| Description | Interview with Wilma Sim recorded by Jennifer Carter on 27 June 2003.
Transcription :-
JC So very nice to meet you Mrs. Sim and I wonder if you could tell what drew you to Aberdeen University. Were you a local person or did you come from far?
WS Yes, I was a local person. I had always wanted to come to University. I was the first one in my family who had come and that is why I came.
JC What inspired you then, if you were the first of your family? You say you always wanted ..from quite young.
WS I always wanted to teach and my mother said to me if you are going to teach I think you should go to university, so that you can have a wider range of subjects and things. So that is why I came.
JC That was prescient of your mother wasn't it. I mean what put that notion, which is a perfectly correct one, into her head do you suppose?
WS There was a friend's son who was a lecturer in History and he had a talk to me and my mother was there at the same time and it was very good advice I found.
JC So informally through a family contact you got the sort of advice that presumably your school was not offering?
WS Yes, that is quite right.
JC Well I suppose otherwise if you were a first generation university entrant, who was determined to teach, you might well have thought, well go straight to the college.
WS Yes exactly.
JC How interesting. Where were you at school in fact? Which school was it?
WS Well I went to Ballater Primary School, Primary and Secondary up to the third year, and then to I had to travel to Banchory Academy for three years.
JC Well what was it like as a school then? It is very good nowadays.
WS It was a very good school, even then. I believe it is bursting at the seams at the moment, but I know that it is maintaining its very high standard.
JC Yes, I have heard that too. So school was Banchory and you lived at Ballater. That was a substantial amount of travelling, especially for a young child, isn't?
WS We had the train in those days. The train left at a quarter-past seven in the morning and we got home at five at night, but even worse were the people who lived in Braemar. They had to come by bus and they left at half-past six in the morning and home at six o'clock at night, then study afterwards. So life wasn't easy.
JC Indeed! You said you were the first of your generation to come to university, your family, I mean your contemporaries. Could I ask what your family circumstances were? What did your father do?
WS My father was a fish merchant. He had been a painter, he was a very quiet man, who taught himself to play the violin and the piano, but had never had any money and really had very little education. My mother had come from the Black Isle and she had been one of a family of seven, who had been asked to go on to further education but couldn't possibly because she was the second eldest of seven. So she always wanted the best education that, you know, that her children could have.
JC Of course that generation, people who were self-taught like your father, were more enthusiastic for education than people who had been through the system. And like your mother. Did you have siblings, brother and sisters, or not?
WS Yes. My older sister was really very clever, but all she aspired to do .. all she wanted to be was a shorthand typist, so left school at 13 and qualified there. My younger brother wasn't interested in education, but since coming out of the Air Force, he has become a lawyer in England, and my younger sister eventually became a teacher as well.
JC So for a family, which as you say, had not got a past history of higher education, you have done jolly well actually.
WS Yes!
JC Okay, there was not any serious choice, I imagine, about university. You had to come to Aberdeen because …..
WS Well financially it was nearest home and that was it.
JC And did you commute from home or did you ..?
WS No. I travelled home at the weekends and lived in digs.
JC So you were Monday to Friday digs? How did you find those?
WS Well I had a variety of digs. Usually I went where my sister was, because she was working as a shorthand typist in Aberdeen and so we had really to find digs that would cater for a lunch, which was really quite unusual, and also an evening meal as well as we couldn't really afford anything very much more.
JC It was cheaper to get an all in bargain like that was it, breakfast, lunch and high tea, rather than say getting a pie at the Union was it?
WS Exactly.
JC So how did one go about finding digs. Did you do it on a kind of grapevine or was there an official list in the University? Or did your sister take the initiative?
WS Well to begin with, in my first year, my sister was already working in Aberdeen with her friend, so I just joined into her digs. The second year, I can't quite remember what happened, but we had a very good landlady who looked after us and allowed me to stay some weekends, which was very nice because you missed quite a lot of the social life if you went home every weekend.
JC But that was a concession for which you had presumably to pay extra?
WS Yes, a little extra.
JC You went through about how many different digs? Do you remember?
WS Just about three or four. Three, I think, and then when I taught in Aberdeen I went to digs where there were so many teachers it was quite good in some ways and not so good in others.
JC Did landladies specialize in certain kinds of tenants, e.g. one would be a teachers' landlady and another would be student landlady. Would that be right?
WS Yes, I would say that would be quite right. Of course the students who came from further afield, like some of my friends from Stornoway, had to have digs where they could stay for the whole term and they had to have landladies who could accommodate them for doing their washing and things like that as there were not so many laundries you know in those days.
JC How did you manage your washing? Did you take it home?
WS Oh just took it home at the weekends!
JC And mum did it at the weekend and you came back with a bag of clean clothes!
WS Yes that's right. What would we have done without our mother.
JC Did she have a washing machine, just out of interest?
WS Yes. Not an automatic one but she did have a washing machine.
JC One like you lifted it from one tub to another?
WS Yes.
JC And did your sister remain in the same digs with you all the time you were a student? Or was it just first year to get you launched?
WS No, the second year we went into together. I think the third year we broke apart…, oh, by that time she was married! So that was the reason.
JC How much older than you was she?
WS Not quite three years.
JC So it was a smallish gap, but quite a significant one at that age.
WS I remember one day she was rather annoyed, because I was standing at the window watching for her coming home for lunch and there was some children playing and they said "Here's the student" and another one said "No it's not, it's the student's mither"! So she was not amused!
JC But that leads me to ask, did it in some ways feel as if you were being chaperoned or looked after by an older sibling? Or did you get on too well for that not to matter?
WS No we got on quite well. I used to be able to borrow some of her clothes because quite honestly I went to university with some people's cast-offs, you know, and if ever I was invited to the theatre or somewhere nice, she came and helped me there.
JC But there must have been tension over things like for example you went home and had to do work for the next day, where her day ended at 5.
WS Yes. Well I spent most evenings in the library.
JC So you didn't go home until you had finished your work.
SW No, well I went home, had tea and then either went back to King's or Marischal. That was wonderful in a way, because we all had a mass exodus at 8 o'clock and had half an hour for a coffee and had a wonderful chat and then went back and it was very disciplined. You knew you had this break so that was really good.
JC So that meant your sister had privacy in her room. Did you share a room?
WS Yes. The first one, we shared a room. The second one, I suppose we did share a room as well, we had twin beds.
JC So that would be significant that she had, being that little bit older, she had time to herself, then you came back at a predictable time. How liberal were the landladies about having guests in and so on?
WS Well it didn't really occur, because you know, all my friends were in digs and we had met at the library or we had met during the day and so we didn't really socialize at each others houses at all.
JC Did you have your own key or did you have to ring a bell when you came in?
WS No, we had our own keys.
JC And were there a number of students in the same digs?
WS No. Well in the first two digs there were just three of us in the first one and two in the second one. So it was just a widowed lady who took in people to have some extra cash.
JC Did you eat as family with her? Did you all sit down together?
WS No, she served it in our room.
JC You got a tray as it were. That was the arrangement. Interesting that she provided lunch as well. You know. Was that your main meal then and then and just tea in the evening?
WS Yes possibly it would have been the main meal.
JC A cooked breakfast or just porridge?
WS Yes, we had a cooked breakfast, if we wished it.
JC Interesting. Funny, looking back to those days and particularly how poor you were.
WS Yes. I could afford to go to Jack's, up in the Al' Toun café, and have a cup of coffee, which was 3d in the old money. Or I could have a cup of tea and a biscuit, which came to 3d, but I couldn't have a coffee and a biscuit because that was too expensive.
JC You were literally counting every penny?
WS Yes.
JC What were the main outgoings? You presumably had to pay your fees for a start or did you have a bursary?
WS No, the fees were paid by the county council, whoever it was, so I really just had to find my living expenses and my accommodation and the travelling from Ballater. Our digs .. I got three pounds a week and of that £2.50 went on digs, so you can see that I didn't have very much. But I always remember, I was taking a tram from King Street up to King's and I handed the conductor 50 pence, a ten shilling note in those days, and he said "Fit are you needin', a share in the Corporation?"! It was because it was, I suppose, a tuppeny fare.
JC Did you supplement your money, which came from your parents, I assume, by earning in the holidays and things?
WS Oh yes.
JC What jobs did you do?
WS I was a postie at Christmas time, and I worked in one of the hotels in Ballater in the summer, as a waitress and I got £2.50 a week there, but I sometimes made as much as £5.00 a week on tips. So I saved my tips and that sort of helped me with the next year.
JC Still it wasn't exactly a life of luxury, was it?
WS No, it wasn't.
JC But the enjoyment, from what you have said, the socialising wasn't too much restricted by the lack of cash?
WS No, everybody was, I think, more or less in the same boat. I remember I had a boyfriend who had a car and I really thought I was royalty! It didn't last too long, but it was lovely when it did!
JC Do you mean the relationship or the car?
WS The relationship!
JC Was there any feeling among… If the majority of students were like yourself, you know, scraping along, there were presumably others who were better off who could run a car or a motorbike or had affluent parents. Was there any kind of tension between you, or were you very unconscious of that?
WS I was very unconscious of that. We realised there were people who had money and people who didn't have money but it didn't seem to matter.
JC You were all students. Somebody mentioned, though he was of a slightly earlier generation than yours, that the real divide in university in his time was between the city people and the country people. Did you feel that at all?
WS Not really. No I didn't find that.
JC He felt very much, as a boy coming from your part of the world, that he was very much the country "loon", compared with the very smart young men from the Grammar and Robert Gordon's, but perhaps for a woman that mattered less.
WS Yes, for a woman it did matter less, I think. The boy, who had the car, lived in Aberdeen and his father had a shop, you know, a chemist shop, but that didn't matter, he was just in the class and that was it.
JC And within the University context, within the classes and so forth, was there any feeling of distinction between men and women, or were you all just students.
WS We were just discussing this at the language department. The Latin class, it was a tiered seating with numbers and there was also segregation of the sexes. You were allocated a seat. But my name was Willma, spelt with 2 L's and they had listed me as William! So I was among the men and there was another girl called Joanne Gordon and they thought she was John Gordon, so the two of us in first year and it was bad enough having to go into this Latin class with all the people there, but to have to sit amongst all these men! Otherwise we would have been marked absent, you know, when you are a Fresher it is quite a thing.
JC So you weren't moved after they discovered the mistake?
WS Well we did eventually get things sorted out. But it was quite dramatic at the time.
JC So in first year you did Latin and what else? Do you remember?
WS French, because we were always told to try and do the things that you had done at school, you know, continue them on. And you had to do a science subject. Now I had never done any science in my life and we had an adviser, who looked to see that we… but he didn't say anything. I had written down Biology. Now I had never done either Botany or Zoology and here I was landed with Biology, so needless to say I took two years to get my pass in Biology, but I wish now that I had done Geology, which is what most people did.
JC That was considered the soft science by most people. And then in second year?
WS In second year I did advanced Latin, what else did I do, Psychology and English. Then Political Economy and I don't remember my last subject.
JC Did you do Maths at any point.
WS No, because that was a science subject, you see.
JC And you avoided it if you could.
WS I couldn't do Maths!
JC It wasn't considered important for a would-be teacher in those days?
WS No, as long as you could do Arithmetic, but Geometry and Algebra were a closed book to me!
JC And given your ambition to teach, did you do this conjoint thing, where you took some courses for education right through the degree, or not?
WS No, they were not available at that time. You had to go and do your year at training college after you had finished.
JC So of all these subjects, you know, you did not get very close to any one department, but do your remember any particular teachers as being outstandingly good or bad or interesting?
WS Well, I suppose Prof. Noble, who was in Latin. He was a very human man. He was really nice.
JC He was the Noble who went on to King's College, London. Am I right?
WS I really don't know.
JC He became quite a big name..
WS Did he? A small, man. Peter Noble. Well he deserved to do well, because he was really so human about things. Then there was Prof. MacKinnon, he was …. We were just speaking of him an hour or so ago… In fact I came back here to do pre-sessional teaching, tutoring, teaching English as a foreign language to the overseas students in the late '80's and I happened to be having coffee, and he came over ..by this time he was back from Cambridge and he was retired up here, and he recognised me, and he came over and said "So nice to see you". I just thought it so wonderful.
JC It is amazing isn't it as you must have been just one person in a fairly big class.
WS Well I knew him through the Episcopal Association. And then there was Dr. Bednarowski and I suppose Prof. Rowe, he was in French.
JC How did you get on with him? He seems to have had more mixed receptions than the other people you have mentioned.
WS Well I wasn't …Well I quite liked him. He gave us our lectures in French, which were, of course, quite difficult for a first year at times.
JC He lectured in French to the first years? They certainly don't do that now!
WS No I can't think of anyone else really.
JC No notably bad teachers?
WS No, no.
JC And what were the relations between students and lecturers like? Were you ever, for example, invited to any of the lecturers homes on a social basis nor not?
WS Well, no, not lectures that I went to as a student. I actually did know a lecturer, who was quite a young lecturer, and who took me out to the Athenaeum. This was in my first year and I really thought … but not any of my teachers or tutors.
JC Was that the same chap who had advised you about coming up to university?
WS No, no, this was a different one.
JC Interesting. So does that more or less cover your academic career or is there anything else we have missed out on, I wonder? If so, moving into the other sphere, the things you did outside your studies. Now, you were obviously restricted in two ways, one that you went home for most weekends, and two that you were jolly short of money. So you described a good deal of socialising over the odd cup of tea and coffee, but what else did you do? Do you remember?
WS Well I used to sell the Gaudie on a Friday morning for 3 pence, just at King's there.
JC Were you on the editorial staff?
WS No it was just a voluntary thing, but it meant that you got to the Gaudie dinner, which was quite a thing! Now when I look back and see the group of us we were just quite a small group but it was just nice just to be in a different sort of social group.
JC You mentioned when we were talking beforehand that you were in the cadet corps, the OTC. What on earth drew you into that? Ah, you were paid! For nights and weekends and things!
WS Yes, we were paid! We were measured for this wonderful tartan skirt, individually, and a few of my friends were going and they said "Oh, come along". It was Saturday morning, I think, and I don't remember, but I think it was Wednesday afternoon, I went into the Scottish Country dance team that they had and we went to the various universities in Scotland and did various competitions, so that was a good social life.
JC Did you have to go to camp or were the women exempt?
WS Yes, we went to camp, down in the south of England somewhere and once to the Isle of Wight. So, I do remember that I looked terrible with the hat on! It just ruined my hair and never seemed to fit me and I always remember doing drill in a square and it was quite windy and my hat blew off and I stopped to pick it up! No I don't think I was ever meant to be a soldier.
JC And you are quite little. I am slightly surprised that they didn't rule you out on the grounds of height.
WS Well most of them were fairly small. I don't know if they were just glad to get anybody that came along!
JC Well I was wondering that. In the '50's being in the OTC was perhaps not a very fashionable thing to do, as most students were not at all pro organised, army type things at all. But the money was the lure.
WS Well I suppose thinking back now I think it must have been because why else would I subject myself to cleaning my uniform and having everything spick and span. I suppose I learned something but I really don't know what I did!
JC What else, Country Dancing, OTC, Gaudie?
WS I can't think of anything else. Studying in the library, you know at King's, and I remember the day that the old King died, and Dr. Douglas Simpson, who was always there, or there about, came along to each of our desks and he just stood and said "The King is dead". I will never forget that time.
JC And did you have a kind of special place in the library. I presume it was only Honours students who had allocated seats, is that right?
WS They usually went up into the gallery. We didn't have an allocated seat, but we tended to take the custom… but we had our togas as well.
JC Did you wear those regularly every day in the street?
WS Yes, I still have mine in the loft somewhere.
JC Well, well. So wearing your toga in the streets of Aberdeen, did this provoke comment or ..
WS Well you would only have used it in the vicinity of King's, because you wouldn't have used it at Marischal, as the Arts people never went down to Marischal and the medics were not allowed to wear a toga, you see. I don't know about the science people, but I think it was mostly the arts.
JC So when you left your digs in the morning, did you wear your toga or did you have it in a bag?
WS No, we left it in the library and then when they started disappearing, that wasn't so good.
JC But up till then you could just hang it on a peg and pick it up when you went down again. So it was like a uniform for this part of town.
WS Yes and it was nice and warm and it gave you a feeling of being a bit special.
JC So you remember studying in the library. What sort of things did you discuss in the long coffee breaks?
WS Music, Politics and I suppose really anything, rather than what you were studying in the library. I wasn't a very politically minded person so I didn't get involved, but some people did and it was quite interesting to listen them.
JC What were the causes in those days? Was it anti-nuclear armament, CND, that sort of thing? Apartheid?
WS Oh, I just don't know, possibly Apartheid. Life was quite simple in a way, you know, you were a bit blinkered in that you had to get your degree in three years and there wasn't really the money or the time to spend exploring side issues. You just got on with the job and I think that was a bit of a shame, but it was just life and you were glad to be amongst all these people who were so much more clever than you were and to socialise with them and to hear the different views. And to be away from home!
JC Of course!
WS I think that is quite important. I was a bit sorry that neither ………
End of side 1 of tape 1
JC We are just resuming our conversation after I turned over the tape. Immediately before we broke, we were talking about the way in which students were not terribly political in your day but conversations among students were mostly about books and music and stuff like that. Sounds terribly "high-brow" actually. I expect you also went to films occasionally, did you, or were they too expensive?
WS Yes, I liked films.
JC What about HM Theatre? Was that accessible?
WS My sister used to have a season ticket for these plays that ran for a session, so sometimes I went with her. But I remember once being taken by a student to, I cannot remember the name of the play, but he knew one of the actresses, and I was taken back-stage and introduced to her and I thought that was quite something.
JC And did you go to the student show, if it ran in those days?
WS Oh, yes. I would have loved to have taken part in the Student Show, but once again it was a question of money. My daughter, eventually did take part, she was in the chorus. I did some of the make-up, once I started teaching I used to go and do some of the make-up. So that was good and I remember June Imray, you know "The Torry Quine", and some of these people.
JC You say your daughter came to Aberdeen then, did she?
WS Yes, my daughter and my son.
JC Both came to Aberdeen. So they can't have thought your experience was too terrible!
WS No, no, they had heard all the good reports! You forget the bad bits, like exams and things!
JC And apart from theatre, cinema, etc., I suppose the highlight otherwise socially was the Union? Did you go there?
WS Yes it was. We went to the Union a lot. If you could afford 2/6d. on a Friday night you went to the hop or across at the Mitchell Hall as well and I rather liked the Mitchell because of the wonderful stained glass window, you know, it really had an ambience. I really liked going to the "Dive", sitting there listening to jazz.
JC That was under the Union wasn't it?
WS That's right, under the Union.
JC Now what were the sins of those days. Were students very drunk or were you into drugs, or did that not exist in the '50's.
WS Well not drugs, not as far as I know. Drunkenness was relatively common.
JC Among the men or men and women?
WS Mostly men I would say. It was very few women.
JC Drink was relatively cheap, I suppose, particularly at the Union.
WS Yes, at the Union. We used to go there for lunch sometimes.
JC Did you? When you weren't having it at your digs?
WS It was a wonderful place, because you could go and sit and listen to music. You could go and choose your music and look out onto Broad Street, you know, there were quiet areas you could go to and you could read magazines that you couldn't afford to buy.
JC Did it provided practical back-up in those days as it came to subsequently, like launderette and baths and things.
WS Yes, because my first digs, there was no facilities for a bath so I used the Union baths. I remember once going and forgetting to take my towel and I dried myself with my hankie! But, yes, that was a very good thing. Jack, of course in the Union. He was the janitor and he knew everybody. He knew if the face was unfamiliar it would not be getting in! He certainly ruled the roost!
JC A simple but a happy experience.
WS Yes, yes. Oh I am sure there were bad things that happened but you don't really remember them, do you?
JC Were your digs very cold, for example? Or perhaps you were lucky?
WS I suppose, you see, in Ballater in the '50's even, you didn't have central heating and it was cold in the winter, so you just accepted that was life.
JC Great, well I think we have covered most of what I can think of, but if there is anything I have missed, do please tell me.
WS No, I don't think so. Spoke about the "Dive" and the Union, no, I don't think so.
JC Well thank you very much, it has been a very pleasant conversation.
WS Well, thank you.
End of Transcription
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