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’
‘In the fashion rooms down Flude’s there used to be 32-headers [knitting machines] they had to be a certain humidity…and sweat used to be pouring off them (knitters)…stripped to the waist some of them’
Gordon and Doreen discuss when individual ‘stands’ for operatives were introduced. When Doreen left Bennett’s they still had the long benches with shafting underneath and she remembers the long benches and shafting still being used at Nicholls and Wileman where she worked during the late 1950s.
Gordon when he went to work at Tomlin’s in the mid 1950s, however, seems to think that the long benches seating 24 girls sitting at their machines had been phased out. Doreen went back to work in 1959 because her husband was on the dole, it was only for about 18 months. If Doreen had been given a choice she would have liked to have been a nanny but she was able to look after other people’s children while their mothers were at work. It had always been her intention to bring up her own child.
Continuing to look at photos of Flude’s, Gordon seems to think Harry Flude’s daughter, Elizabeth, worked in the office but his wife’s name was also Elizabeth and she is on one of the photos and Harry Flude's two sisters worked in the factory as welters. Gordon at the age of 15-16 would have to get under the work bench to help repair the belts and the older women would be there with their stockings rolled down, ‘you used to cringe...at 15 years of age and you try to be a man and they show you up’.
Gordon and Doreen continue to look at photos and stockings. Gordon gives a good description of the knitting of a stocking, for fully fashioned stockings a knitter or ‘maker’ would look after a ‘32 header’ fully fashioned knitting machine and each head would knit a stocking thus producing 16 pairs of stocking. The fashion rooms were very hot, ‘there had to be a certain humidity to keep the yarn wet’ and sweat would pour off the men. Some would be stripped to the waist because of the heat. On circular machines stockings would come down in one continual tube and if there was a fault then the knitter would have to stop the machine to find out what was wrong. Gordon preferred working on the finishing machines, he found them better to handle. He describes the differences between fully fashioned and circular knitting machines. With time and the advancement in machinery certain jobs were cut out - splicing, hand seaming on circular hose, linking was also being phased out in many factories. There was constant change with improvements in yarns and knitting machines. According to Gordon ‘fashion’ was certainly the best type of stocking, the shape already there, a circular hose was shaped by tension and then trimmed (at Sketchley’s) put onto leg shaped boards and steamed. This process was also carried out at Bennetts and Flude’s. Bennetts also had their own dye works which had been taken over by Richard Roberts (at time of interview).
Doreen commented that she loved tights when they came in also remembering that when wearing stockings if your suspender broke you would put a ‘button in it’ or a 6d. Fully fashioned stockings were knitted flat and didn’t need welting. Welting which Doreen did was a process carried out on circular stockings and Gordon gives a good description of this process. At Stan Lockley’s, Stafford Street, Barwell they made glitter stockings – silver and gold. Apparently Maude Flude would always pull her machine to pieces - ‘always better than the mechanic’. Her sister was the opposite she would wait for the mechanic and say ‘you are better than Tom’ or if Tom was seeing to her machine, ‘you are better than Gordon’. Girls had to wait their turn if their machine broke down. A new job was written down in the work book which was always full. If there was a complete breakdown, however, a ‘still job’ as it was called had priority. Mechanics were staff and received a set wage as opposed to operatives who worked on piece rate. While working at Flude’s the head mechanic was sacked, ‘the trouble with mechanics they are an unnecessary evil, if we could do without them we would’. Mechanics were non-productive. Not all factories could afford to employ a mechanic. Doreen who worked as a cleaner in a small factory in Earl Shilton remarked that if a machine broke down the operative would move to a different machine. Where Gordon had worked up until his retirement they had employed two mechanics. Gordon only ever went on one training course and that was while working with Corah’s on Union Special flatlock machines.
H. Flude and Company was a family business established by Harry Flude, Joe Warner was an MD for the company and when Harry died Derek Flude took over. There were also two younger brothers and their sons took over in time, Gordon is not too sure. One story that was told to Gordon was - Harry Flude would check all the clocking-in-and-out cards on a Friday afternoon and then go up to the local pub and if he found any of his workers there he would give them their cards – sack them. Harry Flude started up in a small way, similar to many other hosiery manufacturers. Doreen and Gordon talk about the demise of factories – Toon’s, and Nicholls and Wileman in Earl Shilton - gone, no trace. The first steam driven factory on Wood Street, Hinckley. Gordon remembers there being a factory called Penguin on Wood Street, bought by Courtaulds and Gordon and colleagues were sent to the factory to clear it out – ‘get stuff from there’. He also remembers the engineering works that was situated where Hinckley library is now – ‘we had parts made there, we designed things and got them made’. That was also taken over by Courtaulds. A fellow mechanic at Lockley and Garner, he thought of as being a clever man he, devised a part that would turn a stocking on the knitting machine. Gordon continues to talk about the local industry and innovation – they had parts made for circular machines at ‘Wraggies’, (New Buildings) this was Michael Wragg whose father had set up business making parts for hosiery machines. Davis’s factory had the facilities to sand blast new cylinders and Gordon would go down Bennett’s to speak to Brian, Doreen’s brother about various things.
Doreen commented that there was only one great grandson left now (Bennett Bros) and he had a small unit on Southfield Road making lace. Doreen seems to think that the two brothers started their business on Wood Street in Hinckley in 1918 or 1908, not too sure about this. Her grandmother lived on Wood Street and she was a Bennett before she got married, she became a Sansome and had 13 children in all, 10 surviving into adulthood. When Doreen’s mother and father first got married they lived in the family home before moving to Springfield Road.