First memory – Aunt Annie coming to Bengeo to stay at Duncombe Road, Bengeo, Hertfordshire. I shared a bedroom (when she stayed) with her – she was always dressed in black as I recall with lace on her dress collar and always a black velvet band round her neck from which hung a pendant – garnet or ruby stone surrounded by brilliants/diamonds – it was so pretty and I loved the glint of this 'jewel' at her throat. She had thin grey hair which she wore in a bun, and I believe rimless spectacles. Her clothes were worn nearly ankle length. She had very tender skin (used 'Palmolive Soap') and wore black stockings which fascinated me as they were made with a separate part for the big toe – obviously trouble with her feet also.

A very neat lady and very much the 'maiden lady'. I believe she had been a lady's companion for a long time at Esher in Surrey. She travelled across London alone, visiting family and friends, and it didn't trouble her at all. She was admired by the family for this – an independent soul.

Another very clear memory of her is that when George Wainford junior was born in 1940 she came to Gravesend from Tilbury to help my Dad and myself in the house. I was 13 when my half brother was born and between us we kept the work in the house done. She washed and ironed beautifully, her training no doubt in service. She was a quiet lady and that is my memory of her.
Aunt Annie lived in Tilbury at this time and died there at the age of 81 years.

Arthur, aged 8 or 9, was taken to see Aunt Annie in Bloomsbury worked for a family called Lumley. Annie was housekeeper and companion to Mrs. Lumley. He was invited to read comics. Arthur saw them in a cupboard. He asked why she had them. She did not answer directly. The assumption is that her son was living there. Annie used to go away with the Lumleys.

George was the first son of the second marriage of my Dad to Sarah Sutton – he married her in 1936, four years after my mother died.

George was born at the height of the Second World War in March 1940 – in Gravesend, Kent.

He was a strange little boy, given to being on his own a lot – a nice looking little fellow with blonde hair and a wide smile. I left Gravesend in 1940 and didn't return until 1944 My father was impatient with him but that was no fault of his or 'Georgie's'. "Georgie" lived a life where he really had to look out for himself a lot. However there was an affection for him from his Dad and Mother. This is a story too complicated to say too much about. George was employed as a docker at Tilbury.

In December 1979 he disappeared and the police were unable to help. Sadly his body was found in the canal at Gravesend in February 1980. A terribly sad business and an untimely end. My Dad had yet another tragedy in his life – it is no wonder he was a nervous, anxious man.

George was cremated at Maidstone having been identified by his brother, Peter, a dreadful time for him.

My Dad never got over this and used to speak of 'Georgie' fondly.

George junior had many good points about him, he loved dogs, keeping his flat tidy and organised and looking after his houseplants. He had girlfriends but his lifestyle was such that the relationships were short-lived.

A sad story.

No children.

The Wright Fleming Institute of St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, was an autocracy, ruled by Sir Almroth Wright, known as 'The Old Man', an Irish giant in physique and intellect. His deputy, Sir Alexander Fleming, 'The Professor', was a Lowland Scot, taciturn, with a boxer's broken nose, a pair of blue eyes that seem to bore into you, and an addiction to cigarettes which meant that he often had three burning in his laboratory at the same time – on the bench, by the microscope, and at his desk.

I stumbled into the country house atmosphere cultivated by Wright where the wish of the 'uncles' (pathologists) was law and the sole function of the retainers (laboratory assistants) was to anticipate the wishes of the family and to see that they were met, and that a proper degree of comfort was in place at all times.

Wright had invented a system of measuring the power of the blood to conquer infection, which required many clever quills of glass to perform. These capillary pipettes I learned to make, with a hard-bitten senior technician to check my work. He kept a pocket of microcalipers and vernier gauges to control my standard of work. 'Pay attention, lad. It has to be just right for the Old Man.'

When penicillin reached the newspapers, the tedium of the day was relieved by Fleming coming into the preparation room. To free himself from the distraction of entertaining visitors he would say, 'Come and show this king some penicillin cultures' or 'There's a general here to see some of the fungus'. So I met the King of Greece and General Laycock, then Head of Combined Operations. There were others, for example I remember 'Flem' asking me to make up a weak penicillin solution which would be collected later. It was collected by a smart Royal Marine Sergeant for Mr. Churchill, who suffered from blepharitis, a crusting of the eyelids.

Wright had discovered and used anti-typhoid vaccine for the Army and had extended this treatment to cover a wide range of treatments. It was the variety of vaccines which paid for the operation of the Institute. 'Public School' vaccine, 'Mixed Anti-Catarrh', 'Whooping Cough', 'Cholera', they were all in the large refrigerator rooms. During the War there were calls for large amounts of vaccines and this meant that the culture media to grow the germs to make the vaccines were prepared in a media kitchen in scenes of Hogarthian bedlam augmented by Rabelaisian uproar and earthiness. This was inevitable where there were three to four hundredweights of cow beef to be cut up and minced and digested to prepare the basic nutrient agar and then sterilised in large autoclaves at 121.6°C and 15 pounds steam pressure (some things you never forget!) and then the Roux bottles were removed at speed with Dan the Media Man meeting our protests about burns and cuts with a laconic 'I did not feel a thing'. The finished articles were shipped upstairs to the Vaccine Room and we moved there after 6 p.m., on overtime, sterilising the used culture vessels. At 9 p.m. we stumbled out into Praed Street to shiver our way home in the blackout.

As darkness came the 'blackout' boards had to be fixed to all the laboratory windows. I had my share to do and I found Sir Almroth in his large armchair busy at his eternal editing of his 'Prologemena of the Logic which searches for Truth'. I was smoking by that time (everyone else smoked, seemingly all the time, so I started – it took me 38 years to break the habit) so I flicked my cigarette into the Old Man's waste paper bucket. Shortly afterwards the senior technician approached me, saying, 'Have a care, young Ted. You nearly set the Old Man alight. Luckily Flem saw the smoke and put out the fire. The Old Man didn't even notice.' Flem never mentioned the matter to me.

During the flying bomb attacks in 1944 there was a system of bomb watchers on the roof ringing alarm bells if there was imminent danger of attack. Of course there was confusion when the clouds obscured the bombs coming over and on one occasion the all clear was sounded ten seconds before the bomb fell next to St. Mary's. It was the only time that I saw a real demonstration of a scientific principle. As the glass in the sterile cabinet dissolved and then reformed I thought, 'Glass is a liquid of infinite viscosity'. I still think I was lucky. Shortly afterwards Flem was in New York to stimulate penicillin production and he told us later that he was very short with the natives for panicking when a US bomber crashed into a skyscraper. 'I told them my own staff always went on working during air raids'.

Our pay was negligible but Wright could obtain the top class men for £250 a year, so the lower grades earned much less. I do not remember anyone grumbling about conditions. If Flem wanted rats held then I held them, and learned as I went along.

The lessons I learned at the old 'Inoculation Department' as we old hands called the WFI lasted me for my working life. Frugality, making do, a search for an elegant technique and a smile when a 'Flem-trick' still worked the best of all. As usual Kipling got it right in 'A Truthful Song':

'Now there wasn't a trick in brick and stone
Which this young man hadn't seen or known;
Now there wasn't a tool from trowel to maul
But this young man could use them all."

So it was with Flem and Wright, and I am grateful to them.