A LONDON CHILD IN WW2(DAPHNE MORGAN) GROWING UP
in
EARLS COURT

THE
WAR
YEARS

BY
DAPHNE MORGAN



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As I get older I have been broached many times to write about growing up through the war years in Earls Court as one of the few residents who has spent their whole life in the area. Some of these memories are just little snippets and observations.

These memoirs are based mainly of an area covering five streets which is now called the Earls Court Village. They are Child's Street, Child's Place, Kenway Road, Wall Grave Road and Red Field Lane. Most of these dwellings were two up two down cottages with outside toilets and tin baths hanging on walls in the back yards.

I was born in St.Mary Abbots hospital, Marloes Road, in 1937 and went to live with foster parents (more about that later) in a flat above a small grocers shop at the top end of Child's Street when I was six weeks old. I lived there for forty years then moved over to Nevern Square where I have been ever since.


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I was two years old when the war started and eight when it ended. At the beginning of the war my mother and I evacuated to a vicarage in the country but my mother, being a true cockney sparra', high tailed it back to London because she couldn't stand all those green fields and fresh air! As we were returning to London the war was escalating and mass evacuation had started. When we got home what a shock, where there were houses opposite us on the Earls Court Tavern side of the street, nos.1 to 4, was now a bomb site, we had to remove bricks and glass to get into our flat, and it's from this point that my memories really begin, but they might not be in chronological order.

For a child it was both exciting times and terrifying times. There were only about twelve children in the village all through the war, myself, two boys in Childs Street, my two girlfriends from Kenway Road and various sets of brothers from other streets and a pack of stray dogs which always seemed to be with us. Fathers were away fighting in the war so we also ran wild like a pack of animals, especially on the bomb sites were we would build dens and then hurl bricks and mortar at each other to defend them. when bored with this mayhem we would go hunting for shrapnel, although I never knew what is was, and still don't! The casualty department of St Mary Abbots hospital became our second homes tending our many cuts, bruises and dog bites.


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Every bomb site had its fair share of cats, wild ones which we couldn't get near, but the easy trusting prey were the homeless domesticated ones. Cat loving women would feed them and we called them the Batty Catty Ladies. My mother was one of them, Oh the shame! When we got bored playing nurses with our dolls, whose arms and legs we would break to transform them into war wounded, we would start on the cats. No we did not break their limbs! We would capture the domesticated docile ones, we thought!, swathe them in bandages, dress them in baby clothes and try and keep them in doll's prams or put them in boxes with air holes and make them prisoners of war. But before you say, Oh Dear the poor things, the cats always won the day and left us covered in vicious scratches and bites when they made their dash to freedom!

When a water tank was built on the Child's Street wasteland we still had bomb sites at the top of Earls Court Road where the Police Station now stands. further up and on the corner was a Lyon's Corner House and Our Lady of Victory Church which were both bombed. Barbed wire or hoarding, nothing could stop us kids from finding a way into these “playgrounds.” Our favourite site of all were the grounds of Holland Park. Holland House, which was in the park, was destroyed by bombs, so the park was closed off, but we managed to sneak in to this overgrown wilderness. We would pick arms full of daffodils and bluebells in the spring and try but always fail to catch rabbits, but the best fun was keeping one step ahead of the gamekeeper who we were told would shoot on sight. I was told years later there were unexploded incendiary bombs lying around!


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We also used to sneak in the back of Rassells flower nursery in Earls court Rd, which had a little pond where we could catch newts and frogs.

Nevern Square was another source of enjoyment, the iron railings around the garden were removed during the war so we had easy access, but just like today, as soon as our shouting got too much someone would come and throw us out.

Hundreds of tons of wrought iron railings were removed for munitions during the war, but there are numerous conspiracy theories and eye witness accounts that they were never used for that purpose and most of it was dumped in the Thames Estuary and landfills all over England.

When a bomb fell on the North Side of the square and destroyed some houses we went over with our friend Bobby, who was really happy about it because an aunt who he hated was either killed or injured. When ambulance men brought a stretcher out through the rubble with a red blanket over it he started cheering until he got a clip round the ear. These houses were rebuilt and are now Rupert House.

Strange, we were a bunch of little hooligans, but we enjoyed going to Sunday School at the YWCA building, now the Parkway Hotel for women at the lower end of Earls Court Rd, because we could sing our heads off and collect coloured religious stickers. I always think, looking back, that Richmal Crompton must have had us in mind when she wrote the Just William books.


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My mother and I had the choice of two air raid shelters, one across the road in Nevern Place and the Earls Court Station, but as she was claustrophobic we spent the raids sitting under the kitchen table.

My biggest fear in the war were the flying bombs called doodlebugs. I would hear the engine, then it would cut out and there would be a deadly silence before it landed and exploded. It's impossible to describe the terror felt in those seconds before impact.

Sitting under the kitchen table and thinking I was going to die any minute, every time the air raid siren went off, was another frightening experience, and Oh! the relief when the all clear siren went off and Mum and I had got through another raid unscathed.

I hated the smell of the gas mask, I think mine had Mickey Mouse ears.
I started school age five at St. Phillips and St Barnabas at the top of Earls Court Rd and we had to practice putting them on in case of a gas attack, I was always sick afterwards and to this day the smell of rubber can make me feel queasy.

Dad would come home on leave now and then, he was a wireless operator in the RAF stationed somewhere in England. When he was home we would sit at the window some nights and he would explain the search lights and the barrage balloons in the air and it didn't seem so scary.


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Life in Earls Court still went about its daily business. In the street we had the rag and bone man who gave me my first balloon and I was inconsolable when it burst, the knife grinder, chimney sweep, the beautiful dray horses that used to deliver beer to the Earls Court Tavern, the coal man with his huge shire horse (more about that in a moment) and the pig man who used to collect all our veg peelings for the war effort.
Not much rubbish those days, everything recycled.

The shops I remember were Fuelings, a large greengrocers opposite Spear Mews, at the bottom of the mews were the stables where the delivery horses were kept. Next door to the greengrocers was a wet fish shop, Mac Fisheries, where Mum would buy fish heads to feed the stray cats. For gas mantels (no electricity), candles and all ironmongery, there was Carpenters which is now Robert Dyas. Undies, hankies and knitting wool was bought at D.A. Jones the drapers. There was grocers Home and Colonial, Buckles, another grocers which was on the corner of Child's Street, not to be confused with Buckle and Rose which was also a grocers further down the Earls Court Road, and Ruggs the builders, I remember them being in Kenway Rd because the workmen used to give us bits of wood and nails to play with.


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Mr. Mowat, a Canadian, and the father of my friend Abby from Redfield Lane, had the new's stand outside Earls Court Station. Boots the Chemist was there, it had a library at the back of the shop where Mum would get her romantic novels, and on the other side of the station was an off license called Redmans. The photo below was taken in 1915, but this is still as I remember it in the war years, except that the paper stand was tucked in the corner next door to Boots. I was in the Infants class with John Redman but steered clear of him after school as he used to bully me.

Everything was rationed, including sweets, so my dad who was a dab hand at cooking would make me batches of sweets when he came home on leave. He also made bags of crisps for us to snack on in the air raid shelters, which we only went to once. Potato cut into crisps with a razor, fried then put into a brown bag with a little twirl of salt. My mother wasn't much of a cook but for a penny I could get a lovely mug of leek and potato soup and a slice of bread at the soup kitchen set up in the community hall at the back of St Phillips church. Can't remember ever going hungry, but I never saw an obese child in those days! I always wondered how Billy Bunter got that way!


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Our favourite snack was a halfpenny bun, make a hole in it and fill with either a crumpled up Oxo cube or sherbet powder, washed down with, R.Whites lemonade which we bought from Mr. Jingles. He had a little grocers in Kenway Rd, by the door he had a barrel of pickled onions as big as apples for halfpenny each. He would also sell under the counter goods on a Sunday which were forbidden as there were strict consumer laws in those days. But the main attraction for us kids was Mr Jingle himself, he was gassed in the first world war and everything he picked up he used to hit himself with, tins of spam,bottles and bread and then his wife would come out from the back of the shop, call him a silly old fool and hit him with a rolling pin. We found this hilarious!

Some other “characters”in the community

Next door to Jingles lived Mrs Bigwithers, she was taunted by us kids as Old Mrs Big Bum every time she stepped out the door. I have no idea why we thought withers was the rear end of the horse. Oh well, that's kids for you.

The one legged bookies runner who was always lurking in alleyways, a great pal of ours as he'd give us kids threepenny bits if he'd had a good day at the races.

The typical dirty old man in the raincoat who would offer us little girls sweeties to see what he had in his pocket. We knew it was something rude but not sure what so we would just giggle and run away!

In Kenway Road there was a good looking chap who was not in the forces and lived with his mother. He always wore a pretty little apron and did all the house work. Our parents called him The Pansy!


As children we didn't know what the war was about so we would pick up snippets from the radio and our parents conversations so in our tiny minds we thought the war was caused by “Hitler and the Jews” A family of Dutch Hasidic refugees moved in next door to us, two little boys who were skinny, deathly white and wore black caps and had ringlets,the minute they came out to play we starting calling them names, stoning them and screaming that they had caused the war. I don't know what happened to those poor little souls but I know they never came out to play again and I've always felt guilty about that.

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One day there was a bit of mischief that went terribly wrong, I mentioned before about the coal man's Shire horse. One of the boys got hold of a pellet gun , cant remember who, and was randomly firing it, at the same time the coal man was in the street making a delivery. The boy accidentally hit the horse with a pellet, it reared up and charged straight ahead just as the coal man was coming out of the end house, he backed against the wall and the horse's head smashed into his face. Months later when we saw him again he had a broken nose and no teeth and we heard him saying he never knew what spooked the horse as it was so gentle and it had been put down.


One Guy Fawkes night we had a good idea for a fire, acquired some tyres from Golly's Garage, which was on the corner of Redfield Lane up to Cromwell Road, piled them up against the Earls Court Tavern side wall, bit of petrol and presto!.The whole side of the pub was ablaze and people came running and panicking in the street thinking a bomb had exploded. We got a few good hidings that night and one of the firemen was so angry he boxed my friend Trevor's ears.
In those days it was open season for anyone to whack kids around the head when they were naughty and if you went home and told your Mum she'd hit you to!

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The home entertainment in those days was simple,the evenings were spent dancing to records on wind up gramophones, listening to battery radios and reading,if the weather was too bad for us kids to go out in the daytime we played board games, painted, drew and dressed up in our mother's clothes.

Our street games were hopscotch, marbles, skipping ropes, swinging round the lamp posts, five stones and statues but of course a day was never complete without Knock Down Ginger which was knocking on doors and running away before the irate inhabitants caught us!

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The adult's social life at that time was mainly centred in the local pubs. Our street had the Earls Court Tavern on the corner. It was split up, as most pubs in those days were, into three bars. The saloon bar, always referred to as the posh bar, the public bar for every man and the snug bar. This last bar was mainly used by the old men who played cribbage or dominoes and old grannies who would gossip over port and lemon or a milk stout. There were always older men in the pubs with missing limbs, a leg, two legs, an arm, a hand. Looking back I realized that like Mr Jingle they were casualties of the first World War.



Later on as the war progressed more and more colonial and US soldiers started billeting in Earls Court and that's when us kids found our love of all things American. It was all “got any gum chum” and singing Lily Marlene and We'll Meet Again to the troops outside The Prince of Teck pub at the top of Kenway Road. PX ( Post Exchange, a store on a US military base selling American goods to the troops) was the most magical word in the whole world as we were plied with American comics, bubble gum and bars of chocolate (and asked if we had any big sisters at home!). One day a black US serviceman came walking along Earls Court Road and we ran for our lives thinking it was the devil coming for us, we had not yet read Uncle Tom's Cabin and we had no idea that the “starving children in Africa”that made us eat up our dinners were black!


Before I conclude these memoirs I would like to recount my home life at that time, unfortunately every photo and document I had up until 1977 went missing when I moved and my parents had both passed away by then. In between the two world wars Dad had a lock-up in Soho from which he employed a team of men to hire out pit stools at the West End theatres. The cheapest seats in those days were called the pits and people had to queue for ages so they would sit on these stools along the side streets of theatres and be entertained by buskers.
It was at this time that my Mum and Dad met when she was Nippy (the name for all Lyons waitresses) at the Lyons Corner House Cafe in the Strand.
Dad was always bringing home autographs of the famous entertainers of the day which thrilled Mum to bits




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After a very quick courtship they married and moved into the second floor flat at 19 Child's Street because my aunt and uncle lived there at the time but they moved out of London at the start of the war. Mum became a registered child minder as she could not have children of her own. In 1937 my natural mother put me in her care straight from the hospital and said she'd come back for me in a couple of weeks but never returned until three years later and that was to put me in a children's home. As the war had started formalities were slap dash so I just stayed on with my foster parents.

I saw my first film in a cinema at Walham Green now Fulham Broadway which was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. My second movie experience was Bambi at the Odeon Kensington after which I cried buckets for days over mummy deer getting killed.

The war ended and fathers started gradually returning home. A good while after our friend Bobby's father came home and we looked on in horror as this yellow skeleton came in to the street holding a coconut and once again we ran away screaming. Bobby didn't go home for weeks as he was so frightened and he had to stay with neighbours until he got used to his father who we later discovered had been a Japanese prisoner of war on the Burma Rail Road.
Street parties were held on VE DAY and I got very upset, punched and kicked a sailor for dancing with my Mum. Would like to embellish more on that glorious occasion but these are my memories and this the only thing I can remember about that day!


Unfortunately these memoirs end on a very sad note. The next morning I was looking out of the window and watching my friend Trevor's father sweeping up after a huge bonfire, he suddenly fell down into the smouldering ashes clutching his broom. I thought he was playing a joke on me and laughingly called my mum and dad to see how silly he was acting. Dad rushed down to help but he had died instantly. He survived the fighting all through the the war, how ironic.


Well that's the end of my wartime memories.
There may be a few discrepancies in this account but on the whole it's pretty accurate as having always lived in the area has helped to keep the memories alive

Many thanks to Michael Hart and Alan Entwistle for the help they have given me on this project.






Contact Email daphneblackie@aol.com

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