Stella has a great sense of humour. As I attempted to take her photo, she said, "Take your time and hurry up." She then told me in a whisper, "I'm 89 but don't tell anybody."
Stella came to England from Guyana in 1955. She enjoyed the journey across the Atlantic. It took 2 weeks, and they would show movies in the lounge every night. On board the ship were families, single men and women and many children. Everyone was excited about starting a new life in England.
Her husband, Cecil, had already come to England. He was working as a carpenter and living in Tooting. Stella left their son with his parents until she got settled.
Stella wasn't sure about England initially, but her sense of humour helped get her through those early years. A white woman once looked at her hands and said, "Oh, look at that, you wear a wedding ring just like us". Stella replied, "We normally wear our rings through our noses but put them on our fingers before we get off the banana boat." Stella and Cecil lived in a single room in Tooting. Cecil worked, and Stella trained to become a nurse. The couple also had a baby daughter called Wendy.
Stella then sent for her son, but her in-laws had grown attached to him and wouldn't let him come. Stella joked that although many English people think that people in the Caribbean live in mud huts, her in-laws had a big house with six bedrooms. They argued that there was no way they would send their grandson to live in a single room in South London. So Stella's son remained in Guyana with his grandparents and still lives there.
Once Stella passed her nursing exams, she worked in the infectious disease ward at St George's Hospital in Tooting. She said that the hospital had a strict hygiene policy. You'd scrub your hands, go into the ward, put on overalls, and then scrub your hands again. There were no disposable surgical gloves in those days. She said you had to go through the same process on the way out. She said that all the hand scrubbing made her hand sore.
The nurses were given castor oil cream to soothe their hands, but it had a strong smell that Stella was self-conscious about on the bus ride home. The whole time Stella was a nurse, there was never any cross-infection. Stella's daughter Wendy became a teacher. Something that Stella was incredibly proud of. Wendy went on to have five children who often visit Stella. Stella feels blessed that she has her grandkids around her. When they leave the house after a visit, she says, 'The silence is deafening.' Cecil died in 2009. He loved gardening and would grow veg in the back and flowers in the front. Stella remembers that back then, everyone in Tooting Street used to pop in and out of each other’s houses, sharing plants, seeds, and vegetables. It was a friendly, close-knit community.
