Interviews of Dorothy Sneddon aged 68

Biographical interview with Dorothy Sneddon, aged 68, who was born in Newton Stewart where she stayed until the day before her 16th birthday, when she went to Irvine to begin her nurse training. Dorothy talks in detail about helping her father deliver the Sunday papers and talks about how a double-decker bus would call at the family home at 730am to pick up papers for the post office at Bargrennan. The driver also dropped off papers at farms along the way. She describes the family home, which developed and changed over the years. Initially her family occupied only a part of the house with another family upstairs, a man who lived on his own and lodger accommodation in the attic. Eventually her father developed the property into one home.

Dorothy talks about her mother's home cooking, remembering that much of the produce came from the family garden: she didn't know potatoes were bought from shops until she was 15. Against her father's wishes, she got a job first in Victoria Wine (at that time a grocer) and then went on to train as a nurse in infectious diseases, orthopaedics and chest surgery. She talks about the various hospitals where she worked and some of the rules and regulations she experienced. She loved working with the psychogeriatric patients (in Kilmarnock).

Returning to childhood memories, Dorothy talks about the games she played and recalled the tension between those on each side of the river in Newton Stewart, which could be quite violent. This was mostly between children and young people, aged 8/9 to 20+ - boys and girls. Dorothy also talks about some of the many superstitions held by her Welsh-born mother. At the end of the interview, she talks about how the police cleared Newton Stewart after the dancing on Friday or Saturday night. You had to be off the streets by 11.45pm or risk being put in the jail.