Recorded Memories
Maureen Smart
Interviews. 1997 & 1998.
'Forty-six years working at Flude Hosiery from the mid 1940s.
Continually adapting to change and working as a factory union rep:’
'They’ll never cut out fully fashioned seaming, there’ll always be fully fashioned stockings – foolish!’
‘Second year I went [Jersey] I was 21 in the September – still on rationing then – I wanted a party…I parcelled my clothes up and sent them home…and brought back food in my case, my landlady got me some ham…’
Maureen talks about the holidays she went on -
Bournemouth was the first holiday with a friend, then the following two years she went to
Jersey with a group of friends, a return flight cost £15 return. This was still
the time of rationing and Maureen remembers filling her case full of food in
preparation for her 21st birthday party. Values entirely different
then, did not have a baby out of wedlock. Young people tended to go out in
groups. Maureen’s mother was brought up by an aunt and uncle. Her paternal
grandmother was 90 when she died and Maureen remembers her reminiscing – she was
married in grey silk at the age of about 29 and as a young girl worked in
service in Sapcote and walked there and back every day. Life was hard for women
in those days – washing took all day and Maureen remembers that as children they
were put into the copper for a bath. She remembers electricity being connected
to the house and how they all sat and watched their mother using the new
electric iron. Maureen was born in the house she still lives in and her mother
was able to buy the house which was just two doors away from the grandparents.
Nothing was ever wasted – all the peelings were boiled for the poultry, chickens
were reared in the house near the fire. In her grandparents and parents day
there were quite a few theatres in the town and artists stayed with the local
people. Maureen remembers a bull escaping (it was being taken to the slaughter
house) and charging around Derby Road.
|
|
|
|
|