vee-obsessions

[vee-obsessions]

hahaha, watched that episode of Buffy a few weeks ago.

*Wilhelm sneaking out to see Simon*

August: Where are you going? 5 words or less

Wilhelm: *pauses, starts counting down on his fingers* out… for… a… walk… bitch

[vee-obsessions]

Bridgeburn 2: Searching for Nancy Baty

There aren't many dates in The Bridgeburn Days, but there are enough pointers for me to be able to narrow Nancy Baty down.

Quite early on we get the first date - "1923, when Kitty was eight and Matron came". That would put Nancy's birth in 1915, making her a year older than my grandmother.

Off to the General Register Office I went. Baty can't be a common surname, I thought, and I was right; there were only 43 female Baty babies born either side of 1915. One of them was indeed a Nancy.

Name: BATY, NANCY     Mother's maiden surname: MC LAUGHLAN GRO Reference: 1915  J Quarter in SOUTH SHIELDS

There were no Nancies as a middle name, nor were there any names that looked like they might have become Nancy. So this was probably my girl. Just to be on the safe side, I also checked the 1939 Register. If Nancy was born in 1915, she would have been well out of the children's home and in service by 1939. We're told in the book that she goes to a place 'near London'. And sure enough, there she is.

Baty, Nancy. 23 May 1915, domestic servant. There are six people in the house including Nancy, who is the last one listed. The house is '49 King's End' in Ruislip-Northwood. Two of the other entries are closed, meaning they were born less than 100 years ago and the system doesn't know whether they're still alive.

So I was pretty sure this is the correct Nancy Baty, and that 'The Bridgeburn Days' was indeed autobiographical since its author was a servant just like Kitty in the books. Next - hunting down Bridgeburn itself.

[vee-obsessions]

There was a little girl

When I was young, I had a book called 'The Bridgeburn Days', by Lucy Sinclair. It was about a little girl growing up in 'Bridgeburn', a children's home in an unnamed town in the North of England, in the 1920s and 1930s. This is what the cover of the book, published in 1956, looked like:

The little girl's name was Kitty Barrowell, and the book followed her life from her earliest memories growing up there through to her return visit to Bridgeburn after having gone 'into service' in London, which was what all the girls at Bridgeburn were trained up for (the boys were trained for farm work).

Although the protagonist is named Kitty, the book is sharply and starkly autobiographical, and it's clear that Lucy Sinclair herself was the little girl who grew up in Bridgeburn. I can't tell you why I found it such a gripping tale, but I did. I was moved by Kitty's longing for something outside domestic drudgery, her anger at the cruelty of the big girls to the little ones, her bewilderment about the unfairness of a world where some children were born crippled because their fathers beat their pregnant mothers while others lived a pampered life.

I often wondered as a child what became of the intelligent, shy, imaginative 'Kitty'. Did Lucy Sinclair write other books? Did she stay in service? Was she happy?

As an adult I tried to answer these questions, but I hit a dead end wherever I went. The Bridgeburn Days seems to have made little impression on the literary world, although it received good reviews. It's been largely forgotten except for being quoted in some academic texts focused on the historical experiences of children in care. And Lucy Sinclair seems likewise to have made little or no impression on the world. Googling her gave me nothing. Maybe 'Lucy Sinclair', as well as 'Kitty Barrowell', was a pseudonym.

I also searched for Lucy in genealogy websites and newspaper archives, again with no success. Then I thought to look up her published. Gollancz. They still exist but are now mainly a SF and fantasy publisher, according to Wikipedia. But one other thing Wikipedia gave me was the fact that the Victor Gollancz Ltd archives are housed at the Modern Records Office, University of Warwick.

With little or no expectation it would come to anything, I did a search on the Modern Records Office's website, to see if there was anything that might point me in the right direction. And there was.

In the details of a contract ledger held in the Gollancz archives was a date and a name.

'The Bridgeburn days' by Lucy Sinclair (Nancy Baty), 12 Mar 1956.

Lucy Sinclair was in fact Nancy Baty.

Maybe I could find out more, with a name.