The Golden Years and After

I was born on the 2nd of May 1921 in Didsbury, Manchester. My parents were born in Syria. My father was in the importing and exporting business and as a young man he had to come to England to attend to business here. After a few months he returned to Syria initially to marry one of my mothers sisters. However when he saw my mother who was twenty five years younger than my father and who was exceptionally beautiful he decided that he would marry her instead and they both came to England and settled here.

I am the sixth of seven children. We were five girls and two boys and when we were young we lived in a large house in Didsbury. There was a dining room, a lounge, a morning room, kitchen, pantry and scullery. Then you went up the stairs and there was a very large furnished landing where you could sit. There were four bedrooms on the first floor, one of which was our nursery. On the next floor there were another four bedrooms and a bathroom. We had a maid and an undermaid, a nurse and an undernurse and a chauffeur for the car and a gardener. We spent a lot of time in the nursery I remember it had a dark green border around the walls which we were allowed to chalk on. It was like a blackboard. There was also a toy boat that the two of us used to sit in and there was a rocking horse. We always used to play in the nursery.

We had a happy childhood I never remember being bored as a child we would play with one another or with our various friends. I was often with my younger sister, we used to play very simple games such as hopscotch and ball against the wall and card games on the floor. Although there were quite a lot of Jewish people living in the area at the time we also had non-Jewish friends. We used to go into each other's houses or play in the garden. We didn't play in the street when we were young we played in the garden because we had a big garden then. I remember when I was very little I attended a small private school, which was exactly across the road from where we lived. Nurse would see us across the road to school. I liked school and it became very important to me when I was older. When I was small I remember a fair in Northenden it always came around Passover time and Nurse always used to take us to this fair, we had a lovely time going on all the roundabouts and rides. Of course because it was Passover we weren't allowed to have any of the sweets that were there.

... The captains would choose all the girls who were good at sport and you knew that if you weren't chosen early you were no good at sport. Fortunately I was good at sport and was chosen early. ...

We spent our summer holidays in St Annes near Blackpool we would pack our clothes and toys, pots and pans and food into a great big straw basket that we called a skip similar to the ones used in the cotton mills. We used to go on holiday for a month you see so we needed to take lots of things. I would pack my teddy bear, books, and my bat and ball because we used to play a lot of rounders and French cricket. We would either take a house for the time we were there or stay in a boarding house. Our nurse would come with us on holiday and she would take myself and my brothers and sisters out each day. I remember she took us to watch the pierrots, we used to sit watching it at the front and she would sit on the sand hills above watching us. She also used to take us on the donkeys we used to love going on the donkeys when we were young. However when we were very little we always had to ride on donkeys, which had baskets on them, and we had to sit in the baskets which we didn't like much. I remember we were very contented when we were children we never really wanted anything special.

When I was ten the family had to move house, the cotton business was in decline and my father lost his money. We rented a house, which was about three minutes walk away from our old house. During the war my mother put beds in the cellar of our new house and when the air raid siren went off we had to all go to the cellar and sleep there. Of course after the age of ten we didn't have any help except for Nurse who stayed on with the family. We were there when a bomb went off in Clyde Road, which was about five minutes, walk away. Nurse was making cakes in the kitchen when the bomb went off because she wouldn't come into the cellar. I remember my mother every Friday would spend the whole day cooking she would cook a lot of Syrian food such as stuffed marrows, stuffed tomatoes, chicken fried fish all cooked in different ways. The food was cooked in preparation for the weekend and on Sunday we would have roast beef. If we wanted to learn to cook my mother would tell us to watch her but of course we never could because she would be constantly asking us to wash her a dish or pass her a pan and so we never really learnt to cook those lovely Syrian dishes.

I then moved on to the Withington Girls School, which was also a private school, it was a very good school. We played a lot of sport at the Girls School, which I enjoyed but my favourite subjects were maths and Latin. We generally travelled to school on the tram or sometimes we would walk to school to save our ha'pennys. When I was at school I was very keen on sport we used to play hockey, netball and lacrosse in the winter and tennis and cricket in the summer. We had four house teams called Herford, Lejeune, Simon and Scott. At the end of our first term at the school the house captains would choose which of the new girls they wanted on their teams. The captains would choose all the girls who were good at sport and you knew that if you weren't chosen early you were no good at sport. Fortunately I was good at sport and was chosen early. Later on I became a house captain, as well as being captain of the cricket and netball teams. We would have matches with other schools, which we used to enjoy.

When I was about sixteen I used to go and watch Manchester City Football team and I still watch that team today. I also used to go to Old Trafford to watch Lancashire play cricket, my friends and I would cycle on our bikes to the ground and leave them out side across the road. A friend and myself would cycle all over on our bikes we would go to Prestbury and Alderly Edge and we would take a picnic for the day.

In my teenage years I used to go to the Hasmoneans which was held at the Queens Road Synagogue and later on I attended the Literary Society were we had talks and debates. We also used to go to the Country Club a lot of the Jewish children went there. We could play tennis at the Country Club and we had dances.

When I was a twenty myself and five friends went away on holiday together to North Wales. We took our bikes and we went by train and we had the most wonderful holiday we never stopped laughing. Six of us slept in one bedroom for a week when it was time to go home we got the bill and realised we didn't have enough money to pay for the room so we sat on the bed and pooled all our money. We gave as much as we could to the proprietors, they were very good about it, they were Christian Scientists and they believed us when we said we would send it on afterwards. However we stupidly didn't leave enough money for our journey home so we cycled to the station and sent our luggage by taxi to save money then we got on the train home. At the other end a porter asked us for money for our cases and we didn't have any money left at all by this point. I had to go up to a policeman and asked whether he could lend me some money to give to the porter and I promised to pay him back the following day. The policeman lent us the money and the next day we went and paid him back.

I left school when I was seventeen and I went to work at the Refuge Assurance Company, as a clerk. When the war started I was called up and I decided that I wouldn't go into the forces and that I would go into a factory instead. A factory called Fairy's an aviation company in Burnage needed somebody in the wages office and so I ended up working there. I went to work on my bicycle or on the bus. I remember the time when there was a very big blitz on Manchester and the next day everybody had to walk to work I walked from Didsbury into the centre of Manchester and everybody came to work that day. There was glass all over the place.

A photograph Mr Wettstein with his family and servants in Cracow Poland. Catalogue Reference: (MJM) PD3026/1

One New Years Eve I went to a dance at the Country Club and that is where I first met my husband. When we were first courting we used to go to the Pictures or go for a walk we didn't really go anywhere else. Sometimes he would come round and we would sit in the house together. When we were engaged we went on holiday together to Amlech in North Wales. We were married in 1944 at the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue on Queens Road of course because the war was on we couldn't have a very big wedding. I remember the day I was getting married the boiler had burst in our house and we had no hot water, so I had to go to a friends house which was just up the road to have a bath. I had to take a piece of coal with me for them to put on the fire because coal was short in those days you see, then I went home to put on my wedding dress. I got married in white we had our photograph taken at Wycherley's which was the local photographers my best friend and my youngest sister where my bridesmaids and my husbands friend was the best man. We all went to the photographers and I remember we were all roaring with laughter and the photographer was getting rather cross with us all. After the ceremony we had a party at the Country Club and we went to Criccieth in North Wales on our honeymoon. When we were married we moved to a house in West Didsbury which we lived in all our married life. We were married for 52 years and had one child we had a very happy life together. This story was contributed by a volunteer at Manchester Jewish Museum as part of a project in collaboration with Moving Here. All the stories collected are available in a booklet from the Manchester Jewish Museum.