Hilda Kemp worked in an East End fi sh and chip shop, keeping hearth and home together in the bleak 1950s
WHAT meal is more heartwarming, more nostalgic, than good old- fashioned fi sh and chips? If anyone knew the answer to this it was my grandmother Hilda Kemp. She worked in a chippy in south- east London in the 1950s, a time of austerity and hardship for most people, yet also a time for close community, fi rm friendships and the wartime spirit of everyone sticking together and getting through the diffi culties of daily life.
My nan was always one to hand out comforts and love, in whatever form she could, from throwing a scoop of extra chips on to a portion for a poverty- stricken friend to dispensing sympathy over the counter.
Hilda’s life had been one of desperate poverty, growing up in the dockside slums of Bermondsey with a father who beat her and her mother after nights spent boozing away his scant wages as a casual docker or the winnings from brutal bare- knuckle prize fi ghts.
Hilda’s father was a boxer and he certainly knew how to land a punch on his wife and eldest daughter. From as young as I can remember, nan only ever referred to her father as “that man” as if the thought of him so angered and upset her that she could not bear to call him “pa”.
Nan was her mother’s right hand; scrubbing, cooking, cleaning and helping to bring up her four younger siblings, Les, Ron, Joanie and Patsy, while dodging bombs during the Blitz. It was the bombings of the Second World War which sealed Hilda’s relationship to that quintessential British meal of sizzling fi sh and golden chips.
During a lull in the attacks from German bombers the family, including her wayward father, would eat together the only food that wasn’t rationed at the time: fi sh and chips – a rare treat they could ill afford.
Later, as a young married woman, she started work in Wally’s fi sh and chip shop, not far from where she lived in Rotherhithe with her husband Bert, a soldier who had survived the war, and their fi rst- born child, Little Albie, who is my father.
BERT worked as a delivery driver at Smithfi eld Meat Market, bringing in only just enough to live on. Hilda meanwhile took the relatively unusual step of taking a job in the chip shop, leaving their son, and later daughter Brenda, with a neighbour.
Bert, Hilda and their children shared a tiny fl at on the Redriff Estate which was permanently covered in lines of drying washing, feral children and life in all its close- knit frustrations and trials. Nothing was private, but it was a move up for Hilda after that desperate Bermondsey slum with two rooms and a scullery between four children and her parents.
Her days were fi lled with the riotous sights and sounds of dockside living: ships’ masts towering over the end of her street, the clatter of horses’ hooves on the cobbles, the rank stench of the tanneries mingling with sweet vanilla smells of the biscuit and custard factories.
It was a colourful, chaotic time, and nan was always proud to have been born a Londoner, despite the privations and dirt. Working at Wally’s chippy in the evenings as a woman of 30, she quickly made friends with the locals, laughing and joking with her regulars, a host of colourful south- east London characters.
Her favourite was Old Man Bill, who came in each evening at 5.15pm sharp. He was a true Eastender, never complaining of his lot and eating the same meal of meat pie and chips with a pickled onion every night. Nan suspected it was his only hot meal of the day, and she always wrapped his dinner up in the sports pages of the local rag so that he had something to read in the evenings.
Then there was Mavis with her wispy hair and haggard expression. She would scrape enough money together to buy fi sh and chips for her husband and twin boys but never had enough for her own portion. As her husband Alfi e was in and out of casual jobs, Mavis’s boys only had one pair of shoes between them so went to school on alternate days.
Times were diffi cult for everyone back then and Hilda certainly endured more than her fair share of heartache and tragedy. She and Bert were left reeling in 1949 after Bert’s father Pop hanged himself after suffering from depression brought on by an eye injury he sustained in the First World War.
The following year saw the strike of Smithfi eld lorry drivers, and as Bert had just changed jobs to work on the meat delivery rounds he was caught up in it, leaving the family to rely on Hilda’s small wage. Nan did her best but one day they simply ran out of food. Hilda, who was heavily pregnant with Brenda, had no idea what they were going to do. Just then there was a knock at the door. Hilda shuffl ed to open it and found a small parcel on her doorstep but no one in sight. Inside the parcel she discovered a loaf of bread, a tin of sardines and a jar of Bovril – meagre supplies but literally a life- saving gesture for the family.
It was yet another example of the community pulling together. But if Hilda was indebted for that kindness, then the ones shown to her seven years later when Brenda tragically died saved her from falling apart. Doctors discovered that her little girl had an inoperable brain tumour after she was accidentally hit on the head by a swing.
She died within a matter of weeks, leaving Hilda and Bert heartbroken, their marriage very nearly becoming a casualty of the tragedy. But the friendships they made at the chippy and on their close- knit estate, plus the love of family, carried them through.
THESE were the days when people looked after each other. With little social support or unemployment benefi t, people literally relied on the help and kindness of their neighbours.
Wally and his wife Betty, the owners of the fi sh and chip shop, were no different. They were Hilda’s closest friends and always looked out for her. Wally even christened her “Hooray Hilda” ( or ’ Ooray ’ ilda, as he said in his Cockney accent) and named one of his beloved racing greyhounds after her.
When Wally heard that Bill Haley And The Comets’ fi lm Rock Around The Clock was playing in Rosehill, Carshalton, in 1956, he drafted in Hilda to his Carshalton chippy to chip mountains of potatoes and fry countless fi sh in anticipation of the stampede he expected to descend on his shop. But it never happened and Wally almost lost his business, having blown all his savings on the extra food.
In order not to waste it though Wally and my nan took the mounds of fi sh and chips back to her estate to give out for free, knowing that many poor families would have at least one freshly cooked hot meal inside them for that day.
I’m proud to have written my grandmother’s memoirs. She was a working- class, hard- working woman who kept home and hearth together through the war years and beyond. When she died in February 2003 it was as if a generation of like- minded, resilient women died with her. She was our family matriarch, our own true Londoner.
It is time we recognised the struggles, hardships, humour and downright magnifi cent resilience of women such as my nan. Her large- hearted spirit and humour live on in this, the second book of her life and loves, and it is testament to all the women of the age who worked, lived and raised the generations we have become.
To order a copy of A Fish Supper And A Chippy Smile by Hilda Kemp published by Orion Books for £ 6.99 call the Express Bookshop on 01872 562310, send a cheque or postal order payable to Express Bookshop, Chippy Smile Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth, Cornwall, TR11 4WJ, or order online at expressbookshop. com UK delivery is free.