The little evacuee who no one wanted

DurinG the first three days of September 1939, 9,000 children passed through Waterloo station. it was the government’s plan to move London youngsters into the safety of the countryside. Similar numbers of unaccompanied children were leaving from king’s Cross and paddington. added to this were mothers with toddlers and babes in arms. according to the official statistics, everything went according to plan — but no one told them about me! our home was in Stamford hill, north London. dad was in hospital being treated for a World War i back injury. My mother was in an ambulance, expecting twins any moment. My older brother and sister had been evacuated to devon with their school. and me? aged 17 months, an aunt in brixton was caring for me. What happened then is unclear. perhaps in a moment of panic, my aunt, who also had her three children to consider, thought it best that i was evacuated. With three layers of clothes on, a label with my father’s name and address pinned on my knitted woollen coat, and a Mickey Mouse gas mask, i was handed to a billeting officer. by the time the train left Waterloo, no one had claimed me. he could only assume my guardian must be on the train, destined for the isle of Sheppey. When the train arrived, locals came to choose a child or children. by the end of the day, no one had claimed me. district nurse dorothy hubble took me home. i stayed in the care of her elderly mother until all of the other evacuees had been accommodated. Still no one claimed me. in the film paddington, there is a scene where he is on the platform alone and everyone is walking past. When i watched this, i started to shake uncontrollably and to sob. decades after the event, i realised what i’d been through. The nurse was too busy to manage a child and her mother not able to, so the billeting officer started at the top of the hill outside their house in Sheerness and began knocking on the door of anyone not yet allocated an evacuee. halfway down he knocked on the door of Mrs hilda Spence, a widow with a ten-year-old daughter. She had been assessed for a mother and two children, and the officer assured her that, should she take me, a family would not be sent to her. her daughter barbara was jumping up and down saying: ‘Let’s have a baby.’ Later that day i was delivered to them. They wrote to my father, who came down six weeks later with clothes and my brother jimmy in his arms, so my mother only had one twin, Marian, to look after that day. i stayed with Mrs Spence, known to me as auntie, until i was four. Sadly, my mother died in 1949, having been in hospital for three years. We were not like today’s children and i never asked about those times, but i continued to visit Mrs Spence each school holiday, and later took my children. So began one of the most wonderful friendships of my life.

Josephine Kelly, Rhodes.