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Oral history recording with Daisy Maynard, born in St Kitts in 1925. Recorded as part of Race Council Cymru’s Windrush Cymru Heritage Project.

“How to live? Live a good life, if anybody on the street and you seen them on the ground, try to help them up.”

Daisy Maynard was born in November 1925 in Basseterre, St Kitts. She came to Portmanmoor Road, Cardiff.

“My mother had eight of us… it was seven girls and one boy. I think I’m the third…”

“A place named Brimstone Hill, [St Kitts], when you go up there you see the whole world…”

“[When I came over], 19 something minimum … it’s England you come to see, but be truthful… when I came here, we was taken back… it wasn’t so grand.”

“[My first job] was at Super Oil Seals… when you go in there, there’s only coloured people in there, cos it was on a job, they done…”

“Then I went to, Hamadryad Hospital [Butetown, Cardiff]… [then] I went up the Heath… from there… just continue, Ely Hospital [Lansdowne].”

“Shirley Bassey, we was friends, and they used to say to me… ‘Don’t go nowhere with her’.”

“I used to send parcel [home], things was really cheap here then times… I look after them [family] cos what I came for…”

“From home that I brought here, a chain, that was my mothers, nice chain too, my earrings, you know clothes, yes, but I always remember my chain, it was my mother’s Italian, nice chain.”