allowed there. It was very interesting to see Queen Alexandra, the Prince of Wales and the two little boys in sailor suits, as they arrived. Trouble began when the coffin arrived on the train. The coffin was supposed to be placed on a gun carriage to be pulled to the castle by horses. The train was late and the day was cold, but with the excitement of all the comings and goings, the horses simply wouldn't move. They didn't like it and were jumping and kicking about, and looked as if they were going to upset the whole thing, so they were taken out of their harnesses. The carriage was supposed to be followed by a Naval Guard of Honour, and a naval officer came forward and suggested that his men be put in place of the horses. The sailors were harnessed onto the gun carriage and they hauled the coffin up the hill right the way up to the castle. Of course, it took them a long time to pull the carriage all that way, and in the meantime, everyone was waiting. We knew by the salute guns that the coffin must have arrived at Windsor, but it was taking a long time to reach the castle. Time went by and I saw Earl Clarendon, the chap in charge of the ceremony – he kept coming out and looking down the road, wondering why nobody came. You could hear a band in the distance but nothing was happening. Then Queen Alexandra came tearing out, looking this way and that way, before Clarendon persuaded her to go back into the Chapel. Finally, the carriage came along very slowly, hauled along by the Navy. After the ceremony, King Edward VII appeared on the steps of St George's Chapel. He stood with the Kaiser and we gave them the royal salute. They saluted us back. Then they went off and we packed up and went home.
Nina Halliday
We saw the procession from a stand which had been erected under the Guildhall. The seats were covered in black material and everyone wore black clothes, but I had a dress, coat and hat of a lovely mauve colour – I loved it. The streets were lined by Foot Guards and the pavements were packed tight with people all dressed in black. It was a long wait, as the train bringing the coffin and all the important people travelled very slowly from Paddington to Windsor – so that people at the stations which it passed could see it.
It was a wonderful procession, with the Life and Foot Guards playing the Dead March. The Guard of Honour led; then came the gun carriage covered by the Royal Standard. The new King, Edward VII, followed with many of the Queen's relations and Kings and Princes all in uniform. The finest was the Emperor of Germany in a beautiful white uniform and white helmet with lots of gold on it, and many Orders and decorations. Then came the chiefs of the Navy and Army and members of the Queen's Household, followed by members of the Queen's Court, including her daughters and other relations in royal carriages – all, of course, in black with long veils.
I seem to remember that a purple cushion was on the coffin with a small crown on it. The bands had muffled drums and as the procession came along, one could hear the slow booming of the guns. All very solemn, so much black and such a small coffin – but so much colour as well, with so many uniforms.
George Lappage
My chum and I led the procession into Windsor Castle. When that was over, we went back to barracks and that night three troopers and an officer were told to go up to Windsor Castle and do sentry over the Queen's body. I was posted just outside the Chapel door.
Nicholas Swarbrick
I was born in Grimsargh, Lancashire. My mother died quite early of tuberculosis. In those days tuberculosis was incurable, and it was rampant. I was about four when she died, so I never really had a mother. I had one sister and a brother and my sister died of the same disease. She was in her late teens or early twenties. Of course, in those days, consumption used to establish itself, then it became infectious, but it was not infectious in the early stages. It became infectious in my mother when I was about two, and for that reason we had to be kept away from her, which was a dreadful situation. I can remember having to keep some distance away on account of her coughing. So I never had the sort of mother where you could fly into her arms. That was the very thing I was never allowed to do. I didn't know any different, though.
Alfred Anderson
My two older brothers, Dave and Jack, were born in Chicago, because my father had been one of many Dundee men who got recruited to go and help with the building of Chicago, and my mother followed him out there. They came back to Dundee before I was born in 1896. My father continued as a joiner and undertaker and my mother went to work in the jute mill – like her four sisters. I remember in those days we had gas lamps for light and coal fires at home – and we lived on a hill, so the horse-drawn carts had to struggle up and down. I used to play outdoors, and one day I saw two soldiers coming down the road – it was 1902 and they were returning from the Boer War. They were so glad to be back; they picked me up and carried me on their shoulders down the road.
Albert ‘Smiler’ Marshall
My father, James William Marshall, was a farm labourer, and he married a local girl, Ellen Skeet. When I was very small, my father put me onto a wooden cart pulled by a billy goat. When I was two and a half, he put me on the goat's back. The goat didn't like that at first and he bucked me off. My father picked me up and showed me that if I sat facing the tail and kept my arms round him, I could stay on. After that, I progressed to a pony and later to a horse. On most Sundays, my father took me to Colchester to see the soldiers' parade for church. Each regiment had its own particular marching music and I can still recall most of them. What excited me was their red coats. Many of the soldiers had just returned from the Boer War and they were wearing all their medals. At one of the parades, my father was approached by a sergeant of the Devonshire and Somerset Yeomanry who wanted me to become their mascot, but he said no.
Bessy Ruben
I remember arriving in this country. We came from a little village near Lvov, Ukraine, and our passage was booked through an agent. How on earth people arrived here intact, with their family and their few goods, I don't know. We went by train as far as Bremen. As soon as we got there, Mother got lost. She had three children with her, two boys and myself. My younger brother wasn't very strong, and she carried him over her arm. She was twenty-six or twenty-seven at this time. I remember my mother just standing there, waiting. Everybody ran to meet this agent, and Mother couldn't run with the children. My older brother, Sam, was acting like her husband. He looked after her on the journey. She said to him, ‘We're lost. I've lost the people we're supposed to meet. What am I to do?’ ‘Well,’ my brother said, ‘go into that shop.’ And I remember the girl in the shop was jerking some lemonade into a glass, and Mother could speak German, and she went in and she began to cry. This girl said, ‘Just sit there for a while, and perhaps they'll come and look for you’ – which they did! This agent was just as anxious to find us as we were to find him, and I remember that she was so overjoyed at meeting this man that she took his hands and kissed them.
We got on this cattle-boat – that's all I can describe it as. There were a lot of girls from Hungary going to America, and they took me under their wing. I remember they gave me a bit of chicken to eat. Mother asked me what I was eating and I didn't know what it was – this lady gave it to me. My mother said, ‘Throw it away. It's trefa – it's not kosher.’ Mother was seasick for the whole journey – she didn't eat anything at all, not anything. When we finally arrived in England, I didn't speak any English – only Yiddish. We lived above a shop and she sent me down with a penny farthing, to buy a pound of sugar. I went in and asked for a fing of gemulenin sicha in my best Yiddish. And everybody in there burst out laughing. I didn't know why. I was so confused. I was only five years old and I stamped my foot and started crying. ‘Wo wus yachtielare?’ I shouted, which means
