Recorded Memories

O'Rouke Sisters Interview. December 2000.

Three London Girls: Working life at the Argee 1940-1974 ‘Pierre made heaps of difference here, he was a wonderful man’

‘Kids couldn’t wait to join the Argee workforce…we took on so many learners’

During interview the sisters continue to look at photos and every now and again interrupt to talk about the various people they recognise.

People often surprised by their age. Kids couldn’t wait to join the Argee workforce - ‘we took on so many learners…school leavers, sometimes we had a dozen at a time - two-three times a year’. Sisters continue to look at photos and recognise various people. Alice was foremisses, a job which Lynne did before Alice came up to Earl Shilton but Alice had four years experience so took over the position, at first not keen, ‘take the rough with the smooth’. If garments were stitched incorrectly then examiners would send them back to be redone, girls not happy about this because they weren’t earning. It takes three times as long - ‘you do it, undo it, do it again… I was answerable to the boss’. When company first relocated to Earl Shilton 20 girls and forelady came up from London.

The Argee held onto their girls as long as possible especially if they were good. Alice left the Argee when she was 58 in 1974 (two years before state pension). She didn’t want a job with any responsibility and got herself a job as a cutter at Parrot’s on Bond Street, Hinckley. At the Argee, everything colour coded - pink, white and blue, occasionally skin tone, completely different to Parrot’s which ‘was a mess’. At the Argee Lynne and Em were asked to do samples for new styles and there was some bad feeling about this, some girls thought they were getting preferential treatment. When Alice left school at the age of 14 she worked in a tailoring factory but went into underwear for which she was much better suited. The family lived between Hackney Marshes and Victoria Park. They were a poor family and their mother was a wonderful manager and everything was shared. WW2 brought them up to Earl Shilton when the factory relocated. The three sisters borrowed money to buy their own house in 1947 and they paid £6.11s.7d a week. When they first moved in they had a wardrobe and their bikes. Their family home in London was rented off an aunt and their father felt they had ‘a millstone round their neck’ when they bought their own place. Their mum and dad came to visit the sisters in their new home and their father, particularly ‘loved it up here’. When their father died Lynne went back home to look after their mother but eventually came back accompanied by their mum who came to live with them in Barwell. They refer to their mother as being ‘gorgeous’. Their father they remember always wore a bowler hat on a Sunday and a flat cap during the week.

One memory they do have when they first came up to Earl Shilton to live was that the men always wore caps to work and they carried a little bag with handles, this they found very funny, ‘we howled…it was rude of us’. The Argee was built up from nothing, no canteen or cloakroom when they arrived, at lunch time they would take a walk down Leicester Hill for fresh air. While looking at photos the sisters recognise a friend’s husband, Cyril Bott and remembered his soft hands, ‘hands…ladies hands.’ The girls in the factory saved every week towards factory outings and the sisters did the same at home, using a savings tin – the tin had belonged to a friend.