a sleep after dinner—and we used to be sent off. I was a bit of a rebel—no angel—and I could fight as well as my brothers. It was nothing for me to be in a fight with one of my brothers and him getting the worst of it. Not far from us, in Broad Lane, stood the corrugated tin chapel of the Plymouth Brethren—I suppose the strictest Christian sect in England—bearing a board on which was written, ‘How shall I be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou SHALT be saved’.
I had always been sent to Sunday School, chiefly because my mother didn’t know what to do with us on Sunday afternoons after the midday meal. At Sunday School we sang hymns and learnt Bible lessons, and finally I became converted to the Plymouth Brethren. For three years I kept every rule and belief of what I was told was the only Christian religion that could help me be saved. I never went to the pictures, nor to dances, never went walking with boys, stopped swearing and even thought I ought to change my job because it was sinful to be working on stage clothes. In a way, this religion and denying myself all worldly pleasures, as even cinemas were called, was a passive rebellion against my environment, and gave me a sense of virtue and satisfaction. At home I acted superior, and was sneered at and laughed at, and was nicknamed ‘the Bible-Puncher’. Looking back, I think I must have been an awful prig, but I still have a soft spot for the Plymouth Brethren. In a poor and ignorant district like ours they did a tremendous amount of good.
Through religion I taught myself self-control, which was all to the good. I came to mix with people who spoke better English than I did, and I learnt to imitate them. I was also encouraged to better my education and go to evening classes. On the other hand, I was among a lot of pretty badly repressed women, with no outlet for their emotions, leading monotonous lives, and apt to turn queer and bitter, making me in some ways even more repressed and unnatural than I was before.
One of the teachers befriended me and took me under her wing. She used to invite me to her house after Sunday School for tea, and in the evening she would take me home. There was another one who was very motherly, and who had a daughter, and I used to try to imitate her. She went to the Tottenham High School and, me being a cockney, I used anything but the right words, so she always used to correct me. I always remember learning my first words of French with her, which were ‘Fermez la porte, s’il vous plaît’—she was just a young kid, but she taught me.
That stayed with me—and so did the Scriptures. I can still quote the Bible—but I never felt right into it, although I used to go to Bible-preaching meetings, and it did have an influence on me. I got very attached to the people, so even when I went into nursing I stayed in touch with them. I have a lot to thank those outside influences for. Somehow I always came under the influence of the right type of people. There was one Sunday School teacher who worked in a good position in a factory, and I asked her if I could join—but she said no, I shouldn’t go into factory work.
As I got older I got fed up with the job I was doing—it was no good. I didn’t make friends very easily. There were two other girls—and there was always an odd one out, and that was me. I used to pass these roads to the factory and see the girls working in the offices, and I used to think, ‘I’d like to do that—do some typing’. I went round to the school and they said I could join for shorthand and typing—and I was very keen and worked really hard. I was determined to make up for the schooling I had not made use of or missed altogether, and at the chapel I was encouraged to do this. I was fifteen when I first went to evening classes. I was one of the keenest attendees. We had no exams, but weekly tests, and to my surprise I found I often came out top.
There was a Mr Turner, and, at the end of the period, he would give away free theatre tickets to the one who came top. I always seemed to be getting the theatre tickets—but I never went to the theatre because I was a Plymouth Brethren and you didn’t go to theatres and you didn’t go with boys—so I used to give them away.
One day Mr Turner said, while he was marking our notes: ‘Tell me, Miss Phelps, I’m very curious—you don’t use your theatre tickets, do you?’
I thought I’d been caught out, but I said, ‘No sir.’
He asked ‘Why not?’
I said, ‘Because I’m a Plymouth Brethren, and we don’t go to the theatre.’
‘Oh, I see.’
So he left it at that for the time being, but another time he said, ‘Miss Phelps, would you like to come home to lunch with us? I’ll give you an address to meet you on a Sunday.’ It was some station in central London.
So I went home, and my elder sister was very suspicious of young girls and young men, and she said to my mother, ‘You’re not going to let her go at her age—to meet a man at a station, who’ll pretend he’s going to take her home for lunch?’
I said, ‘But he is.’
But she said, ‘Don’t you believe her.’ And my mother took her side and wouldn’t let me go.
I didn’t quite know what to do. I couldn’t go back to school in the evening for quite a while, but eventually I plucked up courage. I knew I was going to tell a lie—and I met Mr Turner, and he said, ‘Miss Phelps, I’m sorry we missed you.’
And I said, ‘I didn’t know your address or where you lived, so I couldn’t tell you that I wasn’t well.’ That was the only excuse I could make.
He said, ‘Oh, well, perhaps another time,’ but, from that time on, when he mentioned the wife, that made me mad—because I had a very quick temper.
When I got home I went for my sister. I said, ‘He wasn’t trying it on—he was married and had a nice wife—and they went there to meet me, and you spoilt it all.’ But still he took an interest in me, and so did his wife—they were the first people who really encouraged me.
During the next two years I visited the Turners frequently, and both Mr and Mrs Turner continued to take a real interest in my career, helping with all possible advice. Mrs Turner helped me to become more human by getting me to moderate my religious tendencies. I had always said cinemas were sinful, but Mrs Turner said she could see I was not happy—that I oughtn’t to go on leading a dull and uninteresting life. I denied this, saying that I was perfectly happy—but without conviction. Then, one day, I broke the rule and went with the Turners to the cinema, feeling frightfully guilty about it, but very soon this sense of guilt passed. Once I had broken through this one restriction, others went too, though it was still some years before I went to the theatre.
One day Mr Turner said to me ‘Miss Phelps, wouldn’t you like to change your job from working in factories?’
I said, ‘What can I do?’
He said, ‘You could do an office job.’
I said, ‘But I’m not trained to do it—the arithmetic.’ But he and his wife helped me quite a lot.
Then, one evening, with the Turners’ advice, I made the decision to try to become a nurse. I was of an age now to do nursing, and I applied to the Homerton Hospital to do that because they took people a bit younger. I was too young for general nursing training, but not too young to do fever nursing. Following my application, I received a letter telling me I had been accepted on trial as a probationer nurse. This was January 1928. Living inside a big hospital, being part of its life and wearing its uniform, opened quite a new world for me. Now I had at last done what I wanted, and I seemed at once cut off from the life of our home and our street. At home the family doubted my chances, and said I was suffering with a swollen head if I thought I could go through with it—and I thought so myself—but I worked hard at the hospital and kept very quiet. The work was tiring, but I found
