Family History 1.120

Gaze History: NSG Memoir

Family Life in the Thirties

However March 1934 saw the death of Mary’s mother, Fanny, at the young age of 56 from a heart attack.  As a result her father, William, became a much more regular visitor to the home at Ruarangi Road and later at Papatoetoe.  He continued working for several years after Fanny’s death, employing a housekeeper, Miss Rutherford, and continuing with his gardening, his bowls and his work for the Baptist Association as its Treasurer.

Mary regularly travelled across town to visit him, or to visit Noel’s parents at Bellevue Road. She would travel by tram from Owairaka to Sandringham and then, pushing a push-chair or with Franklin walking beside her, would walk from Sandringham Road to Dominion Road and another tram to Balmoral or Valley Road as the case may be. Later they would go home the same way.

 A few years later William had problems with his knee – the sort that would nowadays earn him a replacement – and had the knee stiffened, which was the best the medical world could provide then.  At the time of recovery from the operation he stayed with Noel and Mary and their family.  His visits were notable for his baby-sitting on Sunday evenings while Noel and Mary went to Church, his readings of Winnie-the-Pooh, and his vigorous political discussions with Noel, bemoaning the excesses (to his mind) of the First Labour Government under Savage and Fraser.

 

In June of 1936 Noel took Franklin to stay with his parents at Bellevue Road, where Auntie Doris was always ready to entertain her brother’s children, so that Mary could go back to the Nursing Home for the delivery of Olwyn.  She was not as healthy as her brother and was a worry on this score to her parents for the first few years of her life until she outgrew this stage. Her name was one Mary and Noel had heard about in a story about Wales, and was the name of a girl in Noel’s Sunday School.  She was called Anne after Mary’s grandmother, Anne Bigelow, nee Brown, who came to visit the baby a few weeks after the birth. A few months later great-grandmother Anne died.

 

 

As the family was growing, Noel and Mary decided that the house needed enlarging and had the extra rooms at the back built on.  In practice the front sitting-room became almost redundant as the living room at the back became the centre, being larger than the front room and closer to the back yard, where much of the activity took place.

The kitchen, with its dining alcove, was also a room where much of the family life took place.

 

It was a pleasant spot, with its great view over what is now a thickly populated suburban area

towards Mt Roskill and Three Kings.  Noel and Mary would wash the dishes together in the evening with the two toddlers playing around their feet. But major celebrations, like birthday parties, took place in the living room at the back.