style="font-size:15px;"> She had attended the meeting held in Newcastle last September,[3] and believed them when they said that Britain’s big cities were overpopulated, but Whitley Bay certainly was not. However, it rang true when the society’s representatives talked about the devastation of the high unemployment for the area. They argued that Empire migration was the only solution to this unemployment crisis. The Fairbridge Society brochures showed photographs of the already emigrated children living happily in their new countries. Once she saw the pictures, she was certain that it was the right thing to do. She was satisfied that without this type of scheme, some of these Tyneside children would never find a chance to break free from their backgrounds and get out of the slums. Since the Fairbridge Society could accept only those children of good mental and physical standing, they requested the help of the teachers because of their unique position of being able to identify the brighter children of the poor and bring them to the attention of the local council authorities.
Looking down at Marjorie, she felt sure that the children in this family would do just fine if they could get one or two square meals a day and a proper routine. The family moved too often, which simply was not good for the children. When she spoke to the attendance officer, she had assured him that there was nothing wrong with the minds of the children in this family. And, with a good diet and a healthy environment, such as the colonies could offer them, she was certain they would simply flourish. She heard that the families rarely gave up their children on their own — at least, not without a lot of encouragement. Really, she thought, it was the right thing to do. It was her duty to report these children. It did seem like a drastic step though, removing children not only from their families, but from their communities and their country as well. Still, she hoped that she had done the right thing.
Marjorie’s bare feet convinced her. It was the right thing. Winter was coming fast, and barefoot children had a harder time getting to school. She turned to the class and said, “Children, if you have any extra wellies at home, can you please bring them in?”
Marjorie’s cheeks flushed and she felt everyone looked at her, and then at her big sister. It was the first time that she noticed Joyce in the back of the classroom. She tried to hide her feet. Audrey and Kenny were in the infant classes and she expected they would all be teased about their bare feet at recess. It never occurred to Marjorie, however, that her family was not the only one with bare feet or that many of the children with shoes had cardboard placed carefully to cover the worn-out soles.
All too soon, the bell rang to signal the end of recess. Marjorie and Joyce looked at each other. They dropped the skip rope and instead of running to the classroom, they tore down John Street, past their house, hoping their mother wouldn’t see them, and made a beeline to the beach to spend the rest of the day. It was Marjorie’s birthday and they needed to celebrate it properly.
February 2, 1937
Marjorie hung around the school after her detention. She did not feel like going home just yet. She sat on the brick fence and tossed her schoolbook on the ground, still hopping mad because the teacher refused to believe that her mum threw away her homework. Well, she tried. That story often worked at her last school, and that was another thing that she did not like about this new school. Her teacher made her stay after school and finish her work. Her Cullercoats teacher had never made her finish her work. She looked up at her new school. Rockcliffe School was quite a large brick building. It looked so solid and strong. Her mother had told them all to come straight home after school, but she was already late from her detention so she didn’t worry about dawdling now.
A group of older girls pranced out of the girls’ entrance and stopped to play jump rope. They were the smart girls who never got into any trouble and they were the teacher’s favourites. Their proper shoes and socks and their neatly plaited hair, tied with pretty ribbons, caused a bad feeling to surface in Marjorie’s stomach. Sometimes she hated her family for being so poor.
She remembered their leaving the John Street brownstone house; her family snuck out in the middle of the night. They went out by the side garden, and in the quiet of the night its squeaky gate seemed loud enough to wake the entire neighbourhood. Marjorie, roused from her sleep by a sudden noise, heard her mum tell her big sister Phyllis to hurry and get the younger ones dressed.
“What are we doing? What is going on?” She heard her sister whisper.
Her mum’s voice was low. “The landlord is coming in the morning to kick us out if we don’t have the rent money and I don’t have the money, so I am going to save him the trouble. Now, will you please help me?”
That move brought them to this Rockcliffe School, but they missed days and days of school. Marjorie had crossed her fingers and imagined really hard that they could stay at their Cullercoats School or even go back to their Whitley Park School, but it wasn’t to be. Her mum had left them all with different neighbours and friends while she looked for somewhere else to live. She finally found a place on Victoria Avenue, but it meant changing schools. Marjorie didn’t care too much by then, as she hated having to be away from her mum and all that was important was that they were all back together again. She told her mum to never leave her again.
Rockcliffe School looked the same in 2010 as it did when Marjorie attended in 1936–37.
Photo by Patricia Skidmore.
The children had been at the Rockcliffe School since the beginning of November, and, just after Christmas, they had to move again, this time to Whitley Road. Marjorie wanted to stay at their house on Victoria Avenue. It was easy to skip school from there. They would just walk down Victoria Avenue to the promenade and then, instead of turning right and going on to their school, they would run down the path to the beach. She and Joyce or Kenny and whoever else skipped school with them would stay on the beach the entire day. Playing down on the beach was so much nicer than sitting in school. No matter what they played at, they would always keep their eyes open for lost money and other pickings.
Marjorie was happiest at the beach. Sometimes they would walk all the way to St. Mary’s Lighthouse and if they found a low tide, they would walk over to the island and explore around the lighthouse. Her big brother Norman went over one day, and he forgot to pay attention to the tides so he had to stay overnight until the tide was low again the next morning.
The beach was the best place in the world. No matter where they moved to in the area, Whitley Bay or Cullercoats or Monkseaton, they always stayed close to the beach. Sometimes they would build sandcastles, and at other times they played pirates. They would climb on the cliffs, even though their mother said they would get a whipping for even thinking of going near the cliffs. Kenny slipped once and tumbled down almost to the bottom. Terrified, Marjorie had scrambled down to get him. What if he was dead? By the time she reached him, blood covered his face. She dragged him home, watching his face, and hoping that he would not die. When they got to the door, her mother had a fit. Kenny wailed when he heard his mother’s voice.
“What happened here? Where were you two?” she yelled at Marjorie. “Why aren’t you in school?”
“We were up on the cliffs at the sands and Kenny slipped,” Marjorie blurted, even though she was afraid of a whipping. Her mother grabbed a cloth. She wiped the blood away from his face. Marjorie could see that it was just a large scrape above his forehead. None of his brain stuck out. He would probably live.
Her mother was more sad than mad. She scolded them for climbing on the cliffs and warned them again to stay away from that part of the beach because of the danger. She asked them what would they do if the tide was in and he fell in the water and drowned. Marjorie and Kenny did not have an answer. They just shrugged their shoulders. She gave Kenny a clean rag to hold on his cut and when it stopped bleeding
