Transcript: Mrs Marjorie Gough knitting for the soldiers in WWI and WWII

Description

Mrs Marjorie Gough was born in 1908 and [media]interviewed in 1986 for the 'Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900 to 1960.' Here she talks here about her contribution to the war effort in both world wars.

Transcript

MARJORIE: I knitted socks for the first war [WWI] when I was seven. I was born in England and came out. War broke out in 1914 and we came out in 1915 and our boat was the last boat that came out to Australia and then they stopped bringing people out. And we used to knit, in the last war [WWII] you'd knit in church and everywhere, in the last war. Now you wouldn't see people knitting in church but we knitted in church, socks and things for the soldiers.

INTERVIEWER: Who would get the knitted items to the soldiers? Would it be through Red Cross?

MARJORIE: Through Red Cross, yes, and we used to put a little note in and say who did them. My sister, she's still got it I think, she got a reply back from one of the chaps. But the Red Cross, they would supply the wool, and then [we'd] knit for all the soldiers, that was in the first war [WWI]. Then in the second war [WWII] [we] knew people that we'd send them to them.

INTERVIEWER: It wasn't through an organisation in the Second World War?

MARJORIE: No, just knitted them and sent them to people that we knew; little balaclavas and socks, jumpers, things like that. I used to like knitting.. [1]

References

Catherine Johnson (ed). Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900–1960 (Liverpool: Liverpool City Council, 1986). http://mylibrary.liverpool.nsw.gov.au/Electronicbooks/Lookingbackatliverpoolanoralhistory-1900-1960.pdf

Notes

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