"Polly" Lapham

is honored with a Large Bench from Barbara Ritchie.

MY GRANDMOTHER, POLLY LAPHAM -- HEROINE
By Barbara Ritchie

After my father died, in 1958, I went home to England and my grandmother, Polly, made me an apple pie to make me feel better. She measured nothing, just slapped some lard in a bowl, plunged a hand in the flour-bin and brought up a fistful of flour, then another and another. Rubbed it all between her fingers, tossed in some soda and salt, rolled out the crust. Marvelous! Cheering! I looked at her and saw a tiny indomitable woman of ninety, thin hair meticulously curled at the nape of her neck, gray-blue eyes that snapped and sparkled.

Polly was born Mary Frances McGarrick on March 9, 1867, in London, England, and was promptly nicknamed Polly, an old-fashioned diminutive for Mary. Her mother was Irish and had run away from home to join Florence Nightingale, against her father’s wishes. I never knew much about great-grandmother, but my mother’s inevitable reply when asked about her was, "She was not a nice woman, darling!"

Before that day in 1958 when she made me the apple pie my grandmother, Polly, had raised seven children while her husband, defeated by bronchitis and rheumatism, sat in a wheel chair watching. She had taken in laundry, sewed other women’s dresses, acted as the local midwife (for which the doctor paid her a half-crown), and scolded and cajoled her children to join her in refusing to be defeated.

At seventeen, Polly McGarrick married a young man named George Lapham. They set up housekeeping in Southall, Middlesex -- a suburb of London which was out in the country those days. I remember my mother speaking of walking through an orchard on her way home from school. On his marriage license, George’s occupation was listed as French Polisher. French polishing was a kind of highly skilled furniture finishing. He was regarded as an expert.

For some time before she was married they had been living in Polly’s family home with an old lady, Millie Bertram by name, an invalid so enormously fat that she could hardly walk. Polly’s widowed mother, who was what we would call today a Licensed Practical Nurse, had taken her in after the death of her husband, as an additional source of income for the family. At the age of thirteen, Polly left school to run the household and take care of her brother and two sisters, so her mother could work at a hospital. She became very fond of Mrs. Bertram, finding her much more patient and understanding than her own strict and unbending mother. One day Polly overheard the doctor, after his regular monthly visit to Mrs. Bertram, telling her mother that the old lady couldn’t live much longer, would probably die quite soon after Polly left to set up her own house. This distressed Polly greatly and, after talking it over, the young couple decided to take her with them! Returning from their honeymoon, they arranged to move Mrs. Bertram into their tiny house at 17 Grange Road, in Southall, where they installed her in the front bedroom at the top of an extraordinarily steep, dark, and narrow staircase. The front bedroom was the "best" bedroom and though by no means large, was considerably larger than the other three. But Polly and George thought it suitable for this extra-large woman, and besides, she would have a nice view of the street and the people going by even if she were not able to navigate the stairs.

That dear old lady lived another fourteen years. During those fourteen years Polly gave birth to four girls and two boys. (Her seventh child came along two years after Millie died.) I think of the innumerable trays of eggs and bacon, sausage, shepherd’s pie, vegetable soup, puddings and trifle that were carried up those precipitous stairs to that airy front-bedroom. And then down again, empty and rattling, to the minuscule kitchen where there was no running water for the washing-up, and no electricity to light it after dark.

Millie Bertram finally became totally bed-ridden. Tiny, wiry Polly bathed her, washed her hair, read to her, often with the children gathered round, turned her (with help) to prevent bedsores and did her very best to make her life joyous. She grieved at her death, and over all the ensuing years she would say quite often, "I do miss Millie Bertram. She was such a sweet old lady."

Every day George would go off to work in the city of London, and every night Polly and the children would walk to the railway station to meet him. But as he got older his bronchitis got worse and worse and he was less and less able to move around. Finally he had to give up his job altogether, which meant that Polly had to find jobs around the neighborhood while he stayed home with the children, more to be taken care of than to take care. He died in 1940. The children were resourceful and intelligent. The younger ones were able to take care of some of the neighbor children for a little extra money. The girls helped their mother with the ironing she took in. Education in those days ceased after the eighth grade and so, one by one, they left school and went to work, bringing home money for the rest of them. It all worked.

Most of the family fared much better than the parents as the years went on. The extended families were close and many were the get-togethers they had with much laughter and teasing, potluck suppers, picnics in the park, outings on the bus, sing-songs around the piano--every house had a piano! Money was always scarce but it doesn’t seem to have worried them much.

After World War II, when things had settled down, my father decided he would furnish electricity and running water for Polly’s little house. It took a deal of time to persuade her as she thought she should keep things as they were when George was alive. After all, she was used to the inconvenience. In the end she was persuaded, and oh, how she reveled in her inside toilet and the luxury of electric light!

Polly and assorted uncles and aunts always spent part of Christmas at our house. Frequently there would be a game of darts. Polly loved to play darts but she was so tiny that the board was always hung too high for her. I remember the uncles taking turns picking her up by her waist and holding her high enough in the air for her to be able to throw accurately. She frequently won!

When Polly died, while staying with my mother in March of 1963, the family was devastated, even though she had lived a long and full life. Life was and always been unthinkable without her and yet she was gone. When my mother was dying of cancer at our Wichita home in 1984, the nurse on duty came to me and said, "Your mother keeps saying, ‘I want my mother!’ I think she means you." But I knew it wasn’t me she was wanting it was, indeed, her own mother. I feel sure that Polly came to take her hands when the end came, as she surely did with all her children. They are all gone now, reunited with the mother they loved so much.

Polly was one of a kind, irreplaceable, a true heroine who refused to give in to despair and bitterness, but chose instead to bring stability and joy to a struggling family.

September 18, 1998