Jean’s story

I was a successful fashion model back in the day (1950-1960’s), I was born in the 1930’s. I had met my boyfriend when I was 15 and he was 17 years old and my mother had set her heart on the two of us getting married. Although I had been ‘spoken for,’ having children was never mentioned. I was one of those many children that had been involved in a very mixed up childhood with a drunken Stepfather and the word ‘marriage’ was never, never on the cards.

My boyfriend was the son of a famous Surgeon and a medical student at Barts. His family were French Portuguese and owned a Coconut estate in Trinidad.

I finished school and then my mother insisted I had to go to business college, one of the best things she ever talked me into.

My mother, well she was blond and beautiful and she fell in love and I was born. They never married and I was led to believe he had been killed in the war. Actually this transpires was a lie as I just found his grave with the help of Ancestry. He had run off with a Wren called Hilda and they married and moved into a house in the street behind us during the war. Why do I have a hang up about men I wonder?

The main problem in those days was that if you had a child ‘out of wedlock’ good schools would not allow you to attend unless your parents showed their marriage certificate, so I was sent to Catholic schools as they accepted me as it was not my fault , or so I was told!

From college I got my first job as a telephonist at UMP (United Motion Pictures,) but plugged everyone into the wrong slot (plug in switchboard) I was asked to leave after 3 weeks. There was a famous broadcaster called Frank Phillips and he suggested that I was pretty and should go to Lucy Clayton to train as a fashion model. He bought me a pair of Stiletto heeled shoes and I was off! My mother allowed me to work as a model as long as I was back home with her in the evenings. I was on a short lead and when my boyfriend tugged it I had to come running.

Of course, with the help of some of my friends who lied beautifully I managed to go out to party when pretending to stay with one of the other girls. It was wonderful when I had a trip to Paris or Rome so there I was free..free… yes I did fall in love with an Italian, he was and is the love of my life but I wasn’t free so we never married. He died 10 years ago.

Out of the blue I was taken ill and had a dreadful time with complications during an operation. The Surgeon came to talk to me afterwards and told me he was sorry but that it was unlikely I could ever have children!

Well as I had never considered having children after my awful childhood it didn’t mean much to me. I went back to dancing on tables in the AD LIB and partying whenever I could get away.

But then one day walking down Kensington Church Street I saw a tiny little baby in a big pram and I bent down and the baby smiled at me, just at me. That was it I was hooked. I used to follow prams and waved and made faces at every child I saw!

I swear I didn’t plan it but somehow I was pregnant! My mother was over the moon and started planning and my boyfriend was pleased I think. My friends were not that thrilled and they were worried I would not be able to manage but that shows that they didn’t really know me. Jean and Christine my best friends were over the moon and we discussed childbirth and read all the books on having a baby I had 4 copies of Dr Spock. I went to have birthing lessons with Betty Parsons who was very famous and worked with Queen Elizabeth when she had Charles and Anne. I was going to do this right from the start whatever it took, it was 1965 and I didn’t mind not being married. Maybe because I was illegitimate I was more used to being the child of only one parent, well until my stepfather came along. I didn’t know shame you see, it was the 60’s and I wanted to have a baby. The surgeon telling me I couldn’t have one and then falling in love with the baby in Kensington made me want one so much you see, despite having a miserable time when I was a child. Although as a child it was a while before I realised I was different not having a father, but it was the war you see, everything was chaotic, bombs were falling and men were dying so there were a few children growing up without fathers.

Just before I became pregnant I decided to hang up my eyelashes and open one of the first boutiques in London, it was an instant success and I designed clothes for all the pop stars like Sandie Shaw and film stars like Julie Christie. I worked day and night almost forgetting I was pregnant and it was Julie Christie who reminded me that my ‘bump’ was getting bigger, perhaps I had better start thinking like a ‘mum!’ She was right!

My baby daughter was delivered at 12.30 on the 21st June 1966, the Queen’s birthday and the hospital was St Georges Hyde Park. As I woke (I had to have a Caesarean) the guns went off in the park, a 21 gun salute. I thought it was for me but the nurses told me it was for the Queen, never mind I thought, I can make believe anything. Every year, when she was old enough, my daughter and I would go to what is now the Lanesborough Hotel and the door men would drink a toast with me to the Queen and to my daughter exactly as the guns went off.

When I was still in hospital I remember someone came around and tried to fill a form in with me, father’s name they asked for, and then I realised that I had just followed in my mother’s footsteps and I had had a child ‘out of wedlock’. I tried to put my daughter’s name for St Pauls school when she was 4 days old, the first question they asked was what is your married name, father’s name? and I realised it was me against them.

So I did it, I worked bloody hard and I gave my daughter a good life. My mother came in the day whilst I was at work and looked after my daughter and although her father, my old boyfriend came to visit her we never married, he never helped me financially, somehow I made it all work, with the help of my mother and my work ethic.

The boyfriend went on to marry and had four boys and never helped. I just got on with it, I had to I wanted a baby, I had a baby and I just got on with it.

When my daughter was two I met a wonderful man and fell in love, he died a few years ago, we were together for over 50 years.

Life is never easy, but what choice do you have but to get on. Perhaps that is the war mentality but I think I must have known what I was in for having a child out of wedlock, because I was one too!

I’m enormously proud of my daughter. I don’t know what she would say about her father, but I do hope she would say I was a good mother. I did my best anyway, what else can you do really? Women have always been strong I think and always capable of brining up children on their own and of course it happened a lot more often than you were led to believe, I’m glad it’s all out in the open now.