From Elizabeth Lloyd, "Story of a Community"
In January 1920 another young woman, Daisy Campbell, joined the Charlton Staff. She was the sister of a doctor, Jessie Maxwell, whose husband later became Chairman of the Prison Commission and had a good deal to do with the Community; he was to become a great friend of Leila Rendel. She had known the Campbell family in Scotland for some years and she used Dr. Maxwell for medical inspections of the children in those early days.
Daisy Campbell writes:
"January 1920 was my first meeting with Miss Rendel. I was helping my sister at her home in Highgate with her seven-month old baby when Leila called about the medical inspection of the Caldecott children. She suddenly said "Will you come and join us?" My sister said, "Yes, do go, they are a delightful set of people and wear such lovely embroidered overalls." I remained silent but by April of that year I found myself at Charlton Court.
My first job was to look after the "babies" in the garden and at the same time to mend thirty pairs of stockings. I imagine I filled in the holes but I was never very adept with the needle.
The Directors (Phyllis Potter and Leila Rendel) seemed vague about expense - groceries from the Sutton Valence Stores were ordered (often luxuries to me), the children's clothes seemed of good material.
Leila and Phyllis Potter were a charming couple, so different in many ways but each complemented the other. I remember Miss Potter's carrot soup: delicious - but not so her broad bean sandwiches.
By 9.30 a.m., after housework, school began and before long I was involved with Latin and Maths for a boy and a girl who were shortly to go to another boarding school.
Many of the children I met there were from the old St. Pancras days.
In school I remember a class below the "middle" school, being taught on the Froebel system and me upstairs working on the Dalton scheme.
I walked with Miss Hughes, who ran the farm, to Headcorn station at four o'clock one morning to bring back a new cow that was arriving by train: we drove the cow back - two women, one stick and one rope, and eight miles walked, there and back."