made her nervous. “I need to ask you some questions.”
Marjorie slowly walked over towards the man, but stopped a few feet away from him and dropped her boots. Nervously, she demanded to know what he wanted. She looked around the room. Joyce and Phyllis were sitting on the mattress. Kenny was lying on his stomach on the floor, rolling a marble against the wall. Back and forth it went, over and over again. Audrey sat quietly in the corner on the orange box, hugging her ragdoll. She was talking to a second strange man. He had a black bag beside him. Lawrence and Jean quietly clung to their mum’s skirt. For a brief moment, the only noise in the room was the sound of the marble.
“Well, come over here!” The man’s voice made Marjorie jump, and she walked over to him. “Do you wear eye glasses?” he asked her.
“Well, you can see for yourself that I don’t.” Marjorie was having trouble understanding what he wanted.
“Marjorie!” her mum snapped. “You don’t need to be rude. Just answer his questions.”
“What is your school standing?” he continued. Marjorie noticed that he was writing her answers down on a long form.
She told him it was 4C and asked again why he was asking her these questions. Puzzled, Marjorie wondered if he going to make them move to another school. She shouldn’t have yelled at those girls at her school. He looked at her and continued his questions. Marjorie bravely approached him and glanced at the long form in front of him.
She could see her name and birth date at the top of the page. She immediately told him that he had her birthday wrong. That it should be 1926, not 1925. She looked at her mum for reassurance, and told him that she was ten on her last birthday and that she would not be eleven until September.
Again, he did not answer her but kept on writing on the forms. Marjorie started to remind him that her birthdate needed fixing, but he told her to go over and see the doctor. When the doctor finished, he asked Marjorie if she could sign her name. She told him that of course she could, she was not a little kid. He handed her a fancy fountain pen and urged her to do a good job and not to smudge the ink. The pen had little bands on it that looked like gold. She had never touched such a beautiful pen before.
Marjorie’s Fairbridge farm school emigration form. Marjorie’s mother was forced to “hereby hand over the child Marjorie” and thus had to give up her custody of her daughter.
University of Liverpool Archives, Special Collections Branch, Fairbridge Archives. Arnison Family Records, D296.E1.
The doctor passed the four medical forms over to his associate, who then walked over to Winifred, shuffling his papers, “Just your signature now and I’ll be gone. Can you sign your name?” He handed the papers over.
“Of course I can. I may be poor, but I am not stupid.” Marjorie was alarmed by the change in her mother’s face.
“Where?” Winifred’s voice cracked as she blindly looked at the pages.
“Here, and on the bottom of all four — in the same place.” He grabbed up each paper as she finished. He told her that was all he needed for now. He bid them all good day and warned Winifred to make certain that she put the children on the train on Monday morning. He told her that a sister would meet them under the main clock in Newcastle’s Central Station. He tossed an envelope at her as he left the room.
He took the stairs two at a time. The doctor quickly followed. The children charged after them. Marjorie ran onto the sidewalk. She could see them walking quickly up Whitley Road, their heads together looking at the papers. Kenny flew out behind her trying to get a better look, but ran into a shopper and knocked her grocery bag out of her arms. Kenny said he was sorry as he bent down to help her, but she was angry and just yelled at him to watch where he was going. She told him to get away from her and that she would pick up her own things. She called him a “little heathen” and shooed him away and threatened to call the police. Kenny glared at her and said he was sorry again. People stopped and stared at the children. Marjorie asked them what they were looking at. She hated the look in their eyes. Well, she did not care today. She just wanted to get back inside.
Malcolm Jackson whistled as he looked through the Arnison applications. It had been a good day. He was lucky to get the medical examiner on such short notice. Now, he could write to Gordon Green at the Fairbridge Society’s headquarters in London as soon as he got back to his office and tell him — mission accomplished — four more youngsters for Fairbridge. It was not a moment too soon, as far as he was concerned. He was happy that headquarters listened to his letter recommending they let him remove the children as quickly as possible. He smiled to himself. He liked rescuing the area from the children of Tyneside.
Three
Adrift
Take them away! Take them away!
Out of the gutter, the ooze and the slime,
Where little vermin paddle and crawl,
Till they grow and ripen into crime ...
Take them away o’er the rolling sea![1]
February 8, 1937
Early the following Monday, the four children watched the platform in dismay, their little faces plastered on the train window. The train chugged out of the Whitley Bay train station, taking them away and leaving their mum and their older sister, Phyllis, standing on the platform. Where were they going? Why did their mum send them away? Had they been bad? It frightened them to watch their mum wipe at the tears running down her cheeks. Marjorie’s own tears were impossible to stop. She watched the two figures grow smaller and smaller until she could not see them anymore.
Would they be going to the same place as Norman and Fred? She would like to see them again. They would help. She hoped that her brothers were together. Some of the kids at school told her that Fred had gone to one jail and Norman to another. Maybe those kids were right. Maybe her brothers were in jail. Maybe they were going to jail too.
Marjorie turned to Joyce and asked if they sent kids to jail. Joyce looked alarmed and said no, she hoped not, her voice betraying her panic. She gave Marjorie a warning look and told her not to be so daft. She assured her sister that they were not going to jail, then and nodded towards the two younger ones. Their eyes had begun to open wide with this new fear.
Marjorie rubbed her cheek, leaving a smudge of tears. She looked to Joyce for answers. “Well, smarty pants, where are we going then?” She challenged, but Joyce didn’t know. They huddled together — clinging in fear and grief.
Audrey wiggled away first, pulling her doll out from under her coat. She held it close to her. Wiping at their tears, the children turned to look out the window again. Kenny pointed to the sheep in the fields. They had been told that Norman was sent to work on a farm. Kenny suggested that maybe they sent Norman to that farm. But no, Joyce knew he was sent much further away. The new sights distracted them, and, for the moment at least, they forgot their plight.
Two elderly women sat across the aisle from the children. Mary,[2] the stouter of the two, was keeping a close eye on the children. Her glasses were perched on the bottom of her nose and she looked over the top of them as her knitting needles automatically clicked out “knit two, purl two.” She put her knitting down and asked the children where their parents were and why were they travelling alone. The four children looked over but turned back to the window without answering.
The entrance to Whitley Bay train station, shown as it looked in 2007, has altered little since 1937. During their visit, Marjorie and Joyce walked from 106 Whitley Road to the station and caught the train to Newcastle upon Tyne, just like they did in February 1937.
Photo by Patricia Skidmore.
Her companion, Dora, a thin, nervous woman, implored her to not talk to the tatty children. But Mary did not listen