BERMONDSEY GIRLS - Rose Amelia Wigzell - Part 3 - Brothers in arms

Phew that was a long job, sisters being what they are. I’ve whet my whistle with a nice coffee, so I’ll tell you about our boys.

Our Ernest was born in 1915 in Deptford.  Being five years older than me I can’t say much about his early years; I do remember after our Dad died he tried to be the man of the house and was always bossing us around.  Did his best for us though, won prizes with his lovely singing voice, which I expect he got from a relative of our Mums who used to sing in the Music Halls. He worked on the coal carts, which is how he had learned to drive lorries by the time he was about thirteen, which came in very handy for his future employment.

All his life he drove vans, lorries and funeral cars, never walked anywhere. He wasn’t much of a scholar though, didn’t hold with reading and so on and took the mickey out of me with my nose always stuck in a book when I wasn’t doing the housework!  He used to vet all my boyfriends, not that I took any notice of him but he did scare some of them away with his big loud voice. To be truthful I weren’t that keen on him when we were young, too interfering and overbearing, but as Lou always said, he meant well. He liked my Lou well enough though, and seemed quite happy for us to get married.

He was a great swimmer and diver too; that came from jumping across the timber barges on the canal and jumping in the dirty water.  Mum used to go spare at him but all the boys did it. Some kids drowned; it wasn’t unusual to see little bodies pulled out of the water on the boathooks.  But Ern was always ok.

Eventually he was called up and went in the army; he was overseas a good few years during the war, in Europe he was, lucky for him, not like my Lou.  I don’t remember much about Ern’s war, except that he came back and married Florrie Biddiss just before our Mum died in 1946.  Florrie was a nice gentle girl, but came from a family of snooty spinsters who thought they were much better than they were.  Stuck-up in other words.

 It was sad that they never had their own children, but they adopted a baby girl called Susan, about the same age as my Tricia.  When Flo became ill, her sisters took the kiddie over and Ern’s family never got a look in; when Florrie died in 1965 at only 45 years of age, me and Lou offered to take her in and bring her up with our girls; but the sisters weren’t having it and she stayed with them.  I don’t think we ever saw her again after that, and Ernest lived alone for many years, often teaming up with our Fred, Vi’s widower, to socialise.  He met a nice American widow called Jessie Goldstein at one of their clubs, and they married and went off to live in Miami. 

Ern was always just the same when he came over for a few weeks every so often, staying with Fred; Jessie told us he was known by everyone in Miami. ‘Like the coughdrop man known all over the world’ we used to say! Everyone down East Lane knew him, and he knew the Krays and the Richardsons, though I am almost sure he never actually worked for them.  ‘Lovely family’ he would say about them all.

It was the same years later when he moved to America. A mate of his was the coach of the Miami Dolphins, and he used to send shirts and baseball caps over to our kids, and bits and pieces of jewellery he had bought in the markets.  In fact we got on much better in our old age.  Little and often was quite good enough.  His daughter Susan also moved to America and married an Italian, taking on his children.  Ern couldn’t come over to my funeral; he was 86 after all, but he sent flowers and followed me up here a couple of years later, although it was a while before his daughter thought to tell the family.  Anyway that was Ernie for you, the longest lived of all of us, apart from our half sister Mary of course.  Trust her to live to 99!

I’ll tell you about our little Arthur next.  He was the next child after me, and I remember him well.  He was a sweet little thing, with a mop of blonde curls.  Bubbles we called him, he was like that little Victorian boy in the picture.  He could never really walk properly, his little legs were not strong and a little bit bent because of the rickets.  Lots of kids had that in our area because of the poverty and bad housing I suppose.  He was so bright and lively, we were  shocked when he passed away in 1924, only eighteen months old.  We all cried and cried, even our dog Fluff pined away and our Dad was never the same again, took to the drink more and more even though Mum gave birth to two more boys after Arthur had gone.

The first of those little boys was Stanley James.  He arrived in 1924 just a couple of months after we lost little Bubbles.  Our Stanley was a nice cheerful lad, a bit on the shy side though.  He never cared much for school but loved his Mum, and did what he could to help round the house. He was never much trouble, and joined the Army as soon as he could.  Like so many of the boys, he never said much about his war, but we knew he had been at the Normandy landings.  He was heartbroken when Mum passed away so sudden like, and he eventually married a lovely girl called Dolly Umpleby – Bumble-Bee my brother-in-law Dick used to call her.  She was bright and glamorous and loud, loved her make-up and hairdos, and always wore really high heeled shoes. They got married in the Spring of 1950, me and Lou couldn’t go because I was still lying-in after the birth of our first daughter.  I liked Dolly, always plenty of laughs when she was around.

They had a flat at the Elephant, and lived there for years with their only child Michael, who still lives in that area.  He had four children and is a grandad himself now. All that area is in the process of being pulled down.

Dolly passed away in 1987, and Stan followed her in 2004, a couple of years after me. I think both their deaths were cigarette related, they always smoked like chimneys, and old Dolly had one of those gravelly voices like Catherine Hepburn. I was happy to see Lou and my girls and their husbands at his funeral, showed respect.

Now I come to our Will.  My youngest and dearest brother William Robert, born on Boxing Day 1926.  I adored him from the minute I clapped eyes on him, I swear he was born with that cheeky grin!  Of course everyone doted on him, especially when our Dad died when Will was only 3 or 4. He was inconsolable when our Mum passed away sudden-like on Armistice Day in 1946, in fact it was him called the doctor and registered her death.  Bless him, he was unsure of our Dad’s name, being so little when he died, so he made it up, and Mum became the widow of Ernest Frederick William Cherry instead of Ernest Albert Cherry!  Still at least she had the dignity of the Cherry name; no doubt our Will had no idea they were never married.  Just as well really. Anyway Will had always hero-worshipped my Lou, and he joined the RAF like he had, and spent quite a lot of time in Egypr and the Far East just after the war.

He married a lovely young girl, Joan Mellish, in 1952, and our Linda and Elsie’s Margaret were bridesmaids.  It was a lovely sunny day, we all couldn’t help thinking how much Mum would have enjoyed it, and I know she would have loved our Joanie.  Will’s first daughter Cathy was born a year later, lovely girl, very much like our Mum.  Two more daughters Jean and Michelle and three sons Jeff, Graham and David, followed, and Will doted on them all. I always told him ‘I hope you’re treating our Joanie right!’, but with that twinkle in his eye all the time, and a bit too much gambling if you ask me, I often told him off but he would smile that twinkly smile and I was lost!  Everyone was!  They were poor but things looked up when their old house in Kennington was demolished and they were moved into one of the new modern blocks.

Sadly, Will started to get a bit run down.  He was in his early 40s when he said to me with tears in his eyes ; ‘I’m not well Rosie’, and I knew it was serious.  He passed away in Kings College Hospital in 1972, with leukaemia.  In later years we have wondered whether it was anything to do with the atom bomb tests that were happening everywhere round about the time he was in the forces.  I suppose we’ll never know.  Anyway our Will was reunited with our parents far too soon; his ‘little princess’, Michelle, was only about seven when he died, and our Tricia had her as her bridesmaid a couple of months later which I hope cheered her up.  That was a very hard time for the family, I lost two sisters and a brother in the space of a year.

 Joan lived on for many years, loving her tribe of grandchildren.  She was a good kind and funny (ha-ha) woman, but died just before me. I was too ill myself to go to the funeral, but Lou and the girls did. Will would have loved being a grandad and great-grandad and I know they would have loved him back.  Lovely family they are, though his youngest son David lost his eldest son and daughter, Will and Stephanie, in a tragic car crash on Christmas Day some ten years ago which also killed their teenage friend. That accident was caused by someone who shouldn’t have been in the country anyway, which made the family feel even more bitter.

So that’s the story of my brothers and sisters; some laughs, plenty of war and far too many tears.  Now I’ll get on with my own tale.  Where was I?