Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

not leaving her much when he died. What she had went in educating us, providing
nannies and maids, appropriate to her idea of our family's status. I am sure this would
have been impossible on my father's salary alone. She was much involved in local
politics and was pressed into making her first speech in the year I was born, when she
was 30; she was then chairman of the local ward committee of the Whitley Bay branch of
the Conservative Party. In one address, she bluntly told her audience that if they didn't
buy from their fellow countrymen, they could not expect to weather the Depression; and
she so impressed people that she became the principle speaker in the North-East for the
Conservatives. I remember a silver salver, among others that commemorated thanks for
her support at "the battle for Houghton-le-Spring." She claimed that she was three times
asked to stand as a Member of Parliament. She wasn't keen on toeing the party line and
instead stood as an Independent in l937 in a local ward election, opposing a man and
beating him by 97 votes. She owed her success in these fields to her, energy,
determination and eloquence - a vigorous articulate speaker, with the courage of her
convictions.
For nine years she was the only woman on the council. Three months after she was
first elected she became chairman of the Housing Committee which was in the
vanguard of a points scheme for allocating council houses at that time. She went to
Manchester as chairman of the Committee to see high rise flats, which were then coming
into vogue. She described them as "warehousing people" rather than housing them and
it was her dislike of them that prevented such council housing being built in Whitley
Bay. At one time I recall she was Chairman of the Finance Committee and successfully
applied common sense and a shrewd housewife's financial principles to its work. As
children we were steeped in all these things and obliged to listen to a great deal of talk
and horse-trading of a political nature. What we missed was a bit of love and the
cuddles our small friends received.
My mother was also Secretary of the Special Aid Committee, which helped those in
need, and was one of the first to start a welfare Housing Association . She was also
President of the British Legion (Womens' Section). Later she was spokesman for Whitley
Bay and delivered the Proofs of Evidence at a Public Enquiry into the proposed
unification of Tyneside at a Boundary Commission. She was the first woman to be
Chairman of the Whitley Bay Urban District Council and later was Mayor of Whitley
Bay from 1967 to l968, after it became a Borough, retiring in l969. She was awarded the
MBE for her 23 years' work on area advisory committees, including the Labour
Employment Committee, the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance Committee
(which later became the Ministry of Health and Social Security Committee). She served
on the Disablement Advisory Committee and the Panel of Registration of Disabled
People (matters on which, through my father's suffering she had deep knowledge).
I had two brothers, Peter over seven years older than me, born in l918, and Michael,
about three years younger, born in 1929. Peter was tall, handsome, an all round athlete,
the Victor ludorum at the school games several years running (in the mid-l930s). I
remember my awe at his performances: 5 ft 3 inches in the high jump which then (l935)
seemed a near impossible attainment - using the new "western roll". He was an allrounder,
good at discus, putting-the-shot, long and short distances - a god to his two
younger brothers. He also won his events in the school swimming sports which we
watched in the, to us, splendid atmosphere of the Newcastle Swimming Baths, echoing
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