Bessie Wilson Davidson

Auntie Bessie was the older sister of my grandmother, Annie Wilson Steel. Her father, Joseph Steel, was headmaster of the school at Hesket New Market in Cumberland. She and my grandmother both went to teacher training college in Manchester and Bessie worked as a schoolteacher. She taught in the Maryport area until she married John Davidson who was headmaster of the school at Crosby near Maryport. 

This was not the first marriage for Uncle John. His first wife had died in childbirth. Auntie Bessie and Uncle John had no children. 

They lived in Moor Lea House, which was a fairly large house with three or four attached small houses, all joined together in a terrace.  I believe that Uncle John owned the row. His two unmarried sisters lived in the first of the attached houses. Mother told me that they were very unkind to Auntie Bessie and made comparisons between her and the first wife.

When my mother, Sadie was about five years old she had scarlet fever, a serious infectious disease in those days. When she recovered, it was decided that she should go to stay with Auntie Bessie for an extended time so that she could convalesce in the fresh country air on the Solway Firth away from low-lying Carlisle.  It was  common in those days for children to go and stay with relatives, particularly if they seemed weak and underweight. The change of climate was felt to be therapeutic. From then on, there was a special bond between Mother and Auntie Bessie. 

When we visited Carlisle we always went to see Auntie Bessie and Uncle John. We went by train to Dereham Bridge, a small station before Maryport, and walked up to Crosby along a narrow, winding country lane with hedgerows all along. The road was sunk below the level of the fields and it reminded me of a painting “Two Strings to her Bow” that was in a book we had at home with reproductions of paintings in the National Gallery. Crosby was a small village with a village green at the center  but it strung out along the road and Moor Leigh  house was not far from the junction of the road from the station. 

Sheila and I played outside while the adults talked and then began the lengthy preparations for tea. There was always a honeycomb mold thickened with sheets of gelatin that melted as they were stirred into the egg yolk mixture. The paraffin stove stood by itself in the kitchen. It looked like a regular cooker but had a tank of paraffin at the end, somewhat like an inverted bottle, and this supplied the heat. If the weather was good, we ate outside at a makeshift wooden table and I am sure this was a desirable substitute for having us all eat in the dining room. They were the only people I knew who had a dining room and this was made much  more impressive for me because Uncle John had a safe there. I used to like reading a Heath Robinson book that was on the shelf.