Between Wormwood Scrubs and the Gasworks

So, you want to know what crime I committed to get me thrown out of my student digs without notice? Read on!

What happened was an unexpected consequence of a decision to do some form of social work, as an out-of-hours volunteer, to learn more relevant—to me—skills than those I was supposed to be content with at Med School. Miss Hamilton, my friend and mentor from the Probation Office at Bow Street, had put me in touch with the North Kensington Community Centre. It was reasonably near the Bayswater flat and ran social welfare work for the elderly, for young mothers, for the unemployed and the sick. The locals were encouraged to run their own things by the very few paid staff and it attracted a few outside volunteers, of which I became one.

This indeed was an area between Her Majesty’s Prison, Wormwood Scrubs and the North Kensington Gasworks.

Wormwood Scrubs, as its name might suggest, was a largish area of public scrubland, not very appealing and dominated by the famous prison. Nearby was a Peabody Estate, built between the wars. This part of Kensington was by no means a slum, but a good old-fashioned working-class area of mostly council accommodation, and had its own community centre with funding from a charitable trust to run activities for the local inhabitants.

“I need someone to run an art class for the youngsters,” Megan Etholan said. In vain, I told her that I couldn’t draw, had no idea about teaching and would be a lousy youth leader. “Nonsense,” she said, “Anyone can teach these kids and we have all the stuff.” The ‘stuff’ was a collection of brushes, paper, paints and things, donated to the community centre by some well-wisher. So, I taught art to anyone who wanted to attend, once a week after college. I really and honestly had no skill in art at that time and it had never been even a hobby of mine. What irony that more than 30 years later I was suddenly overwhelmed with a need to become an artist embroiderer!

I couldn’t complain. After all, coming to help had been my own idea. Megan Etholan, who ran the centre, was another tough, competent woman. She was divorced, after a very brief marriage. She admitted she knew it was a mistake on the morning of the wedding but hadn’t the courage to run away. Later, she spent some years in the army and was now in her 40s. She became a true friend and another great influence on me.

It turned out to be great fun. My inability to draw was no worse than that of my pupils and what they really wanted, sometimes desperately, was a little adult attention. Of course, at first, a number of older teenagers slouched in and drew pornographic pictures. It was handy being a medical student; I pretended to take it very seriously and criticised their work from the anatomical point of view, adding gory tales from my dissecting room days. Most of them quickly slouched out again. Those who remained actually tried to draw and paint and retained a wary respect for me. “You really cut up DEAD PEOPLE? Ugh.”

Most of the class were younger and a small group of the 7 to 10 year olds became very persistent about getting more of my time. I had never previously had much to do with young children. My parents were older than average and so most of their contemporaries were either childless or into the grandparent range. I was flattered and charmed by these strange beings. Some of them—like ‘my’ twins, Billy and John Singleton and their friend Barry—were obviously very much loved and shown affection at home, but even so, life was hard on the Peabody estates, both parents worked and some of the other children were emotionally neglected. It wasn’t long before I could not enter or leave the centre without a group of little ones crowding around and physically hanging on to every spare bit of my person, all talking at once. They always called me “Miss”, no matter how often, in my egalitarian way, I tried to get them to say ‘Elinor’, and their conversation never stopped.

“Miss! Can I come to your place?” “Miss! Miss! Are you here tomorrow?” “Miss! I fell over in school/ knocked Billy down/ had a tooth out/ Kate got told off/ Barry hit me/ John lost his dinner money, today!” “Miss! miss! My mum says can you come round to tea?” “Miss! Can you do sums?” “Miss! Look at this scab what I got.”

They were desolated that they didn’t see me at weekends. Saturdays I regarded as reserved for my own social life, but Sundays—well, Sunday afternoons in London everyone knows are designed by the devil as a foretaste of eternal boredom. I thought perhaps we could have a Sunday School. On Sunday mornings, I attended the thriving and lively Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, but I couldn’t see myself traipsing these little live wires through London every week. Anyway, my memories of occasional attendances at Sunday Schools were of rather dull, old fashioned activities and little homilies. I thought I could do better.

So, for a while, I went to the community centre on Sunday afternoons, collected up a little group of some 6 to 8 children and walked them back to the flat in Bayswater. There we sang all the noisiest and most thrilling hymns I knew, sandwiched with simple bible stories about their ‘friend Jesus’. I finished each week by reading aloud short instalments from ‘The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe’ by CS Lewis. We also had simple prayers about everyday things. Prompted by the children, who were used of course to school assembly but much preferred being in charge, we prayed for Barry’s wart and Kate’s mum and the new baby and healing for Billy’s scab and all the poor little children in the world who hadn’t enough to eat. And thank you Jesus for everything, Amen.

It was not to be expected that my landlady would tolerate this for long. She contrived to indicate that these were the lowest sort of children, who might be expected to bring all sorts of nasty things in. We were much too noisy and her husband, Billy—officially unemployed—needed his rest after working so hard all week. I thought of telling her the children would pray for her Billy right after praying for the scab on our Billy’s knee, but I held my tongue and just said I thought that the children deserved a little fun in a Sunday School but we’d keep the noise down. No good, she told me, either the Sunday School went or I did.

Even if I had wanted to stay, which I didn’t, I got so much pleasure out of recounting this that it was worth the hassle.

“I got thrown out of my last digs,” I used to say casually and watch my friends’ eyes gleam and their lips glisten as they waited for salacious revelations. “Yes,” I would continue, “I ran an illegal Sunday School there,” and watch their faces fall.