‘Betty Clease is a fool’: Mystery of children’s Blitz graffiti after 75-year-old scrawlings are discovered in Second World War bunker beneath school
- Extraordinary school graffiti has been uncovered in tunnels used by children to avoid Luftwaffe’s bombs
- Hillcrest Primary School is an inner-city school in Bristol that sits close to docks and banks of the River Avon
- Child named Betty Clease was the target of unkind graffiti as well as sketches of her holding hands with ‘Ken’
- Do you know Betty Clease? Email [email protected] or call 02036151866
Extraordinary graffiti made by children during the Second World War has been discovered inside a condemned bomb shelter found deep under a primary school.
The artwork at Hillcrest Primary School in Bristol has sparked a hunt for pupil Betty Clease, who is the subject of a number of scrawlings on the underground chamber’s walls.
The tunnels have been recently condemned – but safety inspections also found a treasure trove of drawings by dozens of children who sat for hours underground hiding from Hitler’s bombers blitzing the city above.
The largest piece of graffiti in one tunnel says unkindly: ‘Betty Clease is a fool’.
There are also two sketches of Betty – one shows her going shopping – another shows her holding hands with a boy called Ken.
The historical discovery has led to a search for Betty, who could now be in her eighties or nineties, to find out why she was the target of abuse and what happened to Ken.
This is the entrance to the air raid tunnel under Hillcrest Primary School in Bristol where a treasure trove of wartime graffiti has been discovered
The tunnels have been recently condemned after inspections, which also revealed a treasure trove of drawings by children who used it to hide from Hitler’s bombers
Betty Clease is the subject of a number of drawings on the wall of the shelter under a Bristol primary school
Betty is also seen holding hands with a boy called Ken but mystery surrounds who the two friends were and what happened to them
Several unkind scribblings call Betty a ‘fool’ and also mention a John Clease, who is likely to be her brother
In this sketch Betty is shown wearing a dress and carrying bags on a shopping trip dreamt up by the artist
The underground air raid shelter was used to hide hundreds of children from German bomb raids across Bristol during the 1940s.
During the Blitz the schoolboys and schoolgirls inside would scrawl on the walls and their doodles and comments are still scribbled on the brickwork tunnels.
The drawings reveal how times have changed – with no swear words – but still some of the petty squabbles we see today.
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There are also games of hangman, noughts and crosses and nursery rhymes covering the inside of the shelter.
One is the rhyme: ‘The cat sat on the mat, and ate some fat’.
One picture shows a couple in bed smoking cigarettes with the caption ‘their [sic] making love’.
Another post says ‘Pamela goes with me’.
Next to it a picture says: ‘The girl is crying. The boy is boxing’.
Now the tunnels, dug under the playground of Hillcrest Primary School have been declared unsafe and are to be filled in.
Beneath the feet of playing six and seven-year-olds one wall simply reads: ‘D Jones. Born Nov 29th 1921, 22 Clyde Road, Knowle’.
Its author would now be 96 Years old today.
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