A Gypsy’s view of Life in the Forest

Article by Anthony Pasmore in ‘New Forest Notes’, New Milton Advertiser and Times, 05 April 2026

A Gypsy’s view of life in the Forest

Some time ago I received a request for permission to include, in a forthcoming publication, an extract from one of my late father’s books. The subject of the extract was the great freeze of 1962-3. I was happy to agree and thought no more about the matter.

Last month I received a copy of the new book – Living in a Kenner (house): My New Forest Romani Gypsy Family by Heather Cooper. If this was perhaps a book I would not have gone out of my way to buy, it was certainly a welcome change from the noxious stream of local authority reports and consultations from which I usually suffer. This was a book that I could actually read. It will be available from the New Forest Heritage Centre from 11th April.

I have to say straight away that I was brought up at a time when the Forest community lived in a state of constant cold war with the local Gypsy camps. Keepers, agisters and police were always trying to limit the activities of those who lived in the half dozen or so compounds. Landowners and residents nearby were in a perpetual state of fear of expected depredations on their property, real or imagined. Ms Cooper’s book therefore gives a rare opportunity to reflect on those days from the opposite side of the social fence which divided the Forest. Her story is derived largely from information supplied by her parents, who were raised in the Shave Green camp, although she herself was born after the compounds were closed down.

The book is a mixture of verse and stories covering life in the camps in the first half of the 20th century and then following her own family and others as they settled into, or struggled with, more conventional life after the 1960s. I am no judge of poetry, so I turned at once to the remaining text.

The Shave Green camp, as it was called, was in fact located in old sand pits on Brockishill, just west of the A337 half way between Lyndhurst to Cadnam. Why it should have been so named is unclear as Shave Green itself is actually nearly a mile further north.

Ms Cooper gives a vivid picture of life in the camp with all its difficulties and hardships, but also a great sense of community and mutual help amongst the residents. There was, for example, no water supply and water had to be collected from a tap a mile away. It follows, of course, that there was no modern sanitation. Accommodation was in flimsy huts made out of poles and fabric or, more luxuriously, in old vehicles. Cooking was in improvised stoves made out of old metal drums and the author tells us that remarkably good meals were produced.

The report of the New Forest Committee of 1947 describes the camps as then hardly reaching the standard of the Stone Age and that is not inconsistent with Ms Cooper’s account.

In those early post-war days, I lived very close to the Shave Green camp and, no doubt like most of the local children, I was warned to keep well away from Brockishill – especially when on my pony. I think this warning had more to do with the quantities of broken glass and sharp metal objects lying about than any direct threat to my safety. I followed the instruction to the letter and not until the camp had closed down did I see these dangers for myself.

Even as late as my early interest in Forest matters, complaints about Shave Green and the other camps came regularly before the Verderers. In 1951, Mr OT Price, a noted hunting gentleman, complained to the court of wire, six feet above the ground, strung between trees in the camp and potentially lethal to horsemen. Mr Terrance Despard of Bartley Manor was a regular complainant about alleged violations of his property by camp residents.

Ms Cooper sees these conflicts through entirely different eyes and that makes her writing unusual and historically valuable. Perhaps her view of Romani life is a little over-rosy in places, just as the recorded opinions of local people may be an exaggeration of the evils of the camp, but this was all a long time ago. Still, she does not shy away from noting some of the more bizarre aspects of camp and post-camp life. It was always alleged that when some residents of the Forest camps were re-housed in nearby villages, they used their new baths for storing coal. I thought this was probably a myth, and certainly the author does not mention it. She does, on the other hand, record the activities on one re-housed woman who was discovered using her WC for washing clothes in and extolling the virtues of this sanitary fitting as a valuable washing machine. Perhaps any of us might have done the same after half a lifetime trudging a mile each day for a meagre water supply.

To buy the book click on the book cover

Revealing Alf Witcher’s Chindit war story

Page from the Summer 2026 Chindit Society newsletter:

New Chindit-Related Books

In June 2025, an enquiry on the WW2Talk forum asked for information about Gunner 11273725 Alfred Witcher who had served with 69 Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment in India. Amongst those who replied was the Society’s own historian, Steve Fogden, who was able, alongside other forum members to work out Alfred’s wartime and indeed Chindit service.

Alfred had been posted to 69 LAA in November 1943 after his arrival in India and was then assigned on the 10th February 1944 to X Troop, with the task of manning a battery of the 40mm BOFOR Anti-Aircraft guns situated at each of the four Chindit strongholds during Operation Thursday.

As are the vagaries of war, Alfred was suddenly re-posted to Z Troop and was due to fly into Burma (Aberdeen stronghold) aboard Dakota FL-540 on the 11th April, but in the end did not take this flight.

Fate had certainly intervened that day, as Dakota FL-540 crashed into the hills surrounding the Aberdeen stronghold, killing all but six of the 26 passengers and RAF crew aboard. This tragic story can be read in full within the Autumn 2025 edition of the Chindit Column.

After his great fortune on 11th April, Alfred Witcher (photographed below) continued his active service in India and Burma with 69 LAA until June 1945, when he was posted to the 85th Medium Regiment Royal Artillery, with whom he served up until his repatriation to the United Kingdom in May 1946.

The original search for information about Alfred’s WW2 pathway was instigated by book publisher, Jenny Knowles and wartime researcher, Shane McCormack on behalf of Alfred’s daughter, Heather Cooper, who was in the process of writing a book entitled Living in a Kenner, about her father’s and the Romani Gypsy community’s longtime association with the New Forest.

The book was launched at an event held at the New Forest Heritage Centre in Lyndhurst on the 11th April this year, exactly 82 years after Alfred’s fateful escape from boarding Dakota FL-540.

Author, Heather Cooper recalled:

‘My Dad grew up on Shave Green [compound] in the New Forest and went to war for over three years, serving in India and Burma.

After the war, Dad returned to Shave Green and built a new life together with my Mum, Harriet.

A few years later, the authorities started to move everyone out of the compounds. Mum and Dad, along with my older brothers and sister, were moved to a Nissen hut on Setley Plain, and then later to a house (a kenner) where I was born.

I’ve lived in caravans, a mobile home and a house with my husband, Burt.

We like to keep the traditional Romani ways alive and share them with others. This book is one way of doing that and I hope people will enjoy reading it and learning about our history.’

To buy the book click on: Living in a Kenner: My New Forest Romani Gypsy Family

‘Romany Truths’ – “Is there Hope?”

Romany Truths:

Lamb, Pearce, Scott and Wells families

of Thorney Hill (Hampshire), Holbury, nr Fawley, and Dibden (Hampshire)

by

Patricia Mary Wilson

Article by Ellen Stuart in ‘Romany Routes’ Vol 17, no. 6, March 2026

‘Patricia Wilson has created something unique in this slim volume. It comprises personal memoir; commentary on the appalling treatment of the Romany people of the New Forest in Hampshire; original poetry and beautiful artwork. Remember, this is not an anthology of work from several different writers and artists. Each distinct element demonstrates a different skill from one talented individual.

Patricia (Trish) Wilson

In Chapters 1 to 4, Patricia’s storytelling skills are most evident. Full of detail and anecdotes, the writing is lively, natural and personal. It paints a vivid picture of her family from the point of view of a young daughter and granddaughter, the portraits as clear as the family photographs. These are happy childhood memories, and the Romany village and camp at Thorney Hill is described fondly as the place Patricia went on holiday to visit her grandparents.

The tone changes completely from page 50 when Patricia describes the Romany compounds with her adult voice and understanding. Her anger at the way the community was treated is evident. So too is her pride in her family and all the Romany people who ‘prevailed’ under very difficult conditions.

These different voices are also heard in Patricia’s poems, some focusing on her own memories and experiences, others tackling broader and darker themes such as racism and the Gypsy Holocaust. The poem, ‘Nevi Wesh Romany’, opens with a beautiful image of the ‘Laughter and conversation’ of the New Forest Romany people becoming absorbed into the physical geography of the Forest itself, preserved in this way.

But fears are expressed that their way of life, their customs and language will be lost.

The last line is a question: ‘But is there hope?’. By recording and sharing the history of her own people in Romany Truths, Patricia Wilson has answered that question with a resounding ‘Yes’.’

To buy the book: click on Romany Truths

The Nilgiris Library, Ooty

Jenny Knowles with Kamala Ramchand on the steps of the Nilgiri Library. The link with Kamala to the book Cor Blimey! Where ’ave you come from? written by Jenny’s mother Winifred Tovey seemed very fitting as Winnie’s best friend was also called Kamala.

It was the serendipity of social media which put me in touch with artist and author, Saaz Aggarwal, and through her, with Kamala Ramchand of the Nilgiri Library Book Club, Ooty (also called Udhagamandalam).

ISBN: 9780956535931

I felt greatly honoured to be asked to meet with the Book Club members and present to the library a copy of my mother’s book, Cor Blimey! Where ’ave you come from?

In the book my mother, Winifred Tovey, wrote about our lives in India from 1951 to 1967. Dad’s work as a medical missionary at Holdsworth Memorial Hospital, Mysore, connected us with many places and people, from palaces to village huts, and from maharajas to beggars.

My siblings and I went to school in the Nilgiris, bringing mixed memories, the best of holidays that my mother wrote about:

‘Carrington was unique. The bungalow perched on the side of a small hill within a huge valley. The ground fell away quite steeply from the front aspect, giving a magnificent view overlooking the tea plantation. Deep down on the opposite slope nestled the tea factory. More mountains rose and fell all around. In the far distance we could just glimpse the plain, six thousand feet below. Beyond the plains stood the Anamali range of hills. Often, on waking in the early morning, we would rush outside in our pyjamas just to witness the glorious sight of the sun rising over on our left. Below us would be a vast expanse of billowing white clouds, punctured by one or two dark blue mountain peaks.

We watched in silence while the sky gradually changed from pale grey to blue and the clouds from white to a pearly grey, then to cream, until finally, the fiery orange-red ball of sun appeared, huge and glowing above the cloud mass. As the heat from the sun warmed the air, the clouds slowly began to rise. First we could see the bright sky above the clouds, then as the clouds levelled within our line of vision the sun was obliterated and below we had a clear view of the plains – truly breathtaking and never to be forgotten!’

This is a familiar experience for the book club members, who often wake up above the clouds … or in the clouds, and once the sun breaks through are struck again by the beauty of their landscape.

Staff and students from Providence College, Coonoor.

It was wonderful to share with them experiences of life in India and in particular the Nilgiris.

The Nilgiri Library, photo from a Nilgiri Library Facebook entry

The Nilgiri Library is 161 years old.

Library interior, photo by Nikhil Paingy

Kamala Ramchand describes it in nilgirishistory.weebly.com as ‘housing more than 40,000 books, holding more treasures than all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island, where one can spend two lifetimes …’

The Reading Room

Fredrick Price in his book Ootacamund: A History writes that ‘Mr. Sullivan, founder of the Nilgiris, breathed life into the concept of a library in 1829: A subscription has been set on foot for a public reading room at Ooty.’

1829 was also the year when the foundation stone for St Stephen’s Church, Ooty, was laid. It seems incredible that a wild mountainous region, only sparsely inhabited by indigenous tribal peoples became a town big enough to warrant a large church and a library in ten short years.

The Nilgiris rise up from the plain.

Although the East India company took possession of the Nilgiris after the defeat of Tipu Sultan in 1799, the mountains had not been visited by any Englishman until 1818, when two sportsmen on shikari (big game hunting) accidentally discovered ‘the coolness of the ambience in the Nilgiris.’

In 1819, John Sullivan, District Collector, Madras, noted above as ‘founder of the Nilgiris’, built the first house in Ootacamund. With great speed the East India Company established the town as a sanatorium for Europeans away from the stifling heat of the plains.

Up to this time, sick and ailing Company employees and their relatives had been sent by ship all the way to the Cape, Africa. Missionaries had no recourse unless their missions brought them home. It must have been exciting to discover a much more accessible place in the hills with a climate similar to an English summer.

For more on the authors and books mentioned in this post try these links:

An Elephant Kissed My Window

by M Ravindran and Saaz Aggarwal

ISBN: 9789383465149

Recently I came upon this book and was instantly transported back to the tea plantations of South India which I was lucky enough to visit in the 1950s and 60s when my father was a visiting doctor to some of the Nilgiris tea estates and when many planters were patients at the hospital in Mysore where he worked.

If you’ve met an elephant at close quarters, you will recognise the extraordinary gentleness described by M Ravindran in his story about a nocturnal visitor …

‘There in the hazy porch light, stood a massive elephant right at our doorstep, blowing kisses on the glass pane.’

Many of the stories are about encounters with wild animals; not surprising considering the isolation of plantation bungalows, surrounded by hundreds of acres of tea bushes and dense highland jungle.

There are other tales about hauntings, fire-walking, snake catching, lightning strike, and quite a few anecdotes that will have you smiling at the eccentricities of Estate staff and servants, and neighbouring planters.

Saaz Aggarwal started working on the book in 2013, interviewing, among others, M Ravindran. Six years later Ravindran told her that he had written a collection of stories … and so the book came about.

Saaz has interwoven M Ravindran’s tales with stories from other planters; Carolyn Hollis, Denis Mayne, Ravindran’s son and daughter, plus some recollections from Saaz herself and interesting extracts and advertisements from old publications such as the ‘Madras District Gazetteer’ and the ‘Planting Directory of South India’. Along with more than a hundred photos and Saaz’s line drawings, this has created a fascinating insight to the lives of planters from the start of tea planting in the Nilgiris in the early 1800s until today.

In Saaz’s words; ‘This book took me back to an idyllic childhood, its pristine air-quality, vistas of sloping valleys of smooth green from sitting room windows, brilliant night skies and a certain formal grandeur and privileged way of living compounding the fundamental isolation of plantation life.’

The paperback book is published in India, but you can buy it on Amazon –

What makes your Christmas special? – replies

I’ve had some great replies to my post ‘What makes your Christmas special?‘

With the writer’s permission I am posting one here and will add others when I hear back from their authors.

A wonderful story from Cynthia Cunningham Shigo

An African Christmas Memory

That first Christmas in Togo I recall—
A potted palm served as our Christmas tree,
The presents piled beneath it seemed so small—
We’d had no box of gifts from family.
We rose before the dawn on Christmas Eve
To drive all day on dusty red clay roads;
I told my father I could not believe
In Christmas wonder when there was no snow.
“The road to Bethlehem was much the same
As this,” he said,” so long and hot and dry.”
Just then ahead three men on camels came
Over the farthest eastern hill, and I,
Exclaimed, “Look, it’s the wise men from afar!”
My mother laughed and looked up for the Star.

What makes your Christmas special?

What makes your Christmas special?
Here are some Christmas stories. Have you got your own to add?

In Letters from Manchuria Marion Young writes of a Christmas birth:

Faku, 25th December 1936

Christmas morning – grey, dank at 10 to 5 – I shot up in bed, wakened, I was sure by running feet outside my window … Nothing more happened and I was just dozing off when I heard Fish [the cook] dash in through the back door and down to Mamie’s room. I was out before he had her door opened and heard him say, “Gow’s wife is in the well.” [Gow was the compound caretaker.] I nabbed my flash light and rope, which I had brought for skipping, and Fish disappeared. I had bought about 30ft of rope in a hank – couldn’t get less, and thought it would come in useful for roping my boxes later – thank goodness! There wasn’t as much anywhere about the 2 compounds.

Marion and Mamie

Mamie and I pulled on knickers and Chinese gowns over our nightdresses and fled across to the other compound. The rest is a muddled picture of nightmare and comic effects. She had fallen into a well – must be over 100ft deep – 40 before you reach water, and they had thrown down the bucket to her. We heard her groaning and moaning – the mother-in-law, husband and Fish were shouting encouragements to her – I suddenly realised someone would have to go down to her – the husband was too big for the well mouth – sick feeling in my middle as I decided it must be me – but it wasn’t!

‘Fish’ the cook

Thanks be – Fish was busy getting off his gown, tying a board to the rope end, sat on it, twisted it round his shoulders, between his legs, around his waist and then we started to let him down – flash failed, candle brought, went out – Mamie and I trying to hold the girl up on well rope – Fish shouted he had her and then we started to haul – what a haul! Ivy was there by that time and she, Mamie and I hauled the well rope; two men hauled Fish’s rope – wet rope, hands blistering – God’s will, make the old rope hold! – what a weight, ice slipping under our feet –hey Ivy keep back – you’ll be in on top of them! they’re up – Hey! Stop hauling! One man at the end of Fish’s rope trying to haul both through the wee hole at once – Fish shoves her up – then is nearly drowned himself when some fool empties the whole bucket full of water on top of his face. Girl into the house – back to ours in the darkness for blankets and hot bottles, knocking up the hospital for the nurses and the drawing breaths of relief sitting round a stove in one of our bedrooms trying to sort out what happened.

She – Gow’s wife – is only a youngster – 18, and got very sick in the middle of the night – the mother-in-law, a decent old soul really, got sick of her groans and moans and told Gow to hit her – he didn’t, but said he’d go over to the hospital for medicine – he started out and the mother-in-law said something crossly and the girl, hysterical between pain and bad temper, screamed she was going to kill herself, lifted up her son under her arm and made for the well – fortunately she dropped the kid at the well mouth and jumped in herself. It is quite a small hole, a round lid on the top – Gow had just got his big compound gate open, heard the yells and came racing back – she had decided she preferred to live – Gow dropped the bucket down and got her hauled up a bit, but she dropped back – the mother-in-law held the wheel so that the rope was long enough just to keep her out of the water and Gow ran for help. It must have taken him several minutes to get anyone knocked up to open our compound gates, several more to run a 4 minute walk across our compound and get Fish knocked up – think what water 40 feet down on Christmas day here must feel like! The girl must have been 15 minutes in the water in all – and she’s alive and well.

I don’t know how the ropes held – mine was only a fairly thick skipping rope, and the well rope has been three years in and out of water and lying in the sun. I won’t forget the honour of having them almost up and wondering what under the sun we could get if either rope went and they fell in again. The comic moments – I said there were some, were provided by the mother-in-law – the moment Mamie and I appeared, “The chiaoshihs are here, what are you making that noise about?” went down the well to encourage her. Then, on a fresh outburst of howls, “What! Still shouting! Look at all the trouble you’ve made, getting the chiaoshihs out of their beds on a cold winter morning.” Fish tackling the job of getting himself ready for going down as if he were used to doing it once a week at least – hat and gown off, another small bit of rope tied into mine – that was another of my horrors, I’d seen the knot tied and I couldn’t remember whether it was near his end of the rope or ours – fortunately, we got past it in the first few feet of pulling. Then when he hauled out of the well and the cold air hit him, capering like a mountain goat and asking for his own home shouting, “Ooo! Cold! Cold!” with thirty feet of rope trailing behind him. And the final reaction as I saw Gow passing my window an hour later with the water for breakfast – thank goodness it wasn’t our well she went into!

Fish’s wife and baby son

In a second Christmas Day letter addressed only to her mother, Marion added:

Thought there was no use adding the details in a letter for general family consumption – but the ‘illness’ the young wife was suffering from was a baby! Mamie had been telling me about 2 months ago that with the birth of the girl’s first child they had a terrific time – two days labour up here and then 30 hours by cart to Tiehling where Dr Brown saved both of them by some miracle. She suffered appallingly and the thought of going through it again must have been driving her crazy …

After we had hauled her out of the well and had left her in the hands of the nurses from the hospital, I again said, “Well, if the baby lives after that, it will be a wonder!” But during breakfast the cook said, “Did you know a daughter was born to Gow’s wife half an hour after you got her out of the well?” We heard afterwards the girl hadn’t even warmed up before the child was born – just over 8 months old. New way of having twilight sleep – freeze the patient stiff! Both mother and baby in excellent health thank you!!

Perhaps a less extraordinary Christmas Day, 43 years earlier in China, is described by Constance Douthwaite in Letters from Chefoo:

Chefoo, Sunday December 31, 1893

My dearest Papa,
I think you would be interested in hearing about our Christmas day, so I will give you a little account. We all met at the [Chefoo] Girls’ School for dinner, about 45 in number and over 20 of them children. After a grand Christmas dinner it was quite a sight to see how the little folk thoroughly enjoyed the rare treat of almonds and raisins, dates, toffee, oranges, chocolate, etc. I returned home and, wrapping our little maid well up (it was a bitter day, snowing hard and fast) her father carried her over to the school, and to please the children we all had games together till it grew dusk about four o’clock. Amah held baby on her knee and both quite enjoyed the fun. Then Arthur and I retired and I dressed him up as Father Christmas, in a long scarlet dressing gown, trimmed with white wadding, and his head covered with a great white wig and flowing beard and surmounted by a crown of mistletoe. He stuck some wadding eyebrows on and was so transformed I should not have known him.

Constance and Pearl

Meanwhile they had lit up the splendid big tree which was loaded with presents and the children were all sitting, wild with excitement, waiting for Father Christmas to appear and strip the tree. Pearl sat on my knee and was so excited and delighted with all the “pitty sings” and the “lickle boys and girls” she quite forgot to be shy and frightened. I think everyone got at least half a dozen presents each and all; I had two aprons, a capital match holder, an antimacassar, one of Anna Shipton’s works, a silk tie and numbers of cards. Pearl had a little fluffy dog on wheels which barks when pinched, three dolls, two chocolate boxes, two bibs, a harmonicon, a box of bricks and bags of sweets. She trotted quite bravely up the long room when her name ‘Pearl’ was called, and returned with beaming face, hugging her presents in her arms to shew them to Mother.

Christmas at sea, described in Strangers in Chaotung by Winifred and Frank Tovey

Frank & Winnie on board TSS Empire Brent

Christmas Day, 1947, on board TSS Empire Brent:

It is a Christmas Day such as one never dreams of seeing at home. The sun is shining brilliantly and the sea is quite smooth and calm, and such a deep blue. Winnie and I are sitting out in the sun in summer attire and trying to imagine what you are all doing at home. Early this afternoon we passed Malta … At 6a.m. some brave people arose and went round singing carols. At 7 o’clock we went to a Communion Service, then we had breakfast – just an ordinary breakfast as served aboard, but a wonderful one – grapefruit, cornflakes, fish if wanted, fried egg and bacon, hot cakes and syrup to follow if tummy permitted, scones and toast and marmalade. It isn’t fair on you for us to enlarge upon the wonderful meals we are having. [Food was still rationed in England.]

After dinner, we plan to have a special little party of our own when we are going to cut the wedding cake and play party games. Last night, the ‘carol party’ sang carols on deck and the crew gave a concert. At dinner, all the children (there are 200 on board) came around and sang carols as we ate.

A White Christmas:

In Cor Blimey! Where ‘ave you come from? Winifred Tovey describes the cold winter of 1961 when the family were on furlough in Ockbrook, Derbyshire, England.

The children only knew life in Mysore, South India, where Christmas was warm and usually dry.

Our first snowman

Winnie wrote:
Snow fell that winter, causing great excitement because it was the first time that the children had seen snow. They dashed out into the back yard with their mouths open to catch the snowflakes. As usual they forgot to close the back door and Mother called out, “Close that door, anyone would think you were born in a barn!”

Keeping with the India theme, Natalie Wheatley in her book Tobacco Wife writes about Christmas 1967 in Guntur, S India.

Natalie and family were staying with the Pritchards …

We met up with Kamala, our borrowed ayah, in Guntur and the children soon took to her. Getting them to bed was not so easy.

“How is Father Christmas going to bring our stockings?” Susina was genuinely worried and Simon soon picked up that he might be missing out.

“I want Pa Kissmass! Pa Kissmass!” he jumped up and down on the springy bed, almost falling onto the polished terrazzo floor.

Looking quickly round the room, I said, “Air conditioner.”

“Con-dish-ner?” they chorused, “Where’s that?”

“Up in the wall, see,” and I pointed to the square box blowing out cool air and a soft hushy noise. “Father Christmas will come through that.”

Half a century of missionaries in China

Three memoirs and autobiographies – history unaltered by retelling

Letters from Chefoo

Constance Douthwaite’s Life in China 1887-1896

by Sheila McClure

ISBN: 9781916484603

Letters from Chefoo by Sheila McClure, tells the story of Sheila’s great grandmother, Constance Douthwaite (née Groves) who, aged 20, left Bristol for Chefoo in north China as one of ‘The Hundred’ missionaries recruited by James Hudson Taylor in 1886.

Constance’s letters form the main part of the book with Sheila’s well-researched explanatory passages providing context.

In her early letters, Constance describes in detail the exciting, intriguing and alien place that China was over 130 years ago.

Arthur Douthwaite

Two years into her stay, she painfully reveals the obstacle of an engagement she had agreed to before leaving Bristol and her decision that she must travel home to break it off.

Returning to Chefoo she marries the man with whom she had fallen in love – Dr Arthur Douthwaite.

Arthur was the senior doctor and surgeon for the China Inland Mission, as well as head of Chefoo Mission with overall responsibility for the CIM missionaries and the running of the hospital and boys’ and girls’ boarding schools of Chefoo settlement. As a medical missionary’s wife, Constance had many responsibilities alongside becoming a mother and managing her household.

Constance Douthwaite with baby Isabel, autumn 1894

Photographs within the book show her as a serene young woman and in her letters she strives to paint a positive picture (it took two months or more for a letter to reach home, so there was no point in sending worrying details).

But still through her words we get a sense of the physical privations of life in Chefoo, the poor nutrition, the isolation, especially during bitter winter weather, the lack of integration between the Chinese and foreigners, the dangers of childbirth and of epidemics, in particular to babies and children, and always the constant longing for news from home.

Added to this, from 1894 to 1895 were the dangers and challenges of the First Sino-Japanese War.

Constance’s family: Edward and Isabella Groves (seated), Irene, Constance (centre) and Ernest

While Letters from Chefoo describes life in China, it also touches often on the lives of Constance’s Brethren family in Bristol, showing how tough life was all over the world in the 19th century.

Constance lived in a time before radio communications (the first ship to shore radio system developed by Guglielmo Marconi (note below) was used on the Titanic in 1911), before aviation (the first scheduled passenger airline flight on the St. Petersburg to Tampa Airboat Line was in 1914), and before antibiotics (the first antibiotic was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928).

Note: Marconi conducted his ship-to-shore radio transmission trials from Luttrell’s Tower, Calshot beach, as depicted in New Forest artist, Gervase Gregory’s book A Lifetime in Postcards and Maldwin Drummond’s book The Strange History of Seagulls.

Letters from Manchuria

the story of Marion Young, missionary in Japanese-occupied China

by Neil T. Sinclair

ISBN: 9780993507816

This Chinese missionary story takes place over the period of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Letters from Manchuria was compiled by Neil T. Sinclair and his wife Helen, whose mother, Marion Young, was a missionary in China with the Irish Presbyterian mission from 1935-1941.

Marion’s residency certificate

Marion was posted to the isolated, inner Mongolian town of Faku, over 300 miles north of Chefoo, and here the Japanese were already in full occupation when Marion arrived.

Just like Constance, Marion wrote weekly letters home to her family.

Mamie Johnston in retirement, 1984

Sometimes she would enclose a photograph or a hand-drawn map, and always she showed an acute eye for detail along with a good dose of Irish wit, especially when describing adventures she had with fellow missionary Mamie Johnston (note below).

En Fu and Ping An playing in the garden

Marion describes the ‘spits and smells’ of daily life, children in happy play, her work and language study, and the shadier sides of social reality at that time – ‘Christmas morning … wakened to feet running by my window’ – the freezing cold morning when the cook’s daughter-in-law threw herself down the well.

Japanese rule became more and more oppressive during Marion’s time in Manchuria; all letters outward and all those arriving from home were read and censored, even to the point of one censor putting a note on Marion’s brother’s letter to say his handwriting was very untidy. Marion could only make veiled reference to the regular imprisonment and torture of many of the leading Chinese Christians and often she used code words; relating back to the Belfast troubles she had experienced as a child, she called Japanese spies ‘the Black and Tans’. Sometimes, possibly when the letter would be travelling home with a fellow missionary, she was clearer in her description – ‘They treat folk a bit more kindly before freeing them, to give the marks of beating or torture a chance to clear up … isn’t it a bright thought?’

Marion travelling with Wang Ssu Wen and a man to carry their luggage

Foreigners were safe, but constantly watched and asked for papers, such was the suspicion about spies within the church community. Tension rose from 1939 onwards until it seemed much of the mission work – especially the education work – would have to be given up. Marion went on leave in January 1941, just as most missionaries were either instructed or encouraged to depart. Because of the Second World War, it took Marion ten months to get home, via the United States. She left her fiancé, Rymer Cayton, behind in China, not knowing for a year and a half whether he had survived internment.

Note: Mamie Johnston wrote the small volume, I Remember It Well, about her time in China. She went to China in 1923 and stayed on until 1951. In the foreword Rev Dr Austin Fulton writes, ‘We used to say to each other: “Where Mamie is, there things happen.” The pages of this memoir strikingly illustrate this. I hope it will be widely read.’

Strangers in Chaotung

by Winifred Tovey with letters and sections by Frank Tovey
ISBN: 9780956535900

The Second Sino-Japanese War officially began in July 1937 with full-scale invasion of China, and ended in September 1945 after Japan surrendered to China and the Allied forces.

During that time, in the mountains of north Yunnan the American Red Cross built a small hospital at Chaotung (now called ‘Zhaotong’), a walled city 6,300 feet above sea level.

At the end of American presence in that part of Yunnan, the hospital was handed over to the Methodist Missionary Society (MMS) – a logical move as the MMS had sent missionaries to Chaotung since 1886 when Samuel Pollard arrived there from Devon. Pollard was a missionary for the Bible Christians, a splinter group from the Methodist Church. His story is remarkable and can be found in the book Beyond the Clouds by Elliott Kendall.

Strangers in Chaotung takes up the story from 1947 when Frank Tovey, a young houseman in Bedford County Hospital, offered his services to the Methodist Missionary Society (MMS).

When Frank qualified as a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS) the MMS immediately posted him to China with instruction to set sail in two weeks.

Frank and Winnie’s wedding day, 11th December 1947

But he had just become engaged to Winifred Hill and knowing that the MMS rule was marriage only after a minimum of two years of service in China, they rushed to get a special license and were married six days before departing from Glasgow on the TSS Empire Brent.

Five and a half weeks later they arrived in Hong Kong, to travel onwards by train to Hankow. Having come from war-torn Britain they seemed un-phased by the disturbances and constant troop movements in China, writing home, ‘the Communist fighting in Central China has not got near Hankow so we anticipate an uneventful journey.’

After a period of language study and work in the Methodist Hankow General and Union hospitals, Frank and Winnie travelled to Kunming by Chinese Airways and onward to Chaotung in an old station wagon driven by Ken Parsons (note below), a fellow missionary who with his twin brother had been born in Chaotung in 1916.

Chaotung East Gate, 1948

As with all walled cities, the gates into Chaotung were closed at sundown against bandits and foreigners. The hospital compound was outside the city and gated too.

When Frank and Winnie arrived on foot after dark because the station wagon had broken down, they had to bang on the gate to rouse the occupants from their beds, and then in the light of a single hurricane lamp scuttle past the vicious guard dogs that were let loose in the compound after dark.

Lungste the gardener, cook, the cook’s wife and son, water carrier and housemaid

Over the following seven months, Frank and Winnie worked with the small hospital staff to treat all who came, Winnie doing the accounts and learning how to assist with x-rays and give anaesthetics.

Chaotung hospital outpatients entrance 1948

Provisions were scarce and because of galloping inflation the silver dollars, sent hidden in boxes under a lorry, to pay hospital staff had to be immediately converted into material goods to hold any value at all.

Winnie with newborn Rosemary

Ever present were the bandits and by April 1949 when a baby daughter was born to Winnie and Frank, the days and nights were punctuated by rifle fire from brigands and rebels besieging the city wall.

News came that Nanking had fallen to the Communists. The missionaries in the locality decided (against advice from MMS) to evacuate all women and children home.

They commissioned an old Dakota owned by the Lutheran Mission to carry them over the mountains to Kunming. There was no seating on the plane, no air pressure adjustment and no heating, and the passengers had to sit on the floor of the hold, while the plane lumbered its way between the high mountain peaks.

Frank and Ken stayed on, leaving Chaotung at the end of August, just four days before the Yunnan Revolution was reported.

Chaotung District People’s Hospital, 1981

To follow were three decades of Communist China, a huge country closed to the rest of the world. In 1981, after the death of Mao and fall of the ‘Gang of Four’, Frank was invited to China with Winnie for a lecture tour.

They returned to the Hankow Methodist Hospital, but did not reach Chaotung because of landslides. However they found that the Chaotung District People’s Hospital had been built on the site of the original Chaotung Mission Hospital and was catering for 280,000 outpatients and 13,000 inpatients a year.

Note: Ken Parsons’ twin brother, Keith, has written a book, Our Providential Way, about the lives of their parents, Annie and Harry Parsons, who were missionaries from 1903 to 1926 at Stone Gateway (Shih Men Kan), a settlement built by the early Bible Christian missionaries one day’s mule ride from Chaotung. This book will soon be published by Little Knoll Press.

Narnia the real place

Did you know Narnia is a real place in central Italy?

Very few people know that the real place, Narni, in Umbria, Italy, provided inspiration for C S Lewis’s most famous book.

How did this happen?
View the video by Dave Knowles to learn about the history of Narni and why C S Lewis chose this special hilltop town for The Chronicles of Narnia. See the tallest man-made waterfall in the world and learn why they were created by the Romans. Also find out about The Rocca, the castle overlooking Narni that was so important to the Roman Catholic church. Perhaps C S Lewis found a link to the character of Lucy from the story of St Lucia who was born in Narni and at the age of five saw the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. St Lucia’s body lies today in a glass coffin in the Cathedral St. Giovanale.

View the video

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(The link below will take you to purchase a beautifully illustrated hardback copy of The Chronicles of Narnia.)

Where Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein

12 New Bond Street, Bath, in 2019.

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My daughter, Beth, took this photo earlier this year on a visit to Bath.

This shop used to be TOVEY OPTHALMIC OPTICIAN, the business started in 1888 by my great grandfather, Frank Ivor Tovey. Great grandfather and his family lived above the shop and I was told that my grandmother was born in those rooms.

The shop front seen in these photos was newly installed by my great grandfather in 1906, designed by Alfred J. Taylor.

Tovey Opticians – photo circe 1961.

The current shopkeepers told Beth that Mary Shelley had lived there.

This was a surprise to me, but a little bit of research reveals that it is true. The rooms above the shop were rented by Percy Shelley and occupied by Mary’s step sister, Claire Clairmont, Mary and Shelley’s son, William, and his nurse, and Mary used this address, 12 New Bond Street, for her correspondence during that period from autumn 1816 to January 1817, although she also had other rooms in a boarding house near the Pump Room and Roman baths.

Mary Shelley

It was a dark time for Mary; Shelley was hardly ever there, and Mary and Claire were keeping out of the public eye because Claire was pregnant with Lord Byron’s child.

In addition, Mary and Percy Shelley’s first baby, Clara, had recently died in infancy while they were abroad and Byron’s relationship with Claire had gone sour. Shelley had run out of funds to support himself, Mary and Claire on their travels and they had returned to England on a low with winter coming. Mary felt deeply the rift with her father, but she determined to write the novel that she had started after a nightmare vision during their stay with Byron.

The 1918 cover.

As if things couldn’t get worse, tragedy came with the suicides of Mary’s half sister, Fanny, and of Shelley’s wife, Harriet. It is hard to imagine how wretched life must have seemed on a dark, wet, winter day.

Out of all this came Mary’s ground breaking novel, Frankenstein.

(There are links to buy the books, Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour, and Frankenstein, below.)

My mother, Winifred Tovey, wrote about her first visit to Tovey Opticians in her book, Strangers in Chaotung …

‘Frank’s grandfather, Frank Ivor Tovey, was descended from a family of watch and clock makers. He had qualified as an optician and set up the business in New Bond Street, Bath. It was here that Frank’s father, Ernest Tovey worked. Ernest trained as an optician when courting Nellie and had to change his name from Short to Tovey by deed poll when he married her, the eldest of the three Tovey daughters.

Frank’s auntie, Irene Tovey, also worked at the shop in Bath. She was the middle sister to Nellie and May and the first woman to qualify as an optician in England, for which she was awarded the Freedom of London.

During the weekend I spent a fascinating afternoon in the shop. I met all the staff members and then was taken upstairs into the workshop where spectacles were prepared for individual customers. At that time, 1947, spectacle lenses were made of glass and arrived in squares. First of all the lens had to be centred. If they were cylindrical the axis was marked with a blue pencil, then the lenses were cut, using a template, and bevelled to fit the spectacle frame. If bifocal correction was required, this was added as a segment, which was stuck onto the lower part of the lens. It needed great skill and care to obtain a good result. I found it fascinating.

Frank, of course, knew all about my background and had visited our house frequently, but I was slightly worried about what his family expected of me because of my working class background. Quietly, I was overwhelmed. Despite the fact that in view of our family circumstances I had successfully worked my way through to obtain a responsible post with a good salary, I did wonder whether Frank’s father would be happy to accept me as a suitable partner for his son.’