Recorded Memories

Neville Evans Interview. February 1998.

 ‘At one time in the hosiery we must have been the best paid pieceworkers in the Midlands…we got terrific holiday pay’

‘When I went on the knitting at 18…earning more than me father…

£5-£6…my dad on £3’

Neville worked at Bennett Brothers, Hinckley from the age of 14 in 1934. He gives a good description of the various processes involved in producing a stocking.

His mother encouraged him to get himself a job in Hinckley, where good money could be earned thus enabling him to take his family abroad on holidays.
He trained as a knitter from the age of 17 and worked circular knitting machines for the rest of his working life (excluding the war years).

He discusses the changes which took place over time, for example from working 10 knitting machines when he started as a knitter to gradually, with innovation and technical advancement in the industry working up to 30 Italian knitting machines when he retired in the mid 1980s.
He notes that in the early days of his working life a B5 knitting machine, for instance, would take approximately 15 minutes to knit a stocking, by the time of his retirement a pair of tights could be knitted in 1½ minutes.

Neville met his wife, who was a fully fashioned back seamer, at a factory dance. He loved dancing and had taken dancing lessons from the age of 12.