East End mother c.1930
Bryant and May Match Factory c.1968
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I hadn’t had any schooling, since I was twelve. So I got myself in at Bryant and May’s, the match factory. It was just round the corner from where I lived. Dad said, “You can always get a proper job, what you like, when the war’s over.” Famous last words…Oh, the noise from all the machinery, oh dear! But it wasn’t a bad place.
Grace Verlander
Bryant and May Match factory 1961
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I worked on the machines, the matches, and sweeping up.
I liked to work on a little
machine where you put the sand on the Swan Vestas boxes.
All factories are repetitive.
So you’ve just got to take your mind off it, or sing a song.
But the conditions were quite good. They had a dentist, a chiropodist, and they had a matron there all the time.
Anyway, somehow I got voted onto the union.
Grace Verlander
I worked at Cohen Whelan’s in the cheroot factory rolling cigars. I got fourteen bob a week. I felt rich! I give my mother ten bob, and I had four. And I went out and bought myself a new hat!
Caroline Wheeler
After my daughter was born, I haven’t worked since…I wanted to be a good mother.
Stella Smith
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FACT: Until the Sex Discrimination Act was passed in 1975, women could still be sacked when they got married.
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East End women c.1930
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| They’ve come on a lot, women.
They’re still not treated equal though.
Marion Davies
The only time my mother ever missed a day’s work was when she had another baby.
Vera Caley
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East End women c.1930
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| FACT: In 1931, 44% of women were in some form of employment. In 2001, this figure had increased to 77%. |
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During the war women started going to work and earning money. Before then most women weren’t really allowed to go to work. When I got married, I had to leave my job at the paint factory. Your husband didn’t like you going to work. I got so fed up that I went out and got a job anyway. My mum had a big row with me. She said, “What are you going to work for? Can’t he keep you then?” I didn’t take no notice. I still went.
Hilda Kennedy
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Hilda Kennedy 1940’s
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Gloria Lacey, (first left) on holiday at Ramgate, August 1945, with Mum (Rose), Dad (George), Aunt Mill (Millicent) and brother George.
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We went to Daniel Street School. There was a little flat in the building, made up of a kitchen, bedroom and dining room. We were taught how to make beds, to do the washing and the cooking. It was all more or less preparing us to be housewives for when we left school at fifteen and got married. I enjoyed it. I didn’t bunk off or anything like that.
Gloria Lacey
Lil Murrell, centre-left, during a cookery and housekeeping class 1936
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It must have been about 1924. My headmaster was very angry because I’d passed the Eleven Plus, but we were too hard up for me to stay at school or go to college. We’d never even had the money to buy the uniform. I said to the headmaster, “I’m leaving school. I’m fourteen on Friday and I won’t be coming to school anymore.” He wanted me to stay on but I couldn’t. I knew I’d have to get a job. I was fourteen on the Friday when I left, and on Saturday morning I got up early, went out and got a job.
Caroline Wheeler |
I’ll tell you what I used to use for lipstick. The wallpaper on the wall used to have roses on it, and you’d get the paper rose and wet it to get the dye. And before we’d go home to our dad, we’d go into somebody’s yard and wash it off.
Lil Murley |
Marion Davies, lifting 225lbs, 1948
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My husband only lived a little way up Commercial Road, his family had the dairy Williams and Jones. The dairy had cows at the back and people would come with jugs and get the milk straight from the cow. Then came health and safety and the cows had to be removed, so my husband took up bodybuilding and weight training and the cow shed became a muscle shed. One chap he trained, we entered him for Mr. East London and he won it.
I went in for Miss East London and
I won it. But the only reason I won it was because I was the only one that entered.
Marion Davies |
I wanted to learn. I wanted to educate myself. I wanted to get away from the way I was brought up. I became a rebel and my dad used to be very wary of me because I wanted to do the things that he thought were wrong for a girl to do.
Tabitha Samuel
I did start working as
a dental nurse, and I quite liked that, before I got married. But the hours was too long, and I just couldn’t cope with the hours and being a new wife, with the housework and everything else. So I had to give that up. It wasn’t long after that I fell pregnant. So that was the end of me going to work until they was old enough. Then me and my husband started being publicans. And I’ve been a publican, on and off, for thirty years.
Linda Bragg |
Miriam McLeod's mother in the family shop
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My mother joined the Communist Party long before my father did. She believed strongly that communism offered the working classes equality and opportunity. She used to go to Party meetings and help take the collection. And she used to have political discussions with travelling salesmen when they came into our shop. She would sit them down and feed them with cheesecake and strudel, while trying to convert them to communism.
The Communist Party gave my mother a recognition of herself as a person that she didn’t get at home, because she cooked for eight people, she washed for eight people. In fact she often used to say: “At home I am a nobody; outside I’m somebody!” We did not appreciate this at the time. We thought she should be at home doing things for us. It’s only when you grow up and want your own recognition as a woman that you realise how important your parents were, and your mum in particular.
Miriam McLeod
Given my background, if I had been born at the end of the 19th Century I would have been a suffragette.
Miriam McLeod
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Doris Nisbet “looking for a needle in a haystack”, Somerset, 1942
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She was a good Grandmother, she really was. I got married in March ’45 but my husband died in January ’48. So I was only married for two years and ten months. After he died my gran looked after my baby while I went to work.
I worked in a shop up the dock.
I got fifteen shillings a week.
Doris Nisbet |
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