Catherine Cookson suffered repeated miscarriages
Her stories of illicit love and class struggle in her native North East made her one of the country’s best-loved authors.
Now previously undiscovered memoirs written by Dame Catherine Cookson towards the end of her life reveal she endured more hardship and heartbreak than any of her heroines.
In her memoirs, extracts of which are published in The Mail on Sunday’s Event magazine today, the author wrote movingly about the four miscarriages that blighted her marriage to husband Tom, the nervous breakdown that nearly destroyed her, and the ‘friend’ who aimed bitter jealousy and hatred towards her.
Cookson at work in 1980. She was the most loaned writer from British libraries for 17 years and by the time she died in 1998, aged 91
Cookson, who sold more than 120 million books, including bestsellers The Mallen series and The Fifteen Streets, recalled the miscarriage at six months of her second child, whom she had planned to call Valentine. She wrote: ‘He didn’t get the chance of a life. I wonder if God looks after babies of six months. I absolutely refuse to believe that they go into limbo. He wasn’t allowed a grave because he wasn’t baptised. I felt so indignant for he had looked so sweet the first and only time I saw him.’
After Cookson suffered the loss of a third baby, she began to show early symptoms of a nervous breakdown that would consume the next 12 years of her life.
She wrote: ‘The form my breakdown took was aggression. I wanted to do something terrible in payment for what had been dealt out to me in my 39 years. My mind was now a hell filled with hate, fear and a desire for retaliation. I lost all feeling of love; even my feelings for Tom went. I had to tell him so, but the man he was, he understood.
‘I was in the continuing depths of the breakdown and fighting fear every minute of the day behind forced laughter.’
Cookson's memoirs reveal how the jealousies of a mother-figure friend led to threats of suicide and years of hatred after Cookson married in 1940
Cookson, who died aged 91 in 1998, recalled the moment a male member of hospital staff told her that she would never have children. The author, then aged 42, had asked if she might successfully carry a baby to term if she remained in bed for the entire nine months.
‘Don’t be silly woman, you’re past it,’ he yelled at her. ‘Even if you weren’t, you know there’s no chance.’
‘I burned with anger as I cried with humiliation,’ she wrote.
The memoirs also reveal how the jealousies of a mother-figure friend she called ‘Nan’ led to threats of suicide and years of hatred after Cookson’s marriage in 1940.
The Cookson chronicles: An alcoholic mother. A devastating breakdown. A cruel blackmail plot... all recorded in a harrowing diary hidden in an attic by Catherine Cookson, the best-selling author of The Fifteen Streets... and published here for the very first time
Catherine Cookson was the illegitimate child of her alcoholic mother Kate and a bigamist father she never knew.
Raised in poverty in East Jarrow, Co Durham, by her grandparents, she grew up thinking her mother, Kate, was her sister until the age of six. From her father she contracted HHT, hereditary haemorrhagic telangiectasia â€" a rare vascular condition that causes bleeding and chronic tiredness.
After leaving school at 14 she worked in a workhouse laundry in South Shields before movin g to Hastings at 23 to run a similar laundry. There she met an Irish woman named Annie (Nan) Smith and lived with her and her drunken mother. A diligent saver, by 1933 Catherine bought her first house, called The Hurst, and took in lodgers to boost her income. One of her lodgers, teacher Tom Cookson, she would fall in love with and marry in 1940.
She suffered four miscarriages and a breakdown that took her 12 years to recover from. She started writing as therapy and her first book, ‘Kate Hannigan’, was published in 1950. Cookson became a prolific writer, penning several bestselling series and drawing on her tough childhood in the North-East. Several of her most famous works â€" like ‘The Fifteen Streets’ and ‘The Black Velvet Gown’ â€" were adapted for television.
Catherine Cookson's mother Kate pictured in her 20s. Catherine grew up thinking her mother was her sister until the age of six
She was the most loaned writer from British libraries for 17 years and by the time she died in 1998, aged 91, she had written more than 100 books, selling more than 100 million copies worldwide.
In the years before her death, she started writing an astonishing warts-and-all memoir that until now lay hidden in her attic. The never-before-published manuscript tells of the bitter jealousies of ‘friends’ that nearly destroyed her…
 Before the war my personal life was a shambles. My mother Kate was with me and drinking heavily. My so-called friend, Annie ‘Nan’ Smith, was making my life hell because I had fallen in love with a young schoolmast er called Tom Cookson.
The war broke out, but what did that really matter compared to all the troubles that were on my shoulders? Tom and I wanted to marry, but I was afraid that if we did, I would find him up the alley with his throat slit. And I’m not joking. Nan Smith was 11 years older than me and she had inveigled herself into my life. I had looked upon her as a mother when we first met because I had never really known a mother’s love.
Kate didn’t come onto my horizon until I was almost six years old. I didn’t want her as a mother because she drank.
So when this woman, Nan Smith, gave me cakes and presents out of her small wage and would run from here to hell for me, she seemed like the mother figure that I had never previously enjoyed.
Catherine and Tom Cookson on their wedding day in 1940
No one saw her as terrible old Nan, old Nan the tyrant. This came to the fore when I met Tom. Her laughter turned to rage when she discovered I was interested in this young lad.
Nan gave me an ultimatum: if I went out with Tom, then when we came back we would find her hanging.
Even when we were separated and I bought a house for her in Hastings, she still remained a threat. What I didn’t know then was that, between Nan and my mother, my name in Hastings was mud.
I was a simpleton who as yet knew nothing about jealousy and hate and the guises they could hide under.
We were married only a month when the order came we were to be evacuated to St Albans. A month later I was pregnant.
I carried my ba by for six months. I wanted to be with Tom, so I stuck it out.
When Tom helped deliver his son on Saturday, December 7 1940, I was ready to die. And I could have because things went wrong inside.
When I woke up from the chloroform some time later, they told me I was swearing like any trooper. It was a pattern I was to repeat on waking from the many operations that were to follow. I, who would never use a swear word â€" not even a damn, bloodied and buggered all doctors and nurses ever after.
My mother’s comment on my loss in her letter was merely to say, of Tom: ‘Well he’s proved himself.’
Tom was called up in 1941, and the chasm opened up in me again. I’d known loneliness before, but this feeling was devastating, overwhelming â€" and I was pregnant again.
After publishing her first book in 1950, Cookson became a prolific writer, penning several bestselling series and drawing on her tough childhood in the North-East
I wanted to call him Valentine. He didn’t get the chance of a life. I wonder if God looks after babies of six months? I absolutely refuse to believe that they go to limbo.
He wasn’t allowed a grave because he wasn’t baptised. I felt so indignant for he had looked so sweet the first and only time I saw him.
When did I become pregnant again? I’ve lost touch of the dates. Tom was in a state as I’d been warned not to let it happen. I was constantly bleeding from the nose and tongue â€" and then there was cordite poisoning. But I was determined to have a baby.
Then one morning, I was on my knees doing the hearth when I felt a click in my side. I gas ped, covered my face with my hands and rocked myself like I was at prayer, crying inside, ‘Oh, no, no. Please God, no.’ But yes, I was to lose the third.
In hospital, just before they took me down, I said to the sister, ‘Sister, I... I have the habit of swearing when I come out of chloroform. Will you please put me where nobody can hear me?’ I can see her throwing her head back and laughing as she said, ‘No, I won’t. We want some entertainment here, and we only get that kind from parsons or priests.’
Following the loss, I became very low in myself. I was always tired and had a constant feeling of illness on me. I was also becoming full of self-pity for this girl who hadn’t a father. Nothing that had happened to me would have happened if only I’d had a father. I recall trying to laugh myself out of it and saying, ‘Well, you must have had â€" you’re no relation to the Holy Mother.’
I was forced to go back to Hastings to clear up the effects of a time bomb that had shattered the observatory. What a pity it hadn’t blown the house to bits. It would have saved a lot of trouble.
I went down to Nan’s, where I was to stay the night â€" with dire consequences.
Cookson (left, holding racket, with, centre, her mother Kate and, far right, Nan Smith),
Cookson in the 1950s (left) and an early childhood portrait (right)
I’d had years of worry, years of fear of what she could do to Tom, and she had done him harm. When she had said she would ruin his character, I exploded in public. With that outburst I had taken a giant step towards the breakdown.
While living in Hereford I had had a bout of nervous hysteria and the phlebitis started. I found I couldn’t move my limbs. The doctor thought a week or so in hospital and a change of scene might help me.
I was only in the ward two or three days when the patient opposite, a woman who talked incessantly, informed her visitors, ‘That one across there thinks she’s bad, but it’s just nerves. She’s hysterical with them.’
That finished me. From that moment, I entered a world of fear, hysteria and self-pity.
Even today, people go through their life without understanding the effect of the mind on the body. But in 1945, the majority of us were still groping at such knowledge and afraid of it.
The form my breakdown took was aggression. I wanted to do something terrible in payment for what had been dealt out to me in my 39 years.
My mind was now a hell filled with hate, fear and a desire for retaliation. I lost all feeling of love; even my feelings for Tom went. I had to tell him so, but being the man he was, he understood. I went voluntarily to a hospital outside of Hereford. I was there for six weeks, and every night that man rode out to see me.
I was in the continuing depths of the breakdown and fighting fear every minute of the day behind forced laughter.
I didn’t know it was going to take ten or more years to clear my head of that breakdown, and that weeks, even months, would pass before I would know part of a day free from fear.
When I was about 42 and in the Buchanan Hospital, Hastings, I was approached by this big, burly individual. I asked him in a very quiet voice if it would be possible that I could carry a baby if I stayed for the nine months in bed. He walked away up the ward yelling â€" and he did yell â€" ‘Don’t be silly woman, you’re past it. Even if you weren’t, you know there’s no chance.’
I burned with anger as I cried with humiliation.
When Nan was ill, she looked at me and said quietly, ‘You know I’ll haunt you when I die.’ Then came the day when she was in hospital and very ill, and she asked Tom and me to take her along to her flat, as she wanted to sort out her letters. She had hundreds of letters that she sorted for burning. All she kept was a small woven pouch.
When Nan was actually dying I forgot all that had happened between us: all the years of misery she had put me through, and all the lies she had told about me. How she had tried to blacken Tom’s character. I forgot the suicide threats that had been her means of blackmailing me for years. I forgot everything except my pity for her. I held her hands, looked deep into her shrunken face and said, ‘Goodbye, Nan.’
After I left the room she said to Tom to take the hand-woven pouch.
In it was a letter from the 15-year-old son of a French woman who had holidayed at our house. I read: ‘We are so very sorry for you, Mama is distressed... and is distressed for you about Miss Mac [Catherine’s maiden name] and her new man [Tom]. You have put up with all her men and doings and now she has thrown you out for a boy… we know how you feel and about all her men, it is wicked.’
There arose in me a terrif ying feeling: a white-hot rage. It made me want to smash something, tear at something.
I felt like an animal, chained, but facing a corpse that I wanted to render into shreds. The feeling was the embodiment of a dreadful hate. They say love is the strongest emotion. Oh no, not by fathoms or miles can it touch real hate.
I started to write down how I felt about her, bits here and there, pouring out this hate. I felt a changed being.
I sat down and spoke to her. ‘No, Nan, no. You’re not going to do it. Hate can destroy; you know that. It destroyed you, but you’re not going to destroy me through it. You’re out of my life now, and I’m going to put you out of my mind. You have lost, do you hear? What you planned, lying there on your sickbed, Tom and me daily by your side caring for you, has fallen flat. It is as nothing. In fact, it has only helped to develop the great bond of lov e that is between us. Nothing or no one can separate us â€" that can only come by death. And if I ever pray again, it’ll be that in the long hereafter, I will never have to see the shadow of you.’
She suffered four miscarriages and a breakdown that took her 12 years to recover from. She started writing as therapy and her first book was published in 1950
The hate left me, but I could not forgive or forget. I tried to understand the motives that made her do it, but couldn’t find an answer. Evil such as hers didn’t come out of love. Real love could not breed the ruin of another’s life.
Looking back, I realised that all along I had feared her, even though I did not know what I had to fear from her.
Fear had filled my life. My young days had been lived in fear. I feared Kate.
I must forgive. So I tried. I know that I cannot forget. It’s utter nonsense, this talking of forgiving and forgetting â€" scars remain, mental or physical. The mental have the more impact. Yet I have gained a measure of peace of m ind and spirit. I can face up to the fact of death and, were there a Maker, of meeting Him. I have learnt to devalue possessions and to ignore so-called fame. I am progressing slowly but surely towards the peace of mind that surpasseth all understanding.Â
Cookson’s memoir ‘Before I Go’, priced £6.99, and her previously unpublished novella ‘Saint Christopher And The Gravedigger’, priced £4.99, are both available now from Lake Union, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. For a 20% discount, order at mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640. P&P is free on orders over £15Â
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