Crier Profile Part II
Margaret Tattman
In this second instalment of her riveting memoirs, Margaret tells how she got her beloved Airey House, and how Gladys Pope, her husband's adoption sister, was forcibly transported to Australia by Barnardo's.
SNOWY WAS STILL IN THE NAVY when I came in '45. Other lasses used to say, in't half a nice looking lad live at Rose and Crown, so when he was home on leave we used to go and have a look at him. He was engaged, but I s'pose, in the war, all that time he were away, that didn't work out. I don't care, because I had him.
If you got into trouble you wouldn't go home. Mam's'll have'em back nowadays, won't they? But if you made your bed you'd got to lie on it, you'd got to get on with it. And we'd wanted to get married: I mean Snowy wasn't a kid, he was 26, he'd done nearly 7 years in t'Navy, and she wouldn't sign t'paper. You had to have permission if you were under 21 so - I lived at Rose and Crown with my mother in law, Florence Webb - she kept t'Crown - and we waited right till last post on Friday night before we were getting married Saturday morning, and my friend's mother forged my mother's signature. It weren't me dad - me dad was much more...no. I mean, I didn't want to be pregnant at 20. If she'd given permission - I mean, we'd nothing! We come out of Rose and Crown and we squatted - in the cottage across the road from the pub; then we waited till Elsie, this first one here (indicates her neighbour's house) and her husband moved out of the Nook to live in the farm houses at the top of t'hill - it had been requisitioned so we knew it was going...so we got that.
No, I didn't have a penny, I never earnt anything in the Land Army - equivalent to 10p a day, when they took your board out. For about 10 hours a day. I kept coming and watching 'em build Airey houses up the hill, and then I cried when I didn't get one! No, it was horrible. Joan Bradley got one - we were about a year before we got one, and it was like heaven. Where they put them two new houses in - Margaret Arksey, she was my neighbour. I mean, we still hadn't got anything - all the floors were black pitch, we'd got nothing on 'em, only a bit o'coconut matting near t'fire - but it didn't matter, we were together, that's all as mattered. That was was heaven not having to go across t'garden to fetch water, and going up t'garden to do you know- what! Y'see, young uns, see, they're not made same. They'd had everything - even my daughter, she were ten before we had a television, we'd no money. My husband was 49 before we had a car. We were the old brigade that, if you couldn't afford it, you didn't have it. But it didn't hurt us, didn't hurt us. We made it, We were only young.
He didn't like it but the name Snowy stuck. I always called him by his proper name, but nobody else did, it was always Snow or Snowy. Philip Tattman. I've been to different places, see if I can find another Tattman. I've find a Tatman with a single T, couldn't find it with a double. He was adopted from when he was 6 weeks old, from a Catholic place in Cambridge for unmarried mothers. They adopted him but they never...I've got a some of his books from church with Philip Webb, and a lot of people knew him as Philip Webb, but he wasn't, he was Tattman. When I left Pye's I took a lump sum with a death policy, and when he went I had to alter it to next of kin. I lost it, but I eventually got through to Philips in London, and I was going to renew what I'd lost, and she gave me a number. Within a couple of seconds, she said "I'm sorry, I've given you another Tattman's" - but I can't make enquiries because Philips is sealed until after I'm gone. I thought, what a small world, to go through Philips and find another Tattman, but there's none in the street directory or anything. They said she was a girl that worked for the well-off families. Happened a lot in them days, didn't it.
Then my mother-in-law had another little girl from Cambridge, Gladys Pope. I wasn't there then but she was so full of rickets she couldn't even walk, and my mother-in-law had her until she was 14. Well, her mother didn't want her, but she wouldn't let my mother-in-law adopt her. Out of the blue one day, two men came in a big black taxi and forcibly took her away and she was one of the unfortunate ones that was sent to Australia by Doctor Barnado's - that's why I went to Australia later, to see her. I'd never met her, but we'd written and photographs and all that. She daren't fly - she said if there'd've been a bridge she'd've walked to come back and see. Why couldn't they have left her alone? They had a terrible time, they never saw daylight. The whole six weeks they were down in the hold of the ship. Then they were put out to these farmers to be abused and whatnot. And she was lovely. She had four daughters and a son, so she got something out of her life, but there were thousands of them sent, weren't there? A bloke at Burwell'd got a school photo. The daughters in Australia thought she were took away about 4 years old, but that wasn't true, that's what Doctor Barnado's'd told - but we got proof she was at Swaffham Prior School, and I had the photo sent off to Australia for them to see, to prove that she wasn't sent when she were four year old. I mean, Sid (Prince) went to school with her - lived next door to her. And there was an old lady who lived in number 6, Mrs Andrews, she lived in the East Road district of Cambridge, which was poor area - not so poor now, but it was then - and this Gladys Pope, her mother was called Gladys too...she lived in a little street called Compass Passage. Mrs Andrews knew somebody that wrote books about Cambridge and he came to see her - and he'd written a book about Gladys' grandmother and grandad Pope. They used to do busking outside Victoria cinema on't Market Square Šso I got this book and I took it to Australia. But Gladys said if she could ever have met her mother she would have slit her throat. It was ever so sad - she had a clear plastic bag that high full of letters from my mother in law. Course, they'd all been opened and censored, in the war, and it always finished up with my mother-in-law saying "please come home". But of course, she never did. So sad, in't it?
Her husband Ned came and found us. He was on a round the world trip. 1981. Knocked on front door one night. He stayed for a few days and we went to Wicken to take photos of me mother-in-law's grave for Gladdie. That were nice. Snowy wouldn't go. He'd been sunk, had claustrophobia. He was on the Penelope - out of 1400 only 400 survivors and he was one of them. I've still got the papers of where he was missing presumed dead, but he wasn't. He was picked up by the Queen Mary. They went to New York for six months, till there was another ship. They nicknamed it Pepperpot, where it'd been hit so many times and they'd plugged it, till it got sunk. On the Russian convoys. We've tried for a number of years to get the Russian convoy medal, but now it's not possible. Something come from the admiralty, and there's some clause. He should have had it when the others did. They built a new Penelope and they had it in the Pool of London, but he was too ill to go; two survivors from the Penelope, one from Jesus College, one from King's, gardeners, seen his name and address, came to see him here. I mean, at eighteen...eh? He was a volunteer, he wasn't called up.