Mavis Christine

On 27 September 1926 at 98 Choumert Road, Peckham, a baby girl was born. She was given the names Mavis Anna, chosen by her young, unmarried mother Edna May Rymer who only held her for a few days before parting with her forever. Edna was a commercial clerk when she gave in to the clichéd charms of a 21-year-old movie casting director called William Burnside who lived with his parents in Walton Street just behind Harrods. As the son of a Scottish Captain in the South Wales Borderers, one can only imagine the parent’s reaction to their son’s carelessness. Baby Mavis was given up for adoption.

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One thing the young miscreants inadvertently did was produce some alchemy. The gene pool Christine climbed out of was magical. Naturally blonde with blue eyes and an infectious grin, she had doll-like charm as a child and matured into a very beautiful woman – tall and lythe with a wonderful laugh. Edna and William’s loss was very much Leonard and Fanny Harwood’s gain. They adopted Sylvia in 1922, followed by Robert in 1923, and Mavis Christine (they dropped the ‘Anna’) in 1926 and they always felt incredibly lucky to be parented by such wonderful people.

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Life at 90 Sloane Street (the Harwoods private dental practice) in the 1920s and 30s was happy and prosperous. Alongside the usual living accommodation was a workshop with three mechanics who made all the dentures, two secretaries, two daily maids and a cook, and of course a nanny to look after Sylvia, Robert and Christine. The Harwoods were always ‘At Home’ for a constant flow of friends and relations who would come up for the day or would beg a bed for the night, and the last patients of the day would frequently join them for cocktails at 6pm.

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Sylvia: “Sloane Street was full of activity. Buses were open topped with stairs on the outside, and were open to the elements. You sat on wooden slatted seats protected by waterproof covers when it rained. The road was made of tarred wooden blocks, and the street lighting was gas powered. Every evening and morning, the gas lighter would come and turn them on or off with his long pole.

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When we went out, we always had sugar lumps in our pockets to feed to the huge cart horses who pulled the drays full of barrels of beer from the breweries to the pubs. There were still quite a few horse-drawn vehicles, especially to deliver coal. The coal men just emptied the sacks directly down to the cellar below the pavement in front of your house through an opening covered with a metal lid. The patterns on the lids had different designs in different streets.

We always enjoyed hearing the barrel organ man whose dressed up tame monkey danced to his cheery tunes. The fish monger would sell fish from a barrow, and it was fun watching him deftly fillet it for you with a few flicks of his knife. Milk was sold from a churn using a measured ladle outside your door straight into your jug. You’d never believe how many hawkers with barrows there were, selling their wares or offering to do household jobs such as sharpening knives, mending cane chairs etc. Times were very hard for people after WW1 and many were ex-service men, often without a leg or arm, who had no work and relied on hawking, begging or selling matches to get by.”

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