Peter Carroll is the author of Queen of Misfortune – A Lady Jane Grey Novel and Doodlebugs & Spitfires. For more information, see his website.
Given the advantage of Internet technology and the initiative to look into the past given the ‘Who do you think you are’ BBC TV programs and the like it can be an all inspiring but a mind bending job to scrupulously examine the files open to you for a cost by a number of genealogy sites.
But I guess, given the comparative ease of researching at home rather than in libraries, is more appealing – although as seen on TV many of those celebrities who are brave enough to disclose personal details to the viewer , are obliged to search all over the world for more detailed information than is available online.
But those of us who have a natural urge to discover just what our forebears got up to and how they lived way back when – often wish perhaps they had not opened the doors to realise the sheer hardship of days gone by.
It can certainly be a lesson discovering just how fortunate we are to be living in the 21st Century given all the safeguards which offset extreme poverty.
For me, perseverance and assistance from my family helps me to make a record for future generations comparing the lives of our ancestors with ours today, it was a definite must on my list of things to do before I die, something I feel I owe to my family who have passed on, who did not have the facilities, know-how or money to discover who they are.
And lots of people are doing it now which can only be good for the soul in many ways. Some sad but others a delight but a handkerchief at the ready is a must.
And how many of us, having lost elderly parents, kick ourselves for not having asked more questions when they were alive.
My father was one of five boys who had a tough time being brought up in home. I remember him telling me just how strict it was and how they would receive beatings for next to nothing. He never spoke much of his childhood and in discovering what happened to him and his brothers explains why.
I held my breath when reading an account of what my grandmother had to endure all because her husband died at 30 with consumption. She was forced to give up her children surviving on a very low salary as a charwoman and living several in a room in the seedy and deprived area of St Anne’s Court in Soho, London.
It is impossible to imagine just how much heartbreak she would have endured living in a slum area where prostitutes solicited in every doorway. I prefer to believe that she did not drop that low that she was working as a charwoman and managed on that income, to avoid the indignity of having to be an inmate in a workhouse. Perhaps that is where she ended up though.
Now I delve even deeper into attempting to find out more, what became of her and when she died.
Some people who have lived on earth have had all the hard luck imaginable.
I guess there was never more a time when the division between the rich and the poor was more significant, as the population increased by 50% and there were more mouths to feed.
In my time I had a horrific war to contend with, but mum always fed her three boys with only the food available on ration. There were no benefits as such but dad always supplemented his salary repairing watches and selling ice cream in his spare time.
No doubt he knew quite well about the trauma of having lived his childhood in a boys home, deprived of parenthood – and my brothers and I benefited from that.
All those, including those celebrities who were shocked about how their ancestors lived, will be minded of them. It has to be a soul searcher and a definite; ‘But for the grace of God go I.’
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DOODLEBUGS & SPITFIRES
Memories and Short Stories by Peter Carroll
“Doodlebugs & Spitfires” is a delightful collection of memories and short stories written by Peter Carroll, the author of “Queen of Misfortune,” in his trademark poetic and profoundly thoughtful style.
Most of his stories, previously published in limited form in local English newspapers and magazines, like “Brave New World”, “The Forties Street Tradesmen”, “Doodlebugs”, or “The Christmas of 43” evolve around his childhood in the Northern part of London during and after World War II. He describes the horrors that came with the V1 flying bombs, nicknamed the “Doodlebugs.” Heroic British pilots in their “Spitfire” airplanes would attempt to divert the flying bombs from the populated areas, sometimes successful, and sometimes not.
Doodlebugs & Spitfires is available at Amazon.Com and its Kindle store, Amazon.co.uk and its Kindle store, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.
