Marie Phipps (b.1918)

I were about 18 then but I never took him (her husband) home ’til I were 21. They wouldn’t let you in those days, you’d got to be growed up. They wouldn’t agree with you. My dad wouldn’t. Anyhow I told him, ‘Dad,’ I says, ‘I’m going to bring a young man home today,’ and he says, ‘Oh no you’re not.’ I says, ‘I am Dad ‘cos I’ve told him.’ He says, ‘Bring him and we will see what we think about him.’

There was a lady at the top of the avenue…I always went to their house…she got them all outside. There weren’t a soul when I went up the road to meet him, when I came down they’d all got their chairs out on the front! He’d got his silk hankie in his pocket like he were ever so smart. My mother took to him straight away and me dad liked him.

When I went to look at it (her first house) to see if I’d like it, his mother went with me and she says to me, well, if I had got a little house like this I’d think I was safe in the arms of Jesus. I looked up the chimney and I looked around and I thought, ‘Safe in the arms of Jesus In this ruddy hole?’ But anyhow, we made a little house of it…and the chimney – there used to be a tin tray so far up the chimney – and they used to have to take that down, and one Sunday it was our eldest’s birthday and I had a party for her…I’d got all the stuff laid out on a table and bang comes this tray, oh you’ve never seen anything like it.

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Mrs. Payne

I met my husband at the Hinckley Technical College. He used to go…he joined the Gas Board at 14 and he used to go lessons and I was on a commercial course for office work. Very strict, he (Dad) wouldn’t allow us to have young men at all but eventually he had to give in of course. There were five girls of course. After he sort of got to know our boyfriends he was all right.