This crammed group almost certainly represents a wartime Christmas party at the Woodbine Day Nursery, in Skipton Road, intended primarily for the children of mothers on war work. If it was in 1944, Father Christmas was being played by Dr H M Holt, Keighley’s medical officer of health.
Seasonal cheer tended to be in short supply but the staff had decorated the nursery with “colourful streamers” and had made toys for the children.
Toys were scarce during the war. At Keighley Parish Church some 150 children attended a toy service, hanging their own redundant toys on a Christmas tree to be passed on to sick young patients in the Keighley Victoria Hospital.
Christmas in 1944 was foggy and quiet. The mayor and mayoress took fruit to elderly evacuees at Morton Banks, then made their traditional rounds of Victoria and St John’s hospitals, the Children’s Home and the Oakworth Road Institution. Nursing staff and the All Saints’ Church choir sang carols around the wards of Victoria Hospital.
One hundred and nine old people from Keighley and Oakworth drew sums ranging from ten shillings to £1 from Bowcock’s Charity.
The photograph, which was taken by William Speight and belonged to the late Jessie Ritchie, who had worked at the Woodbine Day Nursery, has been supplied by her friend, Mrs Maureen Calvert, of Bradley.
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