pay. As chief steward his pay rises to £11 4s 6d a week. Mention of air stewards’
pay is interesting in view of Rosamund Lilley’s ambition, in Problem (1956) to
work as an air hostess. One wonders how much less she would have earned than her
male counterparts.”
Judith Simpson “According to my mother’s account books (which she kept from
when they married in 1949 to just
before her death in early 2006 – one of
these days I will write them up!) my
day school fees in 1958 in the junior
school were £25 9s 6d a term. Senior
school fees would have been rather
higher. When I worked in a book shop
in 1970 between Oxbridge entrance and
going up to college, I earned the
princely sum of £8 8s a week. After tax,
national insurance and fares, I probably
just about had enough to buy my lunch, although I never felt short of money. My
very generous parents never charged me board and lodging.”
Valerie Dane “In the late 1950s the head of music at my grammar school was paid
about £50 per month. For this she was responsible for all the singing and musical
appreciation classes, two or sometimes three choirs which had to be rehearsed
during her lunch time or after school, and also rehearsals for school concerts /
performances etc. She also composed music for these and for our annual church
service for which she composed a setting of The Magnificat. Additionally, she was
expected to accompany outings to concerts / competitive festivals held at weekends.
When I described this to a teaching friend in the 1990s she was horrified and said
teachers these days would not do the extra work without extra payment!”
Half-Term Activities in Jane
Charmian Bilger “In her article Judy Harris asks if
there really was a smallpox outbreak in Switzerland at
that time. My online research in German shows that the
last reported case was in 1933! However there were
epidemics in both Bradford and South Wales in 1963.
As Jane was published in 1964 I imagine that Elinor
had these in mind as she was writing the book.
Orange Sticks
Sheila Ray “An orange stick is a short (about 2”) thin
stick, thinner than a match. There are two kinds – one
with a flattened end (they were used for pushing back
9
Sigrid was tired and depressed by the events
earlier but Peter and Britta squabbled with
him calling her “a prig” and she retaliating
“you are a horrid boy” and when the meal
ended and the children were left alone, Britta
and eleven year old David fought each other
and rolled on the floor! The infuriated maid
stopped the battle and appealing to the
habitually good natured Peter requested the
boys take Britta with them to read saying
“Don’t be unkind now and bear malice.”
Britta, Peter and David first visited the family
donkey Sancho Panza and then inspired by
Britta’s reading of the poem ‘Eddi’s Service’
the boys determined to send the donkey into
church to disrupt the afternoon service where
the curate, Mr Eltringham, against whom the
Willoughby children waged a personal war
was preaching. The boys invited Britta to accompany them in their prank,
perhaps the first time she had been included in their play, and Sancho Panza was
led through the village and pushed it into church, witnessed by an angry Sir
Piers! However the sorry episode had the effect of making Britta an ally with
the boys and she happily faced two less enemies within her step family.
Meanwhile, Dina Willoughby, who was a little younger than Britta, had
required an urgent operation shortly after her father’s return from his travels.
The operation was successful but Dina
remained very weak and required time
convalescing in a mild climate. On the advice
of her doctor Sir Piers decided to take the
entire Willoughby family to Guernsey. Britta
was a little scornful of the Scamps
tremendous thrill at merely crossing the
English Channel, which she called ‘this little
voyage’. She nevertheless took an instant
liking to her youthful step uncle, Nigel
Willoughby, who was ferrying the family to
Guernsey on his steam yacht and spent most
of the voyage standing beside Nigel as he
sailed his yacht with awed expression of
devotion!
Rex and Britta remained hostile towards
each other with the sixteen year old taunting
42
Did Elinor Know About Nappies?
by Dorothy Devlin
C
harmian's article ‘EBD and Babies’ threw up many
queries that had occurred to me over the years.
My favourite Chalet book is not about the school at all or not much: Jo to the Rescue. But who washed all these
nappies? Wretched things! We all know who would be
doing them at home, but faithful Anna had been left behind to darn Jack's socks
and make him mercifully
uninspired sandwiches.
You young mothers don't know
you're born. I would actually have
enjoyed my babies' first years if
I'd had disposables. What bliss to
throw them away. The fact is that
the management of childbirth and
early infancy is as susceptible to
the vagaries of fashion as shoes
and handbags.
My own mother - born 1905 was “put to the bottom of the
bed”. Then someone heard a little
squeak and a rustle, and she was
slapped into 92 years of life. All that happened at home, of course, and my
grandma herself was a noted lay midwife, to be seen hurrying off with a bundle
of newspapers under her arm...
I was born in 1935, and my mother's account of her sufferings was such that I
dare not set it down here, though it resulted in my occupation of an oxygen tent
for four days, during which my mother never saw me, as she wasn't allowed to
leave her bed. All this took place in
hospital, ‘The Simpson’ in Edinburgh.
She was kept in for ten days, but that
was entirely normal then - as it also
was when I had my first child in 1957.
I think young mothers were better
looked after in those days after the
birth than they are today. Half an hour
every afternoon flat on our tummies,
to help restore our figures!
My mother, however, never saw a
49
Guardian then), the only contemporary account I could find, so this is probably
where EBD learned about Dachau. In Exile, published in 1940, she refers to
'protective detention', the 'horrors of a German concentration camp', 'the awful
camp at Dachau'. The descriptions given above must have been in her mind
when she says that Friedel
and Bruno 'had endured
tortures, and had known
cold and semi-starvation
for months. Knocked about
and brutally beaten for the
slightest
offence,
the
wonder was that they had
survived.' The horrors of
Dachau obviously made a
deep impression on EBD.
How did the young readers
of Exile respond in 1940?
They would not have seen on television the effects of war as we do now, so
were they shocked or did they skim over it without thinking about it?
In Exile we read of Gertrud Becker and the sinking of the boat on which she
was attempting to get back to Germany. EBD
describes Gertrud's terror when 'She knew now
what the people in the Athenia must have
felt....with the possibility of death by drowning
or exposure,' and '...she had rejoiced in the loss
of the great liner!' Flung into the sea herself she
was nearly frozen, and although she tried to
swim, she was hampered by her clothes which
were heavy with water, and because she was
stiffening with the cold. EBD's vivid imagination
made her feel how frightening it must have been.
In contrast with the lack of knowledge about
concentration camps, the sinking of the Athenia
was widely publicised in all the newspapers of
the time. She was a steamboat which left
Glasgow on 1st September 1939 with 1,103
passengers en route for Montreal via Liverpool
and Belfast. On 3rd September – just a few hours after war was declared – she
was hit by a torpedo, and sank with the loss of 128 lives. The captain of the Uboat responsible later claimed he believed she was a troopship or an armed
merchant cruiser, but the sinking was declared a war crime.
EBD wrote more than once that the Chalet School girls were not to be
'spineless jellyfish', and in Exile she made facts about the war very clear to her
65