Cynthia was the sixth out of 12 children in her family. They didn’t have much money and everybody had to work hard, including the children.
Cynthia and her family, like most of her neighbours, were regular church-goers. Church was like a second family for her.
”I was in the Girls’ Brigade. It was such fun, and a welcome relief from doing jobs at home.’
Cynthia didn’t usually travel far from home, but occasionally she and her family travelled to the other side of the island to visit her cousins. They took gifts of food, and her uncle, a fisherman, gave them a huge lobster in return.
Cynthia’s mother was in poor health, and so Cynthia left school at 15 to help look after her brothers and sisters. She also took a part-time job as a waitress.
Aged 18, Cynthia decided to go to England. Her mother went with her to the port in St Kitts. The boat journey took nearly a month and Cynthia missed her family desperately.
Jobs were easy to find in Liverpool. Cynthia quickly found work as a machinist. She earned £3 a week working alongside other West Indian women.
A work colleague noticed Cynthia’s needle skills and helped her get a job making children’s clothes, earning £5 a week. All the other women hated sewing the pockets because they were so fiddly, but this was Cynthia’s speciality!
Cynthia went to night school to learn touch typing. Swapping sewing machines for typewriters, she eventually found a better paid job at a solicitor’s office.
Two years after arriving in Liverpool, Cynthia received a telegram telling her the sad news that her mother had been taken ill on Friday and died the next day. Cynthia was 20.
Finding a church had been almost as important as finding a job when she first arrived in England. Her faith and her church gave her strength and support, particularly after her mother’s death. It was here that she met her husband, Roy.
Adjusting to married life took time. For instance, do you wash the dishes in the evening (the St Kitts way) or in the morning (as Roy learned, growing up in Jamaica).
England was finger numbingly cold and damp. So much smoke came out of chimneys that Cynthia mistook them for factories. She was particularly shocked to see young women smoking.
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Cynthia had her first child in 1969 when she was 26, and after a short break, she returned to full-time work. Two years later she had her second child and stopped full-time work, later becoming a part-time cleaner. At this point, she and Roy bought the terraced house in the Manchester area where they still live.
They have a modest working-class standard of life. Cynthia feels fortunate in later life to be supported by her family and is still actively involved in her church community, as is Roy.
Her philosophy has been to live life one day at a time. She went on to have 6 boys and girls who’ve all been upwardly mobile – social workers, entrepreneurs, professional musicians - and has one grandchild.
While her husband spends time on their allotment growing produce that they share with friends in the church and neighbourhood, Cynthia now devotes more time to her long-standing love of singing and writing her own songs. She made her first gospel album when she was 60.
Credits:
All images: Candice Purwin