Heading towards year 2 exams (uni 2017)

[brizzlemint]

Starting uni 2017 continued.
Tales of radiators, errant boilers, tomatoes and potato mashers...oh and university students.

Fascinating family history there, Xenia.
When your uncle started studying in 1936, was he able to finish his medical studies or did he have to take a gap to serve in the 1939 -45 war and then go back to complete his medical training?

I had an uncle do (or at least, start and continue) his medical training during WWII - with no idea of duration I'm sure they realised certain professions would need new recruits. He did a theology degree simultaneously- a Rev Dr medical missionary eventually. DM completed her 2 years teacher training entirely during the war.

late, my uncle was registered in 1941 as sa doctor so it sounds like he was allowed to finish. He was in the navy as a surgeon in WWII so I suspect he was allowed to qualify and then serve after rather than having a break. By 1943 he was a surgeon lieutenant as stated on his marriage certificate of that year.

My poor father qualified after the war and kept being called up and then let go on and on for a few years so he didnm't know if he could accept medical jobs (this was a call up for national service) in the 1950s. Eventually they decided they didn't want him and he could get on with a stable career at last.

That's interesting too, Errol. I find the social history of the 20th century fascinating. My dad was born in 1917, so during WW1 and served in the York and Lancaster Regiment in Europe and the Middle East during WW2. He left school at 14 and in many ways considered his army career as his higher education. My mum is much younger, born in 1938, so only has vague memories of WW2, but has stronger memories of her older brothers having to go away to do National Service.

Love all the social history of your parents!
My father was born in 1927 and joined the navy (aged 16 I believe) - he said he got more food there than at home.

DD and her flatmates are negotiating with the landlord who sounds to be being reasonable, but she says it now smells... I think the uni are supporting with advice, and DH is liaising with DD. Thank you so much NMS for all your advice

I'm just starting to do my family tree. No old 'uns alive now sadly, so I haven't much to go on but have already found little snippets I didn't know about.

DS & Co. have a new flatmate, poor lady's internship fell through, so he's taken the spare (tiny) room they were using as a box room. No rent reduction for them though, even though there are now 6 instead of the original 5.

I'm trying to gather family history snippets too, Horsemad. DH's dad was German and 1 of 13 children, so there's a massive well of untapped information there. I am in "Christmas card" touch with 1 of his sisters and I'm going to ask her to provide me with family birth/ death dates this year. His family were East Prussian and their home village was annexed by the Russians so they got scattered to what became East Berlin. DFiL was a POW in America and settled in England after the war. It took him years to track down his family. He used to watch Pathe News at the cinema to see if he could spot any of his family in those black and white films of displaced people walking with their possessions.

Ugh, the smell after a flood or sustained damp, BTM. ☹ We had a flood several years ago and although it was clean tap water, the smell was awful.

BTM, it sounds awful.

The silver lining is a real mentoring opportunity. A quick recap from the classic negotiating book "Getting to Yes"

1. separate the people from the problem;
2. focus on interests rather than positions;
3. generate a variety of options before settling on an agreement; and
4. insist that the agreement be based on objective criteria.

(Note, DD hates it when I do things like this. So apologies to others. A copy might find its way into her Christmas stocking...)

To be honest if there is a bad small, it is likely that black mould will follow, causing the flat to be declared unfit for human habitation and they will want to leave anyway. (Or they will spend the winter being sick.) Their best bet is to hit the phones and use the University accommodation to see if there is anything else out there, either short term or long term. The negotiation then is for them to get their deposits and pre-paid rent back. Or that the landlord pays for the temporary accommodation.

His interest will be to keep them. It is a big ask to expect tenants to stay during major building works. However he won't want a void until next summer, so may help facilitate temporary accommodation. Or he needs to get advice on how to manage the impact of the damp, as well as addressing the root cause and reassure them that it will be safe.

DM died last week after a decade of dementia. Old Irish Lancastrian roots, though her dad was a Headmaster of a Catholic boys school most of her aunts, uncles and cousins worked in the pits or mills. My Granddad was a Director of Wigan Rugby Club and apparently used to sit in old Dave Whelans sports shop on a Saturday morning helping to pick the team that would play that afternoon. My mum read maths at Oxford, rowed in the first ever woman's boat and later worked at the National Physics Laboratory on the ACE1 computer, which is now part of the exhibition of the 20th century in the Science Museum. She used to calculate angles of incidence for bouncing bombs.

I don't have any links left with the north. (My Godmother died last year.) A pity as I remember visiting pit villages where every cottage seemed to house members of the family.

Wow latedecember1963, your DH's family history sounds amazing. Likewise NMS; I love social history, find it absolutely fascinating - what people did, how they lived etc.
Sorry for your loss NMS

I found it sad that Christopher Eccleston's working class roots were not considered interesting enough for "Who do you think you are?" Ditto, I loved William Woodruff's book "The Road to Nab End" about his Lancastrian childhood. He was a generation before my mother, so it was much bleaker, but there were things I remember.

We started supporting the football team local to my mother so that we would have a reason to visit every couple of weeks. They, amazingly, were promoted to the Premiership which has given DH a chance to visit the famous football grounds. Lots are huge and on industrial estates, but I have loved the old ones like Everton and Burnley where you feel you are following in the footsteps of people a century before.

I am sorry about your mother.
i have been as interested in the badly off roots (most of our family) as anyone a bit richer - hardly abyone but have fuond one yeoman in Yorkshire who died about 1806 a lthough even he wasn't a lord of the manor type, just had a few rents coming in, but he did leave a will which helped with the research. I found one ancestor this week like most of them at that time married to a coal miner who killed herself aged 50. i wonder if it related to menopause. She left 5 sons a daughter and a husband ina bout 1838. Her death cert says for cause of death - hanged herself being a lunatic and the newspaper report says she had been unbalanced for some time.

Sorry for your loss, NMS - and the decade of dementia preceding, that must have been hard.

I wish I'd asked my parents a lot more when they were alive, now all of that generation is gone. Grandad was from a family of Durham miners, he walked to Yorkshire to be hired as a farmhand in Thirsk marketplace a la Hardy. Married a schoolteacher and worked in a cokeworks - but being continually employed in the 30s was noteworthy in his family, many those in co Durham were by then impoverished ex-miners. His sons went to the grammar school and won scholarships to university, both chemists - uncle to Manchester, dad to Oxford finishing just in time to complete his education in the Signals in the 8th Army. The earliest photo I have of him is a small snap with a pal in front of the Pyramids.

Xenia, I believe that suicides were frequently recorded as 'balance of mind disturbed' etc - suicide while sane was not decriminalised until 1961.

I just realised I said I had nobody old left - not quite true as I do have my mum but I don't class her as old (even though she'll be 80 next year! 😆).

It's my Dad's side I want to trace; a cousin did Mum's side a few years back, so we've got that one.

My Dad had a hard childhood and didn't talk much about it, not even to my Mum, so it will involve a bit of digging around but I'm looking forward to it.

I have certainly found it interesting. Both my parents wrote a family tree in the 70s/80s and my father typed notes on the old relatives so those were out best starting point. You can look free of charge on the general records office websites for births which give mother's maiden name although not if the mother wasn't married whch has helped me work some of them out back to about 1837 when they started recording in the civil register. The 1939 census for people who are now dead is availlable on ancestry.co.uk which costs I think something like £13 for a month (that also gives access to the census in England from 1841 every 10 years to and including 1911).

It costs £11 to buy a full birth certificate sent by post although my father had his parents' already and my mother had her mother's - the oldest thing we have of my mother's mother.

Meanwhile in 2019 one of the twins called. He had had his first lecture - 9am and was giong back for 1pm for a second but going back to the house in between. He wanted to know what my recent emails had said as he doesn't read them apparently!

Really interesting to hear the stories. And lots who came from humble roots. My father's father was a docker in Liverpool - day to day work (like Errols) and they were very very poor. He didn't talk about it so I only quite recently gleaned a bit of information from my DGodF before he passed. My mum's family were relatively well off, running a chippy!

Condolences to you NeedMoreSleep. 🌸

Thank you everyone. My mother was 90 and not particularly sentimental. I can almost hear her saying "I had a good innings."

The paperwork mountain is scarey. I would not have chosen the solicitor she chose as executor. I even had a bit of a MN snobby moment when I looked up her University background. DD drove down to join me in the hospital, DH arrived the next day, and we had lovely weekend, finally being able to remember the good times. I realise that DD has no memories of her before the dementia set it. However when she was 16 she spent a summer working in my mum's sheltered housing so saw a lot of her, which is nice.

I'm so sorry NMS What an amazing career your mum had - a woman at the forefront of science - even more special back in those days.

My parents were both born pre war and both did very well at school but neither went to university. Dad's family were military and it was simply assumed he'd follow which he did, despite being supremely unsuited and miserable with forces life. Mum's family were teachers and owned a school (as you did in those days) but couldn't afford to let her finish her A levels . Both my parents said uni just wasn't even considered in their families despite both sides being fairly 'posh' for want of a better word and definitely very intelligent. They've both carried on studying and researching their various interests all their lives. I wonder what they could have done if they'd had the chances our dcs have had.

My father came from a poor family, but his mother was a teacher, so encouraged him to go to university. He later became a teacher, examiner and composer. His father was a wheelwright. My mother came from a wealthy family, but none of them went to university. On tracing back her routes, it seems they were originally poor, but a clever father of 6 girls made sure they mixed in the right circles and managed to marry them all off to wealthy men.

It just goes to show how life choices can change our destiny. I'm just trying to keep all the doors open for my DD, so she has these choices.

Yes, it's very interesting on a unversity thread to consider why we all are where we are given our families' pasts. Education for a lot of people was the turning point. My great uncle qualified as a solicior in the 1890s and did an external London University LLB. I was sent his mother's 1906 newspaper death reports and you could see how proud they were of it as when they listed who attended the funeral it said XYZ LLB.

The next oldest sibling studied nursing and she qualified as a nurse in 1894 - could not be doctors in those days if female. Those 2 were lucky as they got a reasonable education before their father turned to drink. The other 8 had a much harder time including my grandfather who was the youngest. However I suspect the older ones were an example to the rest of the family (although only 2 of the 10 children had children - the solicitor and my grandfather who left school at 12 but was very self educated and qualified as an auctioneer and valuer and estate agent. Two of his sons including my father became doctors etc.

My mother's family started to do better as a result of education too -teachers, nurses etc from about the 1930s +. My mother's cousin became a dentist - quite an achievement from a NE mining family. And then my parents met through education too - my father had his BSc and was on his medical degree and my mother had finished her teacher training but was taking part in the university rag review.

So good luck to all our university children - it certainly can be a huge advantage to get a good education.

Oh I agree - education gives people choices. 🙂

Doesn't it just! This is a message I've worked hard to convey to the children and families I've worked with down the years.
It's about broadening horizons.

Condolences to Needmoresleep.

Fascinating to read the social history - I too am interested in my family tree altho a cousin has researched quite a lot of my father's side. My grandmother went as a domestic servant from Manchester to Glasgow at the age of 14. While my maternal grandfather walked 35 miles from Glasgow to the Clyde coast in search of work - he climbed a gas lamppost to light his cigarette and a policeman tugged on his ankles and told him to get down.

My father was the youngest and was able to stay at school until 18 - and then was called up for National Service so was very eager for us to go to university. Both he and my mother had a huge belief in the value of education.

DD has finally picked her dissertation title. She seems really excited and enthusiastic about it and rang to tell me all about it. She NEVER phones - unless her car has broken down.

@SMaCM that's great shes excited.