Auntie Anne

And my brother and sister, they ran down into the cellar because there used to be a stone slab where they kept meat and cheese and things on, and they died. And I think my mother always blamed me because if I hadn't had the gastroenteritis she wouldn't have had to go out of the house, and my brother wouldn't have been playing with fire and started the fire. 

Auntie Anne as a baby, with her mother, 1944

She wasn't a loving mum. I found it hard at times. Because my brother used to sit next to her, she’d put her arms around him. But if I went to sit next to her, “Move up, move up, you’re crowding me.” She just didn't seem to have time for me.

And he went into a room and we had, you know, like beetroot, and brown sauce and things, and pickled onions on the table. And he picked the beetroot up and he smashed it, and beetroot just went everywhere. And then they got up and they went, right quick. Then I was in the kitchen, squeezing a cloth to go clean it up and he just said, “Well, I've started I might as well finish it.”

Auntie Anne and her daughter, with Gussie (the cat), and Sherrie (the dog), Leeds, 1986

She just wanted to love. She wanted you to love her. And when people come to the house, she’d hide behind my legs, she won't talk to them. And I used to get them pretty dresses ‘cause they had nothing. And when they eventually went home to mummy. They had a big suitcase, a big double suitcase full of clothes. (Names redacted for privacy)

Diane and Auntie Anne, after sharing her story for The Making of Black Britain oral history project