About Grace

 2 February is Grace’s birthday, so today seems like a good time to tell you about Grace’s life up to February 1942, when the story told by the letters begins.

Grace was born in the mining village of Grimethorpe in South Yorkshire in 1921 (for more details of her family see The Skuse Family page on the left).  She attended Grimethorpe Board School and, like most children, left school aged 14 and ‘went into service’ in a big house in Leeds.

Grace’s mother, Alice, had told her to put a chair under the doorknob of her room to prevent anyone getting in, and Grace was grateful of this advice when the teenage son of the household tried to get into her room.  “Oh, come on, Grace, let me in!” he said. “The other girl used to let my brother in.”  Can you imagine, away from home age 14 having to deal with this?

This photo shows Grace, aged about 14, outside her home, 56 Brierley Road, Grimethorpe.  This house is mentioned in many of the letters that she and Stan wrote to each other.

Grace soon decided that ‘skivvying’ was not for her, but without School Certificate (the predecessor to ‘O’ levels) most careers were closed to her.  However, she discovered from a girl who lived along the street in Grimethorpe that you could train to be a Children’s Nurse without having School Certificate.  Once you were qualified as a Children’s Nurse you could then move on to train to become a State Registered Nurse (SRN).

On 1 November, 1938, Grace began her training as a Children’s Nurse at the King Edward VII Hospital for Sick Children in Rivelin Valley, just outside Sheffield.  Most of the children that Grace cared for had tuberculosis in their bones (“TB Limb”) caught from unsterilized milk.  Treatment often involved the children having limbs – or their torso – encased in plaster to support the bone while they fought the disease.  There was little treatment apart from good food, sunshine and fresh air, and many of the children died.

This photos shows Grace with two of the patients at the King Edward VII Hospital.

When war was declared in September, 1939, her father sent a telegram “They will bomb Sheffield.  You must return home.”  Grace responded “Staying where I am.”

Once Grace had qualified in October, 1940, she found a place to train as an SRN at the City General Hospital in Nottingham and began work there on 1 November, 1940.  

Grace still returned home to Grimethorpe regularly, whenever she had at least three days off in a row.