Casgliadau Arlein
Amgueddfa Cymru
Chwilio Uwch
Recordiad sain / Audio recording: Maria Moseley
Oral history recording with Maria Moseley. Part 1 of 2 (AV 11450, AV 11451). Recorded as part of the Italian Memories in Wales project (2008-10), delivered by ACLI-ENAIP and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Summary covering AV 11450 and AV 11451: Maria talks about her father coming to Wales alone at the age of 13. He worked for the Gamberini family and was an ice cream vendor until he could buy a shop of his own. At the beginning of the First World War her father went back to Italy and enrolled in the Italian army. Having survived the war, he married in Italy and then came back to Wales with his wife. They came in 1924 and Maria was born the following year. Her mother didn’t go back for 22 years. Maria remembers her crying at the news that her mother had died in Italy and she could not be there. Maria explains that in those days the cost of travelling was very high and for her mother the cost of travelling with four children would have been truly prohibitive. But she kept in touch by writing and by sending occasionally little gifts. Maria remembers that she would go to the post office to send a quarter pound of tea to her grandmother in Italy.
As a child Maria experienced going to Italian classes in her area and going to holiday camps in Italy (Livorno), these breaks were funded by the Italian Government. She remembers when WW2 started, she had just finished her grammar school and her father, who was then 54, was taken away by the police to be interned. Even though the family was well established and well accepted in the village, her father was nevertheless arrested, accused of being an 'enemy alien’. Maria remembers what Churchill had said with regards to the Italians in Britain at the time: 'collar the lot’. Her father was one of the people who took the ill-fated trip in the Arandora Star, the luxury liner with a high number of Italian civilians. The ship was torpedoed by a German submarine and there was the loss of many Italian lives. Her father was one of the few who survived the disaster in spite of the fact that he could not swim. He then spent 5 years in a concentration camp in Australia, working on the outside for an Italian family. In Wales the family was supported by the local community, ‘the people were great’, Maria commented. But they had to close the shop and Maria, aged 15, went to work for others. She was keen to feel integrated in the society of her friends and in her school. So, she used to feel a little embarrassed when her parents would talk in Italian to each other in front of other people. But ultimately, she didn’t feel discriminated against, and she felt any different from her friends.
Her family was a traditional family and her mother was very resourceful. They never had much money but the children were always well dressed as her mother would make all the clothes they needed. There were other Italian families around, who would come regularly to the house to play cards and chat. She remembers that on those occasions the girls were not allowed in, so they would sit on top of the stairs watching with great interest. There was a certain Mr. Conti who would come around with his van selling authentic Italian food. If children were unwell, they could call for the second opinion of an Italian doctor, who lived just 5 miles away and would occasionally come to the house and talk to her mother. Her family was also a very religious family. On Sundays they used to have two masses in the morning and the Sunday school and benediction at the end of the day. Maria used to go twice a week to Italian classes, and to the annual Italian ball.
At home, they used to have at least one meal together and Maria remembers well special dishes, particularly the stracciatella or brodino, which was usually made when children were unwell. None of her brothers and sisters continued with their parents' activity in the shop.
Later on, Maria went once to Bardi with all her six children and then she went one more time with 5 of them. In Bardi, the family has a dilapidated property, which her Lynda (Maria’s daughter) intends to restore and use. In fact, her children are very keen to maintain their connection with Italy and they have been actively researching their family tree in order to get in touch with their roots. Another of Maria’s daughter, Helen, has studied fashion and design in Florence, and Lynda's only daughter has married an Italian from Milan, thus the family has come to full circle. In all of these respects, the sense of attachment to Italy felt by her children is stronger than her own sense of belonging. In Lynda’s opinion, this is primarily due to the formidable influence exercised by her grandmother, who died aged 101. Maria feels that there is a 'bit' of Italian in her, but she sees herself primarily as a Welsh woman in view of the fact that ‘she has lived here all her life’.