Pamela Ginger - nee Bennett

February 2020 Pamela's daughter Susie sent some memories from her mother, as she approached her 100th birthday. She notes:

Mother left the Grammar School at 14 years old and spent a year at York convent. After that the family moved back to Reading.
She has returned many times, for holidays and school reunions. I think she left her heart in Malton!

This account is taken from two differing accounts that she wrote, partly for herself and partly for one of my children when he was doing a school project. I have had to do some cutting and pasting to make it read sensibly but in essence it is her own....
I hope it is of interest to some of the Maltonians.

Susie Bytheway (daughter)

Susie sent some photos of her mum, which I have put in appropriate categories on the website - 1920s photo gallery, 1930s photo gallery, Reunions, In Later Days, and Visitors.

Bertha Pamela Ginger nee Bennett (Pam)

A short life history

Although I was born in Caversham on the Oxfordshire side of the Thames at Reading, my father who worked for Huntley and Palmers as a representative was sent to Yorkshire when I was two years old. Houses were hard to find after the First World War, otherwise we should have settled in York. Perhaps a more cultural place, but we were very happy in Malton. The house (in Middlecave Rd, next to the school) was quite large, built in 1912, though not too warm in winter. Facing north east we got some cold winds straight over from the Moors. However, we all kept strong and healthy, though in later years almost anywhere else was enervating.

It was off to school at five years, St. Michael’s was private with boarders, but not so good as it had been. There were two old lady headmistresses on the point of retiring. I left at nine and a half years with the Form prize, the only one I won, unfortunately lost!

Then after a year with a sixth form girl I went next door to the Grammar School, paying of course, as we could in those days. This was a pretty little school with lovely gardens and playing fields. From early days my one ambition was to go there, too. The boys (brothers Jim and Doug) were there already, of course. This was quite a small school, but with really splendid playing fields. It was built in 1912. [actually 1911. STF] The gardens were beautiful and the gardener supplied all the vegetables for school dinners from the vegetable plots at the bottom of the cricket field.

We had four houses, named after local country families. I was in Fitzwilliam and we were blue and this has been my favourite colour ever since.

At school we played tennis, hockey and netball, and a sports day (athletics) was greatly looked forward to. The girls had running, skipping races, high jump and an inter-house netball tournament. We also had a tennis tournament, played off in the lunch hours and umpired by the headmaster. The champion of this event was awarded a tennis racquet.

We held five dances every year, when I was at the Grammar School. Four were house dances and at Christmas (best of all) it was fancy dress. Mother made me a very nice black and white pierette costume one year and with a mask I was very difficult to recognise. Pierots and pierettes were entertainers, dressed rather like clowns, who did shows on the sands at the seaside. The dances were foxtrots, waltzes, valettas, polkas, the ‘palais glide’ and the Lambeth walk. We always finished the evening with Auld Lang Syne-arms crossed in a big circle.

We also did a Shakespeare play every summer on an outdoor stage.

Going back to Middlecave Road we had quite a variety of families. Opposite, a very wealthy corn merchant with one very spoilt daughter who I loathed. She told dreadful tales, mostly quite untrue, and was to be avoided. Next door to them was the manager of the local Co-operative shop. They were the Rowntrees, Quakers, Keith and Ruth, and we were all friends and had a little gang together. Further up the road the Spiegelhalters, optician and jeweller, Sheila and I were often together though she stayed at St. Michaels. Also opposite the Taylor family were very friendly. Andrew their youngest son was our hero. A very jolly, sporty lad! How he amused us! We all did quite well at the Grammar School, the boys getting matric and captain of football, Victor Ludorum etc., and I was in the hockey team at the age of twelve! No doubt a case of a big fish in a small pond, but they were happy days.

There was a mixed variety of pupils from local villages, some cycling in every day from the Moors, seven miles each way. One boy came on his horse! I was lucky and lived next door, though Mother said this made it too easy for us. It was a happy time and I always looked forward to term starting again.

Disaster struck in 1932 when the drains failed and over two hundred people in Malton were struck down with typhoid fever. A boy in my class was one of the first to die. Two hundred and fifty people were ill and taken to fever hospitals and there were twenty five deaths. This was dreadful in a very small town and the country children stayed at home. So we were only a very few in each class and did very little work for a whole term. My brother, Doug, also succumbed and was taken to a fever hospital at Driffield where he stayed for three months. We were not allowed to visit and bulletins were posted up in a shop window every day. An anxious time, but he recovered after a bad dose and lost his hair for a time. No antibiotics in those days! Very few pupils came into school that term and the headmaster who took us for Latin, brought a William book in and read a story instead to lighten the atmosphere, I expect.