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’

‘Every Friday when you finished you’d get your machine spotlessly clean…you’d have what you called a picker (a maker’s needle) and pick all the fluff all out where your needle were…and sometimes mid-week if your machine wasn’t making such a good stitch’

Doreen and Gordon continue to look at photos and stockings Gordon commenting that he had at one time worked on the Zodiac knitting machines, mentioning that not all factories had their own mechanics, to hire a mechanic cost £25 per hour plus travelling.

Every Friday afternoon it had been the norm to clean your machine, Doreen remembers her machine being spotlessly clean and a ‘picker’ (a broken needle) was used to pick out all the fluff.  Nowadays suction is used.  All machines work far better when they are kept clean and oiled, a process which isn’t always observed these days.  Gordon finished his working life working on finishing machines. 

They continue to criticise the change in fashion comparing today’s fashions with that of the 40s, 50s and 60s and enjoy looking at some late 1950s early 1960s photos of stockings being modelled for Flude’s. The ‘film shoot’ took place at the Lido and show the fashion of the day - dresses with net underskirts, high heels and fully fashioned stockings.  Doreen does mention that they wore turbans to work on a Saturday morning and also wore pinnies while at work.  Doreen and her friends were very much influenced by the American films of the day; her mother ‘went mad when I put my hair up’.  She also used her wages of 12s 6d to have her ears pierced much to the disgust of her parents.

In 1969 she went to work on the toe stitching at Marvin’s in New Street, Earl Shilton, while Jack had been laid off because of lack of work, and if something had gone wrong with the machine the mechanic would bring a ‘new’ machine from the attic.  Girls, according to Gordon, were always complaining about their machines not working properly and their language could be terrible.  Mechanics did not do shift work, they also had a extra weeks holiday because they were staff.  A knitter or other operatives were paid on piece rate and Doreen remembers if the machines weren’t working they had no pay.  In later years, however, operatives were allowed ‘waiting time’ or ‘down time’.  A boss would want to know why a machine had taken so long to repair.  Years ago, operatives took pride in their work and perfection was always preferred to quantity.  Operatives would also have their favourite knitters, work that was easy to welt or link, if an operative complained to the foreman about work coming from a particular knitter then the knitter would have to check his work and alter it accordingly.

Doreen had first gone back to work in 1959, just after Lynne had started school, because Jack had no work, and she hated it because Lynne was so unhappy.  Nicholls and Wileman were next to Wood Street School.  Doreen remembers having her hands examined and they wore gloves in order to protect stockings and countermen used cream on their hands.  Bennett’s dye works she found smelly, it was an awful place - unhealthy.  Gordon commented on a photo showing a man using shears to cut up large pieces of fabric, these days operatives doing this job would wear chain mail gloves.  Years ago people had tops of their fingers chopped-off, girls would sometimes get broken needles in their fingers, a machine having to be taken apart in order to free the operative.  One lady linker had part of a needle fly into her eye – ‘I don’t know how it missed her mouth!’ - always a sense of humour.  Looking at a photo of Jamie Bennett’s Christmas party from 1925, this is how it used to be,  tables set out, Doreen mentioning that they always used the splicer’s table – table clothes as well.  They had wine and acted silly.  On Friday afternoons Doreen and friends would hand sweets around to everyone, Gordon remembers at the factory in Barlestone they had cream cakes.  Gordon’s wife Jean was dressed up before they were married in 1952.  After being dressed up and before being tied to a lamp post girls would take sweets round to everyone.  There would have been a collection for the bride-to-be and she would have been given a present.

Doreen related a story told to her by Jack - one of the knitters wanted a blow-up doll which his fellow workers bought for him and tied to the back of his motor bike.  Things became more raunchy in later years - girls bringing vibrators into work for brides-to-be.  One operative who fancied one of the mechanics told him, ‘I’ve got a vibrator bigger than you’.  When Gordon first started work a gang of women could be frightening, and they would often put their names down in the works book so that he would have no choice but to go and see what needed repairing!  Gordon’s brother was ‘christened’ - as an apprentice counterman he had a funnel put down the front of his trousers and a ‘two bob’ put on his forehead and told if he could get the ‘two bob’ into the funnel he could keep the money.  What did happen was that a jug of tea was poured down the funnel! They were happy days, they worked long hours.  Gordon looked forward to the canteen lady coming round at 10 o’clock every morning and he’d have dripping cobs and two jam tarts every afternoon.  Factory life was compared to a family, ‘we’d have arguments but if anything went wrong you’d all stick up for each other’ and ‘you’d really find out what a person is like when you work with them’.

The conversation reverts to Saturday mornings when all the girls wore turbans to work to hide their curlers or ‘dinkies’.  Doreen commenting that the turban was put on in such a way that it looked nice.  Gordon continued his lament as to why girls look like navvies these days.  ‘Quality not in the music’. 

Doreen still receives a Christmas card from HJ Hall’s every year, ten years after Jack’s death.  While he was ill he received a bottle of wine and biscuits, he had only been at Hall’s for two years.

Gordon and Doreen continue to look at photos and stockings, ‘you had to put them on so carefully’!