Mary's Memoirs - A Poole Childhood, Dorset War Work and Post-War London, 1925-1950
Introduction
These are the memoirs of my mother, Helen Mary James nee Norman (always known as Mary) who was born in Poole, Dorset in 1925 and who died in Cambridgeshire in 2004. Her parents were Phyllis Mary Elizabeth Scammell and Estcourt William Norman (Billy). However her grandmother, Sarah Scammell nee Allerton was to be the greatest influence in her life.
The memoirs tell the story of a childhood spent in pre-war Poole (Dorset), Grammar School life during World War Two, teacher training in post-war London. Mary followed this with a lifelong career in the teaching profession. The memoirs are written up by me, her daughter, Helen Jones using taped oral interviews conducted with Mary by her son-in-law Stephen Jones. I am also indebted to the book 'Upper Parkstone’s History' by Patricia Wilnecker, (privately published 2004), which confirms some of the incidents remembered by Mary and backs up her memories with facts and dates.
Mary died less than two years after the interview was conducted and I am so pleased that we immortalised her memories on tape. So much changed in her lifetime, and her school experiences were very different to my own in the 1960s and 1970s, or my children's in the 1990s -2000s.
I am putting Mary's memoirs on the internet as a small piece of social history, but also in the hope that they will encourage other researchers to commit their own, or their relatives, memories to tape or paper and so preserve their own little piece of the past.