Book description
Dear Mr Bigelow is an enchanting collection of weekly letters
written between 1949 and 1961 from an unmarried woman working at the
Public Baths in Bournemouth, to a wealthy American widower in New
York. Frances Woodsford and Paul Bigelow never met, yet their
epistolary friendship was her lifeline. We follow Frances's trials
with her ghastly boss Mr Bond; the hilarious weekly Civil Defence
Classes as the Cold War advances; her attempts to shake off an
unwanted suitor, and life at home with her mother and her charming
ne'er-do-well brother.
Sparked with comic genius, the letters provide a unique insight into
post-war England and the growth of an extraordinary friendship.
Frances Woodsford was born in 1913. She was exceptionally bright
at school but her father's death in 1926 interrupted the prospects of
an academic career. She left school to work as a secretary, to help
provide for the family during the Depression. After taking an
administrative job at a local garage, she taught herself engineering
and ran practical workshops during the Second World War. When the war
ended she took a position as secretary in the Public Baths Department
of Bournemouth Town Council, where she worked for the duration of her
correspondence with Mr Bigelow.
Frances had eighty or more correspondents, but Mr Bigelow was
particularly special and received over seven hundred letters from
Frances during the twelve years that they wrote to one another, until
his death in 1961. She continued to work for the Council until her
retirement in 1974; her final position was as archivist.
Extraordinarily, in 2006, Frances's letters to Mr Bigelow came to
light and were returned to her. They are the testimony of an ordinary
lifebut their vigorous prose suggests that with other opportunities,
Frances could have been a professional writer.
Frances never married. She continues to live in Bournemouth, aged 95.
