Past, Present & Future 1950 - 2022
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MANCHESTER 1972 UNCLE MORRIS
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PAST PRESENT AND FUTURE
The PRESENT meets the past
In 2021 during the Covid Pandemic, completely unexpectedly I was contacted by two different people from my (late) sister Sandra's and my past, who knew us, and had found us via social media and the website. I had an email from Richard Casson, from Manchester. He had been to the same primary school, Thomas Street. Whilst researching the school he canme upon this website!
I had an email from Louise the daughter of Margaret Hendry Bushnell in Scotland saying that her mum is our cousin. I hadn’t seen or heard from any of the Hendry”s since Sandra and I were about 10 or 11 years old and Margaret about 8 or 9. Our mother took us up to Scotland to visit them. Margaret’s father was our mothers’s brother James. I had no idea that she was alive. Margaret for many years had been looking for the Horowitch girls, Myrna and Sandra.
Since getting in touch we have found out that we share some Horowitch and Hendry stories and photos. I had a photo of Margaret”s family in an album and she had a photo of Sandra and me with our mum wearing a large hat. Margaret's family now know that the stories she had told them about Myer Horowitch and the sofa were true. Since then we have filled in gaps in our remembered stories from that time.
The Toilet Paper Story from Margaret. Sandra and Myrna came to our place in Balloch in the 1950s. The housing block had only one shared outside toilet. We all only used newspaper as toilet paper as it was cheap and readily available but to impress your mum, our mum Nellie bought some Izal hard shiny toilet paper especially for you girls. But the plan went wrong. Your mum was horrified to see that you both had purple backsides. She couldn’t work out why,
Some neighbours seeing the posh medicated paper took it and replaced it with newspaper.
Since getting in touch we have found out that we share some Horowitch and Hendry stories and photos. I had a photo of Margaret”s family in an album and she had a photo of Sandra and me with our mum wearing a large hat. Margaret's family now know that the stories she had told them about Myer Horowitch and the sofa were true. Since then we have filled in gaps in our remembered stories from that time.
The Toilet Paper Story from Margaret. Sandra and Myrna came to our place in Balloch in the 1950s. The housing block had only one shared outside toilet. We all only used newspaper as toilet paper as it was cheap and readily available but to impress your mum, our mum Nellie bought some Izal hard shiny toilet paper especially for you girls. But the plan went wrong. Your mum was horrified to see that you both had purple backsides. She couldn’t work out why,
Some neighbours seeing the posh medicated paper took it and replaced it with newspaper.
After about 63 years my first cousin Margaret speaks to me via Messenger.
Here is what she told me.
MARGARET BUSHNELL HENDRY. HER STORIES
"Your mum Ina's dad James lost everything. Also, my father James and mum Nellie lost everything. I think their house was bombed and they had nothing except the clothes they had on. Poverty was a big problem in our lives. James my grandfather had Irish descendants. He had a pawn shop. (Our mum had told Sandra and me that it was an antique shop) and he lost it all and after his wife Margaret died he took to drink. 'Our mum hated him, as he would kick her', Myrna
Margaret, my cousin tells me another story about aunty Betty or Bessie as they called her. Elizabeth was her full name so both are correct. Only about 20 years ago Margaret was told his story.
Here is what she told me.
MARGARET BUSHNELL HENDRY. HER STORIES
"Your mum Ina's dad James lost everything. Also, my father James and mum Nellie lost everything. I think their house was bombed and they had nothing except the clothes they had on. Poverty was a big problem in our lives. James my grandfather had Irish descendants. He had a pawn shop. (Our mum had told Sandra and me that it was an antique shop) and he lost it all and after his wife Margaret died he took to drink. 'Our mum hated him, as he would kick her', Myrna
Margaret, my cousin tells me another story about aunty Betty or Bessie as they called her. Elizabeth was her full name so both are correct. Only about 20 years ago Margaret was told his story.
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"Betty had a child out of wedlock and she gave the child to a relative to look after. The child was sickly and died very young. Betty never ever came to see her child. Then Betty adopted Cathy a daughter from her husband Bill's affair. (The mother of the child didn’t want to keep her and let Bill take their daughter. Betty brought the child up with Bill as though she were hers. Cathy when an adult also got pregnant out of wedlock and everyone was embarrassed and didn’t want our mum to find out about it. Cathy was told not to come out and meet our mum. Cathy then was forced to give up her child for adoption. She said that she would’ve loved to have found out what happened to her child Margaret said. Betty never had another child of her own". Margaret.
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Aunty Betty
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Then 2 months after Margaret got in touch with me I had an email from Richard Casson, from Cheetham Hill Manchester who knew Sandra and me very well from primary school. He had lived in the same area as us. While researching Thomas Street School Cheetham Hill Methodist, Richard discovered this site. He is a passionate researcher of family stories and histories and has a record of people from that time who knew us both well. He is still in touch with many from that time.
Through these new encounters I am able to reach back onto the past and add information, my truths to those times which in turn will affect the future for all of us who knew those stories from so long ago.
History is fluid, the way we look at events is dependent on what information is gathered from different points of view, the context of the times. Memories of past events and stories will inevitably become fixed if no new input has been added to those recollections.
Through these new encounters I am able to reach back onto the past and add information, my truths to those times which in turn will affect the future for all of us who knew those stories from so long ago.
History is fluid, the way we look at events is dependent on what information is gathered from different points of view, the context of the times. Memories of past events and stories will inevitably become fixed if no new input has been added to those recollections.
NOW IS THE TIME TO FILL IN THE GAPS IN OUR STORIES
Sandra would be delighted to know that finally we can be heard.
BEHIND THE CLOSED GATE
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Susan a childhood friend lived across the road from our house. She wrote about the Horowitch's house, how the gate was always closed (barred) triggered off thoughts for me about the stories that become like myths of a time.
Susan "The Horowitch house was conspicuous as the front gates were always closed (effectively a barrier). If you asked the girls to come and play they always had an excuse why they couldn't. Their mother was sleeping and they shouldn't disturb her, or they were going elsewhere".
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Sandra and I were part of a cover up about what really went on behind the closed doors of our house. I can now pull off the cover of respectability and reveal the secrets. The moral and cultural framework at the time of our growing up silenced us all.
"Susan as a child herself would have had no idea what madness went on inside the house behind the gate. Who would have listened at that time to 2 young children talking about their mother?
Sandra and I would come home from school find our mum on the floor completely drunk, ranting incoherently or find her trying to kill herself by leaving the gas poker on unlit. Our mother hated all our friends and would let rip how awful they all were. Even our dad concealed the secret. ” Myrna.
Sandra and I would come home from school find our mum on the floor completely drunk, ranting incoherently or find her trying to kill herself by leaving the gas poker on unlit. Our mother hated all our friends and would let rip how awful they all were. Even our dad concealed the secret. ” Myrna.
REspectability
Susan - "We lived in a narrow environment, were not really aware of things outside our own world. Todays age of electronic communications would have been unimaginable then.
We grew up in an era where RESPECTABILITY and MORALITY ruled the day. Ladies wore hats and gloves, when they went out. When did you last buy a pair of dress gloves to match your shoes? White shoes could be worn from June, before then it was déclassé.
Times have certainly changed".
We grew up in an era where RESPECTABILITY and MORALITY ruled the day. Ladies wore hats and gloves, when they went out. When did you last buy a pair of dress gloves to match your shoes? White shoes could be worn from June, before then it was déclassé.
Times have certainly changed".
"It’s fascinating how things change, words take on other meanings, what was important at one time becomes irrelevant at another time. All this is what interests me about looking back at these stories," Myrna.
MORALITY
Susan "A major scandal that did become public. A Rabbi in the community was having an affaire with the wife of a Jewish butcher. The husband found out and threatened him with a meat cleaver. His aim being to remove the offending equipment. He was prevented from fulfilling his ambition."
Sandra artist talent
“I am able to amend the past by telling 'what happened next' therefore the stories in the Past become the Present and the Future will change because of the new information," Myrna.
“Sandra’s artistic talent was apparent even at primary school. I always admired her art prowess. She would often draw things for me," Richard. “Sandra was closer in age to me, so we were in the same class. Her artistic talent was apparent even then,” Susan. Similar comments came via emails from other people from that time.
Myrna “Yes Sandra was very good at art. As I was a year ahead no one knew about me. Sandra and I both spent time drawing around our home. At Broughton High School for girls encouraged by art teacher Miss Grist, I also became ‘good at art’. Both Sandra and I were encouraged to study art at Manchester Regional College of Art. I completed the course but Sandra decided not to, as she was so upset by our dad's premature death that she felt she didn’t deserve to continue. She was almost 17 year old. From that time I have lived my life through art in, fashion, prints, greetings cards and film.
Sandra after a divorce returned to complete the art course. Her talent was such that she got accepted on the course simply with an A4 folder of her recent drawings and paintings. Sandra and I over the years shared many creative projects".
“Sandra’s artistic talent was apparent even at primary school. I always admired her art prowess. She would often draw things for me," Richard. “Sandra was closer in age to me, so we were in the same class. Her artistic talent was apparent even then,” Susan. Similar comments came via emails from other people from that time.
Myrna “Yes Sandra was very good at art. As I was a year ahead no one knew about me. Sandra and I both spent time drawing around our home. At Broughton High School for girls encouraged by art teacher Miss Grist, I also became ‘good at art’. Both Sandra and I were encouraged to study art at Manchester Regional College of Art. I completed the course but Sandra decided not to, as she was so upset by our dad's premature death that she felt she didn’t deserve to continue. She was almost 17 year old. From that time I have lived my life through art in, fashion, prints, greetings cards and film.
Sandra after a divorce returned to complete the art course. Her talent was such that she got accepted on the course simply with an A4 folder of her recent drawings and paintings. Sandra and I over the years shared many creative projects".
MANCHESTER 1950s - 1992 the same pictures on the wall
Past, Present & Future. I incorporated these images into an installation about Time on a Digital Film and Animation MA course in 2009 - 2010
In 1992 Sandra and I on a trip to Manchester walked up to our old house at Stanley Road and knocked on the door. The last time we had been in our house was 1961, the year our father died. The lady who owned it now, remembered our name. She was a short blonde stocky woman with a baggy jumper and wore a neck brace. She was from Liverpool, a market, Jewish trader selling Marks and Spencers' seconds. She had bought the house 16 years ago from the Herwells who 14 years earlier had bought it from the Horowitchs, our mum
Amazingly, she knew names of people we had played with as children, Irene Freedman, Mark Seitler, Philip Aronson from Marston Road, Nora Landsman, Susan Mendelssohn, the Gibbs the market family and Morris Radovan. Rita Pollock had told Greta Sneider that she used to play in the top room with the Horowitch girls. They were all her friends.
When we went up to our old playroom which was now their stockroom as they couldn’t use it for business reasons there on the walls were the original prints of pre-war Zoo pictures which were from our childhood in the 1950s. Sandra and I remembered them as always being there. It gave us a jolt to see them again 30 years later.
The market lady then made a statement that rendered us speechless. “This has always been a happy house a Mazaltov house,” she said. Sandra and I when we left couldn’t stop laughing.
The house for us had darker memories. Our mother's many attempted suicides, her alcoholism, and her hysteria.
Amazingly, she knew names of people we had played with as children, Irene Freedman, Mark Seitler, Philip Aronson from Marston Road, Nora Landsman, Susan Mendelssohn, the Gibbs the market family and Morris Radovan. Rita Pollock had told Greta Sneider that she used to play in the top room with the Horowitch girls. They were all her friends.
When we went up to our old playroom which was now their stockroom as they couldn’t use it for business reasons there on the walls were the original prints of pre-war Zoo pictures which were from our childhood in the 1950s. Sandra and I remembered them as always being there. It gave us a jolt to see them again 30 years later.
The market lady then made a statement that rendered us speechless. “This has always been a happy house a Mazaltov house,” she said. Sandra and I when we left couldn’t stop laughing.
The house for us had darker memories. Our mother's many attempted suicides, her alcoholism, and her hysteria.
Feedback from the past to now
RICHARD CASSON’S Thomas Street stories and more
"The Jewish community is so tight. I still retained a core of friends from primary school days (not secondary although one or two of these have crossed my path) and information just seemed to come my way. I suppose most of us as we grow older wonder what might have become of our primary school classmates? Some of the people in the Thomas Street black and white school photographs I just felt very close to as I had played with them as kids and wondered what became of them. Every one has a story to tell.
Dear Sandra is in several of my class photos however it was her talent for art that I remembered mostly. I do remember the playroom in your house. I certainly had no inkling of some of the things that have recently been revealed.
When the Thomas Street ex pupils started to meet up regularly it was always a case of ''I wondered what happened to?"
"The Jewish community is so tight. I still retained a core of friends from primary school days (not secondary although one or two of these have crossed my path) and information just seemed to come my way. I suppose most of us as we grow older wonder what might have become of our primary school classmates? Some of the people in the Thomas Street black and white school photographs I just felt very close to as I had played with them as kids and wondered what became of them. Every one has a story to tell.
Dear Sandra is in several of my class photos however it was her talent for art that I remembered mostly. I do remember the playroom in your house. I certainly had no inkling of some of the things that have recently been revealed.
When the Thomas Street ex pupils started to meet up regularly it was always a case of ''I wondered what happened to?"
Brian - "I remember well the Horowitch girls, particularly Sandra, and even the mother. She was, of course, close with my grandmother Anita, and I remember being invited to parties at their place. I have a picture of Sandra at one of my parties. And I was quite fascinated with the webpage and the openness with which they wrote about the relations with the mother".
Susan - "Myrna and the late Sandra have my admiration and respect on being strong, proud women they became. The beautifully recorded family history is a tribute to them and their achievements".
Susan - "Myrna and the late Sandra have my admiration and respect on being strong, proud women they became. The beautifully recorded family history is a tribute to them and their achievements".
Here is a video installation I made exploring NOW, Past Present & Future
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Myrna Shoa "Time Project) Past present and future are all in the NOW. A photograph frames a moment in time but conveys very little of a life. A million images of a moment says no more or less than 4 or 5 images.
This is a presentation of the installation, Having the time of your life. Concept and idea Myrna Shoa |
