ABSTRACT
Mrs Delia Skelley (B015) was born in 1902, the daughter of a former clerk who became an office manager with a furnishing company. Her mother she described as a housewife, and she had one younger brother. Financially, the family was in a reasonably comfortable situation until her father was made redundant late in his career. Delia attended elementary school in Addiscombe, near East Croydon (where, years later, her friend Lesley Thornbird would teach for more than 20 years), and gained a scholarship to the Old Palace School, a convent school for girls. From 1920-21, she was a student teacher in Croydon, thereafter attending St Gabriel’s, London from 1921-23. Croydon was recruiting no new teachers when she qualified in 1923 but eventually she succeeded in securing two months’ supply teaching at Woodside Infants School. In the following January, she took a post in Dudley, in the West Midlands, at Netherton Church of England Boys’ School. In 1925 she was able to return to Croydon through a post at Tavistock Junior School, moving under reorganisation in 1930 to Sydenham School, a 5-11 primary. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Delia was evacuated with this school first to Patcham, near Brighton and later to a village in North Cornwall. In 1943, on recall to Croydon, she taught for a time in a grammar school before returning to Sydenham School, retiring as Deputy Head in 1962. From 1965-70 she worked part-time as a remedial teacher.
