Terrible toll on one city family

She was the youngest of five children of Alfred and Salome Susannah (Susan) Bennett, who lived in a terraced house at 260 Astwood Road, Worcester - a property a few doors from the Chequers pub and overlooking the city's main cemetery.

She and her two brothers and two sisters were all born at No.260, but at the age of five she was referred to the Worcester TB Clinic, then in Bank Street, to the rear of Simes Departmental Store (later Bobbys and now Debenhams).

"The clinic was run by a Dr Griffin and a lovely nurse, who was very religious and at one stage gave me a thick book as a present," recalls Gladys. "I took that book with me to Knightwick Sanatorium when I was sent there by Dr Griffin as a five year-old in January, 1928.

"Though it's more than 70 years ago, I can still remember the sanatorium as though it was yesterday. You went up the steep hill at Knightwick, through a gate with a lodge beside it, and then along, what seemed to me as a child, to be a very long drive. Beside it was a huge bank lined with cherry trees and, during my time at Knightwick, we were allowed to pick a few fruits off them.

"Next, you came to the large, open-sided chalets with beds laid out on the verandahs behind the white railings. I was put in one of these chalets in an end room, and I well remember my eldest sister Dorothy bringing a water-proof sheet for my bed because we were virtually exposed to all winds and weathers battering us. It was almost like living out of doors."

Her stay at Knightwick also represented something of an ordeal for her mother and family.

"The bus ran only twice a week from Worcester to Knightwick and stopped at The Talbot Hotel, which meant my mother had to traipse all the way up that hill and along the drive. She was only about 5ft tall, quite chubby and insisted on wearing three-inch heel patent court shoes all the time!"

Also vivid in Gladys' memory is "the most beautiful red brick house at the sanatorium. Through my little eyes, it was like a castle. It was the home of Dr Gordon Smith, who had a maid named Marie. She wore a chocolate brown outfit with cream cuffs and I was very fond of her. She was always kind and used to mend my teddys.

"A horse called Lightning was also kept in the sanatorium grounds and it sometimes got loose and would suddenly put its head over the chalet railings. It used to frighten me to death."

The child patients were expected to attend a school at the sanatorium but Gladys "absolutely loathed and hated it," so much that she would sometimes suck a tooth to make it bleed and look as if she was spitting blood. It was her dramatic way of getting off school.

But Gladys brings everything into sharp and painful focus by remembering too, that of the nine children in Knightwick Sanatorium at the same time as her, only two came out alive - her and a small boy named Billy Bills from St John's, Worcester.

"In the next bed to me was a girl named Peggy Valance, and I well remember the day her grandmother arrived in a massive chauffeur-driven car and took us for a run in the countryside, stopping for us to have some fancy little things to eat.

"Sadly, Peggy Valance died of TB just shortly afterwards. She was only eight.

"Another young patient in our chalet was a 16 years-old maid servant named Rosie, and she too died while I was there. Also during my time, a whole family was killed by TB - a mum, dad and two children who were in the Higher Block."

It was a few weeks after Easter 1929, that Gladys was allowed to leave Knightwick Sanatorium and return home to Astwood Road.

"My sister Dorothy had just brought me in a large Easter egg in a basket and it broke my heart not be allowed to take it home, but my mother insisted I leave it for the other children, telling me not to be so selfish.

"Though I loathed its school, I certainly didn't hate my time at Knightwick. It was like a second home, and I don't remember doing a lot of crying there."

However, Gladys had not been cured of TB on her release but had regained weight and looked "quite bonnie," though within a year she was "like a rake again."

Her education was to be only periodic at St Barnabas School because of what became regular bouts of bronchitis and pleurisy.

"Miss Blackwell, a sweet person, was head teacher, but I kept developing a bad cough and would be off. My eldest sister Dorothy paid for me to go to an annexe of the Battenhall Convent for six months. It was in Belmont Street, but my time there was of no use. Dorothy then taught me at home and I especially remember learning to print block capitals.

"However, I was so poorly I didn't go to school from the time I was 12. I would be in bed for days or weeks, looking out from my bedroom window over to Astwood Cemetery. I would watch the many funeral possessions passing by and, when any of these was for a child, I would wonder how old he or she had been. They seemed cruel times."

However, fate was to have an even more personal and tragic impact on young Gladys. Her father, Alfred Pearce Bennett, "a most handsome man," served for some years in the 13th Hussars and also as a sergeant in the mounted military police, going to India and seeing active service in four war zones.

But while still a comparatively young family man, he was diagnosed as having TB and was sent as a patient to Knightwick Sanatorium and later to the Newtown Isolation Hospital. He was only 40 when TB claimed his life.

The disease was to continue exacting a terrible toll on the Bennett family. Gladys' sister Phyllis died of TB in Newtown Hospital at only 15, to be followed by her brother Bill, who died on a Christmas Day, aged just 20. He had also spent time in Newtown Hospital. Another brother Gordon was also struck down by TB and suffered severe ill health for about 20 years, until his death at the age of 59.

Gladys' other much-loved sister, Dorothy, also died tragically young at only 29, though not of TB but of cancer. She was, by then, married to a Roland Charles and left three small children.

Gladys is, therefore, the sole survivor of the five Bennett children, though her mother Susan went on to "a ripe old age," living for many years at the family home, 260 Astwood Road. She was 85 when she died. Her gift to daughter Gladys was the ability to play the piano. Susan Bennett had been a music teacher before her marriage, and she was an accomplished pianist.

In looking back on all the sorrow and tragedy of her early life, Mrs Willcox displays an indomitable spirit.

"I am very grateful to be alive and firmly believe that things in this country have got better and better over the last 50 years. People don't realise how lucky they are and have no idea of the meaning of poverty as people of my generation knew it. This is why I am so critical of today's complaining society," stresses Gladys.

In her teens, she continued to visit the TB Clinic in Bank Street and was mercifully given the "all clear" from TB at the age of 15. The following year she began her first job at Boots the Chemist in High Street, Worcester, and, not long afterwards, became an usherette at the Gaumont Cinema.

At 17, she married Charles Willcox, who came from Manchester, and began what was to be 55 years of happy wedded life. However, the Second World War broke out and Charles was then mostly away on Army service for seven years.

During the war years and through the 1940s, Gladys was one of the small team of projectionists at the Gaumont Cinema under chief projectionist Jack Leopard. The Gaumont managers during her time were, in turn, Mr Wilcox (no relation), John Bee and Arthur Davids - "all very nice bosses".

She recalls that the Gaumont staged several one-night stage shows in the 1940s, including visits by Big Bands such as those of Henry Hall, Mantovani and Jack Payne.

"These shows meant we had to stay on late into the night putting back the screen, and there were times during the war when I was stopped by the police walking home in the early hours. They wanted to know why I was out so late after dark but when I explained, they would offer to accompany me home for safety."

Gladys gave birth to her first three children - Fay, Vaughan and Madeleine - at the family home, 260 Astwood Road. She, Charles and the children moved to her present home in Drake Avenue, in 1953, and there, her fourth child, Jenny, was born.

Charles Willcox is perhaps best-remembered as one of the founders of the Worcester Harriers, playing a key role in the training of a lot of aspiring city athletes. After Army service, Charles was to spend his entire working life as a printer with Ebenezer Baylis Ltd at Worcester.

Not long after the birth of her third child, Gladys returned to the projectionists' team at the Gaumont, but found the technology had advanced so much so she was not happy. She went instead to work at Littlewoods, trained in catering at Birmingham and then became manageress of the Lido Caf, Droitwich, for 11 years under "a great boss," Alan Yorke Jones of the well-known Spa ice-cream making family.

Alas, Gladys was involved in a serious car crash in 1963, suffering many fractures, particularly to her spine and pelvis, and she was on crutches and sticks for two years. Further trauma came when her husband Charles developed Alzheimer's disease and was afflicted with this for five years until his death at the age of 78, in 1994.

Despitesuffering various illnesses, Gladys has retaind a great vibrancy in her character.

"I've had enough illnesses to kill a regiment of soldiers," she quips.

Even so, she looks back on "good happy memories. I don't regret my life despite all its early sorrows." She continues to pursue several active hobbies and clearly takes great pride and satisfaction in her blossoming dynasty of four children, 12 grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren!

Her son, Vaughan Willcox, the Evening News' picture editor, has been a colleague of mine on the newspaper now for 40 years.