Beti Davies , Voices from the Factory Floor
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Beti was born on 30th August, 1930. Her parents had always lived in Glyn Ceiriog where her father worked in a factory. She left Llangollen grammar school when she was eleven years old to look after her mother. (Her mother died of cancer at the age of forty one.) Her father wanted her to return to school but they couldn’t afford it. She returned to school when she was thirteen, but it was in Glyn Ceiriog, and she left a year later in order to start work in the woollen factory. The year was 1944. She left school in the July and began work in August. She had friends who were already working there. When she was in the grammar school she had wanted to become a teacher but says she wasn’t too disappointed that this didn’t happen, as she enjoyed working in the factory.
She got the job as the owner of the factory lived in the village and her father asked him if there was work there for her. She wasn’t interviewed. Her first job there was making the bobbins and she had to learn on the job as she didn’t receive any training, even though she had never sewed at home.
The factory was a large three storey building with a mill underneath. Beti worked on the second floor where it was cold there. There were six or seven girls working there, and were on their feet all day. She started work at half past seven and finished at half past five, and had half an hour for lunch. She didn’t have enough time to go home for lunch so everybody brought their own food and went down to the mill to eat it.
After a year working on the bobbins, she went on to work on the fabric for coats and suits on a loom machine which was noisy and fast. Even though she was on her feet all day she didn’t feel tired, as she was young. She also worked every Saturday, from seven until half past twelve. There was a quarter of an hour break in the morning and in the afternoon, and she had to take her own flask of tea.
The factory produced blankets on eight of the looms and fabric for coats and suits on the other three.
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Beti’s cousin worked at the factory, and later on her sister came to work there for a short period. It was a place where everybody knew each other. She enjoyed the work, even though the factory was very noisy, and it wasn’t possible to chat, apart from break times. They didn’t wear anything to protect their ears and got used to the noise. The coat fabric was made from white wool and would be sent to Runcorn to be dyed. The material for the bobbins came from Bradford by train. The bobbins she made went into big baskets to be used on the looms, and there was a basket of looms next to every machine. The machines never stopped.
16:00 Her starting wage was five shillings which didn’t seem much at the time. After a month it rose to six shillings and by the time she left at twenty years old she was earning twenty three shillings and sixpence.
She once bought a smart coat with a velvet collar from them:
“A piece of fabric had gone away and they’d received a letter back saying that there were a lot of knots in it, but if we wanted to buy a coat we could. It was camel coat in duck egg blue, and we could buy the coat for five pounds, and they would take five shillings from our pay each week until we’d paid the five pounds. And somebody told me that those coats were worth twenty five pounds in the shops because they were made from the best material.”
Beti looked after the home as well. She gave most of her wages to her father but kept two half crowns for herself. Her father couldn’t work due to ill health so at that time she was the only member of the family bringing money in apart from a small sum that her father got from some club in the quarry. At one point the family was living on seventeen shillings a week, and times were hard. Many families were in the same situation. As the eldest daughter Beti would cook for the family.
20:00 She went to the Band of Hope in the chapel every Wednesday night and spent her spare time in the village.
There was no union in the factory. She doesn’t recall anyone ever asking for higher wages. There were no other places of employment in the area apart from the quarry and the woollen factory. Facilities in the factory were poor with an outside toilet. It was very draughty because of holes in the roof, and it was cold. They had to work in their coats sometimes. It was light enough in the factory and Beti remembers that there was electricity there.
The boss’s name was W. A. Dennison, and he was from Yorkshire. He moved to the factory in 1940. He would be at the factory every day, in the office, keeping an eye on the workers all the time and didn’t speak much. He was a typical Englishman. The workers were all Welsh, including the supervisor. Two men worked there – one of whom was the supervisor who facilitated the work on the bobbins, and the other fixed the machines when the arm was broken or the shuttle had come out, which could be dangerous. Men and women got on well together as they were all from the village and were all on the same level. There was a good atmosphere there and it was a happy place to work.
Everybody was aware that the work could be dangerous, eg if the shuttle came out it could knock somebody. She doesn’t remember any accidents at all. The boss didn’t look after them but walked around a lot.
27:20 The girls were of a similar age and would start in the factory after leaving school. Older women had been working there but during her time there they were all young. Women would carry on working there after getting married.
Beti was there for six years and was nearly twenty years old when she left. There was talk of the factory closing. The Forestry Commission had a nursery nearby in Oswestry where some girls had jobs, and her cousin worked there. The wages were better there too – two pounds fifty – so she went to work there until she got married even though it was further away from her home, meaning she had to cycle to work instead of walking. She was trying to save money in order to get married but it was impossible to do this on the wages she was paid in the woollen factory.
30:20 She wore her own clothes to work at the factory, with an overall over them as there was a lot of oil there. The workers had to provide their own overalls. There were no perks or bonuses at Christmas time. It was hard work but a happy time in her life. She had a lot of responsibility at home but when she was in the factory she felt the same as all the other young girls.
34:00 She remembers the GWR lorries delivering materials to the factory. Some of the girls and her asked for a lift down to the village one lunch time. The driver took them too far and they had to shout at him to get him to stop. They had to walk all the way back by one o’clock before the boss got back.
Beti tells the story of how the boss used to put the clock back towards the end of the day:
“I’d noticed after looking at the clock that it was five o’clock . . . I saw an arm going up and pushing the clock back ten minutes. I told the girls and after he’d gone home we grabbed the measuring stick and pushed the hand forward and it came off. It was on the floor and was still there the day after, and we all expected to be called into the office, but heard nothing.”
She had a son approximately four years after leaving the factory. She didn’t return to the Forestry Commission but looked after her father until he died. She got a part-time job cleaning in a school a while after that.
She left the wool factory a year before it closed in 1951. By then were buses to take people to other places to work such as the nearby towns.
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