Early Years 1926-1939
Shirley, aged 2
Leila, Millie and Shirley, Margate 1933
Shirley and Leila, Margate 1933
Millie, Leila, Sol and Shirley, c. 1938
There is not much information about Shirley's childhood years. She was 13 when WW2 started in 1939, and she did not start writing her diary and journals until she was 15. But we know a little from talking to her, and particularly from three documents: one from when she was interviewed in 2002 by her granddaughter Sarah (then aged 11) and her brother Jacob (then aged 10) for a school history project on WW2 (see below). The second from one of her ‘remembering’ sessions when she recalled and wrote about the places and people on Deptford High Street in the 1930s (link to Memories of Deptford. The third from an interview she gave to the Norrice Leader magazine in 2012.
Sarah and Jacob posted their questions to her, and she - typically - typed out her answers.
Q: What did your parents do for a living?
My parents, Solomon and Millie Finn, had a millinery shop in Deptford (near the docks on the river in South London) and my father was also a Hebrew teacher. Before the war we lived in the rooms (a flat) above the shop. When we went to Edgware (because of the terrible bombing) and bought a house it was a great excitement for me - a whole house - detached - on a curve of a hill so it was very big in the front. And a garage, although we didn't have a car! My father would not drive although he could. The house was built in 1936. During the war my parents travelled by tube from Edware to Deptford. If an air-raid warning sounded the trains did not run in the tunnel beneath the River Thames, and often my parents had to wait at London Bridge Station until the All Clear sounded and they could continue home.
Q: When you were little, did you have a nanny to look after you?
We didn't have a nanny, but we had a 'maid' to help with housework and with me and Leila because my mother worked in the shop. These maids usually came from villages in Wales.
Q: Did you like playing with Auntie Leila, and if so why?
I really do not remember playing with my sister at all! We shared a bedroom and we didn't quarrel, but it was a big age gap (6 years). When she was 10 I was going to work! I do remember very well looking after her when we were evacuated - she was only 7 years old and I was the big sister. We were in the country and she hated daddy-long-legs, and I used to kill them with the back of a hairbrush when they came into the room.