John,
Slightly tangential, but I just saw a play – The Idiot Colony – based on accounts of English women living out their lives in asylums
between the 40’s and c1980’s. Some of them were apparently incarcerated by their families due to ‘embarrassing liaisons’ with black GIs billeted around the
UK. This was apparently based on interviews with former ‘residents’ living in midlands asylums. They play was brilliant! Check out the link:
http://www.redcapetheatre.co.uk/idiotcolony.html
Jeff Oliver
From: Discussion
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On Behalf Of dan ratcliffe
Sent: 01 June 2009 23:57
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Subject: Re: 'Visitors' to wartime airbases
A lottery funded project I'm involved with has uncovered a story along these lines relating to Wortley in
South Yorks. Its told in a book called 'When Jim Crow met John Bull' (http://openlibrary.org/b/OL17727961M/When-Jim-Crow-met-John-Bull) which deals
with the experience of segregated African American US soldiers stationed in the
UK during WWII. At Wortley the troops were stationed at Earl Wharncliffe's ancestral home of Wortley Hall with Afro American troops living outside under canvas whilst white officers slept inside the hall.
A report was written by the US inspector general's office after the Earl complained of what he described as "serious fratinisation" between the troops and local white girls, some of whom were reported to be
travelling to the hall in taxis from Sheffield to trade sexual favours for money and rations. The report apparently found instances of girls as young as sixteen camping alongside the troops, one captain being punched in the
face after disturbing a nightime liason. There were also tensions reported with local men who resented the sudden influx of well paid, attractive young men.
I'd love to know more about this, I've contacted the US archives to try and get a copy of the report (they say the've lost it) and also put feelers out in the village
to try and get some oral history, but people are as yet unwilling to come forward.
Dear all
I wonder if anyone can shed light on an interesting story I have heard, from a respectable and reliable source.
In the context of women’s camps at Greenham, I have been told that the 1980s camps there were not the first, and that during WWII a campsite was set up of ‘working girls’ from the East End who came to Greenham to … how should I put this … ‘look after’ the
airmen based there. In mentioning this to a colleague, he responded that he didn’t know about Greenham but this was indeed the case at other airbases, and predominantly American not British (they had more disposable income I believe). Of course such things
are a common feature of Naval towns and runs-ashore, as I know from Malta,
but I hadn’t heard of women camping outside airbases. Can anyone shed any more light on this, or provide examples.
Many thanks.
John
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