#100daysofbfotc Day 88: Winnie Hamm

Torquay Town Hospital

Winnie is a character where a little more imagination came into play. Barefoot on the Cobbles needed a VAD nurse, so I searched the Red Cross database to find someone of a suitable age who actually worked at Torquay Hospital. I also needed to include someone who was a little more street-wise, to introduce Daisy to life in the town and Winnie fulfilled that role. Although there is no evidence that Winnie and Daisy met in real life, they may have and Daisy would have needed a friend in her new home.

Winnie’s employment at Aylwood is another invention. On the other hand, Winnie’s description of her time at the hospital, far-fetched though it may sound, is taken from genuine memories of a VAD who worked at the Town Hospital at the time. In reality, Winnie Hamm worked in the pantry at the hospital from 3 November 1917, earning 9d a day.

Although I have implied, in the novel, that Winnie grew up in Torquay, the real Winifred Muriel Hamm was born on 24 Feb 1899 in Tooting, London to Sydney and Alice Hamm. When she was working at Torquay Town Hospital, Winnie’s address was Ruthven, Meadowfoot Lane, Torquay. At some point after the war, Winnie moved to Bathavon and in 1930, she was fined at Corsham Petty Sessions Court for failing to display a motor registration license. In 1939, Winnie was living with the mother at Laurel Cottages, High Street, Bathavon. Winnie was obviously keen on public service. She was a manager of Bathford Primary School and stood for the Parish Council in Bathavon in 1949. She died at the age of 96, on 20 June 1995 and is buried at St Swithun’s Bathford.

‘Daisy judged that Winnie was the younger by several years, probably not much older than Violet. Although not a hair was out of place, there was a light dusting of freckles across Winnie’s pert nose, which somehow made her seem more approachable.’

Barefoot on the Cobbles will be published on 17 November 2018. More information about the novel can be found here. Copies will be available at various events in the weeks following the launch or can be pre-ordered from Blue Poppy Publishing or the author.

#100daysofbfotc Day 82: Upton Hill, Torquay

Oct29 by thehistoryinterpreter

Upton Road Upton Hill features in Barefoot on the Cobbles as the home of the Cornelius family. In chapter ten, Daisy arrives at 48 Upton Hill, to take up her role as parlourmaid. Upton Hill rises steeply on the northern outskirts of Torquay and number 48 is in the middle of a short terrace. At the time of the novel, the end property of the terrace was a small grocery store.

‘Daisy’s box had been sent on ahead, so she was unencumbered by heavy luggage as she wound her way up the street above Torre Station. The steepness of Upton Hill caught many a visitor unawares but Daisy was accustomed to the Clovelly cobbles, so she was barely conscious of the gradient. Another glance at her instructions informed her that she would find number 48 on the left hand side of the road, three doors up from Bertram’s grocers’ shop.’

#100daysofbfotc Day 71: Robert Meyers

Oct18 by thehistoryinterpreter

Upton Road, Torquay

We meet Robert Meyers towards the end of Barefoot on the Cobbles, when the action moves to Torquay and illness stalks his household. Robert is one of the characters whose speech hints at the Devonshire dialect. In truth, it would probably have been broader but that would have rendered it incomprehensible to non-Devonian readers. Robert John Meyers, or Mayers, is Kate Cornelius’ father. Despite his Germanic sounding name, he was born in Morchard Bishop, Devon in 1846. He was registered with the surname Mare and was the son of John and Charlotte Mare née Drew.

Robert married Caroline Foot in 1868 and settled in Torquay, where they had five children. Initially, Robert worked as a carman, later he became a packer on the railway and then a furniture packer. When his wife died, in 1912, he lived with his married daughter Kate in Upton Road until his own death in 1921.

‘‘Then Mr Meyers’ foot was on the stair. He only ever came to the upper floor to use the bathroom. This time though, he knocked on Daisy’s door but remained discreetly outside.

‘Them’s all falling sick now,’ he called, with a lapse of grammar that would have earned a reprimand from his daughter. ‘I hopes you can shift for yoursen a bit. Francis has just taken hisself off to bed and Mrs Meyers started with it this afternoon. There’s only me left standin’. What’s that they say about creaking gates eh?’ The old man chuckled to himself.’

#100daysofbfotc Day 58: Torre Station, Torquay

Oct5 by thehistoryinterpreter

In Barefoot on the Cobbles Torre Station in Torquay is both a gateway and a meeting point. It is here that Daisy alights to begin her new life. It is here that the many wounded soldiers arrived for transfer to the hospitals and nursing homes of Torquay; in this way it is where Daisy’s world collides with the horrors of the Western Front. Torre Station is also where Polly passes through on her way to confront her feelings for her daughter.

I studied the early twentieth century railway network, to try to get details of Polly’s journey to Torquay correct. I even used genuine train times, although I suspect that these may have been disrupted by the needs of the war. I was writing about an era when the railway was the predominant means of transport. So it was important that there should be train journeys in the novel. The journeys I describe were taken in real life and would have been lifechanging for the characters that undertook them.

‘Torre Station was small, more like Barnstaple but it still pulsed with hectic life, hypnotising Polly into inaction. Reminders of the war were ever-present. Each person carried with them the scars of the past four years; the age had marked them all. Anonymous, khaki-clad Tommies, with their old men’s unfathomable eyes staring from the bodies of boys. Bold young women, their shorter hem-lines and bobbed hair, reflecting a new freedom.’

#100daysofbfotc Day 31: Percy Cornelius

Sep8 by thehistoryinterpreter

Western Daily Mercury 20 January 1912

We only meet Percy Cornelius when the other characters, who share his Torquay household, mention him. You would be justified in asking why he appears in Barefoot on the Cobbles at all. He is included because his existence and his subservient attitude towards his wife, help to explain her attitudes and behaviour.

It appears that Percy lived in Torquay all his life. He was born in July 1881 and baptised at Upton parish church. Percy lived with his family in Market Street, Torquay and attended the local infants’ school. As a teenager, Percy, a butcher’s assistant, was summonsed for leaving a horse and trap unattended. The horse wandered off. The police had warned Percy about not securing his trap on previous occasions and he was fined ten shillings, or seven days’ imprisonment.

In 1912, when he was working as a manager for Messers Nelson of 186 Sidwell Street, Exeter, he was fined again, this time for adulterating sausages with boric acid. This was used as a preservative but could have harmful effects. Its use was not banned but it should have been labelled. The sausages had actually been made in Bristol but Percy was fined £2 plus costs for allowing them to be sold. This incident was referred to in an early draft of chapter 11 but suffered under the delete button’s mighty power.

Percy married in 1913 and he and his wife had two further children after Kathleen, who is mentioned in the novel. By the outbreak of the Second World War, Percy was a bus cleaner living in Chatto Road, Torquay. He died in 1967.

‘I don’t suppose it affected you in the countryside but we’ve had trouble obtaining foodstuffs here. Of course, there’s never a problem with meat, Mr Cornelius being a butcher but we’d like to have a few more vegetables for the table.’

#100daysofbfotc Day 22: Mrs Gilley

Aug30 by thehistoryinterpreter

Torbay Express and South Devon Echo 12 August 1939

Although we first meet Mrs Gilley in the gardens of Clovelly Court, she is more at home in her home town of Torquay, where she is a lynchpin of the town’s genteel elite. It is through her character, amongst others, that Barefoot on the Cobbles can explore the intricacies and constraints of the early twentieth century social class system. We are allowed through the doors of her home to glimpse an opulence that is alien to most of the others who inhabit the novel’s pages.

Born Mary Elizabeth Angel in 1859, the future Mrs Gilley grew up in the comforts of an upper middle class household in Torquay. She and her sisters were educated at home by a governess. In 1882, at which time her family were living in Castle Grove, Torquay, Mary Elizabeth Angel married the widower, Tom Henry Gilley. Their early married life was spent at Kenwyn, Wellington Road, before they moved to Aylwood in Newton Road, Torquay. Mr Gilley established a flourishing railway cartage business and they associated with the cream of Torquay society. The Gilleys had eight children, two of whom died in infancy. Mary Gilley died in Paignton in 1939 and is buried in Torquay cemetery.

‘Mary Gilley was small and solidly built. Despite her greying hair and a slight stoop, she was impeccably and fashionably dressed; her speech underlining that she was a woman of some refinement.’

#100daysofbfotc Day 13: Torquay Town Hall Hospital

Aug21 by thehistoryinterpreter

Torquay Town Hall Hospital The military hospital that was set up in the Town Hall in Torquay at the beginning of the First World War was one of the largest in the country. The climate in Torquay was thought to be particularly suitable for convalescing soldiers and there were a number of other hospitals in the town. The hospital is mentioned in Chapter 10 of Barefoot on the Cobbles as Daisy’s friend Winnie has been working there as a VAD nurse. Unlikely though they may sound, Winnie’s experiences, that are described on pages 200-201, are based on the memoirs of a real volunteer at the hospital. Although family information suggests that Daisy nursed whilst she was in Torquay, there is no record of her having been attached to the Red Cross as a VAD, in the Town Hall Hospital or elsewhere. I have therefore given her a slightly different role.

More information about the wartime work of the Red Cross volunteers and the auxiliary hospitals that they manned, can be found on the British Red Cross website.

‘ ‘What’s so bad at the hospital?’ asked Daisy. ‘I mean, I know that the men are fearfully wounded and that …. and that some of them … well, some of them don’t get better. But surely it is wonderful to be part of it all? I feel so useless. There’s all the men risking their lives, off to war and all I can do is polish the brass and empty chamber pots.’ ’

#100daysofbfotc Day 11: Laura Kate Cornelius

Aug19 by thehistoryinterpreter

Upton Hill, Torquay

Kate Cornelius straddles an awkward social divide. In the Barefoot on the Cobbles, I have used her character to explore the issue of social mobility in early twentieth century Britain. She was born Laura Amelia Kate Mayers or Meyers, in January 1881, to a working-class family; her father was a packer on the railway. She spent her childhood in Upton Hill, Torquay and it is here that we meet her, in Chapters 10 and 11, as the First World War is drawing to its close.

Laura’s working life began as ‘Kate’, a nursemaid to the Gilley family; as such she was associating with Torquay’s elite. Mr Gilley, of Aylwood, ran a railway cartage business and it is likely that he employed Laura’s father. Kate moved on to work in a smaller household in Babbacombe, as a servant to Mrs Macphearson. In 1913, already in the thirties, Kate married a local butcher, Percy Cornelius. This gave her a new respectability and she was able to employ a servant in her home, back in Upton Hill. By the time of the novel, the Cornelius’ first child has been born; they later go on to have two further children. Kate also appears in the final court scene, as a discomforted witness. She lived to reach the age of 91, dying in Torquay in 1972.

‘Mrs Cornelius exhibited all the snobbery of the social climber. Kate Cornelius would be horrified if these securely middle-class matrons realised that she, Kate, was formerly one of Aylwood’s servants.’

The History Interpreter – Janet Few

Presenting and Preserving the Past

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