A Manchester born woman recalls the stories of living through the war and regular bomb threats as she celebrates her 100th birthday.
Great-grandmother Dorothy Roberts (known as Daw), will be turning 100 on Tuesday (July 9) and is preparing to celebrate her birthday with four generations of her family, as well as the residents of McCarthy Stone retirement home – Speakman Court in Altrincham.
Daw will be continuing the celebrations alongside her two children, Sandra and Steven, as well as going out on the Saturday with her five grandchildren to the Drum and Monkey, in Alderley Edge.
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Dorothy spoke about her excitement of receiving her telegram from the King. “I'm excited to receive one cause absolutely. It's quite amazing to get something from the King," she said.
“I have been here over ten years and nobody knew my age, because I am young, and as old as I feel.”
Despite turning 100 years old, she said she has kept busy, emphasising that she doesn’t ‘feel any different’ and continues to maintain an active lifestyle.
Now a great-grandmother, she claimed that it was her grandchildren that kept her young. " I used to take them swimming. I used to take them tap dancing. I used to do tap dancing with them.
"I used to do a lot and I started doing a lot of badminton which I've never done before, not when I was young anyway."
It's the busy lifestyle that seemed to have kept Dorothy so young, playing badminton and bowls into her nineties. But she continues to keep herself occupied with cooking all her meals from scratch, adding: “I do all my own cooking, I buy everything raw and cook it all. I don't buy any ready-made foods, probably that’s why I’m living.”
Born on July 9, 1924, in Miles Platting, Dorothy and her family moved to Failsworth after the passing of her grandmother. And after six years, her family moved to Newton Heath, which she was grateful for, and said: “That’s where everything that happened to me, I grew up more.”
She had to grow up quickly amid the Second World War. During the war, Daw worked for Avro, the British manufacturing company behind the Lancaster Bomber.
“I used to do the riveting on the Lancashire Bomber,” she continued: “I used to love riveting, it was the landing gear for the plane.”
And this didn’t come without any dangerous encounters. She recalled a night where she came home from her local dance club: “I can remember going out dancing one night, we had regular bombs dropping, and I just got about two steps upstairs and a bomb went down two roads away from us.”
Living so close to the factories that made the Lancaster Bombers meant continuous threats to her life and those around her. “There was one of the bombs that dropped about two roads away from us, one of the girls who used to come to school with us died in it.
“It was quite close to use, about three or four of them were very close.”
Despite all the threats, she smiled joking about her stubbornness to go into her family's shelter. “My dad used to say Dorothy, come in the shelter, you’ll get yourself killed. And I used to think if I'm gonna get killed, I'll get killed in bed.”
But it wasn’t all doom and gloom for Dorothy growing up, as she recalled the enjoyment she used to have going dancing. “That was great for me, we used to go to Manchester to the two dance places, and there were loads of foreign dancers from all the countries that came from the war.
“We had French dancers, New Zealand, Australian, they all came to dances. I think I was out every night when I was younger.”
It was dancing that led to her meeting her late husband Joe, who passed away in 1982. She recalled originally meeting him when she was 12 and giving him a fake name, ‘Mary Topham’.
Only to meet him again on the dance floor when she was 17, “he kept coming up to me to dance, and he’d say come on, ‘Topham’, and I said what are you calling me Topham for?”
The pair were quickly together as she continued by saying: “And that was that.”
With Joe going to serve in the Navy throughout the Second World War, they had to wait three years before his return.
Daw recalled being proposed to before he went away, but after her Mum told her she wouldn't get a party if she was married before 21, she was adamant to wait. She said: "I said no, we can't get married. I don't want to get married before I'm 21, it was a big deal to me."
Dorothy waited three years for his return, and after five months back from service the pair were married. “Who would have thought we would've been together 36 years," she added.
Dorothy will be celebrating her birthday surrounded by her growing family, as she added a ninth great-grandchild is on the way, and will have a party hosted for her the day after the big occasion.
