Pearl was born in 1937 and attended the Foundling Hospital School at Berkhamsted. She worked at a company called Pi in Cambridge after leaving school, married, and has lived with her husband Gordon in Cambridge ever since.
Early Life
‘Apparently the story goes that I was such a sickly child that they didn’t think I’d survive, and so they had another one, and this was Alice, my foster sister, who’s still around. So we went in a twin pram together.’
Into the World
‘I was working in Pi, in personnel office, and I was 15 when I started, just, because I was 14 actually when I left school and had my birthday over the Christmas holidays, and the others had left the office – there was only about three of us – and the phone went, and I was terrified. Anyway, I picked up the phone and it turned out, I recognised the voice, it was the works director, and he said, “Where’s Mrs whatever?” and I said, “Oh, she’s not here.” “And who are you?” So I said, “Well, I’m the junior here,” and he said, “And what do you do?”, and I said, “I do as I’m told,” and for years I was known as the girl who does as she’s told.’
Reflections
‘I think when I look back, I probably had a better life than I might have had with a 16 year old girl having to bring up a baby. I know they do it now but no social services and things in those days. Only sort of hardship. But on the other hand, I still would like to see her but I mean she could have died by now of course. Although she’s only 16 years older than me, she’d be in her eighties. But I know with Alice, you see, it didn’t work with her mother at all.’
School Life
‘When I was at school I went on the trip to Germany. Well, they had an exchange visit, and so some of us were, you know, asked if we’d like to go. So, we were given temporary passports and things, and the German children had come over and we were going– then they went back, and we followed them. Must have been in the late 40s, about 1949, ’50, something like that, and- well it was wonderful, we went across the Channel and got on a train at Brussels, no Ostend, and then went off, and we went – there were sort of twinned villages Bernkastel-kues – and stayed with families, and of course they could speak English, but we couldn’t speak German. Typical isn’t it? And so we went– we went to Bonn, Beethoven’s house and all this sort of thing. We were absolutely amazed to see the Parliament, or whatever they, they call it, guards at the gates with guns, you know. And we went to Trier and all sorts of places, and it was– I’ve never forgotten it.’
