Market Drayton branch was continually held up as a shining example.
Here, they had a manageress, and they probably took more money on a market day than lots of other shops took all week. Whitchurch and Wem were two other good shops. In all of the branches regarded as ‘worthy’, they sold ‘present’ tea, not ‘gift’, and the shops were always referred to as ‘present’ shops. Customers saved the coupons off the tea packets, and could then exchange them for a ‘present’. These ranged from a shining galvanized bucket or a scrubbing brush, through a fairly comprehensive range of household aids, for instance, you could save your tea coupons to exchange them for a present of a washboard! This was a ridged piece of galvanized metal in a wooden frame, which you held upright in a bowl of soapy water. Any item that was particularly dirty could then be draped over the board and scrubbed!
Presents also included print pinafores, and for the truly frivolous, pink rayon petticoats and, depending on your capacity for tea drinking, pink directoire knickers to match the petticoats.
I know all this because one Wednesday morning the post brought a letter from Mr. Hurd, the area inspector, asking that ‘Miss’, be sent to Market Drayton shop, as someone was off sick, and they would need help because it was market day. You will notice that all communication was by letter. Post Office telephones never made any money with Hunters help. There may have been a telephone at Head Office, even that is doubtful. Jimmy gave me five shillings to cover my train fare, and “have your dinner in a cafe, the firm will pay, but get the money off the manageress to give back to me.” The trains that ran on the Market Drayton line belonged to the ‘Great Western Railway Co.’ they were painted brown and cream, and eventually one came in, and chugged its way off to Market Drayton I enjoyed the walk from the station and soon found the shop.
It was very busy. I suppose most of the customers were farmer’s wives, they were all very big and fat, and the manageress was big and bouncy too, it was like being trapped in a balloon factory, every time I moved around the shop to get something I was assailed by enormous busts and bottoms! Some of them of course had tea coupons to exchange for presents and while most chose mundane things like ‘a good stiff yard brush’ or a ‘heavy quality mop bucket’, one or two had their sights fixed on the pink directoire knickers, the sizes of which were unbelievable to me, until I looked at the customer! The morning passed quickly and I went to a little cafe and had sausages and chips, and a piece of apple pie and custard and a cup of tea. One and nine pence. I was a bit worried about spending one and nine pence, and thought the limit might be one and six. However, at the end of the day the manageress refunded it together with my train fare, and thanked me for being such a good help.
Jimmy had waited at the shop for me so that I could: get my bicycle, and I made him laugh when I told him about being surrounded by so many fat people, I didn’t tell him about the pink knickers, I was too shy to mention them. I went quite often after that to several of the Shropshire shops, Whitchurch, Wem and Wellington.
I also went to the Macclesfield branch. This was a nice journey on the North Western bus, and the town was very attractive. The shop was rather dilapidated, and I was asked to hang my coat ’downstairs’. In fact it was the cellar, and in addition to it being crammed with stock it was the place where the staff had their ‘breaks’. There must have been a resident cat, and though I didn’t see it, the overpowering smell of it was everywhere, I was very thankful to get out for the dinner hour. A visit to a cafe of course. By this time I was quite blasé about spending two shillings on my lunch. During the afternoon I asked the manager where the toilet was. “Oh you have to go into the town, there isn’t one here”, he said. So I had to run down the hill into the town to the public toilets. I don’t know what he did; there was a pub a few doors away, so he probably went there. Even for the thirties those conditions at that shop were outrageous, and its surprising that they got away with it.
A little further along Victoria Street on the opposite side from Hunters, was ‘Seeds’, a very old-fashioned drapers shop. It was old-fashioned even for those days. The shop was dark and gloomy, no light could penetrate the windows, and they were piled high with so much stock. Rolls of curtain material, sheets, blankets, pillow cases and towels. A variety of cretonne and curtain net was draped down the inside of the windows. The assistants were all pale and serious, (who wouldn’t be, spending a working life in a dim dusty world, surrounded by uninteresting things). Behind the counters were wooden fixtures with boxes of the hated combinations, wool vests, interlock knickers, and hideous pink corsets reinforced with whalebone at the front, and two rows of eyelet holes down the back through which were threaded long pink laces (like shoe laces). Overweight women punished themselves unmercifully by forcing themselves into these instruments of torture. They certainly would not be able to get dressed in a hurry.
Mum bought some sheets from Seeds, double size, unbleached twill, nine shillings and sixpence a pair. They were a sort of fawn colour, but after being boiled about three times they came beautifully white. Every few weeks she would ask me to get a pair, if she was not coming into Crewe. I think she put half a crown from my wages each week in order to do this, and so she was able to amass quite a good stock of bed linen. She was very glad that she had done so, when the war started a few years later, and household linen became virtually unobtainable. Seeds had a veritable ‘spiders web’ of wires along which sped the little cups of money homing in to the cash desk. When you had been served, the assistant would take your money, make out the bill, then call, very importantly, “sign please” another assistant would come forward to check and see if it was right, and add her initials with a flourish then the bill and cash were put in the little cup which was sent whizzing along the wire.