Swiss ‘fresh air’ experiment put me on the path to happiness
MEMORIES OF TRIP ABROAD AS YOUNG GIRL IN 1948 COME FLOODING BACK FOR ELSIE...
A TRIP to Switzerland 70 years ago shaped the rest of Elsie Voyce’s life.
She was one of 238 children from polluted inner-city parts of Manchester and Salford who left for Swiss towns and villages on March 22nd 1948.
Aged eight she was living in Bannerman Street, Higher Broughton, Salford when she was chosen to take part in a three-month health experiment.
Elsie and the other children had endured trauma and deprivation during the Second World War, growing up in smoggy industrial cities. They needed building up with fresh food, and air.
Elsie, then a pupil at Marlborough Road Primary School, was chosen, as she had asthma and eczema.
But while she was away a classmate, Jack Yarwood, then aged seven, wrote her letters to stop her from becoming homesick. It was the first blossoming of romance. In 1959 they married while Jack was serving in the Royal Navy, and have been together ever since.
In June the M.E.N. reported how 70 years after they returned home from their adventure on June 24 1948, some of the children and their families were to meet again.
The story triggered memories for Elsie, who now lives in Worsley. “Reading the article I felt quite emotional, as I was one of those children.
“I was a very shy little girl and on my very first journey ever, so it was strange without my sisters for company. I remember the acrid smell of the train made me ill – going on the ferry – sleeping on a trestle bed in what appeared to be the underground.
“Then on the last leg of the journey to be met by Martha and Carl Nell of the restaurant Kronenhalle in Basel. I will be forever grateful to them for caring for me and giving me wonderful memories of Switzerland.
“I celebrated my ninth birthday while I was there at Easter. I woke up on Easter morning and my table was full of chocolate bunnies and chickens.
“While I was there we visited Bern, Lucerne, and Lugano, it was so beautiful.
“The visit worked for me. I grew out of my asthma and eczema, married, had two sons, six grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.”
Elsie kept a 1948 newspaper cutting from the Manchester Evening Chronicle which reported how ‘pretty fairhaired’ Elsie said: “I want to see my Mummie and Daddie again, but I don’t want to leave”.
And Mme Martha Nell, proprietress of the big restaurant, had tears in her eyes as she said: “I shall see she comes back next year”.
The reunion of the children June in Manchester saw the screening of a film held by the North West Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University. It shows the return of the children from Switzerland. Silent but with titles in German, it was given to the Swiss as a gift from Manchester parents who chipped in for it to be made.