Pensioner, 76, delighted to unearth her cutely-misspelled 1952 letter to ‘Santer’ asking for sweets

It’s a centuries-old tradition in danger of being sidelined by modern alternatives such as email or even video messages.

But a pensioner who has unearthed her own handwritten letter to Santa penned back in 1952 told yesterday how it has evoked memories of a ‘different time’ when even a bag of sweets was a longed-for present.

Deirdre Quemby, 76, discovered the letter she wrote at the age of six in a box of her late mother’s belongings she decided to sort through in the run-up to the festive period.

The charming letter complete with numerous misspellings is written in pencil and contains a hopeful plea to be sent ‘sweets’, a rare commodity in 1952 when the UK was still coping with post-war food rationing.

Miss Quemby writes that she wants a ‘Mackey Mouse’ book, meaning the Disney character Mickey, a china tea set ‘like mammy got’, a dressing gown and a bottle of ‘sent’ for her mother Olive, a ‘hakeakafe’ – meaning handkerchief – for nanny, and a book for ‘granpy.’

She signs off by sending love to ‘Santer’ and adds numerous kisses.

Miss Quemby, a former stand-up comic who is about to start her 60th year as a dance teacher, said she would have written the letter when the family lived in her grandfather’s pub at Shepshed, Leicestershire.

Her mother and father, Leonard, a former soldier who worked at an engineering firm, later moved to the village of Mountsorrel, where her late mother worked at the local Rolls-Royce factory. Miss Quemby still lives in the village outside Leicester today.

She signs off by sending love to ‘Santer’ and adds numerous kisses

‘I don’t remember writing the letter but finding it has brought back some wonderful memories’, she said.

‘I can still see the fire in the living room at the front of the pub where we spent most of our time. My grandfather used to keep a bottle of horse liniment by the fire to keep it warm. Whenever we had aches or pains it would be rubbed on us.

‘I can see the 9in black and white TV and the big leather settee.

‘Getting sweets was a big deal back then. We were still under rations – I remember the ration book.’

Sweets and confectionery only stopped being rationed in 1953, eight years after the war’s end. Food rationing in Britain ended completely in July the following year, when restrictions on the sale and purchase of meat and bacon were lifted.

Miss Quemby met and married John Hayward, who started his working life as a sheet metal worker at Rolls-Royce in Mountsorrel. The factory burned down in the 1960s and he went on to work for Severn Trent water company. Mr Hayward died at the age of 67 in 2008.

Pictured: Deirdre. aged 18 months, (right) with her mother, Olive (left)

The couple had no children.

Miss Quemby, who kept her maiden name after marrying, said: ‘Mum died 16 years ago and when I cleared her belongings I found cardboard boxes full of musty old documents. There were so many of them from so long ago it was impossible to go through them all in detail.

‘The particular box where I found the letter she had obviously kept as a keepsake as it was special to her. It was put at the top of the wardrobe in my house and it was only recently I thought, “I need to go through this stuff”.

‘I thought all the best bits and pieces were in the photo albums so I was very surprised to find this letter. I don’t know why my mother kept it.’

The Children’s Literacy Charity has previously expressed fears that technology was ‘taking over’ from Christmas letter writing, as websites now offer children the opportunity to send letters to Santa online. Some even offer an instant message facility to the North Pole, promising a quick reply from Father Christmas.

An app which has become increasingly popular with families also offers children the chance to track Santa’s progress around the world on Christmas Eve.