A woman living in Rotherhithe, who has just turned 100, reflected on her life of hop picking, unmasking a German spy and how she had ‘never been to hospital’ until this year.
Born on November 13, 1923, Dorothy ‘Doll’ Sullivan, known locally as Dolly Knowles, said she definitely ‘doesn’t feel’ her age.
Last weekend, the family had a party to celebrate Doll’s long life, which she decided to have in the Time and Talents building.
When asked ‘Why there?’ – Doll replied with a cheeky grin: “It’s the old morgue.” To which her daughter, Pauline commented: “She’s got a wicked sense of humour.”
Having grown up on Old Street with her five siblings and parents, Doll spent the first chapter of her life in the city and moved to Bermondsey when she got married.
In the war years, she briefly worked at a munitions factory so she was exempt from service.
Remembering the war, she admits that life was scary at first but they all quickly adjusted. “We thought – it’s silly ruining your life,” she said, “They used to say you could stay in the flat and get bombed or go down the sewer and die of pneumonia – so in other words, get on with it.”
She got through the dark times by dancing, saying she fondly remembers the fun evenings she spent doing ballroom in the underground London bars – sometimes with the sound of air raid sirens in the background.
After the war, she returned to her job at the printers – which she had started at fourteen – and worked there until she was in her 60s.
In 1947 she married her first husband, Patrick, and they moved to Bermondsey’s Cherry Garden Street. When widowed she married her second husband Charlie.
She may have lived in Southwark for the last seventy-five years, but Doll said her heart belongs by the coast.
As with many families in south and east London at the time, summers on farms in Kent and Sussex hop picking were central to her childhood. A working holiday – Doll explained it was their only chance to escape the city.
“I loved it,” she says. “We went every year from when we were young.”
Working at the hop farm one year during the war, Doll said some of them noticed a man they hadn’t seen before had rented a cottage nearby. “He was staying just down the road from the farm and he had a telescope in the window.”
She said they often saw him writing notes, which had caused some of the pickers to become suspicious and they informed the police.
“We used to see a light at night coming from his window. My mum and another man there thought it looked dodgy.
“It turned out he was a German spy,” she said, “then all the women got taken away and some men looked through his things. But we never heard anything about it again.”
Up until this year, Doll said she was very independent, but that stopped after she had a recent fall. “Before that, I’d never been to a hospital before in my life,” she told us, explaining that she had her four children at home and had never fallen ill.
Having outlived two partners, for the last decade, she has resided at a sheltered housing unit in Rotherhithe.
Asked her secret to living such a long life: “Not drinking too much,” she continued, “When I came [to Southwark] I thought it was a drunken borough because of all the dockers.”
Doll said she hasn’t had a drink for about 50 years now.
She added that getting to 100 also has to do with her mentality: “I always say don’t let your age get in the way of doing things – do them until you can’t.”
Despite a hip replacement, she remains as sharp as ever. As a lover of the Royal family, Doll said she was happy to receive her letter from King Charles III to congratulate her on her centenary, but joked: “I thought there’d be a few bob with that.”