Auntie Gert Continued....

When Auntie Gert was 14 in 1922, she was fortunate to be placed with Jarvis and Son Bookbinding and Printing Firm, where she entered an apprenticeship during the Depression. She left her father’s home to lodge with a lady I knew as Auntie Nesta (query spelling) – whom I did visit with Auntie Gert at least once when I was really young: there seemed to be a crowd of people in this large room – perhaps they were other lodgers. Auntie Gert remained an employee of Jarvis’s until her retirement in her late 50s.

When JH was in her middle teens, Auntie Gert moved to Ilford from Kentish Town as - no doubt - the tenements in London were due to be demolished. Her brother, Uncle Alec, had lived in Ilford with his family for many years – and so was able to look about for a suitable home for his sister. Auntie Gert’s house was easily identifiable in the terrace as hers had ‘1908’ impressed in the plasterwork at the top of the front elevation. Furthermore . . . she got the property for a ‘song’ in the 1950s – a few hundred pounds, not thousands – because there was a sitting tenant occupying his ‘flat’ on the first floor. Mr Hutchings’s kitchen was the bathroom – boards were placed over the bath; and Mr H had sublet – illegally – one of the bedrooms to a widow lady who was a bit of a tippler. AG found Mr H dead in bed one morning, by which time she had been designated the executor of his few possessions; said widow lady rapidly removed herself to her daughter’s!

Not many years later, a lady knocked on AG’s door and explained, in an American accent, that she was Mr Hutchings’s niece. She inquired of Auntie as to the whereabouts of the Hutchingses’ family bible, which AG had given to the local Masonic Lodge. In any event, Auntie loaned her caller £5 in sterling - as the lady had not obtained any since her arrival in England. Auntie Gert got the cash back with a delightful letter: JH has been known to expound her opinion to the effect that, if you take no risks in life – albeit loaning money to a stranger – one would lose out on ‘the rich panoply of life’s relationships'!

Not so long before she retired, Auntie Gert had a hysterectomy in the Royal Free Hospital. When she attended her GP, because of her enlarging abdomen – she was in her late 40s and a single lady – the Doctor asked if she was pregnant – to which AG retorted ‘At my age, you don’t think I’d be coming to see you if I was pregnant, do you!’, AG actually had massive uterine fibroids. As already mentioned she was by this time living in Ilford, and so AG commuted to Jarvis’s Premises in Tooley Street in London by making a 10-minute walk to Ilford Railway Station, then alighting at Liverpool Street Station (there was nowhere further to go in any case), and then catching a bus to Tooley Street. The Firm had moved to the Tooley Street site after being bombed-out of their building near Whitechapel. After her major operation, she came to an understanding with Mr Jarvis Junior – who was by this time the boss – that she need no longer arrive at work until about 9.00am.

I remember working on the women’s floor – where Auntie Gert was in charge – for a week or two during a holiday. There was no doubt about it: some of the ladies were a bit put-out at having the boss lady’s niece amongst the workforce – which is hardly surprising. But I learnt a lot about relationships within a band of women in a busy working environment! Also I visited Auntie Gert at the Firm during my off duty periods – it being only a short ride on the underground from the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in Euston Road. On one occasion, I recollect AG having a conversation with the ladies during which I ‘woke up’ to the realisation that AG was stating that she felt ‘Jeanette would not indulge in perverted relationships’. I cannot quite remember the adjective used, and I assumed the conversation between the women had arisen from something seen on the previous day’s TV to do with sexual activity between women. I was not uninformed about Lesbianism – which I understand Queen Victoria did not legislate against because she refused to acknowledge that it existed! However, I hardly realised I was being included in this discussion, before it passed me by. No doubt JH was being observed as being rather ‘at risk’ of such a liaison – being in a profession in which the ‘temptation’ to enter in to a Lesbian relationship was apparently a risk - just by being amongst a crowd of women. I do not recollect any such unseemly activities being hinted at in ‘Emergency Ward 10’: in any event, I hardly view any episodes. I think I watched a programme in a subsequent drama – was it called ‘Angels’ {groan} in which such activities were more explicit. In any event – as I have already said – Auntie Gert did consider herself to be an advisory guardian on behalf of her niece.

I was visiting Auntie Gert at the Firm just before one Christmas – when out of the window I observed a drunk trying to drag another drunk – drunker than him – on to a bus: I don’t recollect either man getting on to the bus. I do recollect feeling upset after witnessing this ‘exhibition’. But, of course, I have witnessed some similar scenarios since [although I have never been drunk myself]. AG and JH were on an underground train shortly afterwards: in the train a tall, dapper young man, kept subsiding to the floor by the doors of the carriage, and dropping his newspaper; AG expressed a tinge of amusement at this performance. Fortunately, we did not witness the dapper YM falling out of the train at a station as the doors opened. During another visit in the early 1960s just before I came to Plymouth to do my Midwifery Training, the ladies were discussing the television adaptation of ‘Up the Junction’ a book written by Neil Dunn about – what might be considered - the seamier side of life in the industrial slums of Battersea: I was in no doubt that this film was thought ‘unacceptably explicit’ (OTT was not in colloquial use in those days) by more watchers than just AG. . . . In due course, when ‘The Unions’ somehow finally managed to get through the door of Jarvis & Son, Auntie Gert fulminated about this imposition on a small family-run Firm.

During her visits to Jarvis & Son, JH also learnt about all things to do with printing and bookbinding in that era:- the compositors used a noisy typeface machine which churned out individual metal letters which were aligned-up into a ‘printing block’ in which other text, etc, of the page’s contents were held in place by various mini blocks of wood. Also, at that time, Jarvis’s printed Fyffe’s {banana}labels on another noisy machine, which stamped the labels out into a little gutter, so the lady operating the machine could pick up a gutter-full at a time and pack four gutter-fulls in each box – perhaps about four hundred labels.

{AE}Jarvis: walk past the Setters with all those letters Marie full of blue at the Fyfes label machine. Auntie remained in contact with the girls + Auntie Sally in her Office. Only x1 house sink.

There were also noisy small ‘shakers’ in which the women placed carbon copies together with a top sheet of paper for each order which were to be made-up into order books - or the like: subsequently each book of order forms were glued together along the top. [Plymouth museum has an old-fashioned glue pot amongst their collections.] Auntie Gert was a master of the hand-numbering machine which she ‘manoeuvred’ over each batch of forms using a finger stall to raise each corner in turn – I feel sure this is all done automatically now. Some of the activities undertaken by men were a little less noisy: the ‘lining’ machine drew lines (obviously) over sheets of paper which rotated under the nibs – the ink having been put in to little reservoirs to feed the nibs; the paper was then cut to size in a stupendous guillotine – in front of which a bar shot up to thump an unwary operator should he be too close to the pile of 50 layers of paper. The ‘marbling’ tanks contained oil, over which inks of various colours were poured; a wooden comb was then raked across the surface to create the wavy appearance of the colours on the edges of the pages – to be seen on large tomes and record books when held shut.

I am sure that Auntie Gert did not work until she was the appropriate age for retirement for women – as she mentioned that she would retire early: but by this time she had been commuting from Ilford to the City for about 15 years, and had had a major operation. In any event, Auntie Gert was a stalwart of the pensioners’ (now senior citizens) social scene in Ilford: she organised coach trips and also bingo and various ‘dos’ for the local OAPs’ Club. In 1978, when she was 70, she hired a hall in the City somewhere and had a - not quite wild – Party which was attended by over 100 people. My sister Ann did not go – as her youngest child, Johannes, was still a toddler; also Auntie Gert did – more or less – say to me that she realised that parties were not my ‘thing’: in other words, now we had a workable mutual understanding between us. And in any case, I was by then a Nursing Sister on the Special Care Baby Unit in Freedom Fields Hospital in Plymouth, and Auntie realised my commitment to my Profession. Unfortunately, I forgot to send a bouquet to AG – as requested by my sister: said sister rang up AG who said she had not received a bouquet from us both. I was most upset – possibly more by my sister ‘checking up’ on me – than not marking our Aunt’s 70th birthday . . . but Auntie Gert did tell me she had seventy bouquets!

Auntie Gert taught me to do book-sewing with really stout needles and linen thread: after completion the spine of the book was coated with glue which was allowed to harden to seal the knots, and subsequently the rigid cover was put on and the outer sheets of paper – back and front – stuck onto the inner side of the two flaps of the cover. I still have the old sterling penny which I sewed into a leather pocket with tapes attached – so that I could push the needle through the intricate knotting of the linen thread with the palm of my hand.

As Auntie Gert got older she lost some dexterity in her hands – she was sure that she had had a mini stroke, but her GP talked in terms of ‘rheumatics’ or whatever. Auntie Gert was not going to have the ‘wool pulled over her eyes’! Her contemporaries, friends’ and neighbours moved, or deceased, and so her social activities diminished. She had a severe stroke when in her 80s and, fortunately, a neighbour with a key was still around - and found her collapsed at home. Auntie Gert was taken to a local hospital, and then to an annexe of St Joseph’s Hospice, where she received the best intensive rehabilitation: she was able to return home for a number of years – with varying input of caring agencies - for which she had to pay - such as ‘Meals-on-wheels’, home help, etc. Her house had a toilet accessed via the garden: this was ‘turned round’ so that Auntie was able to access the toilet by manoeuvring round on her wheel chair via the cubicle door - actually off the little back room which Auntie used as her kitchen.