(G)GAB – We miss you already.
1919-2018
Starting Work
“I left school when I was 15 longing to go to a Drama School. The Headmaster wrote to Lillian Braithwaite [Baylis?] & ? at the Old Vic Theatre and Mum and Dad were sent prospectuses setting out fees which, unfortunately, were beyond their income and thus applied to hairdressing/beauty care. However, he arranged for me to become a laboratory monitor at Mayfield (County School) at Putney which incorporated further education, which led to the Certificate for Shorthand and Typewriting and English. I was employed by Lloyds Bank, being taught to use their, then, machines for typing the statements and ledger sheets. This took a month and I was then sent to St. James’s St. branch of Lloyds in their S. & Ledger department. The other girls were nice, but their parents were well-off, allowing the girls to join all the societies within Lloyds Bank, and, because my small salary (30/- per week) did not allow me to join anything except the Staff Club. I enjoyed the work but moved on to finally become a shorthand typist for a large firm of solicitors in Pall Mall right next door to Marlborough House”.
War Memories
Bee became a Borough Control telephonist for the Air Raid Patrol/Civil Defense in 1941.
We worked 24 hours on and 24 hours off and were allowed a 48 hour rest if possible during a month.
[…] our home, 9, Burston Road, Putney, London S.W.15 was destroyed [in 1944] by one of these flying bombs. Rupert Horn, my father, had had an Anderson Shelter (made from corrugated iron) installed and reinforced in the garden – fortunately the entrance to the shelter was facing away from the roadside as, if it had been the other way round, my mother, Winifred Horn and young brother Peter would have been killed or very seriously injured.
A Horn Family Chronicle 