The early life of Jean Bishop spent playing in the quiet streets of the city
WHEN THE BEE LADY LET US INTO HER ‘LITTLE SECRET’
HULL’S queen bee Jean Bishop did not actually hail from the city she called home for almost all of her 99 years.
She was born in Louth, in Lincolnshire, but moved to Hull before her first birthday, delighting in letting the Hull Mail into her “little secret” some years ago that she was a “yellowbelly”.
Born to Fred and Eva Applegate, she was the youngest of four children. Jean’s father ran a hotel in the Lincolnshire town, before moving the family across the Humber to Dundee Street, off Chanterlands Avenue.
“I went to Thoresby Street School until I was 11,” says Jean. “I then went on to Middleton Street School, off Spring Bank,” Jean told the Mail in one of her interviews, recalling how much she enjoyed playing outside as a youngster.
“We lived near National Avenue – we called it ‘Radiators’ then – and there was hardly any traffic down there.
“We played on the road all the time, we stretched our skipping ropes right across.
“We used to play all the usual games, like block, and we ran around the back of these big terraces. Nobody bothered us.
“Mum wasn’t working then, so if things were a bit desperate, she used to take in a bit of washing now and then.
“Dad owned the Masons Arms Hotel but then he went bankrupt and started travelling around fairs with gaming machines.
“He moved around with my uncle, who travelled with Billy Butlin.
“Billy told my father he had this idea for setting up some holiday camps and asked him if he’d like to come in on it with him. My father said, ‘no way, it’s a ridiculous idea, it will be a flop.’”
Jean’s mum arranged her daughter’s first job.
“I left school, aged 14, on the Friday, and I was off on a really old bicycle – the chain kept coming off and it was a tatty old thing – on the Monday to Harlands
Printers, which was near the Land of Green Ginger then,” Jean said.
“I used to ride there and back. There wasn’t a lot of traffic – only the trolley buses really.
“I wasn’t used to getting up early, I think I was asleep on my bike for a bit because I was riding along
Spring Bank and went straight into the level crossing gates.”
After war broke out, Jean fancied becoming a Land Army girl and went along for a test, but her dad, Fred, was so upset at the prospect he got her a job at the Brough aircraft factory.
She said: “Dad could cook and he went as a chef for the officers. We were both there together for a bit but then he had an accident, he tripped over a step while he was carrying all these plates and glasses and cut an artery in his wrist. It finished him because he had no movement in his hand.
“I can remember running into the shelters when we had a raid. I started off stamping numbers on parts and finished up in the office, but then I was made redundant.”
Jean met her husband, Cliff Bishop, who was a fitter, at Brough. The couple married on June 28,
We played on the road all the time, we stretched our skipping ropes right across
Jean Bishop
1947, in a chapel in Chanterlands Avenue that was later replaced by flats.
“The men used to complain if they hadn’t received their bonuses,” she said.
“They’d say, ‘I bet Bishop has got his bonus.’ I’d tell them, ‘Oh, yes! We’re going out at the weekend.”
Cliff left to go down the mines but because he suffered with his chest, he moved into engineering at Stoneferry in Hull.
The Bishops lived happily in a comfortable terraced home that they occupied since the row was newly built in the 1950s.
“For a short time I went as a dinner lady at two schools,” said Jean. “Then I went back to Harlands, who’d moved Anlaby way, by then. I did a 5pm to 9pm shift every night and was there until I was 58.
“I left to look after my husband, who was very poorly by then, and he died two or three years later.”
Jean said: “The funny thing, is I was known as Mrs B by my neighbour’s children long before I became the Bee Lady.”