Recorded Memories
Doreen Marvin and Gordon Kayliss Interviews. October 2000.
Work, family and social life in Hinckley and Earl Shilton from the 1940s:
‘Job for life or if you didn’t like your job…get another one…plenty of jobs then’
‘A lot of lint about…everywhere…place were covered in it no individual benches – a long bench with a shaft running underneath twenty-four [girls] at a bench'
Doreen and Gordon at the time of the interviews had been neighbours in Earl Shilton for 45 years. Doreen was born January 1931 and Gordon was born October 1932. The conversations cover working life, family life and growing up in Hinckley. We look at photos of factories and I also take along stockings for Doreen and Gordon to look at.
Doreen started her working life at Bennett Bros, Southfield Road in January 1945 at the age of 14 commenting that, ‘we didn’t seem old enough’ – her mother started work at 13. Doreen worked on the ‘splice cutting’ – the stockings came in bundles of 24 from the ‘makers’ (knitters) and they were ‘lovely and warm’. At this time there were no individual benches, 24 girls were seated at a long bench and the shaft that ran the machines was found underneath with pulleys above. Gordon started his working life at the age of 15, in 1948, at Burgess’s earning £1-and-a-farthing. Doreen received 12s 6d, this was given to her mum who gave her 2s 6d back. Both remember paying 4d for chips, 1s 9d at the back of the cinema and 1s 3d upstairs. Gordon had stayed on at school until 15 because he wanted to be a carpenter, this didn’t work, however, and after a year at Burgess’s he started his working life in the hosiery industry at H Flude & Co Ltd as a trainee mechanic. At 18 he did his three years National Service and returned to Flude’s in 1953 earning £6 a week. Doreen left Bennett’s late 1952, she was pregnant with her first child and at this time she was earning £6 a week as a welter, her husband, Jack a knitter, was earning £10 a week, ‘we had £16 a week , so rich, saving all our money for our bungalow’. Mechanics were not as well paid as knitters - knitters were production, mechanics were non-productive. Gordon was married at 19 and they moved into their bungalow in 1955. Gordon worked for various companies - leaving Flude’s to work at Tomlin’s on New Buildings where he earned £7. 10s, his money increased to £10 over two years. Jean, Gordon’s wife worked as a linker and earned more money, she was very fast at her job and Gordon gives a description of the linking. Doreen and Gordon chat about the various stockings discussing whether or not they are fully fashioned. During the war, however, girls would often mix sand and water together using this mixture in place of stockings (and pure peroxide to blond your hair). Gordon mentions ‘chimney stacks and cubans’. Some girls had nylon stockings brought over by the American soldiers but nylon was readily available in the UK after the war. Doreen gives a description of the welting mentioning that she didn’t want to be a welter but a seamer but at the time there were no jobs for seamers. At Flude’s they used Merrow finishing machines and Bennett’s used Wilcox and Gibbs. All the shafts were placed under the long benches and Doreen remembers that all the machines came to a standstill if any repairs had to be carried out; Gordon however, describes how he was taught to repair the belt without stopping the shaft, it was quite a dangerous process but once the shaft was stopped the finishing machines also stopped. Doreen remembers the factory being very noisy and hot, Gordon’s first impressions of the factory was ‘marvellous’ - pure silk, all colours, orange, pink, green depending on the colour of the yarn before the stockings were dyed - and working with all the girls! ‘Lot of fun’. Good girls to work with. Both remember the huge numbers of people coming into Hinckley to work in the factories, a lot of Nuneaton girls - ‘six Monty buses would be outside Bennett’s, crowds of people came on the trains, buses and cycled - no cars then’.Gordon and his family originally came from Leicester and came to Hinckley when he was about five, he remembers the Danilo being built. They both agreed that things have changed so much - hardly any cars, milk was delivered by horse along with the coal, the ‘rag and bone man’ would give you a gold fish for any old clothes’. Doreen remembers she and her brother would play down the station yard and feed the Shire horses. Children played over the ‘Nobbies’ (three fields), skating on the ’ressy’ (reservoir near Sketchley Dye Works) building rafts, swimming and every Sunday would go on family walks across the fields and along the canal to the Lime Kilns.
When Doreen first started work she did the ‘splicing, shaving and boning’. The ‘boning’ was something that was carried out on lisle stockings which were made for the ATS and WRENS, they did this just one day a week , and the six girls, including Doreen who did this job, hated it. Whenever there were mistakes ‘Fat Nell’, as they called her would shout, ‘do these buggers again’. There was a great emphasis on having fun – at Christmas Doreen remembers having trifles and jellies, Gordon remembers Christmas parties with wine and beer, parties eventually being phased out.
Gordon was made redundant from Courtaulds on Coventry Road (now HJ Hall & Son) and went to work for Elite Hosiery (Hawley Road) where he worked for 28 years. Elite Hosiery, however, were taken over by Corah’s and other companies over time and he finished his working life in Barlestone in May 2000. Courtaulds bought nearly every hosiery factory in Hinckley ‘and closed the lot’. Government grants were used to set up factories and Gordon gives an example of this procedure when working for Courtualds. They set up brand new Stibbe knitting machines at the old Percy Taylor factory on Coventry Road, ran one stocking off each machine, no knitters were employed and the factory was closed down within a year.
At one time there were plenty of jobs to choose from, if you didn’t like one firm you moved somewhere else. Gordon thought of himself as a ‘stick in the mud’ – from Burgess’s to Fludes, then Tomlin’s, Lockley and Garner which was taken over by Courtaulds and finally Elite Hosiery.
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