MARK GIGIERA & JOSEPHINE FOLWELL-AFTER THEY MET. By Josephine Ellis (nee Folwell) 2008

THE CONTINUED LIFE STORY OF 

MARK GIGIERA (Gilbert) AND JOSEPHINE FOLWELL - 

AFTER THEY MET:

Written by Jo Ellis (Gilbert, nee Folwell) 2008
with edits from me - Kath Harpley 2019

29 September 1949

On his release from the Polish 11 Corps, Mark was offered a place on a rehabilitation program. There was a choice of training in clock making, photography and shoe making. He chose shoe making and leather work, and was sent to Glasgow where he had a small flat and a neighbour who practised the bagpipes. He never liked them (comment: and now we know why!). He was comparatively well off, probably for the first time in his life, and seems to have enjoyed Glasgow. The course was for Poles and he was given a Polish award when he finished the course. He had by this time been demobbed from the army, and had a suit of grey pin stripes, and a BOW TIE!! When I first met him at a dance, he was wearing this. He must have grown a bit in the meantime, as it was a bit short and tight.

Mark travelled down to Northampton for a job interview. He was qualified to design, make patterns, and make a shoe entirely from scratch. The firm, he went to were impressed, and were eager to employ him, as all their skilled men were still in the forces. However, the Union said 'No', that jobs must be held for returning forces, which was fair, but hard on Mark.

Memories: Some of us will remember the quite remarkable slippers that he made in his retirement with an Axminster carpet lining and sheepskin outer and soled in hard leather and which Jim inherited when he died. Jim wore them out.

Home made shoes from car tyres.

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Mark recalled making shoes, when he was in Poland, and in poverty,  from car tyres. He saved these for winter when the weather would be very cold. Whilst in the Luboml museum in 2019 we saw a pair of shoes like those Mark would have made for himself. Clearly it was common for people without shoes to make these.The lack of shoes in his early life and the necessity to make some might have reflected in his choice of occupation as a shoe maker. I recall he always liked nice leather shoes.

Historical information: It was normal practice during the war to leave jobs open for the returning soldiers. During the war when men were away the women and those left behind filled the gaps, working in factories and farms and doing what needed to be done at home. They got used to going to work and earning money. There were then the immigrant soldiers like Mark who also required jobs and then there were those left of the returning men who would all need work and who expected to return to their pre-war occupations. There must have been competition for the good jobs. However, add into the equation, the damage done by war and bombing and the amount of rebuilding that needed doing and you have a recipe for full employment which was achieved after the war.

Freeman Hardy & Willis.
 Leicester.

Mark eventually got a job in Leicester as a clicker, cutting out shoe uppers with Freeman Hardy & Willis. This was still done by hand, by laying the pattern on the hide, avoiding thin or damaged parts  and cutting out with special knives. He found this boring, and only worked enough to get by, as he had a war pension. He had been doing this for a year or so when I met him at a dance, just before my father died (early 1949), although they never met. He was brash and full of stories of a world I had no idea of. He was charming and full of ambition, but no real incentive.  He kept telling me that previous girl friends thought he was very good looking. There's no doubt he was very strong despite his disabilities. He had a wonderful head of hair; beautifully curly which I was quite envious of. He was totally tone deaf, which was surprising as all Ukrainians and Poles seem able and willing to sing.

(Kath writes: That'll be the vodka in them!! LOL. In his defence, neither could mum sing and its safe to say that all 5 of us offspring have inherited this disability as Jim (my husband), who has suffered my Elvis impressions will lay testament to.)

After we married 29 September 1949, we lived with my mother (Mary Folwell – nee Thompson) and I carried on working (hospital telephonist). At this time Mark worked more happily saying he was saving his war pension to buy a house to let off. My mother lent him the money for a deposit for the first house we had, early in 1950. We furnished it from auctions and let five rooms off, to Ukrainian, Poles and Latvians. It worked well. They were happy to be there and mostly stayed until they bought their own houses. Mother lent us a further sum of money to buy another house. We bought it at the time Alex was born-April 1950 (yes there was a bit of bonky bonky before marriage, shameful at that time!), and I said I wanted to live in it. Mark said it was silly to do this as we could let another room off, but I was adamant. So we went. We bought new furniture for ourselves, and the bedroom suite still survives (Not anymore!!). It cost about £100. We let this house off in the same way, but after a couple of years, people were buying their own houses, so we ran a bed and breakfast boarding house, although many of the people were not so nice.

During this time: November 1951, Mark hands his notice in with Freeman, Hardy & Willis, stating a health issue as the reason for leaving. See the response dated 26/11/1951 from Freeman, Hardy & Willis Ltd.

  

Boris was born in June 1952.

Where we lived, we had public gardens across the road, town within walking distance, but it was a red light district at that time. We sold the first house, and paid mother, and then Mark wanted to leave Leicester. He went to Northampton, Derby and Coventry to look at properties, but it was Nottingham that won. We moved to Nottingham on 26^th April 1954 (her birthday age 24!).

Mother bought Princess Road from us, selling Upperton Road. She, with the help of Mark converted it into 3 flats, which bought her an income to supplement her pension. She became friendly with one of her tenants, Mr Pitt, who was a widower with an adult son who had been shell shocked during the war, and was mentally unstable. This problem was too much for Mr Pitt to bear, and he committed suicide. Mother was terribly upset, but she got over it and soldiered on. Friends who had known her when Dad was alive, dropped off which upset her and we weren't a lot of help.

Mark bought a house on Colwick Road. We did it up and sold it in October, and moved to Charlbury Road at Radford. That was a pre war semi which was OK. Mark worked at a wood yard for a time, but it didn't last. We moved a year later to Lenton Boulevard where we stayed 5 years. We decorated the house and divided it into 2 flats, and we had the upstairs flat. Alex went to school and eventually so did Boris. Mark had a job down in the meadows that he cycled to. He didn't like it much, (a pattern establishing itself here) but he stuck to it. Mother died-18/3/1958 whist we lived here, and I was ill, and had to have an operation on my chest (one lung removed, so a serious operation). Alex and Boris went to live in Nazareth House whilst I was in hospital. It was all very traumatic.

I then became pregnant, and had the twins, Antonia and Katherine, April 1959 (at last, 2 adorable little girls), at which point, we needed more room. We moved to Mapperley Park in September or October that year.

1959 at Thorncliffe Road, Mapperley Park
Boris, Mark with Antonia, Jo with Katherine and Alex.

My health improved, and we gradually did up the house. Mark had started up in business on his own at Lenton, as a painter and decorator, at first on a bike, and then with an old Trojan van. Next a Bedford Dormobile. He worked hard (as did Jo with a blooming family) but the family did not see much of the money. Life was quite hard with four children and no heating.

Kath writes: Regarding the money and in Mark's defence and in retrospect, they started with no funds of their own, in a red light district, sharing the house with others, then moving several times, bettering their standards as they went, and eventually moving into a nicer house and business that supported a growing family in relative comfort for the time period and so we assume the money was saved for bigger and better things. Not bad achievements just after WW2 and especially for a man who arrived here with nothing – hats off to them both and big appreciation for all their hard work.

Groceries were delivered, but I walked a lot to town. The boys did not get the amount of attention they should have done, but there were not enough hours in the day. We took the family out at weekends a lot to Clumber Park and Derbyshire which we all enjoyed (The picnics were legendary). Then Andrew came along August 1962, and Mark fell off a roof in the beginning of winter 1962 (beginning to sound like the cat with 9 lives). Although he was insured, there was no way he would be able to do anything like that again.

We looked around for a business when he recovered.

Eventually he (note the 'he' and not 'we' – a sign of the times and who held the purse strings) bought the hardware shop at Lowdham and moved in September 1964 (at which time Alex, the eldest would be 14 and Andrew the youngest 2). Mark fitted the shop out with mahogany timber bought at Dunkirk for about 10 bob or (50p a board).  It was extremely hard work running the shop with no experience, and looking after 5 children. We lived on the premises. There was a big yard in the back and outbuildings.

Hardware shop at Lowddham

It was hard. Sometimes I had someone in to clean, but when the girls were deemed old enough, 8 or 9, they were expected to do some cleaning after school. Despite this, I enjoyed the years at Lowdham. The children were growing up. Andrew used to come home from school and make a gurgling, screeching noise that made customers in the shop jump. It was him just letting off steam after a day in the classroom. When Mark got tired of the shop (at this point he had health issues, angina) after some 7-8 years at Lowdham we moved again to Mapperley (South Devon Avenue) and that is where things fell apart.

Kath writes: (The Lowdham years were happy years for us children, where we grew up in lovely countryside and had freedom to go out and roam. We were members of cubs and brownies and I got to ride lovely big hunting horses (at a time when hunting was deemed an acceptable sport) at Hagg Farm, Gonalstone and later, racing horses in Lambley).

Alex left school while we were still at Lowdham, and went as an apprentice to Raleigh (One of the big industries in Nottingham – bike manufacturer). Boris, after a tormented school life, and a couple of false starts, went into the RAF which he enjoyed. It seemed that as soon as the children were 17 or 18, Mark wanted them out. He made life difficult for them and was very restrictive.

Kath writes: He was very restrictive, which is a difficult one to get our heads around, given the way in which he learned about the world, you would have expected him to be more liberal and not less.  But then, mum got pregnant before marriage so maybe it was 'do as I say and not do as I do'.

Mark's and my relationship was tense and he was  critical of me.  I was not businesslike enough, I was not smart enough, etc, etc. Money was always short. Even when things got better, I never had enough money to feed adequately a growing family, and he certainly didn't believe in spending money on children's clothes and toys. It was a constant struggle to make ends meet.

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Kath writes: This is a man who had little if anything when growing up and so to him our lives were luxurious.  However, compared to others around us it was a frugal existence, but comfortable. It comes over that mum writes this with a heavy heart towards the end and I can see her struggle. When she later got a part time job at Jessops-now John Lewis, after we moved to Mapperley, and had her own money and her own friends, life became better for her. I can't say enough, how much she was appreciated. Both mum and dad had had difficult lives. In mum's case, coming through the war, losing her father when she was 19, getting pregnant, probably on the backlash and upset of losing her father and having to marry. Health issues where she lost a lung and bringing up 5 children on a very tight budget whilst running a business.

In dads case, a traumatic early life, as a child, losing his mother, when he was just 7 or 8 followed the next year by the death of his grandfather, running away from his uncle's and  what potentially could have been a safe home and then living rough for some of the time, although we know Zot Gigiera his mothers husband took him in later on. Being deported to Siberia to a forestry goulag work camp at the age of 17, then escaping and as an escapee and refugee travelling with only the clothes he stood up in and nothing else, across thousands of miles and several countries to join the Polish Army and fight in Italy where he received many wounds, some of them severe. Then to come to the UK, as part of the British Army to recover. Still a young man, he got my mother pregnant and his life was then mapped out for him. I suppose there are 2 takes on this. Yes, he was then tied into a relationship and providing for a family but on the other hand, he had a lovely intelligent, committed and hard working wife from a reasonably well off family and maybe he had at last achieved stability and people to love and to love him and he could stop jumping on trains.

One wonders if my mother and father ever truly, really deeply loved each other or if, having got pregnant, they just went through the motions (making your bed and lying in it as the old saying goes). They gritted their teeth as they had done all their lives, simply got on with it, although it has to be said, they both look extremely happy on their wedding pictures.  In my mothers case, worn  down by the thanklessness and hardships of bringing a large family up, I know that she found true happiness when she remarried Bob Ellis when we were in our teens. As I have previously stated this was one amazing women with so many hobbies and interests and she was the one holding it all together, keeping us all well fed on a tight budget and clothed in knitted jumpers and home made clothes, whilst dad was of course perceived as the main bread winner and the one holding the purse strings. Mum talks scathingly of this, but really we had everything we needed, even if we didn't have everything we would have liked to have, and to put it into context, we were born just a few years after the end of WW2 when the country was rebuilding itself. Yes times were hard, and sometimes emotionally difficult but both dad and mum did everything with the best of intentions. They both gave us one precious thing and that was their time. We had some amazing days out as children and they taught us practical skills to carry us through life.

Having gone through the traumas in my fathers life one wonders how he survived. Apart from the very early years with his mother and grand father, everything seems to have been absolutely horrific and traumatic up until the time he arrived in England. To have survived all that (as many people from his part of the world did) it is absolutely humbling and puts into perspective our lives today, I write this on behalf of us all; No matter how bad things get, what health, money, family or job issues we may have, what unhappiness or distress we sometimes have to endure, none of this remotely compares to the horrific awfulness of my father's and his fellow compatriot's lives, from becoming an orphan to arriving in the UK and even then there were struggles and racism in the post war years. Maybe we should take a leaf out of Dad’s book and instead of today's customary whinging and whining about inconsequential things we should simply shut up, and to quote Dorothy McNulty (Dad's later lady friend) try and change things for the better and if that is not possible then get on with life and make the best of it as we can. We are all so fortunate to have been born when and where we were and to be living in a democracy.

This is the last picture taken of all the family together on Boris's 40th birthday party and just before Mark died in 1993.

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