Mum’s story – Worksop as a child

Betty Ormandi nee Fores

Born Worksop 9 June 1933 – passed away in Budapest 17 November 2011

aged 78

(Trevor’s notes in italics)

Family Life

My earliest memory is of 5 Duke Street. It was where my brother Les shut my thumb
in the crack of the door and nearly took it off. I remember going to the hospital with
my hand all wrapped up in a bloody bandage.

When dad left the Army the day he got home he smashed everything in the house
that was breakable.

Violet (Betty’s mum) – He attacked me once and I had to knock him down with a
saucepan to stop him. I though he was going to kill me.

I’m wondering if Aunt Blanche was the wife of Toby Fores? (Toby was Betty’s
Grandma Annie Fores’ brother and Blanche, if his wife, her sister in law). This is the
first place Jean and I stayed when dad beat mum up and they pushed us out of the
door and round to Aunt Blanche’s. I remember once I had a boil on my bum and she
put a heated glass on it to get rid of it. Then Jean and I went to live with Aunt Ada
(probably sister of George Pridmore who was married to Betty’s grandmother, Annie
Fores’, sister) and poshy June. Poshy June was adopted by Aunt Ada and her
husband. Ada came from Watford and her brother was a cobbler. Poshy June’s
parents were travelling actors, which was looked down on in those days. They
couldn’t keep her and travel as well.

Les, my brother, went to live with Aunty Dolly (Dorothy Tong), sister of Aunt Win
(Winifred Tong); Grandad Fores’ stepsisters (Annie Fores’ children by her third
partner, Walter Tong). Grandad Tong was a miserable bugger and his wife, Grandma
Tong (nee Annie Fores), looked like a witch. To this day Les can’t stand the thought
of plum jam ‘cause she used to make it to feed him. Not just as a treat but all the time.
 Winifred Tong

In the meantime my mother had at first gone to stay with her friend who lived above
the pub and then moved to Stamfrey, where I ended up. She had met Tom (Gibbons)
in the pub on the corner of the road were we had lived with dad. Mum had a friend
who lived above the pub. Tom already had two sons and mum wasn’t good to them.

When we moved to London we lived at Iffley Road in Hammersmith. Then we moved

to Paddensiwck Road and shared a house with the Indian actor Sabu (Dastagir,
famous for his role as Mowgli in Zoltan KLorda’s 1942 Jungle Book) who was
shooting a film at Lime Grove Studios in Shepherd’s Bush (Black Narcissus with
Michael Powel and Emeric Pressburger). Me, Jean and dad were living at number 60
and Les, Doug and mum at number 14.

(1)

We moved back and forth between London and Worksop about four or five times and
we were eventually evacuated back to Worksop because of the war. It was while
Doug was working at a garage in Goldhawk Road that he got a splinter in his eye
from a lathe. When he joined the Royal Navy he was limited as to what he could do
because of it and became a cook.

Doug Fores

During the war dad was stationed in London (with the 15th Bomb Disposal Company).
They were responsible for removing bombs from Buckingham Palace. He said that
when the King came to visit with Churchill and offered them a cup of tea he said he
rather have whisky thank you very much. At one point he was buried alive when the
tunnel they were digging collapsed. He was incarcerated for a while in a military
mental health institution and then discharged after carrying a live bomb on the train
from London to Worksop.

(2) (3)

One of his mates wrote to the BBC to say that, ‘In 1942 I was a sapper with 15 Bomb
Disposal Company RE and we had dug down to an unexploded bomb in North-West
London and, having exposed the fuse, were waiting for our officer, Lieut. Rumsey, to
come and de-fuse it. While we were eating our sandwich lunch, at a distance from
the bomb, a man came up and spoke to the sergeant. “Is there really a bomb down
there?” “Yes, the officer is coming to take the fuse out, then we will lift the bomb out
and take it away.” “Well be very careful with it, I’ve got a very valuable piano in the
flat over there”….. (4)

After the war when he got his medals he went to the Ministry of Defence and told
them he rather have the ‘f******g money’. He sent them back in the post.

After he died we found his will and he’d cut out his signature from another document
and pasted it in his will…
 Life in Worksop

John Street – There was a chip shop just up John Street and we didn’t realise that
the people who owned it were related. Jean, my sister, said, ‘Oh! If only we’d known!
We could’ve got free chips!’ I went to school up John Street, and Doug, my brother,
used to drop me and Jean off at the school gates. We’d wait until he’d gone and we’d
go back to Manver Street where we had a swing in the attic.

(5)

Gateford Yards – Ooh! I remember those and the Jennels (passages between the
houses and streets). There were some very poor people living there

(6)

Priorswell Road and the Worksop and Retford Brewery Company – Grandad
Exton worked at the brewery all his life till he retired and he was teetotal! He was a
miserable bugger! The only person he was happy around was his darling Dorothy
(Exton). Her sister Jessie, the one with the humpback who had the operation, was
such a lovely person.

(7)
(8)
 (9)

Jessie born June 1915 aged 17 in 1932. Married a man in later life whose surname
was Stoppani (my note: Harry – see photo below) who came from a family in
Doncaster who made horse drawn funeral carriages. The Stoppani family originally
came from Lake Como in Italy
Union Workhouse (now a school) – the birthplace of William Exton, born out of
wedlock to a destitute woman called Sarah, Great Grandfather of Betty Fores and
father of Betty’s Grandfather Bill Exton. He was fathered by Samuel Exton of
Greetham, Rutland. Because he was illegitimate and his mother destitute and in the
workhouse he went to live with his Uncle Luke Exton and Aunt Elizabeth.

(10)

Worksop Hospital – ‘Me’ dad (David Fores) was working on the extension when he
fell from the roof onto a beam. A spike went straight into him between the legs. When
he went to the hospital he was such a bad tempered bugger and not happy with the
treatment the nurses were giving him he threw a bowl of water over one of them.
After that something had happened to him and we always thought that it was as a
result of the accident. He used to get what we called the spiders. It was like a rash
but in the outline of loads of spiders, when it came out on his skin it would start at his
head and spread all over his body and then when it went it would disappear from his
feet upwards and the last place it would disappear from was his face and head. It
was very odd.
 (11)

Timber Yards - When I was living with poshy June and her parents they used to
keep piglets and I used to have to go to the Timber Yards to get sawdust, you know,
for bedding and to make it easier to muck them out.

(12)

I used to have to push a one wheeled wheelbarrow all the way and I was only 10. It
was very hard. I used to pick up bales of straw along the way as well. On the way
back I used to avoid one lane where one of the houses kept geese. I was afraid of
them. I used to throw the bales of straw over a fence and then push the wheelbarrow
through the fence.

(13)

Sandhill Street off Sandy Lane – I used to collect pig food at Sandy Lane and I
remember Aunt Amelia (nee Fores, Betty’s Grandmother Fores’ sister), whose
(possibly second) maiden name was Pridmore, was beaten up by her husband Don
Calvert who managed the quarry works there. She used to go and stay with her
sister’s Annie’s mother in law Sarah (…Ann Stenton nee Varley). It was a big house
and she used to have a larder there that was semi underground where she used to
bake cakes. When I went to collect the pig food she used to give me a cake. I
remember the gypsy site and the gypsies that used to live there. They were never a
problem. No problem at all. Nelly Fores (another of Betty’s Grandmother Fores’
sisters) also lived in Sandy Lane.

(14)

Sarah Ann Stenton nee

Varley

Grandad (Leonard) Stenton never married Annie Fores which is why Granddad
Fores was born out of wedlock. In about 1953 he had sold his business to the Co-Op.
He worked for them in the shop in Central Worksop. I think it was opposite M&S and
Woolworths, possibly on Bridge Street. I was waiting at the bus stop outside and saw
him and said, ‘Hello Grandad’. He never really had anything to do with us

(15)

Leonard Stenton with his wife Mary at their shop

12 Eastgate, Worksop, in about 1910
 Leonard, many years later when he worked for the Co-Op, at a flower show

Years later when we had settled in London I remember the shop Les had in Napier
Road, between Brook Green and Shepherd’s Bush. It used to belong to a Hungarian
lady. I used to work there sometimes and park Trevor outside in the pram

David (Grandad) Fores with Lucy ‘Mum’, Napier Road

References

(1) http://www.cinefania.com/persona.php/Sabu/

(2) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/410155.stm

(3) http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/1940SOND.html

(4) http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/60/a2790560.shtml

(5 – 7) Jackson, Michael J., The Worksop Archaeological and Historical Society, Victorian Worksop,
1992, printed by Peter Spiegel & Co. Stamford, Lincs

(8 – 9) Worksop Guardian, 1932

(10) http://www.workhouses.org.uk/index.html?Oakham/Oakham.shtml

(11 – 13) Jackson, op cit

(14) MacFadyen, M. A., Bygone Bassetlaw, 1983, pub. Bassetlaw District Council, Worksop, Notts

(15) Bassetlaw Museum, Welchman Archive

http://www.bassetlawmuseum.org.uk/bassetlaw.asp?page=photo&itemId=RETBM%20:%202001.1010