‘From Jeely Piece to Jane Haining’

“IT’S about community. It’s always about community.”

Mary Miller, mother, minister’s wife, professional and now author of a new book about the life of Jane Haining, lives what she believes. Born into a well-to-do Edinburgh family, Mary spent most of her adult life living in housing schemes in some of the poorest parts of Scotland with husband, the Very Rev Dr John Miller and family.

“I was born and brought up in central Edinburgh where my father was an advocate”, she told me.

“We didn’t have strong church connections, to be honest. We had something of a ‘hatches, matches and dispatches’ sort of relationship with the church.

“I went to Oxford University to study modern languages and a postgraduate degree in medical social work at Edinburgh and Glasgow universities thereafter.

“Round about that time my sister was engaged and wanted to marry at the Canongate Church. Of course some attendance was required, so she asked me to come along with her to the services so that she wouldn’t feel so out of place.

“The first time we went I met a student assistant minister who I fell in love with at first sight.

“I was 18 and he was 23. Luckily he liked me as well and we quickly began going out together. And that was how I met John. “Being a student minister obviously the church was very important to him, and so it became important to me to find out about it and I did some serious cramming about the Church of Scotland!

“We got engaged when I graduated and we married the year before I qualified with my social work degree.

“Our first home was in Craigmillar in Edinburgh, a housing ‘scheme’ where John was an assistant minister. We had a council l at in Niddrie.

“We developed a ‘taste’ for housing schemes. We liked the people and the sense of community. Our work was mainly with young people there, and frankly, it was a great laugh. We were young ourselves and had plenty of energy so working with youngsters was just good fun. Life was never dull, though there were elements in the area who gave it an ‘edge’ and this was a theme we found in poorer communities wherever we went.

“When we finished there we set of for a year to the USA where John had a fellowship to do a Masters degree in New York. I had a job in a stenographers’ office (these were the days of the typing pool). When the academic year finished, we bought an old car and took of across America. “It was 1970 and the protests against the Vietnam war were in full swing. We became slightly hippyish and joined in the protests of course. Good times!

“We thought about staying in the US but we felt that if you want to protest you really have to do it in your own country. So we came home and looked for a housing scheme parish. There are usually vacancies there, and John was successful in being called to Castlemilk East Parish Church.

“We moved to Glasgow the same week as the Ibrox disaster. One of John’s first jobs as parish minister was burying one of the victims of that terrible tragedy.

“We were initially given a manse in a leafy area outside the parish but we weren’t happy with the gulf between the people John served and the life we led, so we put in for a council house in the scheme and after two years we moved in. We had a 13-month-old baby by then and I was pregnant again, so I had given up work and was a full-time mum for the first few years.

“Castlemilk had been built quickly to accommodate overflow and had no amenities. A lot of people were crammed into a small space. There were problems of overcrowding, sectarianism, gang territories and the all the struggles of poverty. But they were good people and they looked out for us – we loved Castlemilk “On one occasion our l at was broken in to and the CID man toured the l at with me.

He was very apologetic that ‘it was such a mess – they’d obviously gone through everything.’ I walked beside him tutting and sighing – but I didn’t have the heart to tell him that, with numerous black bags all over the place, jumble sale stuff and three teenagers, that was pretty much how it had looked beforehand! One of the neighbours had seen something suspicious and had called the police. As I say, they looked after us. Nothing was taken.

“The church community there was terrific. On another occasion, we had new turf laid over a large hole where a tree had come down in the church grounds, to make it look its best for a wedding that Saturday. During the night it was stolen. We had new turf laid. Again it was stolen. The third time we laid it, members of the congregation volunteered and actually slept on the turf outside the church overnight so that it would be safe.

I helped set up ‘The Jeely Piece Club’ when I was there, a project designed to give the numerous children who lived in the area something to do during the holidays. I discovered I had a real passion for working with children – something that would attract me to Jane Haining when I was offered the chance to write about her later.

“That’s the goodness that was in the hearts of the people there.

“I helped set up ‘The Jeely Piece Club’ when I was there, a project designed to give the numerous children who lived in the area something to do during the holidays. I discovered I had a real passion for working with children – something that would attract me to Jane Haining when I was offered the chance to write about her later.

“The Jeely Piece Club started with maybe a dozen families. When it was full, and children arrived wanting to come in, we told the parents the children could come but they’d need a parent with them. That way it built and built and more people got involved, so more kids could be catered for.

“We were able to persuade the council to let us use the buses normally used to ferry disabled children to and from school that were unused during the holidays, so we were able to take the kids on a trip at least once a week. We went everywhere and the trips were a huge success.

One of the schools had been in a block of flats and we put in a successful application to take over the building and were given it, so were able to set up a permanent base for the Jeely Piece Club.

“We were very much guided by the ‘by the people, for the people’ ethos. It was important that the people in the area were at the heart and guiding the projects.

“There was an under 5s group, a group for older people and after school clubs created. To begin with there were hundreds of children in the area, but with the closures of the heavy industries, people began to move away and schools began to be closed.

One of the schools had been in a block of flats and we put in a successful application to take over the building and were given it, so were able to set up a permanent base for the Jeely Piece Club. Moving from a purely voluntary group to being a charity that had to have a Board and employed staff meant a lot more paperwork and bureaucracy, but it also meant that we were able to begin to offer formal SVQ qualifications to the people who had worked with us as volunteers. That gave them the chance to earn vital certificates to help them get jobs with us or elsewhere and bring income in to their families.

“We learned to move – and change – with the times.

“In the 90s there was a gradual increase in the gang-related violence in the area and as a reaction to that, we set up the ‘Play It Safe’ team. Every day, after school, we would go out and engage with children where they were, including the local ‘bridge’ where some of the gangs would meet and taunt each other.

“It was a dangerous time for the youngsters there. Some were lost to violence, stabbings and so on; others to road accidents; some to drugs. They were casualties of poverty.

“John retired from Castlemilk after 36 years. We knew we’d miss the people, but we were taken aback at just how much they cared about us. It was incredibly touching.

“I say retired, but few ministers actually retire, and I had been bitten by the Africa bug when I had done a couple of stints there during our time in Castlemilk.

“I very much wanted to work there for a longer time and so of to Zimbabwe we went.

“It was a time of political turmoil there and things were not easy. I had some contacts at a district hospital and I worked there with children with HIV, helping to establish psychosocial support for children and for the families left to bring up HIV orphans. It was not unlike the Jeely Piece Club.”

I ask Mary where her attraction to writing about Jane Haining came in.

She laughs. “It was her love of children. “When I was asked to write the book, I did a lot of research. One thing really stuck with me. It was her refusal to leave the children.

I have often asked myself if I’d have had the courage to stay the way she did, when the others from the Church were called home. I would love to say that I would have done the same – but I don’t know if I could have. “Writing a book is a fascinating process.

You hear a name and you chase it up. Someone mentions an incident and you go of on a trail following that. You talk to amazing people and you gather so much information! It’s hard now to remember what I didn’t know about Jane before I started. Several groups are busy keeping her name alive – for example, local residents have set up a Jane Haining Memorial Centre in her home village of Dunscore outside Dumfries.

When I was asked to write the book, I did a lot of research. One thing really stuck with me. It was her refusal to leave the children. I have often asked myself if I’d have had the courage to stay the way she did, when the others from the Church were called home. I would love to say that I would have done the same – but I don’t know if I could have.

“Jane was a highly intelligent woman. She won a full bursary to Dumfries Academy and got a very good education there. She was a boarding pupil. She was a great reader, and as I wrote about her, I could picture her sitting quietly, reading page after page in the evening.

“Her mother died when Jane was only five and she also lost a baby sister at 18 months, so her mothering instincts were well-developed caring for her family, It was not surprising that it was Jane the younger girls at the school would turn to when they were upset.

“After school she went to college to study business. Remember this was just after the First World War and there was a great shortage of available men around, so young women, like Jane, who might otherwise have married and had their own families, were forced to make sure they could look after themselves financially.

“She worked her way up to become what we’d now call a PA at J & P Coates in Paisley, but she was always pulled towards children.

“After hearing a church talk one night about the Jewish Mission, she gave up her job and went through a domestic science course. She applied for a job as matron of a girls’ home in Budapest that she saw advertised in Life and Work.

“We all know the generalised story of Jane Haining. The woman who refused the Church’s order to come back home and stayed with her charges when Hungary was invaded. Perhaps she thought, being a foreigner, and a non-Jew, she might be safer, but we know it didn’t turn out that way.

“Jane was denounced by a relative of an ex-employee who was upset at being sacked, even though Jane had had no option but to let the woman go.

“She was taken to the city jail and then transferred to Auschwitz, where she was murdered.

“There’s a heartrending story told by one of her pupils who was given a class photograph to look at. She went through each girl, each face, and pointed out the ones who had died. Out of the class, only two girls survived.

“I don’t know if Jane knew what happened to her children”, Mary said. “She was very sharp, so it’s likely she had an idea. But I like to think that to the end, she cared for those around her. That’s who she was.”

Jane Haining, A Life of Love and Courage by Mary Miller is published by Birlinn and is available in hardback priced £14.99.