NATIONAL LIFE STORIES ARTISTS’ LIVES Rosemary Butler Interviewed by Gillian Whiteley C466/94 This transcript is copyright of the British Library Boar d. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB 020 7412 7404 [email protected] This transcript is accessible via the British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings website. Visit http://sounds.bl.uk for further information about the interview. © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk IMPORTANT Access to this interview and transcript is for private research only. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. 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Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators ( [email protected] ) © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk The British Library National Life Stories Interview Summary Sheet Title Page Ref no: C466/94/01-09 Digitised from cassette originals Collection title: Artists’ Lives Interviewee’s surname: Butler Title: Interviewee’s forename: Rosemary Sex: female Occupation: Dates: b. 1930 Dates of recording : 09.11.1999; 11.02.2000; 29.06.2000 Location of interview: Interviewee’s home Name of interviewer: Gillian Whiteley Type of recorder: Marantz CP430 and two lapel mics Recording format: TDK C60 Cassettes F numbers of playback cassettes: F7831-F7832; F8044-F8045; F8495-F8498; F10198 Total no. of digitised tracks : Mono or stereo: Stereo Additional material at the British Library : Copyright/Clearance: Full Clearance . © The British Library Interviewer’s comments: Part of ‘Memories of Philip de Laszlo’ series. Final tape [ F10198] is a self recorded tape submitted by interviewee. © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Rosemary Butler C466/94/01 F7831A Page 1 F7831 Side A This is Gillian Whiteley interviewing Rosemary Butler on Tuesday the 9 th of November 1999. Well Rosemary, it might be good if we could perhaps start with your grandparents, if we could perhaps... Yes. I think...I can’t go back as far... On my father’s side, he was born in 1884, so that’s going back a very long time. And... That’s your father? That’s my father. He was...he would have been a hundred and something now, so it’s sort of... He was born in Scotland, in a village called Symington. He was...he went to school in Kilmarnock, and then he went to Glasgow University, he was a very, very clever man. He studied medicine, and he became a biometrician, an anatomist and an anthropologist, and I think one of his big claims to fame was that during the First World War he took all the information about the wounded that came back from the front and their treatment, and the results of their treatment, and this was a huge sort of, amount of work that he did. He was offered the OBE for that but refused it because he felt that he didn’t fight and what he was doing was not as worthy as fighting, but of course it was far more...well it was far more important. He also studied...well he became part of the Medical Research Council, and studied measurements. He was also a statistician and did a great deal on measurement, and he worked on some of the old sort of, in the anthropology line, some of the old skulls were brought to him for measurement and that sort of thing. He was given...he worked...he was given a place in University College where, he worked there, and... Stop a minute. Sorry. [break in recording] A lot of his work was, he wrote papers on measurements of, especially children’s teeth, and women’s, sort of measurements on women’s thighs for childbirth and all that sort of thing. And one of the things that I always remember, because...was that, he used to, on Saturday mornings he used to take me to London, I must have been © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Rosemary Butler C466/94/01 F7831A Page 2 about six, he used to take me to London, into University College, and I was sort of allowed to play around with various things, where busloads of children used to come up from the East End, and these children were, all the measurements were taken for their teeth and their condition of their teeth. And then he used to write, he wrote papers on the diets and how the diet affected the teeth of these children. And after this, you know, after the children had all gone away, I was taken to a restaurant in Tottenham Court Road, which was called Flemings, and my childhood memory, it was sort of tiled... It was considered posh amongst the people, you know, sort of people at University College, and where they all went. And as far as I can remember it was tiled with sort of bench tables. And I was given lunch at Flemings, and then I was taken to London Zoo as a treat in the afternoon. And this happened many, you know, sort of, almost every Saturday I was taken up to this. My brother...I was born in 1930, and my brother was born in 1937, and I don’t know, but I think my mother had difficulty in getting something in between, but she did tell me, not so very long ago, that my father felt fully happy, and a completed man when he got a son, which made me feel vaguely...he was of a generation that, one’s line. You see when he was...if he was born in 1884, he was a Victorian really, and he was of the generation that, you had to have a son to carry on, and a son was the...daughters were all very well, but you know, all the money had to go into the son and everything. So, my brother was... Very very sadly, my father died three years later, so that was when I was ten and my brother was three. He had...he had tuberculosis, both types of tuberculosis, he had glandular tuberculosis and also pulmonary tuberculosis, and he was, a lot of the time was incredibly ill, I remember him as being ill. But I do remember him a lot also sitting by the fire in the sitting-room with a leather suitcase on his knee, a brown small leather suitcase, and he used to be writing calculations on this in the most minuscule, tiniest, tiniest spidery writing. I still have some of it, because, I mean how do...you don’t know how he could have seen it almost, but it was... And he used to sit there endlessly writing, doing his sums and calculations and everything. He was...he was a very modest man, and very kind, and very, sort of, looked after his mother and he looked after his sisters and, you know, that sort of thing. Anyway he...he...I can remember him, as I say, being ill, and he went to, at one time he went to, towards the end of his life he went to Papworth, which was a very, you know, it was the lung hospital. Because he was at University College and because he was very important, very high up in his department, the anatomy © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Rosemary Butler C466/94/01 F7831A Page 3 department, he had, you know, treatment, and all the best doctors and everything were looking after him. But he was sent to Papworth, and, this would be in 1938, and, I have letters from him to my mother describing the treatment which he had, and what he had to go through, and before the war it was, to me, I mean I actually read the letters, and I couldn’t believe it that, you know, it made you cry, because of the barbaric treatment. And being a doctor, he knew exactly what they were going to do to him. And he had to keep having this treatment done. Perhaps I should go back to my mother, who was born in 1901. She was younger, quite a bit younger than he was. She was born in Hull, and her father and mother...her father worked on the, my grandfather worked on the railways. He was born, the grandfather, my grandfather was born in Cumbria, what’s now called Cumbria, and was on a farm up there, but then he moved to Hull and, where the work was in those days, because there wasn’t any work in the country. So that was your grandfather...? That was my grandfather, my mother’s father. He was born in Cumbria? Yes. Do you know the village? Yes, near Crosby Ravensworth I think it was, near Crosby Ravensworth. Up there. He was William Buckle, and there are still Buckles up there I think. Is that B-U-C-K-L-E? Yes, B-U-C-K-L-E, Buckle. And, he then married somebody who was also...but she was from Barton-on-Humber, and I think... There’s a very interesting story. I think my grandmother was hired out to, almost adopted, by somebody in the big house, because she was one of many and was deprived, so I think...and I think she was also illegitimate, and she was then adopted by this person in the big house in Barton-on- © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Rosemary Butler C466/94/01 F7831A Page 4 Humber, and..