A Birth, A Death

On October 25, 1932, Grace was born. When Doris’ time came to have the baby someone arranged for the ambulance to take her to the hospital. A while after she left a man from the city council came and took the Eric and George to the orphanage. No one really explained to the boys what was happening, this was a very frightening time for them, and they did not know if this situation was temporary or permanent. After about a week Doris was brought home and the boys were returned home. When Doris learned the boys thought she had left them she was mortified.

About a year after Grace was born, Doris’s husband, William (Harold) Taylor, died in a hospital in Manchester of Pulmonary Tuberculosis. George remembers him and Eric coming home and finding their mum crying, they were anxious to know who had made her cry. Then she told them their dad had died. Later, when George was grown his mother related an interesting story to George. George knew his mum to be a very practical person, not one to tell fanciful tales, or things that weren’t true. She recalled how on the day William (Harold) had died she had awoke in the early morning hours and looking toward the bedroom door saw William (Harold) standing in the door way said asked, “Harold, what are you doing here?” She looked over at the clock on the night stand and saw it was about six in the morning. When she looked back the image she had seen was no longer there. Later that day the telegraph arrived informing her of her husband’s dead which had occurred at close to six that same morning.