Archive / Audio / Mrs M. Hall and Mrs K. Garrod

Interview number: 013

Interviewer: de Caro, F. and Jordan, R.

Interview date: 1978-01-02

Length 216 minutes

Condition notes: [Clean]


Like many young women, Mrs. Hall went to India on holiday in 1938 to stay with friends and returned again in 1939 to be married. Her husband was in the Political Service, and served in Simla, U.P., Bombay, Delhi and N.W.F.P. from 1938 to 1945. From 1946 to 1962 he held posts in Sabah and Sarawak. During the war years, she worked in the Red Cross and W.V.S.

Her memoirs, comprising ‘And The Nights Were More Terrible Than The Days’ and ‘Brief Encounters In A Land Of Sea And Sun’ describe the great difficulties that were borne by the wives of Indian Civil Servants.

Mrs. Kate Garrod is the widow of a PWD engineer. Amusingly differing views on some of the same experiences.

See also: Hall (M) Papers – for Mrs. Hall’s memoirs, above, in microfilm box 6 no.43


Coverage notes: Simla, U.P., Poona, Delhi, N.W.F.P.; great difficulties and hardships borne by wives of I.C.S.; amusingly differing views of snobbery; memoir cross-reference; East is East, West is West; Ahmadnagar; Tomb bungalows; clubs; colour, Anglo-Indians; Jacobabad, hell hole; health; 1938-1945