Children of Robert & Elizabeth Spence Watson

 . . . well she had senile dementia, really, because she had bouts of real mind-wandering, and didn’t know anything at all, where she was, what she was doing, and then she’d have periods of complete sanity, and it was very distressing for her and the family, because when she was feeling well and sane she realised that she had been not well – to feel that she had been upsetting everybody by her behaviour worried her, and made her worse again – and so she had these bouts of sanity and insanity, and gradually deteriorated. I know this was very upsetting for your grandmother, to have to go and see her, and visit her, when she was like that – I don’t know whether your mother had to handle her when she was in these bouts of insanity. But it was a happy release when she died.

John Bowes went to call on her, in her lodgings at Acomb, to sak if she would help as a canvasser. The twenty-one-year old Bertha agreed willingly, and although the Liberal candidate was defeated the election was to have important consequences for two of his young supporters.

John Bowes, during the next two years, was often to think of the girl with the beautiful golden hair, who had trudged about the streets of York distributing election pamphlets in the interests of the Liberal Party.

Four grown-up bridesmaids and two little girls attended the bride. The women's clothes were elaborate. Bertha wore a dress of 'pure white oriental satin' trimmed with quantities of lace and with a long train. The bridesmaids also wore white satin, with insertions of coffee-coloured lace, and very large white hats. There were flowers everywhere. In Bertha's bouquet were some orchids sent by Backhouse's - the York firm of nurseryman for whom she had once worked.

Then, a few weeks before, she wrote & said we couldn't have it then, someone else wanted it. Mother was furious, & wrote such a strong letter that we got it all right, and Aunt B was so kind, providing an enormous box of groceries to greet us, and free riding.

Bertha had always been an energetic woman. She had loved long walks on the moors, riding, swimming, and gardening. The beauty which had been hers in youth lasted, like the brilliant gold of her hair, well into middle age. Her children, when when grown up, found her a good companion. She had surprised her family, in her fifty-fifth year, by moving for the second time into the Mansion House. The Lord Mayor, Alderman Wragg, was a widower, and he asked Bertha to act as Lady Mayoress.

When when was about sixty, however, she began to go lame in one leg. It was the first onset of arthritis, and in spite of all possible treatment the disease advanced.

She fought it stubbornly. When a first-aid post was set up in the stable at Burton Croft during the Second World War she took a nursing course, became one of the team of nurses, and turned up whenever there was an air-raid 'alert'. After the war her lameness increased, and presently she was obliged to use an electric chair. This she drove dashingly about York; and although most of her favourite activities were now impossible she managed to go on swimming until she was nearly seventy. She was, however, not strong enough to act as Lady Mayoress when John Bowes became Lord Mayor for the second time in 1950.

She was quite different from your Granny, and Evelyn, and she seemed to be a very lively person, and aware and much more a realist in touch with everyday matters – much more in tune with modern living, as it were, and able to cope with being the wife of a director of Rowntree’s, and being a hostess to a very fluctuating number of guests, in the house; and she was very well off, of course, and very friendly and helpful. She had a good sense of humour – I think she had to, to put up with Uncle Bowes, and his peculiarities! I think she wore a wig, in the last years of her life, when I knew her. Your mother was always impressed, when she visited there, while she was at the Mount – Bertha was very kind to your mother, when your mother was at the Mount school, because your mother, when she went to the Mount school in the first term, was miserable – she was very home-sick, she’d been brought up largely with her mother, her mother had always been around, and her father was always at home, and – of course they’d been very close, with Carol, and Margaret, and Robert – and so she missed all her family very much, when she went to the Mount; and it was unfortunate, when she first went there, for the first half of the term, when she was most miserable, Aunt Bertha I think was away on holiday, or they’d gone on a tour, and so she didn’t even have the pleasure of her aunt’s company, to help her. But I think about half way through the term two things happened, 1) Bertha came back from holiday, and was able to invite her out at weekends, and give her boxes of chocolates, which helped to restore her standing amongst the other girls, in her class; and also she made friends with a girl in the class, and no longer felt alone, and she became reconciled to boarding school from then onwards. But it was great fun for her, having her aunt at Burton Croft – all the fluctuating, interesting people who came to see her at weekends, or staying there – and also when Aunt Bertha was the Lady Mayoress of York, she got invited to quite a lot of functions, going to the Mansion House, on various occasions, and – so it was a real bonus, education, for her, being associated with someone like Aunt Bertha; and I think she acquired a lot of Bertha’s love of life, and fun – and I think it sort of broke her a little bit away from the rather solemn nature of many of the Quaker tradition that she’d been brought up in.

. . . had been an invalid for some time, but to the very end her courage did not desert her. When she was in pain she would try to straighten herself against the piano in the drawing-room or the sideboard in the dining-room. She was never heard to complain.

John Bowes' wife had a narrower range of interests than her husband, but in a sense her gifts were a complement to his. She was naturally hospitable, and her girlhood at Bensham Grove had taught her to mix easily with people. Her husband's reserve, and the slight shyness of his early years, were offset by her cheerful friendliness towards anyone who came to Burton Croft. The responsibilities of entertaining fell largely upon her, and her open-handed hospitality survived through two world wars and the onset of her own illness.