some way reflected in the curriculum or did you get a lot more emphasis on the spoken language in the course, or how did they kind of make up for the lack of time abroad?
IM Well I always remember Dr.Yeats in German, saying that of course we wouldn't wish any dilution or lowering of standards. And it was quite heavy going at times, it really was.
JC So you had of course at least one native speaker in Bill Witte. What about French, did you have native speakers there?
IM You had Free French people coming through. Well they were escapees, really, from whatever they were doing.
JC But at any rate they brought people in who spoke French as their native language.
IM And of course for French Claire Rowe was a native speaker. So she was there and that was a compulsory tutorial every week, so that was that side of it.
JC And was the student body much affected by the war, in the sense that were there a lot more women than men?
IM Oh yes, and particularly in the Arts Faculty.
JC The Arts Faculty must have been pretty small.
IM It was small and as regards the male population, it was just decimated.
JC Was that progressive during the course of the war, i.e. did you start off with a few chaps and then there were none? Or did people start coming back into the classes before the war ended? No?
IM I don't know about that as I was away by then.
JC You probably had the odd conscientious objector did you?
IM We had. Very few. Very, very few. One of the notably ones being the Reverend Willie Still.
JC Really! Who subsequently had the charge in Union Street.
IM Yes, that's right. He and a few of his cronies came in as, what we would now- a -days call mature students. They were in Divinity of some form or other. No there was a great clearance out of men called up at the end of our 2nd year.
JC So up till then were the numbers more or less even? Or were you predominantly women?
IM Predominantly women. Not just quite cleared out the way we were.
JC And the women just took over for the rest of the war?
IM Just about it, just about it. The men left in the place : well you have got health people, people who just didn't pass, didn't pass medically for the forces I mean to say, and conscientious objectors and then you had the people who were reserved and who knew kind of what they were going to do in Engineering or Medicine, Chemistry research and this sort of thing . Then it was, I think about my 3rd year, that compulsory fire watching came in. I was drafted to Botany, but in the holidays you had to do extra to make up for the people who were away. I was usually put down to Marischal College and it was absolutely nightmarish and we were down the notorious part called "the drain", Anatomy part! Anyway whatever it was it was riddled with rats. It was appalling and there were strict rules and regulations. No bags were left open, your blankets didn't dangle on the ground and all this sort of thing! And the wonderful person in charge down there was Professor Lockhart of Anatomy. Very, very, strict. Oh yes. Men stood to attention, didn't have their hands in their pockets, and they addressed him as "sir". Could you picture it nowadays! He came round in the morning. You didn't get paid of course until you were just about going off duty, and you were sat up in your underskirt and your curlers in and all the rest of it, and you had to sign for your 3 shillings and sixpence, or whatever it was. It was very, very strictly run.
JC You were paid for fire watching. It wasn't voluntary?
IM Oh no, it was compulsory. It was 3 shillings and sixpence, I think for the winter hours, would it have been two shillings and sixpence for the summer time, when it was shorter. You went on at 10. 00 pm. but in the winter you were on long before that. The one horrible experience I recall at Marischal was we had just arrived, we were just signing on, and the Marischal party was huge, 38 people there. Of course you were assigned to the Mitchell Tower, the North Tower and all the rest of it, and the roof of course on either side of the Quad. Well I had on my tin hat, I had a stirrup pump in my hand, and the fellow in front of me had a bucket of water and the way he was walking or holding his bucket of course it was dripping off my tin hat on to my nose. Well we got up on to the roof and we didn't realise how near the harbour we were and quite distinctly we saw the two German planes coming in and we saw the bombs dropping. There were casualties of which one heard very little really, it was Royal Naval personnel. There was some boat in the harbour. It wasn't a nice night. I was really frightened that night.
JC It must have been jolly frightening being up on the roof of Marischal in the winter anyway for fear of falling off!
IM But there was also, in Professor Lockhart's team there was one of his lecturers, the name has just gone. He was Polish and not a very good command of English, and of course as the men were so strictly held and checked by Lockhart, they used to play games with this poor man. He used to get all mixed up you see. It was always men up the Mitchell Tower and women up the North Tower and he would say "Quiet please, I speak, Quiet please, I speak. Ladies please up Mitchell Tower, gentlemen up North Tower". Which of course was all wrong and he really had a dreadful life this poor man.
JC Apart from the money that you got from fire-watching did you have any other paid source of income? Just University work and fire-watching. What about social life in the war? Was that very quiet?
IM It was very quiet compared to nowadays! The Union was quite active, as far as it could be and there was a weekly hop, but it cost 1 shilling, so you couldn't manage to go to the hop every week But there were various things. In the German department there was Weinachtsfeier and that aspect of things was kept going by the Wittes.
JC And what about the charity show, the charity week and the student show? Did they stop or did they go on?
IM I think they went on but I was removed from the scene temporarily at that time, in my second term I took very, severe appendicitis and it was really touch and go with peritonitis. I was lucky to come out alive actually. When I did come out I was as weak as water and the surgeon said no degree exams for you in June! Oh No! I couldn't do this and I couldn't do that. Lifting things and that, and that was a disappointment, because even then I was mad keen on country dancing. I used to go to country dancing at Marischal, I forget what afternoon, and occasionally I would go to a keep-fit class because that counted towards your gym attendance when you went to training college to train as a teacher.
JC You had to do that. I didn't know that!
IM And all that had to stop for me and removed me from the scene, but I know that my contemporaries, well Ethel and a lot of others, were in these charities shows and having great fun. So that was nice.
JC So you were a bit kind of taken away from that by the illness.
IM I was. Of course strict rationing and all the rest of it, when you heard advice from the authorities say now eat plenty of oranges. We had forgotten what an orange looked like.
JC It must have been very difficult for your mother managing the rations for visitors and so on?
IM Oh yes, exactly. And students have a good healthy appetite. But she seemed to be resourceful enough to… It worried her I know, the cooking, the catering side did worry her quite a bit. It wasn't what these laddies would have been getting at home. Although it wasn't like anything anyone was getting at home normally I am afraid, but there it was.
JC So you graduated in 1944 with your Honours degree. Which was a first class one?
IM No. I am afraid it wasn't. No it is ungracious to say that this carryon in my 2nd year upset things, but no I had a good 2. Professor Rowe was very annoyed about it. He said if I had tried a little harder, and concentrated a little more, you would have made it. Well I didn't. But there it was.
JC And you had already decided to go on to training college had you?
IM Yes. As a matter of fact we had to more or less to sign our souls away at some stage in the 3rd year, I think it was, 2nd or 3rd year. Because if you didn't say you were going in for teaching, and proceed to start training, then you were called up to the interpreting place at Bletchley, or you were into the Forces in some form or other.
JC So military service had come in for women had it?
IM Yes it had, but I intended to teach anyway. That was no great hardship for me. So we eventually got into training college.
JC And you successfully graduated and had a long career as a languages teacher.
IM It wasn't easy, financially, at training college, because the bursary comp has expired by that time, various things had.
JC Did Carnegie continue to support you?
IM Carnegie, no it stopped too.
JC How did you get through training college?
IM With difficulty.
JC On savings in effect?
IM On savings, yes. I think I began to do a little elementary tutoring, just a little to fit in with class times. But we were not really happy at St. Andrews Street, the training college, at all. You felt you were back at school. You were no longer being treated as an adult student and that sort of thing.
JC Common complaint of a training college I think!
IM I know. I was always in trouble for one thing and another.
JC Was Scotland in charge then or not?
IM No, it wasn't. It was Hardy. And Lawrence was the Principal Master of Method. There was a dear soul called "Phonetica", don't ask me what her name was. She was in charge of phonetics and elocution and language and diction. Then another dear soul who drove me mad was Logic, "Logic Annie". Now one of my main reasons for taking Psychology was I knew, even then, that I hadn't a philosophic turn of mind, so I didn't take Moral Phil. at the University, or Logic. I though I would get away with ½ a term of something, ½ a session at the training college. Which I did and I don't know. I used to say to my friend, "This is bad teaching here. We don't do well". You could argue any sort of nonsense you see. I thought. That was "Logic Annie". Then when it came to 3rd term and the end was in sight, freedom, glorious freedom, this is wonderful. Oh I have suddenly remembered something I should have mentioned…. We were going to, the language people, going to a course in St. Andrew University. Three week, course in German and Dr. Witte was behind that, as you may imagine. So when "Logic Annie" said "And where are you girls going for the holidays?" We said we were going to St. Andrews. "St. Andrews, that's where I live. Now you must come and see me". So we thought that was very kind of her. So right enough she more or less appeared at the University Hall of Residence and fixed a day and date when we would appear at her place for something or other in the evening. Well, of course, for growing girls, only milk was suitable for an evening beverage! And one of our number couldn't take milk you see, so talk about the old dodge of putting milk into the Aspidistra when "Logic Annie" wasn't there and all this sort of thing! But she meant well, poor soul. She couldn't help her subject I suppose. Now talking about this course at St. Andrews, I have omitted to say, that at the end of our 2nd year, Free French teachers who had escaped to this country and others and our own professors, the four universities. They decided to have a French school, lasting three weeks anyway, in St. Andrews and you were supposed to take this quite seriously. When you were in the hall you spoke only French. You were kept quite busy. The classes were all in French, your written work as well as oral work and they were very popular and useful. Some of these Free French people were wonderful teachers.
JC So that was another way in which made up for your lack of travel during the war.
IM Yes it did. So I was at the one, at the end of my 2nd and 3rd year and they were really very good. Of course it was great fun living in too. Of course it gave us all a lasting love for St. Andrews the place.
JC I am sure, it is a beautiful place isn't it.
IM It is beautiful that's right.
JC Then was it relatively easy or very difficult to get a teaching job when you finally graduated?
IM Very difficult. We came out in 1945, the end of the war, and the demobbing was in full swing.
JC People who had been in the services coming back to teach and so on?
IM Yes, and if they had been something glamorous like Squadron Leaders, or Flight Lieutenants and DFC's and bars and goodness knows what all, they just walked straight in. We thought. Anyway women had quite a difficult time and as a matter of fact I was the one nearest home. That was in Stirling. In the Borders, all round about there one or two were in it. Otherwise it was England. That was awkward, because the teaching qualifications were for Scotland and not for England and the English ones were for England and not for Scotland. I remember one our classicists, she did very well and she thought she would go to Cambridge if she got the chance and she did. But it meant that she had to teach in England to begin with. So that caused complications. An aspect of life that loomed very large with us in those days, as students, was the Chapel.
JC I was going to ask about religion and where you worshipped and so on.
IM I wouldn't have said that any of us were religious or pious or anything at all like that, but I don't know, and we turned up regularly for morning prayers, before 9 o'clock. There was a little something in the middle of the forenoon, musical item and all the rest of it, and it was very well attended, by the body students at King's, as a whole. Then they had great difficulty in holding the Chapel choir together, particularly for weddings, and there was an arrangement whereby.... now German always finished at 12 - 1 pm. and no earlier than 1pm.. There was this choir, well you couldn't say volunteers, auxiliaries, appointed auxiliaries, who attended Chapel Weddings at 1pm. You got yourself out of the Cromwell Tower and up into the loft of the Chapel and helped to swell the music there, in the days of Swainson.
JC Interesting. You say Chapel was not in a sense a strictly religious commitment, but was more part of University as it were.
IM Yes it was a part of life.
JC Was there a University Sunday service? Did you go to that or did you go to your own church?
IM Well, we considered ourselves on loan to the Chapel if we were doing anything in it, but it was well attended, not of course just by undergraduates but by others too and academic presence was quite different to what it is now.
JC The Principal came every Sunday did he?
IM Every Sunday and quite a few of the professors and the staff.
JC Who would that have been? Would it have been Tom Taylor?
IM It was before Tom Taylor. It was Hamilton Fyffe.
JC So he turned out every Sunday and had an Academic procession.
IM The Academic procession was quite something.
JC Did you wear togas? Or was that not done in wartime?
IM Yes. No. Very much so, it was done and it was a great boon.
JC They are nice and warm!
IM They are lovely and warm and comfy and they hid a multitude of sins underneath! Well you couldn't go into E & M's and buy a toga. A) you hadn't the money and B) wouldn't have got one anyway. They were handed down in the department. When students had finished, in Modern Languages, ahead of you, would hand them on. Which was very nice.
JC For free or for a small consideration?
IM I think it was for free. It was just one of these things you did. You knew you wouldn't be wearing it again. Oh no the Chapel meant a great deal. It really did. But, as I say, in my crowd, the ones I really knew best, you wouldn't have said for a minute, that they were extra pious or religious in that sense.
JC Was your mother religious? Were you already brought up with religion?
IM Yes definitely. That was one of the comforts in life for mother when we came up here. The minister of St. Machar's Cathedral was Melville Dunwoody and, I think, he had a brother who had similar wounds and injuries to father and of course when he heard that there were new people in the place he was down pronto .He was a delightful man and visited very, very frequently. Father liked him and mother too. Very often he would come latish in the evening, about 9 o'clock. Now the minister did not have a car in those days, he had a bicycle and he was also involved in various things like Toc H in those days and I think he had something to do with the lifeboat, all sorts of things. He would be trundling home on his bicycle, and he would just say "I will look in here". I remember mother distinctly saying sometimes when she showed him out "Oh that was nice, I think we will have a good night tonight".
JC That's good isn't it?
IM He was really excellent that way.
JC So you in a sense transferred from St. Machar's to the Chapel when you were a student?
IM You were on loan, but you came back to whatever to Sunday School teaching or whatever you were doing for the short time that you had available before you moved out altogether. Now mentioning Hamilton Fyffe as Principal, I should say, very gratefully too, that quite soon after my father died, I remember. You know Humanity Manse in College Bounds, it was the Humanity people who lived in there, and the first incumbent, whose name I remember was Soutar. I can't tell you a thing about the professor, but he had a most formidable lady and they had a brood of daughters, anyway she used to emerge from Humanity Manse and proceed down the Old Town like a ship in full sail and she landed on out doorstep. Mother nearly took a fit.
JC This was just when you were a kid of course?
IM Yes. I heard about it later. So, condolences and all the rest of it. She said who she was and what she was and she said "Now Mrs. Middleton, we have been hearing in the Old Town, one does speak and talk, (I'll say), now if we hear of any lecturer or anybody like that looking for accommodation, we will certainly get in touch with you". And they did. Mother never forgot. She thought that was wonderful. Then (I don't know if this should go on tape or not) but the Principal before Hamilton Fyffe was Adam Smith and they seemed to be nice people from what we heard. But there was a little problem in their lives. He was strictly temperance, TT, and he had a brother coming home from the India, I think it was, and he couldn't retire for the night without his night-cap. So this was a problem in Chanonry Lodge, so the Lady Adam Smith came down and had a word with mother and she said " We have a little problem Mrs. Middleton" and she wondered if mother could help. So anyway the long and short of it was mother said Yes, send him here and that's what happened. He was a delightful old gentleman.
JC He used to come and have a wee dram with your father?
IM Oh no! Father couldn't and didn't of course. Father was away by that time anyway, but well it gave him a happy, peaceful night, why not, mother said. He was a dear old soul and we had a little Scottie dog called Flossie, which he could never pronounce properly and he called her "Prossie". Those were the days when I was called Isa, before I became Isabel, so for this visitor I became Lisa! But mother got on fine with him and we had that, but as mother said to think that people like that would consider people like her to come and help in such a practical way.
JC So Old Aberdeen in those days was really just a village. You had your own shops and High Street and everything?
IM It was wonderful. The shops, I should think so and the High Street was wonderful with all those different shops. You were more or less self-contained.
JC So you felt very apart from Aberdeen itself then?
IM Yes. The little church, St. Mary's, now the Geography department. It had originally been a free church, then it came in with the Church of Scotland. It had some wonderful men in it. Stewart Lowden. And we had someone before that who became a moderator. I can visualize this tall figure with a top hat and then of course Stewart Lowden. That was a sad thing. He wasn't long married and he was serving in the Navy, Naval Chaplain I think, and of course he was captured, disappeared for about five years and that was when St. Machar's and St. Mary's combined. The other reason for that union was that St. Machar's Cathedral was impossible to black out, so on a smaller scale, they could move over to St. Mary's and operate from there.
JC St. Machar's services moved down there during the war. I didn't know that, that's interesting.
IM The Town House of course had the Free Masons on the top floor and the Library and then you had part of the Cleansing Department on the ground floor and a little police "holding cell" there. Oh no, things were very much alive and throbbing, which they are not now, I am afraid. We had a horse-trough of course right outside the Town House.
JC Quite a lot of horses still about then?
IM There were. Milk delivery was by horse. Oh yes.
JC You would have shopped on the High Street rather than down on the King Street roundabout?
IM Well as I grew up and could be sent safely for messages on my own it was up here, prior to that it was down the way. That big shop, it is a Blackwells bookshop now, was a Co-op, cooperative society. From there it moved down to SPAR.
JC So that was a big grocer's shop and presumably there was a butcher and a baker and so on?
IM Oh yes. We had Chalmers the butcher, an excellent butcher on High Street. We had one near the baker. We had Neil the fish-man.
JC All on the High Street? So it was a little village.
IM Yes. We had our own sweep and people like that.
JC And you living in St. Machar Place considered yourself very much part of the Old Aberdeen/High Street community as it were?
IM The post office in those days, well it was the post office and there wasn't one down here and there wasn't one at the Chemist.
JC Was the post office where it is now, in the High Street?
IM Yes and it has changed very, very little. Cramped, poky, little place! It was there for a long, long time. That is where mother trailed up and down to collect this Widow's pension.
JC And finally one other thing about being a student we haven't spoken at all about, and I usually try to see what people think. What did you think about the library in those days? Was it your home when you were a student?
IM Yes, very much so.
JC That is the old quad, King's Library.
IM King's Library, of yes. I can't come to terms with what they have done with the Library.
JC But you very much spent your time in the library, did you?
IM Yes, you were there most afternoons or whatever. Part of the afternoon you weren't at classes and the great figure was of course, Dr. Douglas Simpson! He was devoted to that place.
JC If you wanted a break during the day, did you get a cup of tea anywhere, or something?
IM One of the Mundy ladies served tea, first of all in the Cromwell Tower, then when the Pavilion opened, over there. Oh yes, we were quite well done by. But there was no snacks or lunch place.
JC You went home for lunch?
IM Yes I did.
JC Since your mother was cooking for people anyway.
IM So that was about it. But Douglas Simpson was wonderful. Ruled the place with a rod of iron! I was none the worse for that.
JC So you were speaking about the Library and Dr. Simpson.
IM Yes. Dr. Simpson. His lieutenant in the Library was a tall, rather gaunt figure, called Maggie Brown.
JC Yes, I have heard of her before.
IM She was a wonderful person too and could just account for every volume in that Library. She really could and one reason for her being so slim, I think, was she was constantly on her feet and on the move.
JC And running up and down those long ladders no doubt!
IM Exactly. Those ladders. But I was about to say Dr. Simpson knew exactly who we were and what stage we were at. Now in those days you did not ask for things, you just sort waited your time and they came to you! Early on at the beginning of term, in your final year, Dr. Simpson would say "I think you could do with your own desk now, your Honours desk." That was up in the Gallery and each desk had its window and all the rest of it and it was a great privilege to be up there and have your own desk.
JC Was that Arts people only who got that privilege, or did it go to scientists as well?
IM I can't tell you, because they wouldn't be in our Library, as they would be with Miss Best in Marischal, I suppose.
JC Of course. So there was space for every Honours student in Arts to have their own desk?
IM Talking of Dr. Simpson, I remember, it must have been between 2nd and 3rd year, he approached me and said in the holidays would I be prepared to go up and sort of be the sit-in librarian for the Medical School. Which by no means was an onerous job. I did that, and I remember it was £2.00 a week!
JC You were paid. Good.
IM Huge. £2.00 a week, but I enjoyed that and learned quite a lot from it, in the way of classification and just books generally. The odd medical facts and interesting people too. But again that was the kindness of Dr. Simpson.
JC Fine. Well is there anything that we haven't covered that you think we should?
IM Surely not! I have been talking too much!
JC No, it has been a great pleasure. Thank you very much for giving me so much of your time.
IM Well thank you for coming.
End of Interview.
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