A Peep into my Mum's Past

My mother whose name was Isabella Jane Kinley, her maiden was Spence and was born in Dublin on the 16th June 1906. Mum lived there for a while before crossing the sea with her parents to Liverpool. She then moved to Hull, back to Liverpool and eventually across the Irish Sea to Londonderry where I was born. Then across Northern Ireland to Cloughfern and lived the rest of her life in that area but also moved another 5 times.

It was January 1941, mum was carrying me running to the shelter, above us was a red, red sky and the noise of the planes and bombs was deafening. I was wearing a blue siren suit. Then with my green dressing gown which had shiny labels and then daddy's blue plaid dressing gown over the lot. The shelter did not have a door, it had a curtain which blew up to the ceiling each time a bomb fell and the walls and floor shook with the blast. The next morning as we were the last house at one end of the street a policeman stood at our door (to prevent looters) and mum's handbag and all the contents (identity cards, insurance ect) all strewn up the hall as she had dropped it when running out of the house. I was only allowed up the hall and to stand at the living room door. There was a hole in the roof above the stairs where a kerbstone had come through and landed on my bed. In the back yard where my Donald Duck skittles which I had got for Christmas but mum said I couldn't have them because they would have germs on them. Mum then lifted off the mantelpiece two brass candlesticks which were all black and dusty and out we went.

Inside the Album on the left is a selection of photographs from my mum's past. When you think about it my mother had lived through two World Wars and in the second one, mum was bombed out twice! The second time mum was living at 28 Salisbury Street in Birkenhead and was underneath the stairs when the bomb landed and blew half the house away! The reason mum was there instead of being in the bomb shelter was that a man kept complaining about my sister crying.