Mother Granma

Further Info

This story was made on a five-day training workshop for staff from the City Museum and Industrial Museum, who aim to become digital storytelling workshop facilitators, led by Dani Landau, Liz Milner and Alison Farrar.

The course took place during Aug 2005 at the City Museum and Art Gallery and was supported by Bristol’s Museums, Galleries & Archives.

Transcript

[1920s big band dance music]

My family tree, which goes back centuries on some branches, stops above my grandfather’s name. But it doesn’t matter.

Ten years or so ago, my grandfather and I went back to see the house where he’d grown up. He told me that they’d had just two rooms on the top floor, with a shared sink and a coal store on the landing of another floor. And not far from this house, in streets which he no longer recognised, was the place where he’d been born: the Hospital for Unmarried Mothers.

But the maternal figure in his life was a childless widow. She was in her early seventies when she took him in. She knew his mother, who was a bar maid, and she agreed to look after the baby in return for some money, while his mother carried on working.

He called her “grandma”. Well, the money never came and the bar maid left town, but my grandpa, and his grandma were happy, just the two of them.

Other babies came and went - she gave a temporary home to waifs and strays for all her life, but it was my grandpa who was with her from his earliest days to her last. She died when she was ninety nine years old. So, you see, it doesn’t matter if your family history doesn’t go back very far. It’s the amazing characters and their legacy, family or no family that matters.

[1920s big band dance music]

Credits

All media not otherwise credited created by the story author, or permission obtained, used under copyright licence.