Nothing wrong with a black doll - it is not a caricature like a golly.
We had no toys during the war except what could be made at home - all materials were needed for the war effort. My father made my sister and me some doll's furniture from off cuts of damaged planes, which he was helping to repair. He also made a duck that 'walked' down a sloping board.
We used a lot of imagination - pillows were children, the bed was a boat and they all had to be rescued.
Believe it or not we also used the back of a mirror that was just down to the wood, the drawer from our mother's sewing machine and a statue of Mary which I had won at school (probably blasphemy). They represented the children in our plays, which my sister composed.
She also cut out paper families and made me clothes for them, with tabs to go over their shoulders.
Most of the children in the terraced streets would play out if the weather allowed - tig, skipping ropes, two balls and even football for the boys if they could make a ball someway. We were all equally poor, so there was little envy. The girls would make 'houses' out of bricks and use slates for plates.
The boys were a nuisance and would break up our game - I think they resented the fact that we ignored them.
Being a bookworm, I spent many days in Peel Park Library - once they got used to my speed-reading they would let me read a whole book and then change it for another. Nobody had a radio until we got an old one that had a battery which had to be changed at the rag and bone yard. We were then considered posh.
My older sister had a baby when I was 10, in 1950, and I adored her. I used to pick her up from the aunt who did the child minding. I would make her a bottle and change her nappy - she was better than any doll. I suppose the social workers would step in these days but I was very responsible.
Needless to say, when my own girls were born they had every possible toy, and eventually a horse each and we had a house with stables,paddocks, a tack room and a hay store. Posh? Not 'arf!