13th December 1940
Mary Marples
Mary Marples, aged 31, was living in 18 Windsor Road in the Little
London area of Sheffield, UK. She had married her second husband,
Tom in 1938 and he had been called up into the armed forces on 28th
November 1940. He was a trained plasterer, but the building trade
had stopped completely upon the outbreak of war, and he had
become a tram-conductor until his ‘call-up’ papers arrived, requiring him to report for army
training. Mary was left a single-mother with a son aged 2 and a daughter of a few weeks old.
Sheffield was a big industrial city and the people had become used to the night-time air-raid
sirens calling them to the shelters. There were more alarms than actual bombs and so, when
the air-raid sounded on the 13th December, the family calmly followed the usual drill of
moving to the shelter in the shared garden. However, this time was to be different. The
three houses across the narrow street from them took a direct hit. All the occupants were
killed and other houses, including Mary’s, were left uninhabitable. As morning came, the
family moved out to live with Mary’s mother. Helped by her two teenage brothers, she
pushed her eldest son in an orange box with wheels and carried her daughter. All her son
remembers of this eventful time is being bought sweets as he sat on the barrow box. After 6
weeks they returned to the repaired street, but to number 12 Windsor Road. This house had
a shelter in the cellar, which was reinforced with a corrugated iron roof.
End of 1942
Mary Marples
Mary’s son remembers coming downstairs to find his mother crying in
the small front room. She had just received a telegram to say that
Tom was declared missing in action on the 27th October 1942. He had
been part of the battle of El Alamein in North Africa. It was not until
the next year that news was to arrive via the Red Cross that he had
been confirmed as a prisoner of war on 16th February 1943.
May 1945
Mary Marples
As war ended, Mary was still living in Windsor Road. She had spent
the last 3 years bringing up the children as a single mother. In
February 1942 the allowance for a wife of a serving soldier (not an
officer) with two children was £2 per week, raised to £2.37 by 1944
due to wartime inflation. Seebohm Rowntree, who studied poverty in
the UK from 1900 to the 1930s, had calculated that the amount a
family of four needed to live on in the UK in 1936 was £4 per week. The average civilian
wage in 1942 was £6.05. Therefore, even though they were a family of three not four, life
was not easy. Tom was the only man in the street to have been called up into the army, as
the other men worked in the steel industry. As vital workers for the British war effort, they
continued in their peacetime jobs. The steel industry in their area was put to making
gearboxes for planes such as the Spitfire. Mary was supported by other people in the street,
especially Mrs Eales, who would often pop down the road and share her sugar ration, or
give them some milk. Meanwhile, Mary got to know, via the Red Cross, that Tom was in the
prison camp known as Lamsdorf, though she had no specific idea where that was.
June 1945
Mary Marples
Tom had been registered as a prisoner of war to be returned home
when he, and some other prisoners, had stolen a truck and driven
west across Austria until they met American soldiers. In February or
March 1945 he had been marched from Lamsdorf into Austria, ahead
of the advancing Soviets. As the war ended in May, their German
guards had left, with the recommendation to the prisoners that they keep moving west in
order to avoid the Soviets. Because he was a registered British prisoner of war, with a home
to go to, Tom arrived home to Sheffield just a month after the war in Europe ended; in June
1945. His son remembers that they all painted a bedsheet saying ‘Welcome home, Tom!’
and put it up on the wall at the end of the street. Mary had been a single mother for 5 years,
and home came a man who was thinner, balder and with less teeth than the man who had
gone to war. His son and daughter had no memory of this man who they were supposed to
call Dad. However, they adapted. Tom was not technically discharged from the army until
December 1945, but in reality he was on permanent compassionate leave because he had
been a prisoner. He was able to stay at home.
By December 1949
Mary Marples
There was change and continuity in Mary’s life. Tom’s return had
taken some adjusting to, but he had soon found work as a plasterer
again as the building trade restarted. Two more children were born in
1946 and 1947. To some extent, Tom and Mary started again. This
time Tom would know his new children as toddlers. Rationing
continued. (It started to end in 1950, but meat was still on ration in
Britain until 1954). The children had free milk at school and a daily spoon of cod liver oil,
followed by a small glass of orange juice. Chocolate was so scarce that the two older
children had a Mars Bar a week. That is, one bar cut into 14 pieces and made to last. As Tom
had work there were 2 week family holidays, to Cleethorpes in 1946 (where there was still
barbed wire on the beach to guard against invasion), to Bridlington in 1947 and to a caravan
in Derbyshire in 1948. The famously cold and snowy winter of 1947 is not remembered by
her son as a particularly hard one for the family.
Moving on
Mary Marples
Tom and Mary had a fifth and final child in 1951. Meanwhile, their
eldest son and daughter did well at school. They both passed the
11+ exam (brought in as part of the 1944 Education Act), and went
to grammar schools. The eldest son passed the 11+ with such high
marks that he qualified for the top boys’ grammar school in
Sheffield. He proved to be a talented mathematician, and went on to the University of
Oxford; the first person in the family to go to university. As was typical for the time, his
sister was not allowed the same opportunities, though she did become the youngest
qualified librarian in the UK.
In the 1950s, Mary began to go to the Congregational Church Women’s Fellowship. The two
eldest had started Sunday School there during the war years. Then followed scouts and
guides. Mary got more involved herself as her children became more involved. It was to
become a very important part of the rest of her life.
Tom worked for a private building company and then moved to the City of Sheffield public
works department, working on the new council housing stock on the 1950s and 60s. Even
into the 1950s the centre of Sheffield bore the evidence of bombing. Building materials
were in short supply until well into that decade.
Tom and Mary continued to live in Windsor Road until after Tom retired in 1973, aged 65.
The bombed out houses were never rebuilt. Instead the landlord built lock-up garages for
people in the area who were becoming car owners. The rent on 12 Windsor Road was 8
shillings per week, whereas council house rents were 15 shillings per week. As the house
had no bathroom or inside toilet, it was condemned for demolition, and Tom and Mary
were moved into a council flat for the elderly in the early 1980s. For the first time in their
lives they had central heating, a bathroom and an inside toilet.
Tom died in the 1990s, shortly after their eldest daughter finally lost a long battle with
cancer. Mary lived on in the council flat until she became blind and suffered from dementia.
She was incredibly proud of her 12 grandchildren; all but one of whom studied at university.
She died, aged 93 in 2003.