Annette - Sweet on You

Chapter 43 Annette – Sweet on You (Extract from the book Two Worlds)

Annette Motley nee Combe, with her mother Catherine Picture courtesy Tony Combe During Arthur’s first year at university he had met a young lady – a local girl who was aged only around sixteen at the time. Her name was Annette Turnbul Combe and she would go on to to become a significant ongoing presence in his life. As to when he first met her we don’t exactly know, but given the nature of the relationship and what was to thereafter occur it would most likely have been at a relatively early stage in his first year at the University of Edinburgh, so perhaps during late autumn 1928. By the start of his first academic year in October 1928 we’re fairly certain that Arthur is now residing in lodgings at 25 Marchmont Road.

It’s only an informed guess but it was perhaps whilst on his way to and from the university that he first met young Annette Combe within the general vicinity. My mother seems to recall that her parents – or at least her mother - ran a sweet shop selling newspapers, cigarettes, confectionery, etc. Perhaps Annette worked part-time in the shop and it was here in the premises that their paths first crossed.

Editor’s Note Come the 9th September 2025, after meeting up with Annette and Arthur’s nephew, Tony Combe, it does indeed appear to be the case that Annette’s mother, Catherine Combe, now separated from her husband David, does indeed run a sweetie shop in the area. See postscript vignette, Shop-Keeper and Assistant.

I suspect Arthur may have enjoyed both a smoke and a bar of chocolate. When you visit a shop regularly it allows you to build up an easy rapport and quick relationship with the owners and the staff. Each day you superficially pass the time of day - how you’re getting on – and gradually as you get to know one another better you exchange what’s going on in your day to day life too. Here in Britain – and Edinburgh is no different to cities in England – such conversations famously begin with comments about the city’s variable weather and before you know it you’re discussing school, university, work and family background. As a business one of the key tricks is to please your customer so that they come back time after time after time so that they become one of your regulars: it’s not simply a transaction but instead you develop a relationship with your customers. You want to be friendly but in doing so by trying to seek out the right balance – not being too nosey – too inquisitive, but being interested in your fellow traveller’s life and when appropriate being supportive too. If Annette worked in the shop she would have been pleasant to Arthur. They were both young – Arthur was 24 and Annette aged around six or seven years younger. Indeed, she may still have been at school only helping out in the shop occasionally. She would have found Arthur interesting, perhaps even an exotic creature – he was handsome – he was Black – he had an attractive personality and disposition – he was charming, fun, optimistic, with a ready smile and a hearty chuckle. And he was different – very different to the other young Edinburgh men who frequented the shop and with whom she had come across, albeit, with students living within the Marchmont area and community, Arthur wouldn’t have been the first coloured man that she had met. But nevertheless she was attracted to him and found him fascinating too. But given the prevailing ambience and culture of Edinburgh, how on earth did their relationship develop beyond simply a short pleasant exchange, encounter and chat within the confines of a shop across the counter as Arthur passed his farthings, halfpennies, pennies, sixpences or shillings across to Annette in exchange for a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate or a packet of Woodbine, Gold Flake or Players Navy Cut cigarettes?

And in developing further the notion - the concept or theory of transactions versus relationships in the world of business and clients and customers - how on earth did they first move from it being a transaction to a relationship in its more fullish – or should that be foolish – sense? At the time – late 1928 - the barriers would appear to have been insurmountable, but as the cliche goes, love will find a way. Beyond the shop one other likely way whereby they may have met is if they had both attended the same local church. I don’t recall Dr Motley being of a religious persuasion but it does state in the Lincoln University CV that he was a philosopher of religion, so who knows. With his father Frank going on to become a minister clearly his parents were religious. But outwith that unless there was perhaps a local party at around Christmas or New Year the only other possibility is that they may have passed each other in the local streets and got to know each other in brief little exchanges. But beyond that, in Calvinist Edinburgh with its colour bars in some parts of the city, if they were to have been seen out and about as a couple together in each other’s company, it would most certainly have turned heads. They say Edinburgh is a village – that you’re only one link away in the chain from knowing someone in common - and in a community such as Marchmont and given Annette’s parents were shop-keepers, what with the regular flow of customers coming in and out of their shop each day, if the young couple had been seen out and about together, no doubt word would have spread very quickly and got back to them.

And whilst their colour difference at the time would have been a major barrier, this was further exaggerated by Annette being so young and still a local schoolgirl. Annette may have attended the well regarded George Watson’s Ladies College school better known as George Square named after its location in the city close-by the university: alternatively she may instead have been at the local school in Marchmont - James Gillespie School for Girls made famous by its most famous alumni Dame Muriel Spark with the school becoming legendary as where ‘Miss Jean Brodie’ taught when she was in her prime. Writing of this does of course raise the possibility that if Arthur and Annette had got to know each other through the shop, on occasion they may also have followed a very similar route home to Marchmont, she after school and he after being at university, giving them an opportunity to meet. So perhaps on occasion they accidentally bumped into each other enjoying each other’s company as they casually and easily chatted about their distinct and different young lives and backgrounds – she an Edinburgher and he an Okie. And thereafter, as their relationship developed, rather than serendipity bringing them together, as the weeks and the months passed by, in the harmony of the Edinburgh seasons - autumn through the bitter winter of 1929 when Arthur kept warm in Annette’s arms and sweet embraces and then into the darling buds of May and early summer, their love for each other grew and grew until their passion spilled over in that first week or so in May when they first consummated their relationship. But certainly when Annette had started seeing Arthur it’s something that wouldn’t have gone un-noticed and it would surely have been spotted by one of the girls from Annette’s school and no doubt word would have got out and quickly spread. It would have been the stuff of gossip. The Meadows on Sundays has always been a popular Edinburgh haunt for courting couples but it would have been well nigh on impossible for Annette and Arthur to have been like other lovers and instead they would have had to have conducted a more clandestine affair. And yet, an affair there was – a love affair – so the young couple must somehow have managed to find a way because during the height of when Arthur should have been studying hard for his first set of medical examinations and sitting the written and oral papers he and Annette conceived a child.

Events, dear boy, Events - or - A Ripple in the Pond

A Ripple in the Pond

A small update on Dr Motley.

This morning (20 August 2020) I received a charming letter in the post from North Yorkshire from an 88 year old lady, Mrs Betty Verrill nee Hunter. 

Betty wrote:

Dear Peter Hoffmann,

Here is another ‘ripple in the pond of memory.’

Annette Motley was at my school – George Square a.k.a. George Watson’s Ladies’ College. She was a year above me, well liked, I think, and popular due to her high-jump expertise! We had no playground, so lunchtimes were spent indoors dancing to records, doing gymnastics or playing musical instruments.

After telling my great-grandsons of my adventures in Dreghorn Woods in the 1930s and 1940s I went on the internet and found your fascinating writings.

I was never in Annette’s house (had our own doctor in Colinton) but remember passing her gate and maybe we were walking over to the Braid Burn? There was entertainment there and we sat on tiered grass banks.

As soon as I read Annette’s name I could picture her flying over the high jump at school. She wasn’t particularly dark-skinned either – just a nice girl, one of us.

I left Scotland at 18 in 1950 (most reluctantly) for a Civil Service post in Surrey – a boring Surtax job – but that was where I met my husband David, a Yorkshireman, who died a week short of our 60^th anniversary in 2016.

Kind regards.

Betty Verrill

As previously written there wasn’t a great deal of information on Dr Motley's daughter ‘Annette Junior’ other than some of her unhappiness and bad fortune in later years as described by her children. So Betty’s letter provides a small insight into a happier time.

Within previous vignettes on Dr Motley I referred to some of the vicissitudes that as a mixed race married couple from different backgrounds the couple may have suffered from, from prejudiced individuals so it was a small balm to hear something so very positive from Betty providing a small insight into happier care-free times in Annette’s life.

The letter propelled me to undertake further research into Dr Motley – as we both said – when you throw a pebble into a pool you never quite know where the ripples will go!

After some sleuthing I’m pleased to recount that I’ve unearthed one or two small pieces of further information to help to illuminate some of the legendary Dr Motley’s story of when he first came to the United Kingdom.

Twenty-one year old Arthur Phillip (A.P.) Motley B.Sc. set out from New York and stepped upon Scotland’s shores at Glasgow for presumably the first occasion on the 28^th September 1928. He had travelled as a student on the Anchor Steamline ship ‘Caledonia’ – rather appropriate as he sought out a new life in Scotland to train as a doctor. 

The Italian Smoking Room on board the S.S. Caledonia

But perhaps at that stage he had little intention of settling in Scotland and building a new life for himself and instead he would simply return to America. But as Harold Macmillan reputedly once said ‘events, dear boy, events’.

On the ship’s passenger list his occupation is recorded as being a student however his name is mis-spelt as ‘Matley Arthur’. And further, his address and therefore first abode is listed as Ramsay Lodge Edinburgh – what a wonderful introduction to the capital to be accommodated at the top of The Royal Mile with its astonishing views over the city.

He needed to pass the University of Edinburgh’s Preliminary Examination in Arts and its Pre-Registration Examination in Elementary Science and was registered on December 12^th 1927. By the time he had arrived in Edinburgh he had graduated B.Sc. from the renowned black university Lincoln, Pennsylvania, in the same year, 1928.

Although he only moved to Edinburgh in the autumn of 1928 by the following year – aged around only twenty-two - in October 1929 - he married his wife Annette aged approximately eighteen. Come early the following year on the 5^th of February 1930 their daughter Annette Junior was born which suggests Annette was already four months pregnant when they wed.

One would need the pen of a skilled and imaginative novelist to do the story justice but it can’t but raise comparisons with A.P.’s illegitimate son Lewie born three years earlier in 1925 when he would have been around eighteen having just left L’Overture High School McAlester Oklahoma.

Perhaps if he were to have married the lady it would have prevented him from going into further education – one of those major crossroads in life – and if he had not done so and gone on that journey there would have been no Dr Motley in Oxgangs and the lives of thousands of his patients would have been very different and we who knew and loved him, well our lives would have been very different.

Further to this and as I reflected on A.P’s journey taken, there came a different twist in the road – one of those situations that was there – not hidden – but as far as I had been concerned, hidden in plain sight.

Because he had gone to the University of Edinburgh I had simply assumed that he had graduated from that esteemed institution – MB, ChB or MD. However, in fact he didn’t graduate at all begging the question that he may have failed those ferociously tough and much feared exams.

I’m unaware of how many years he spent at the University of Edinburgh but from some of my earlier research we do know he was listed as being a medical intern at the Royal Hospital Edinburgh in 1935. An intern is normally someone who has completed a medical degree but is not yet able to practice, which if that premise is correct adds to the mystery – perhaps his B.Sc. allowed him to do so?

But what we do know (from The Medical Directory) is that he passed the L.M.S.S.A. (Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery of the Society of Apothecaries) examination in 1939 – a surprising five years later - which allowed him to thereafter practice medicine.

‘The Society of Apothecaries, under a charter granted by King James, was authorised to license doctors in Britain.  The Society does not, however, operate any medical schools.  Rather, they conduct exams, and if the applicant passes the test, they are licensed to practice medicine. Apparently, people who fail their university medical exams often took the Society of Apothecaries test.’

And thus ‘the LMSSA functioned as an alternative to the usual system and was frequently used by graduates of foreign medical schools who wished to practice in Britain, as well as by people who failed their exams at British universities.  Apparently, there was little scope for retaking a failed exam.   The last Society of Apothecaries exam was given in 1999 and the Society's legal authority to certify doctors was revoked in 2008.  People already holding LMSSAs are allowed to continue to practice medicine.’ Peter Richards described it as non university examinations as ‘convenient insurance policies or late lifebelts.’

Going back to Dr Motley’s period as an intern in 1935, he, Annette and Annette Junior were living at 275 Leith Walk. That period - 1928 to 1935 begs such questions as to how the young A.P. was able to fund his travel to Scotland, the cost of studying here, living expenses etc. etc. Did he receive a scholarship? I suspect not. But looking back it must have been expensive and a challenge for him to support his young family - perhaps he had to work in part time jobs – a heavy burden when combined with onerous studies.

Between 1935 and 1939 the family moved out to the south of the city to Colinton Mains, set in the lea of the Pentland Hills, one of the newly developed areas of the city as Edinburgh began to spread her wings. Their new home was at 356 Colinton Mains Road, one of the Gumley houses. The family remained there until just before 1960 when he and Annette moved into the medical practice at McAlester Cottage which was listed as number 250 Oxgangs Road North in the 1960 Electoral Roll and as number 300 in the following Electoral Roll in 1965.

One further interesting snippet from The Medical Directory is that it lists him as having been the Honorary Medical Officer at Colinton Mains First Aid Post. Without having the knowledge that reference begs further questions. What were First Aid Posts? And what were Honorary Medical Officers? Given that he had qualified in 1939 when he became fully qualified to practice medicine was that his starting date in this post or was it from before then? Whatever, it paved the way for him to open his Oxgangs practice at McAlester Cottage, presumably after the Second World War.

I may be wrong, but the house – McAlester Cottage (clearly re-named by Dr Motley after he purchased it to remind him of his home and upbringing in America) - was designed by the architect A.A. Foot in 1927 for a J.C. Gibson Esq.

Passing the L.M.S.S.A enabled Dr Motley to join the army in 1941 in the R.A.M.C. (Royal Army Medical Corps). He was appointed as a Lieutenant on the 27^th September 1941 and whilst serving would have been a Captain. 

He was awarded the War Medal 1939-1945 and the 1939-45 Star for operational service.

So, with grateful thanks to Betty’s ‘ripple in the pond’ has helped to facilitate adding some further fascinating little snippets into the legendary and much loved Dr Motley’s story and of his earlier journey through life including when he first stepped onto Scottish shores – of his subsequent marriage to Annette and the birth of their daughter Annette Junior and a small insight into her teenage life – and also that he didn’t graduate from the University of Edinburgh.

I await to see what further ripples this small vignette makes – I’m sure there must be more water to flow under the bridge!

Dr Motley-A Further Update From 10 February, 2015

Hello Peter Hoffmann

I was happy to find and read about my grandfather Dr Arthur Motley here on your blog! Amazing to read and see pictures of him. He was a wonderful grandpa. He taught me 'grandpa stick it up yo jumpa' 'I dene kene but canna whackum' He would test us again & again if we remembered who invented the telephone and the raincoat. He was very generous. His daughter Annette married a Norwegian man and they moved to Sweden and adopted me, my sister and brother. Annette died 2000, 69 years old in London. She inherited all from her father but lost it all to men cheating it of her. After Annette and my father divorced she got involved with men of the lowest rank possible unfortunately for me & my sister. She had had a very unhappy upbringing though (in spite of such a wonderful grandpa in my eyes) and never found lasting love in her life due to having severe personal problems much caused by her own mother Annette, Probably why you saw so little of them. His daughter Annette was a very artistic person, she worked back stage on some theater when she met my dad. In my youth she designed clothes and painted on glass. 

All the best
Yvonne Hjertholm