KP/CLA/3/KEN/A/1 - Letter from Annie Kenney to Nell and Frank Clarke, 9/1/1942

KP/CLA/3/KEN/A/1

Item

Letter from Annie Kenney to Nell and Frank Clarke, 9/1/1942

9/1/1942

4 leaves Letters (MS)

Kenney, Annie, 1879-1953
Kenney, Sarah Ellenrecipient
Clarke, Frank Randallrecipient

Letter from Annie Kenney to Nell (her sister) and Frank Clarke describing life in Letchworth during WWII.

Transcript:

From Mrs Kenney Taylor

Pardon some bad punctuation and everything else in the letter only the news.

[Note: handwritten top left of letter, adjacent to address]

Campers Road., Letchworth, Herts, England

Jan 9th 1942

My Dear Nell and Frank.

You will I know be pleased to hear that your Christmas Parcel arrived quite safely. The contents were most welcome and they arrived just at the right time for us

How are you? We should love to hear how Frank is and if he likes his new post. The articles were interesting. There is no need to tell you how things are going here, you get that in the news, any how, however bad things are, we shall get through it’s our destiny as the British Race, for we are the highest state of [consciousness] in the world to day. That is
[Note: AK has added ‘over page’ diagonally in the corner of Page 1 – it could refer to the crossed our word above but it seems to relate to the ‘British Race’ point.]

[Page 2] The British Commonwealth of Nations. America of course is part of the Great Heritage. Warwick this coming week will finish his first course, if he succeeds, he will pass on to a flying school.

We had him home for the whole of Christmas it was lovely and he had one of the best holidays.

We were feeling a little [illegible] when he arrived because for the first time in his life we had not a bird on the Table for Christmas Day, and we know that it might be his last Christmas with us, any how fate decided otherwise[.] Jessie won two chickens in a Raffle, then Jim took Warwick to see a [Brother] who is in the country and he gave Warwick a 14lb Goose and £1 for a Christmas Present, then your parcel with two [articles] which are like gold in [these] day[s]. Therefore we did grand, and a real lovely time we had. I am enclosing a photo of Warwick in his Home Guard suit.

The times I have seen him dressed like this go out at night at all hours snow and rain, hail and frost, especially while the danger of invasion hung over these Islands. He was grand and it has helped him very much in his training for the Fleet Air Arm.

[Page 3] Tell Frank that Jim, one day, when he has time, will write him a long letter about [The Centre]. Well Nell dear and Frank and all the [illegible] our love and a big hug from us all.

Annie

[Note: the following note was centralised under the above letter.]

Tell Frank, we received his cuttings about change in his work we hope to find time to write him a long letter about the Centre [illegible words – possibly ‘he wanted’, ‘he visited’ or ‘he was’ ] with cuttings from our local paper.

Copyright: Estate of Annie Kenney. All rights reserved.

A digital copy may be viewed at Suffragette Stories: https://suffragettestories.omeka.net/items/show/116