Copyright © 2003 Paul Krawczynski.

The Hollies and Lamorbey Children’s Homes                                                      Memories

I was born on July 16, 1916 in Southwark, London, England. My father was forty-nine years of age when I arrived on the scene. I was an only child. In 1927, when I was eleven years old my mother died of pneumonia. I had been to the hospital on that last day to see her but I had no idea that she was dying. Her last words to me were “Be a good girl for your father” and I promised her I would, never realizing that she was not going to get better. I left her and went outside in the corridor to tell my father that mother was talking to me and was getting better. He went in to see her next and then we left the hospital together, neither of us realizing that we had spoken our last words to her, We had not long been home before a policeman knocked at the door and told us that my mother had died.

My father was then 60 years of age. He was so shocked at the loss of his wife he felt he was unable to bring me up on his own. That very night Dad made an instant decision to leave our flat. I packed a few things and took my favorite doll and a little tin box with some letters in it, and my father and I went to my Aunt Emily’s House. She was Mrs. John Ward, my aunt and Dad’s sister. She lived on Orkney Street, Battersea. He asked her to look after me for a few weeks until he could make arrangements for me. I never saw my own home again. I had nothing left of my mother’s. Not a thing. My father was so distraught he gave everything away, including my toys and he moved out and went to his workshop. He was a firewood cutter. He was extremely deaf as a result of almost thirty years in the army and it was so difficult to communicate with him. We said very little to each other about Mother’s death because of his disability. I really missed her because we had been so close. She used to sing Irish folk songs to me. I have never found an Irish relative in my family background so I presume she just liked the music.

My Aunt Emily, to whom I had been taken, was very kind to me and I stayed with her for a few weeks. However, her brother in law, whose plumbing supply shop was underneath their flat, was a little strange in his behavior, and he had a violent temper. My father was not happy that I was living there with the brother-in-law so close, and he took me away from there after a few weeks. I wished I could have stayed with Aunt Emily longer because I liked her very much, but indeed I was afraid of her brother in law Percy.

My father decided to move me closer to his workshop and to the small flat he took which was close to it. He paid a lady who lived nearby on the Borough High Street to look after me. He gave her nearly all his money to look after me, but it seemed that most of the money went on her children instead. I did not stay long with her but went to live in Deptford with the family of a fireman and his wife, Harold and Kate Hyde. They had just lost their little girl to diphtheria, and they were happy to take me in. I enjoyed living with them but it was not to be, and after just six months there, Mr. Hyde was offered a job in Mombassa, East Africa. They wanted to take me with them but my father wouldn’t let me go because he thought he would never see me again. With the Hyde’s arranging to leave England I was on the move again.

Mr. & Mrs. Hyde took me to the Greenwich Board of Guardians and arrangements were made then to take me to Greenwich and Deptford Children’s Home in Sidcup, Kent. I had no idea that my father was not aware that I was being sent there. So, in early 1929, I went there in a private car with a nurse and I remember clearly the day we drove through the big wrought iron gates for the first time. I was delivered to the Lodge where the gatekeeper showed us the way to the Matron’s quarters in the house called “The Hollies”.

All of the children in that school were housed in semidetached cottages. They were very nice inside. I was taken to “Poplar Cottage”. Upstairs in each cottage there were two dormitories which housed six children ranging in age from six to twelve years. A separate room housed two older girls whose ages were thirteen and fourteen, and then the nurse had her own private room. Also on that floor was a communicating door to the cottage next door. That was used by the nurse from the next cottage when our nurse was off duty two days a week.

At the bottom of each child’s bed there was a big box which contained two sets of clothes and this we were given plus the set we were wearing. The box contained underwear, shoes, stockings and a dress. A set of towels for each child also was in the box. The girls wore a gym slip. The school colours were grey and white. We had a grey velour hat and warm grey coat. The initials GDCH (Greenwich and Deptford Children’s Homes) were on the hat band. The stockings were black and we wore black lace up boots.

The ground floor of each cottage had a dining room which seated everyone at the table at the same time including the nurse. There were fifteen of us that all sat down to meals together. The food was quite good. I didn’t always like what we were served but we had to eat it. Breakfast consisted of porridge or toast and tea. Our main meal was midday. Sometimes it was stew and dumplings, and other times it was fish, peas and carrots and boiled potatoes. I didn’t like the Swedes (turnips) they served but I had to eat those too. High tea consisted of sometimes an egg, or cheese, bread and jam and tea. Occasionally a piece of cake was served. I don’t remember anyone ever celebrating a birthday and having a cake when I was there.

After I had been there for two weeks it was visiting day which occurred once a month. Visitors were allowed to visit for two hours between 2 and 4 pm once per month. I looked forward to my father’s first visit there to see me. I was very disappointed when he didn’t appear. Another month went by and I still didn’t see him. I was very upset and cried a lot. I didn’t know why he hadn’t come to visit. Later I found out that I had been put in there without his consent or knowledge. I was worrying about him and he thought I was still living with the Hyde Family where he knew I was happy.

In The Hollies, the days were long and tiring. I got up at 7 o’clock in the morning. The older children had to get the younger ones ready for school. We had our breakfast during which time I had to help feed the little ones and cut up their food for them. After breakfast, we all walked down the drive across the green to the school which was enclosed in the grounds. After school we had chores to do. I had to clean 14 pairs of boots before I could have my tea. Very often there was little or nothing left for me by the time I had finished. After I had had my tea (if there was any left) I had to then go and help bath and dry the smaller children and get them ready for bed.

On Saturdays when there was no school, we had to go out to the back yard, and work in the laundry room for each cottage. We were taught how to do laundry and ironing. It was bitter cold in there in the winter time. Wringing out wet clothes in the cold weather was awful. I got very bad chaps on my hands and the nurse put glycerin on them. In the school there were also some children from outside but they were kept in a separate area away from us, so that we would not catch any diseases from them.

The children also had to do gardening there. The girls put plants in the flower beds, weeded and rakes leaves. The older boys did the heavy digging in the gardens. I had to do my share of gardening too. However, I was so tired from cleaning all the boots in the cold porch every day, and getting thinner from lack of food at night when there was little or none left after all the other children had eaten theirs, that I became very depressed. The monotony of the same routine every day and the sadness I felt began to take its toll on me. I still had not seen my father.

I felt very deprived of love and affection in that school. It is hard to live in a place like that when you have lived in your own home with your parents. As I had been an only child and had my parents around me, it was very difficult to adjust to being in an institution.

I made plans to escape. I told the two older girls that I was going to run away. They asked me to find their parents and tell them how unhappy they were too. I planned to go back to Deptford to the Hyde’s because I knew they had not yet gone to Mombassa but were due to leave at any time. I had no money for streetcar fare so the two older girls very kindly loaned me some.

May 3rd, 1929 will remain in my memory forever, as the night I ran away from the school. I was twelve years old. I chose to make good my escape on a Friday evening because I knew that our nurse was having the night off and she wouldn’t be there at bedtime. I knew that the other nurse would drop in from next door to ensure that we were all in bed at night.

I waited until all the children including myself were all in bed and the nurse had been in to check on us. After she had gone, I got out of bed and took my clothes out of the box at the bottom of the bed, and rolled them up and put them in the bed to make it look as if I was in it. The little girl in the next bed watched me in amazement while I ‘made up the bed’. I put my finger to my lips to indicate to her that she was not to say anything. Her name was Patricia Garcia. She was six years of age. She used to cry a lot and missed her mother. When they found I was missing, the school authorities questioned Patricia but she never told them she had seen me leave. (I wonder what happened to that little girl).

I waited for a while and then tiptoed down the stairs carrying my hat and coat and shoes. One of the older girls let me out, wishing me good luck and asking me to go and see their mothers and fathers to tell them they didn’t like it in there either. I told the girls not to lock the door after me so that it would look as if I went out by myself, thereby not getting anyone else into trouble.

I put my hat, coat and shoes on outside and with my little tin box which contained all my little treasures and letters, I prepared to run away. In order to get out of the area, I had to pass The Hollies where the matron lived, and so I went around the house to the bushes outside and hid there. As I was hiding there in the bushes, I heard the boys in the band and the band master, Mr. Bonner, coming along the drive. I knew they would ask me why I was outside if they saw me, so I remained hidden until they had gone by. Then I had to crawl on my stomach across the grass. The Lodge door was open, and the lights were shining across the field. I knew they would see me if I stood up and ran across there. I crawled down as far as the fence which led to the Day School and I climbed over the fence into the school yard. From there I walked down to the bottom of the school yard and into the lane. The lane led to the High Street. I was frightened someone returning to the home would recognize me because I was wearing the school uniform. I took off my hat to make it less obvious that I belonged to the school.

In one of the shop doorways I left my little tin box containing all my treasures. Fortunately for me, the shop keeper when he opened the door the next morning found it and returned the tin to the school for me. I caught a bus on the Sidcup High Street which was going to the Bricklayer’s Arms on the Old Kent Road which was the end of the line for that bus. I had to get on another bus from there. I sat there as we rode along, wishing I was one of the other people on that bus instead of me. I was so alone and afraid. I got off at the Bricklayer’s Arms and unfortunately had no more money left for another bus fare. I still had to get to Evelyn Street, Deptford to go the Hyde family. They had no idea I was coming.

I waited outside The Bricklayer’s Arms until I saw an elderly lady coming along who looked kind. I took a chance and told her I had run away from the school and asked her if she could give me some money for bus fare so that I could get to see Mr. & Mrs. Hyde at Deptford. She gave me tuppence and said she hoped I knew what I was doing. I think that was probably all the money she had with her. I got on the next bus and eventually got to Mr. and Mrs. Hyde’s house on Evelyn Street at Deptford.

I knocked on their door, and by this time it was very late in the evening. Mrs. Hyde opened the door and when she saw me standing there she was so surprised, and said “Oh Katy! What are you doing here?” I told her I had run away from the school. Her husband joined her at the door and the look of dismay on their faces was evident. She said “Oh my! We can’t keep you here tonight. We are leaving on the ship in the morning”. I looked behind her in the hall and could see all the trunks lined up against the wall.

Mr. & Mrs. Hyde called a taxi and they went with me to the Board of Guardians. By then it was very late at night. We saw the man on duty and he told me he had a son my age. I think he felt sorry for me. He was going to keep me there for the night, but then at the last minute he decided to send me to the Institution called The Greenwich Work House. Before we left for the Work House, he phoned the school to tell them I had ‘escaped’, and they were very surprised. They didn’t even know I was missing. They weren’t very happy. I was very worried because I didn’t know what they were going to do to me as a punishment for running away.

I went by car with the Hyde’s to the Work House and they left me there. The man from the Board of Guardians went with us too. When I arrived at the Greenwich Work House, I was taken to a section full of elderly ladies. One of the women gave up her bed for me, and they put her somewhere else for the night. The bed was in an alcove. I remember the lady stripping off the sheets and putting clean ones on it for me. The other ladies in there kept asking me why I was there. They commented on my clothes and how nice they were and asked me why did I want to run away from a place that dressed me so well? I had had no food for many hours so a glass of milk was brought for me.

The next morning a chauffeur driven car arrived to take me back to the school. A nurse dressed in a blue uniform went with me. The chauffeur whistled all the way to the school, and I can remember the song now – it was “Laugh, Clown Laugh”. I kept thinking he wouldn’t whistle that if he was in my position.

When I arrived back at the Greenwich school, I was taken to the Lodge and then they advised the Matron that I had arrived. I had never met the Matron and I was expecting I suppose, a large woman with a loud manner, (possibly someone similar to a character out of a Charles Dickens book). I was very surprised to find she was small in stature with a nice face, and very pleasant to me. She said “Catherine, why did you run away? Were we unkind to you”? I had to explain to her that they had not been unkind to me, but that I had been put in there so quickly and didn’t know why my father had not been to see me. I told her I was very unhappy. I explained that I had no time to have my tea at night because I had to clean fourteen pairs of boots right after school. I described how I had to scour the boots of any mud before I could start to polish them, and then the kind of polish I used was the sort that the army used. You put it on dry, spit on it and then rubbed it into the leather. It took me a long, long time to get the boots cleaned and shiny and polished properly, and by then there was no food left for me. Also, I had to help bath the small children before I went to bed. I told her I was too afraid to complain. In fact I told her everything. I sat there with her and cried.

The Matron listened to me. She wasn’t angry with me. She was very nice. She said I should have told the nurse in the cottage that I was not getting any food to eat after school. Furthermore, she said I should have told them how unhappy I was. She said her job was to make sure the children were happy in the school, even though they had no parents there. I wondered how anyone could be happy in there with the routine that we had to live with each day.

Naturally, the other children were surprised to see me back so soon. It probably dashed any ideas any others might have had with regard to escape. My father was contacted and he came to see me a day or so later. The school must have sent someone to find him and tell him where I was. They didn’t make me wait until the next visiting day. He explained that he didn’t know that I was in there. He gave me the money to repay the girls for the bus fare I had borrowed from them.

The number of pairs of boots I had to clean was reduced in number and arrangements were made for me to eat first and clean the boots later. Things improved a little from there on.

A month later I left THE HOLLIES, and was taken to the Central London District School in Hanwell, Middlesex. It turned out that I had not lived in Greenwich with the Hyde family long enough to qualify to attend The Hollies so I was transferred out of there. That was in relation to the Poor Law which stated that an individual had to have lived in that district for a certain length of time before the local council would help support them. If you did not meet those requirements you were physically taken back to the district from whence you came.

I never heard from Mr. and Mrs. Hyde again. I often pondered what my life would have been like if my father had given me permission to go to Mombassa with them. What happened to them I wonder?

The Central London District School in Hanwell became my home from July 1929 until March 17^th, 1930. I liked it there. I had a lot of hard work to do like scrubbing corridors and other duties, but I worked hard at my studies and I earned a scholarship from that school. My name went on a plaque in that school as one of those who earned a scholarship.

From the Central London District School, I went to the London Borough Polytechnic for two years. It was the first Trade School for girls in London. Some of the subjects learned in there were dressmaking, tailoring, and the sciences. I decided to learn how to cook and be a Lady’s companion. I had to take all the general subjects and passed with honours in all subjects including cookery.

While I was there I was very fortunate to become chosen as a Ward of Lady Helen Barlow who looked after the expense of my room and board and my clothes. The Polytechnic was not a live in school. During the time I was there I was invited to her home for tea with some of the other girls in the small group that she sponsored. She was very kind to us and I felt very privileged to go her home in Wimpole Street, London. There were games organized for us when we went there and the treasure hunt led all through her house. Most of the rooms were open to us, and those that were off limits were marked as being so. Lady Barlow sat at the piano and played and sang to us. She had a very nice voice and I can recall she sang Cherry Ripe and Strawberry Fair.

I studied hard at the London Borough Polytechnic and passed receiving my Diploma in Cookery.

When I left there I then had to start working my way up from the bottom to eventually become a Cook or a Chef, which was my ambition at the time. Because of my good record (except for running away from The Hollies) and my good marks, I was fortunate in acquiring my first position, as Scullery Maid with the Guinness family of Lord Moyne, who lived at #10 - #11 Grosvenor Place, London. It was a beautiful house, several hundred years old and full of marvelous antiques and paintings. It was very close to Buckingham Palace, and when I was on the top floor I could look down into the Palace Gardens. Sometimes I saw King George V walking in there.

Starting work for the Guinness Family was indeed an apprenticeship for me. They had 32 servants in that house. The Guinness family was very good to their staff and we certainly lacked for nothing in the way of good food. Employees were offered a glass of Guinness Stout every day if they were of legal age to drink. My working hours there were from six o’clock in the morning, to eight o’clock at night, with a three hour break after two pm. I had to wash and dry the plates and pots and pans. There was a huge rack on the wall in the kitchen in which I had to place all the plates after I had washed and dried them.

Because I was not very tall, I had to stand on a chair and clean the bottoms of the large saucepans which were on the high draining board. My job was to scrub the copper bottoms of the pots with sand and vinegar which was mixed with flour to make a paste. I developed a bad rash on my arms from the vinegar which ran down as I scrubbed the pots. (No rubber gloves in those days). Every night I had to peel potatoes for thirty two people. I had to soak them in cold water overnight so that they were ready for the next day’s meals for the staff. I had two half days off a week. The night before my half day I had to peel enough potatoes for 64 people to cover the two days I wasn’t there. I hated that job. I still hate peeling potatoes today.

I wasn’t supposed to cook in those early days at the Guinness home; just do the Scullery Maid work. However, the Cook soon found out that I had done very well in cookery at the London Borough Polytechnic and that I could make very good sauces and prepare vegetables. She let me help her make the sauces (and she took the credit for it too). Lord Moyne was very fussy about his vegetables and he liked the way I prepared and cooked them, and eventually for the time I was there, I prepared and cooked all his vegetables for him.

We had to prepare huge dinners for Banquets and Balls, and sometimes the Duke and Duchess of York (later The Queen Mother) and other Royalty would attend. On those occasions, the Butler would allow the staff to go up to the dome and the gallery over the ballroom and watch through the glass skylights from above the chandeliers, the guests dancing far below. When I went there I noticed that there were two railings around the gallery. I was told that previously and just before I arrived there, only one railing had been in place. However, a young woman on the staff had leaned too far out over the railing and had fallen through the glass skylights and crashed onto the Ballroom floor. I was told it was an occasion when the Prince of Wales was there. The girl was very badly hurt and the Guinness family undertook to care for her financially for the rest of her life as she was unable to walk again. I was sad to read that Lord Moyne was assassinated in the 1940 in mistake for someone else. He was a kind man and a good employer.

The staff was also allowed to go and have a look at the tables when they were set for a Banquet. Outside caterers were brought in on those occasions to do the flowers, the table settings and the decorations. The tables were absolutely stunning as they sparkled with all the crystal and silver. The floral decorations were reflected in the mirrors on the walls. I loved to go around and read all the names of the guests at the place settings. They read like ‘Who’s Who’. I learned a lot of interesting things there which I will always remember.

I left the employ of the Guinness family when I developed rheumatism and could no longer stand on a cold, hard kitchen floor for long hours. I worked for Lady Hester Duncombe as her Lady’s Companion for a while. It was exciting being with her and traveling to other country homes. However, it became very lonely for me. I was just eighteen at the time and yearned for the company of other young people. Lady Duncombe was very kind to me and sorry when I left her employ.

.My days of cooking and working for the aristocracy came to an end when I married at the age of 23 and my husband learned what a good apple pie I could make.

I do believe that children who have been in schools like The Hollies (particularly girls) made good wives in those days because they were so grateful to have a husband who cared for them and looked after them, and with whom they could share affection. The latter is the one thing that is so necessary and yet is so void in any institutional setting.

Catherine Elizabeth Hazelwood (nee Gornall)

Catherine Gornall married Ernest Hazelwood in 1939, and they had one daughter Anne Catherine born in 1940. Catherine Hazelwood lives in Qualicum Beach, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. In July 2004 she turned 88 years of age. She is a widow having lost her husband Ernest in 1991. She lives in a small cottage, next door to her daughter and her husband in a beautiful woodland area on the Pacific Ocean. She has a cat and a dog and loves to feed the birds that come to her garden. She is very interested in her family genealogy and has helped her daughter trace their Gornall ancestors back to the early 1500’s in Lancashire.

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