Dorothy Jarvis was evacuated to Alton at the age of nine with her brother Tony and the rest of St. Robert’s Roman Catholic School from Manchester. In the following audio clip you can hear her speaking about her arrival in Alton and how she and her brother found a billet:-

Dorothy Jarvis – first impressions

Transcript of Dorothy Jarvis’s 1st audio clip

Margaret was very happy in Alton, and enjoyed being in the countryside, which was a change from her home town of Longsight, Manchester. Her host family were kind to them, although she remembers being unhappy on one occasion when they accused her of having fleas:-

Dorothy Jarvis – fleas or midges

Transcript of Dorothy Jarvis’s 2nd audio clip

After about two weeks their mother and baby came to join them in Alton, and were billeted in a house nearby ‘at the bottom of station bank’. In their year of evacuation, Tony and Dorothy saw quite a lot of their mother, who would go to visit them often with the baby in the pram.