Codebreaker Girls

A Secret Life at Bletchley Park

Jan Slimming

• Verlag: Pen & Sword Military
• Jahr: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781526784124
• Thema: History
• Thema: Military Biographies

"What would it be like to keep a secret for fifty years? Never telling your parents, your children, or even your husband?" Codebreaker Girls: A Secret Life at Bletchley Park tells the true story of Daisy Lawrence. Following extensive research, the author uses snippets of information, unpublished photographs and her own recollections to describe scenes from her mother's poor, but happy, upbringing in London, and the disruptions caused by the outbreak of the Second World War to a young woman in the prime of her life. The author asks why, and how, Daisy was chosen to work at the Government war station, as well as the clandestine operation she experienced with others, deep in the British countryside, during a time when the effects of the war were felt by everyone. In addition, the author examines her mother's personal emotions and relationships as she searches for her young fiancée, who was missing in action overseas. The three years at Bletchley Park were Daisy's university, but having closed the door in 1945 on her hidden role of national importance — dealing with Germany, Italy and Japan — this significant period in her life was camouflaged for decades in the filing cabinet of her mind. Now her story comes alive with descriptions, original letters, documents, newspaper cuttings and unique photographs, together with a rare and powerful account of what happened to her after the war. "Here's a beauty of a history of some of the codebreaking girls who helped save us during the second world war. This one's about Daisy Lawrence's extraordinary life as a poor girl brought up in London and then chosen for top secret work at Bletchley Park. Reads like fiction." —Books Monthly

Part I

Early Days

Chapter 1

Tooting SW17

Daisy Lawrence was a bubbly child, born on 7 January 1917 during the First World War, the Great War, the war to end all wars, a time of unprecedented death and destruction in Europe. The war with Germany started in 1914 and by 1917 many had lost loved ones – husbands, fathers, brothers, sons – over one and a half million. Wounded soldiers returned in horse-drawn carriages, hansom cabs or trains to South London. Nurses with brown flowing capes helped families reunite. Young men, returning from the front, cried out in pain as they manoeuvred wooden crutches across the steps of their mothers’ terraced houses. Daisy’s mother, Annie watched sympathetically from an upstairs parlour window.

In the smog-filled air, a distant blue-grey circle indicated a brighter orb of sun that hung magically over the railway track; hope of a better afternoon. She could hear the cackle of chickens in the henhouse at the bottom of their small garden, next to the railway-crossing. Steam trains heading for Tooting Junction or Merton Abbey often trundled by, but they no longer stopped. The level-crossing was closed. After feeding the chickens, Oswald Lawrence leaned on the fence to puff on his tobacco-filled white clay pipe, waiting for another train to pass. Deep in thought, he smiled as scenes of bygone years came to mind and the time he worked on the railway. Now the gates at Kenlor Road were shut and had been for some time, but he well remembered the hustle and bustle of horses, coaches and carts as they crossed over the tracks.

At the time Daisy was born he had moved on to work as a general painter and decorator. He’d learned new paint techniques for wood, a fashionable skill and far superior to that of just a brush hand. When that work dried up, he took other work as a night watchman or general labourer. It was hard and monotonous, but it paid the bills and provided food for his family. The drudge of his non-working days was often lifted by the friendly cries of the Cockney delivery lads as they cycled by. ‘Morning Mister! Cheers, Mister!’, they cried, ‘Keep y’er pecker up.’ He was a friendly man, always ready to have a laugh and joke. Everyone called him ‘Mr’.

Old Tooting – The Broadway. (Paul McCue)

* * *

Annie Lawrence’s children were born at home in their rented flat. Daisy was her third. Her older children, Harry (10) and Ciss (9), often played outside, especially after the railway crossing closed. Their road had instantly become a cul-de-sac and provided the perfect playground. After school and at weekends they would bundle up with thick cardigans and coats to play outside their cramped flat in all weathers. The black iron cemetery railings on one side of the road were great for climbing and the tall green trees growing majestically behind provided plenty of shade in the summer. They played hopscotch, football or cricket and when it was time for tea, Annie lifted her parlour window to call in her children. Summer evenings often seemed very still; a pungent aroma of hay-perfumed horse manure was sometimes accentuated by a light breeze. Opposite the graveyard, on the corner of Kenlor Road, SW17, Daisy Evelyn Lawrence’s home was happy. Annie hummed an old song everyone sang or whistled; a catchy tune from the early 1900s. The music hall singer, Katie Lawrence was no relation as far as Annie knew, but her song ‘Daisy Bell’ was still popular – how lucky, she was to have a second chance to call her new baby Daisy, after that sweet song.

Daisy Bell sheet music by Harry Dacre. (Author)

Early Years in Kenlor Road

We wonder if there were other pregnancies between Daisy and her older sister, Ciss. Nine years was a long time without other children. Perhaps Annie and her husband used early forms of birth control such as olive oil and sponges, the withdrawal method, or maybe he worked elsewhere. There are no records to support this, but a 1920 photograph reveals he helped build tramlines and it’s possible he travelled to other areas for this type of work. Breadwinners needed to find employment for their families to survive. There was no social security or unemployment benefit in England then.

Mr., building Tooting’s tramlines (far right). (Daisy Lawrence Archive)

The acrid smell of boiling washing on the stove made their noses wrinkle. Traditional washing days in Tooting were Monday and Friday, when a caustic aroma of boiling water, bleach, soap powder and linens bubbled together in a large iron pot in the scullery; it smelled like fish. But the damp atmosphere of wash days was comforting for the Lawrence family in the upstairs flat they called home. As hot steam vapours hit the cold windows, the Lawrence children drew pictures on the glass with their fingers – matchstick-men, a round cat with whisker, or a rabbit – simple and fun distractions from the rain. Or perhaps they would read a book or work on a difficult maths problem. In July 1919, Walter Oswald Lawrence arrived. Daisy giggled with delight to see her new brother. She was two-and-a-half years old. Ciss, was almost 11 and well-versed in childcare as she whisked the new baby off to the kitchen table to change his nappy (everything was done on the table), and later finished the washing. She played the role of the ‘little mother’. Their real mother had returned to work cleaning somebody else’s house.

Daisy and her cousin Edith Mitchell, c.1918. (Daisy Lawrence Archive)

Annie and Oswald Lawrence worked hard to feed their family in less than glamorous jobs, but their children were happy, especially as their extended family of joke-telling aunts, uncles and cousins lived close by. Together they enjoyed summer trips to the seaside, Christmas and birthday parties, or ‘any-excuse-for-a-knees-up’, when all the family would gather around the upright piano to sing old London songs, drink tea or beer, tell funny stories and play hilarious party games. Daisy loved to join in and by the time she was five, she would happily flick her blonde curly hair and flutter her blue eyes at the thought of what was to come. One game was Animal, Mineral, Vegetable, another was Kiss the Blarney Stone, blindfolded. Between her father, aunts, uncles, cousins and her brothers and sister, there was always family leg-pulling going on somewhere. She learned at an early age to be smarter and deal with their wisecracks.

She liked to play the mind-stretching games the adults produced which also included Pelmanism and Tell Me. Harry, her older brother, helped with new words using his Oxford English Dictionary. She remembered ‘mineral’ was one: obtained by mining; (belonging to) any of the species into which inorganic substances are classified. ‘Minerals are in rocks,’ he explained, ‘You know, things that come out of the ground like tin, coal, gold, silver, and … diamonds!’ His eyes sparkled and Daisy scanned the entry for a word that could have been ‘diamonds’, but he slammed the book shut just missing her nose. However, she just noticed the words ‘ginger beer’ at the bottom of the page, next to ‘mineral water,’ and she ran to the scullery to find a refreshing cup of home-made ginger beer.

* * *

Small things pleased, and every penny earned was a blessing; life was simple. Daisy loved to learn from Harry, who was a salesman at the Co-op. She played with her little brother and copied her older sister. Ciss, whose real name was Ann, earned her nickname from Harry and was quite happy to be called something different from her mother, Annie. At 13 she had also just started work at the Co-op. On summer afternoons their mother sat outside their front door in the sunshine to watch her younger children play. Sometimes they climbed on the iron fence opposite, but that soon stopped when young Daisy’s head became stuck between the cemetery railings. The fire brigade was called to free her.

Despite Daisy’s brush with the graveyard pailings, a year later she was left in charge of Walter, who for some unknown reason was now called Bill. Her parents and older siblings had gone to an aunt’s funeral in Somerset, a two-day trip. Six-year-old Daisy and four-year-old Bill stayed with Mrs Apps next door, but they were allowed to play in their own back garden, feed the chickens and collect the eggs.

The trains at the bottom of the garden were always of interest and as Daisy tended the chickens, four-year-old Bill ran around, but he also loved to climb. Daisy didn’t notice him move an old chair to ascend the drainpipe next to their father’s greenhouse where he grew tomatoes. The first she heard was crashing glass and Bill screaming among the plants, his legs covered in blood. The chickens clucked noisily aware of danger, but Daisy acted quickly, shouted for Mrs Apps, and pressed on the wound firmly with her handkerchief and skirt. She had just learned First Aid in Brownies. Mrs Apps heard the crash and Daisy’s calls but couldn’t climb over the fence. Instead she ran out of her front door, around the corner and into the Lawrence’s back garden, where together they managed to slow the flow of blood, and calm Bill down. ‘What on earth happened?’ scolded Mrs Apps. ‘Why was he on the roof?’ Daisy couldn’t answer. Quickly, they ran to the doctor with him draped across a pushchair where a nurse stitched together the gash in his right thigh. He was lucky the wound was not more serious or life-threatening. All he had wanted was to watch the trains from the roof.

* * *

Records indicate that Daisy’s ancestors were once poor west country agricultural workers from Winfrith-Newburg and Tolpuddle, Dorset. They had travelled north to London via Reading, Berkshire looking for work. Now, in south London, the family were fortunate to have four rooms upstairs in a terraced home. Most of the small London houses in Tooting, close to Colliers Wood and Wimbledon, were built in the nineteenth century by farm and industry landowners: textile printers, paper mill owners, railway companies, daffodil and lavender farmers. The dwellings had two levels, upstairs and downstairs, and often provided homes for two large families. Inside was dark with only windows at the front and the back, but the Lawrence’s flat on the end of the terrace enjoyed extra daylight through its side windows. One room was a combined dining and sitting room, where a fire often blazed in a cast iron grate. A mid-sized settee, on newly polished floorboards, filled a third of the living space and a small dark-wooden dining table stood on a multi-coloured rug. When the family gathered every Sunday for lunch, the table was extended and pulled into the middle. Four spindle chairs accommodated most, but one person always had to sit on the wobbly three-legged stool.

Over lunch on weekdays – called ‘dinner time’– they discussed the news. Daisy and Bill nearly always ran home for lunch from school, while Harry and Ciss came home from work. Their parents were not always there because they worked at different times. Harry, now 16, usually bought a newspaper which he read while he waited for Ciss to serve his lunch. He was a junior assistant in the Co-op’s china department, but their conversations often centred around the news and fashion. Ciss worked in the fashion department at the Co-op. Coco Chanel was in vogue and her knitted twin sets and hats sold well. As an avid knitter, however, Ciss knew she could create something equally pleasing for far less money.

Daisy wished she could have a hat like Chanel and made a mental note to add this to her Christmas list. Harry continued to read the newspaper. Working class females were expected to do most of the cooking and household chores then and were often subservient to older males in the house. Daisy was still too young to cook so Ciss or her mother made the meals, but she sometimes helped mix the Coleman’s mustard.

The other three rooms on the same level were bedrooms. Daisy shared hers with Ciss. Harry had his own, and young Bill slept in a small bed in his parent’s room. The two girls had a wooden commode between their beds, which held a lilac-flowered china bowl and matching jug of icy water to wash in private. A strip wash was often best with a flannel and a clean rough towel for drying. A matching chamber pot was in the small cupboard underneath, just in case nature called during the night, one could relieve oneself in the potty, sometimes called the ‘guzunder’ (goes under the bed). The pot would be emptied in the downstairs WC in the morning. A small wardrobe held their clothes, and Mister added extra clothes hooks to the wall above two wooden chairs. A fireplace provided warmth in the winter, and colourful handwoven rugs of linen scraps on the damp floorboards, either side of their beds, helped make getting up less shocking on cold mornings. The toilet, WC or water closet, was in the shed outside under the fire-escape. They shared it with the family downstairs. Here Harry’s newspaper from the day before came in handy for toilet paper as well as a relaxing read.

The black iron stairs also led down to their enclosed garden through the door of the scullery. This small anteroom contained a large porcelain butler sink for washing dishes and clothes, with just enough room for a new gas-burning stove and oven to cook the Sunday roast and heat pots of water. Once a week, the tin bath was brought up from the garden shed and placed in the middle of the living room. Multiple buckets of hot water were boiled on the stove and the living room fire to fill the tub. Their father was usually first in, modestly protected from female and children’s eyes by a wooden clotheshorse draped with sheets. On Friday evenings he would bathe and spruce himself up for a weekend of social intercourse and church on Sunday. Tooting SW17 was a working man’s haven among the Victorian suburbs of the landed gentry in Clapham, Streatham and Wimbledon, South London. This was home.

Life in Tooting

Daisy remembered visiting Harry at work at the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society one rainy day before Christmas. It was a large new emporium between Tooting Broadway and Tooting Bec. She was in awe of the vast staircases, huge windows and different floors with multiple sales counters. There was a distinctive smell too, which reminded her of Bazooka bubble gum – a sweet and sickly smell. The cause of the nose-wrinkling distraction was probably the dim burning gas lamps. Harry doted on his little sister and often brought her presents from the store.

The Tooting Branch of The Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society opened in 1923; its merchandise was inexpensive and employees were paid a fair wage. There was also opportunity for employee promotion. Harry became an expert in the china and glass department and enjoyed serving everyone, including the well-to-do ladies of Tooting Bec and Streatham Common who frequented the store. Their husbands were businessmen in the growing middle classes, but not as rich as the landed gentry of the London’s elite, who lived in larger houses. ‘Nobs’ was a favourite term given to most of the higher classes by working class Londoners.

* * *

In the busy centre of Tooting Broadway, market boys with barrows appeared from all directions, shouting ‘Mind’ja backs, mind’ja backs’, as they hurried to their stalls. Their large wooden flat-bed carts were painted red and green and loaded with rustic crates of fruit, vegetables, sad-looking fish, live turkeys and chickens screeching as if they knew their destiny. Merchant lorries and steam trains from central London’s Smithfield and Covent Garden markets brought fresh goods to the suburbs for distribution and consumption. Fresh milk from the dairy was delivered by milkmen who pulled milk prams, some with the help of a horse. They used jugs or large tin cups to serve the milk, but glass milk bottles were becoming popular.

David Greggs’ or J. Sainsbury’s sold fresh meat, cheese and eggs, but the new...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Part I – Early Days
• Part II – War Secrets
• Part III – Secret Burden
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgements
• List of Names
• Abbreviations
• Endnotes