I will leave my problems for the moment though to mention the fact that in that spring of 1935 the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary was celebrated. An enormous bonfire was lit on the top of the Warren, one of a chain, which was lit on high points throughout the land. .
Most of the young people went to see it lit. Faces glowed in the light of the fire, showers of sparks flew up into the night sky and an occasional puff of wind sent clouds of smoke billowing into the crowd. .
There were no fireworks, but no one noticed the lack, the fact that this was an unusual way to spend an evening was entertainment enough. We were a fairly typical example of country boys and girls, to most of whom, a trip to Manchester or Chester would have been an event. It would have been hard to imagine then, that of that number round the fire that night, many would find themselves in a few short years, in the sands of North Africa, Burma, and on the beaches of France. .
The aunties came from Manchester to stay for a few days. They had no helpful suggestions to offer, but it was always pleasant when they came. Meals were a bit more special; we went out somewhere each day on the bus, and scented soap appeared to wash with. Normally we had what was called White Windsor soap, ‘for toilet use’ it was sold in cardboard packets containing two half -pound blocks. Whenever visitors were expected, Mum produced a tablet of ‘Lux’ or ‘Palmolive’. While the aunts were staying, arrangements were made for my usual months holiday in Manchester, but shortly after they returned home, we heard that ‘Diamonds’ in Crewe wanted a junior assistant. .
It was a large dress shop in Market Street. Sammy Diamond and his wife were Jewish, and had had a market stall, then started with modest premises, gradually acquiring more until they had a very imposing store. The clothes they sold were good quality and fashionable, but there was no such thing as teenage fashions. When you were too old for children’s styles and sizes, you had what were called ‘Maids’ for girls, and ‘Youths’ for boys. They were just scaled down versions of the adult styles, nothing colourful or exciting, and no trousers for girls. So working in a dress shop was not much more exciting than working in an ironmongers as far as I was concerned. .
I did, though, secretly yearn for bought clothes as opposed to home made ones, and thought that there may be some ‘shop soiled bargains’ going for ‘the staff’. Mum took me to see Mrs. Diamond, a fat ugly little woman who just looked at me and said, “She can start next week, the job isn’t here though, it’s at our household shop in Earle Street”. This was a shop where they sold all household linens, towels, sheets, curtain material and curtain net. Upstairs was glass and china. .
During the interview, (if you could call it that) I was not addressed personally, being merely a meek bystander, listening to Mum agreeing that I would be at the Earle Street shop at eight thirty the following Monday morning, suitably dressed in a navy blue or black dress with a white collar. Assurances were given that I would do my best, be well behaved, and willing, all for five shillings a week! I simply did not dare to say that the prospect filled me with dread, because by this time Mum was very much less than pleased with her problem daughter. The next day she made me a navy blue dress with a white collar, and all I can say about that is, I was thankful that it was not black! We went to Manchester for the weekend, returning on the Sunday. No more long holidays for me. I arrived at the Earle Street shop on Monday morning, truly determined to make the best of it. .
The manageress was called Miss Williams, and there were four other assistants all much older than me, all in black dresses, which, presumably because they did not show the dirt, had not been washed for some considerable time. Miss Williams had blonde frizzy hair, and I shouldn’t t think her dress had been washed for months. Consequently the smell of stale perspiration was overpowering! My first task was to mop the entrance and the shop floor, then polish the wooden counters, and dust the fixtures where endless rolls of cretonne curtain material, curtain net, and other household linens were kept. .
There were umpteen boxes of tray cloths and supper cloths. These were about a yard square, and if friends came in for an evening, a supper cloth was laid corner ways on the table before the sandwiches and home made cakes were brought in. Proving, that although we lived a long way from the big cities we knew the correct way to do things! .
Lots of people embroidered them, and the Miss Bagguleys mentioned earlier, did a fine trade in ready traced linen ones. Small skeins of ‘Clarke’s Stranded Cotton’ were two pence each, and could be had in a great variety of pretty colours, inspiring the most unlikely needlewomen, (that included me) to try their hand at ‘lazy daisy’ and 1satin stitch’. .
The ones we sold in Diamonds were machine embroidered of course, and regarded as inferior to hand worked ones. There were also many boxes of Duchess sets, these were in sets of four mats, two large and two small, and if you possessed a dressing table it was not complete without a Duchess set. Again, these were in infinite variety, round, oval, square, imitation lace, embroidered, plain, all, in white or what was called ecru, a sort of pale coffee colour. .
The prices ranged from one and eleven pence halfpenny, to five and eleven pence halfpenny, at the latter price it would be a wedding present or a twenty first birthday! All prices were in these odd sums; traders felt that one and eleven pence halfpenny sounded so much cheaper than two shillings. It was not unusual for a customer to come in and inspect all the boxes then say, ‘I’ m sorry, I’ll have to leave it, its not for me you see, I’m shopping for a friend’. That was the classic get out. When lunchtime came, one-o-clock ‘till two-o-clock, I could walk round the town after I had eaten my sandwiches and drunk my flask of tea. I walked round ‘Woolworth’s’ until I was dizzy. It was the only walk round store at that time. No ‘Marks and Spencer’s’ or ‘British Home Stores’. .
Everything in Woolworth’s was sixpence or less, and it was amazing what could be bought for these small sums. To quote a few examples: ‘Tokalon’, ‘Betty Lou’ and ‘Icilma’ face powder, ‘Tangee’ lipstick, ‘Californian Poppy’ and ‘Ashes of Roses’ perfume, all sixpence. ‘Amami’ shampoo was three pence. This was a small quantity of what was probably soap powder, with a dash of perfume added, it was quite an innovation, and ‘Friday night is Amami night’ became their selling slogan. Up till then, soft soap was generally used for washing hair, this was sold in one pound and two pound tins, it was like soap jelly and was also widely used for washing floors! I don’t remember any liquid shampoos until a few years later. All manner of items for the kitchen were sixpence, and that included pans and kettles, buckets, brooms and bowls. You could get a fountain pen for sixpence, (ball pens had yet to be invented), Woolworth’s pens had steel nibs, whereas Blackbird and Waterman pens had gold nibs, but could cost five shillings, or even more, (a weeks wages for a pen!) .
I did not use make up, and the kitchenware did not interest me, the toys I was too old for, although there were lots of really good toys for sixpence. The only counter I was really fascinated by was the stationary. All those lovely fresh writing and drawing pads! I did occasionally buy a three penny one, which, when I got it home, I filled with stories and poems. I suppose I was a dreamer and really fancied myself as a writer. Most, of course were consigned to the dustbin, but one was kept, mainly, I think because the book was a hard backed sixpenny one, Gill has it now. I do not intend to sound self-pitying when I say I had very little money to spend, it was just a fact of life for most people. My wages just paid my fare to work, and a shilling a week to spend. So you can see that I was not sent to work for what I could contribute to the housekeeping! .
The days seemed never ending. The shop closed at seven-o-clock on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday; Wednesday (half day) one-o-clock, Friday, nine-o-clock, Saturday, eight-o-clock. It was not a busy shop, and when I’d finished my cleaning and dusting, there were long periods when I had nothing to do. I was not allowed to serve anyone, and the other assistants used to talk to each other but not directly to me, not that I wanted them to, their conversation was mostly crude and vulgar. I was thoroughly unhappy, and could see no way out of it, I felt I had to try to like it even though I knew it was impossible. Salvation was to come in a strange way. .
When I had been at the shop for two weeks, Miss. Williams said, “You are going to be the cash girl from Monday”. No preliminaries, no explanation of what the job entailed. I did not know whether they had had a cash girl before, or whether it was a new idea. In the two weeks that I had been there the assistants had each gone to get their own change when serving a customer. On the Monday morning I was shown the cash drawer. This was literally a drawer at the end of the counter, containing two tins and a spike file. Miss. Willams put five pounds of silver coins, and five shillings worth of copper into each of the tins; that was my petty cash. The assistants each had a small notepad attached to their dresses by a length of string and a pin. The top sheet on the pad had Diamonds name and address, then a piece of carbon paper and a plain sheet. When a customer was served, the assistant wrote down the goods and price, then called, ‘sign please’ and one of the others would initial the transaction to verify the fact that 2yds of curtain net @ 1/11d was indeed 3/10d and that the customer had tendered a ten shilling note, or four shillings, or two half crowns, as the case may be, they then came to me for the change, leaving the duplicate for my spike file, and giving the customer the top copy. It was all very simple. As I have said, the shop was not busy, at least not at the beginning of the week, Thursday, Friday and Saturday were reasonably busy, and for the first part of the week I felt a little happier about the job. Nothing could ever have made me like it but I did feel a bit important and thought that being in charge of the cash drawer was perhaps more glorified than being allowed to cut curtain net. All went well until the Thursday, when we, (Miss Williams and I) counted the cash and added up the slips off the spike, deducted the petty cash, and the remaining money was sixpence short. Miss Williams was very sniffy about it, but said we would have to leave it or she would miss her train. She traveled on the same train as me; she lived at Kidsgrove. We had to get a bus from the square to the station but she always sat well away from me, and carefully chose a different carriage on the train. I’m sure she did this because she felt too grand to be seen with a junior member of staff. Little did she know how relieved I was to be free from the overpowering smell of her! That night on the train I was sick with worry over the sixpence, I felt confident that I had not made a mistake over anyone’s change, because I counted it out carefully and was in any case pretty good with money. The next morning Miss Williams put the petty cash in the tins with a dire warning not to have a repetition of the previous day, and mentioned that “we haven’t found that sixpence yet, don’t forget”. As if I could. All that day I took absolute care and knew it could not possibly be wrong. As it was Friday we were quite busy and several times two of the assistants would come to the drawer together, and one would say, “I’ll help myself”, which she did. Cashing up time came and we were a shilling short that night. I was very near to tears under the onslaught of Miss. Williams’ fury. Foolishly I did not say that the others had been getting their own change, because I did not dare to suggest that they might have made a mistake. I felt ill all that weekend, and when Monday morning came I dreaded the thought of that drawer, which despite all my efforts, might very well fiendishly contrive to be short again. It was, another shilling this time. I was demented, we had not been very busy and I just knew that I had not made any mistakes. I’m forgetting to say that I went out every day at lunchtime and the drawer was not locked, and two of the assistants stayed to lunch! The significance of this never crossed my mind at the time. Being totally honest myself, I never visualized anyone else not being the same. That horrifying week dragged on, and each night the deficit varied, on the Thursday it was two shillings short, and on Friday, half-a-crown! I just thought that there was no one in the world as miserable as me. I hadn’t said anything at home about this enormous weight of worry that I was struggling under, but the half crown shortage on the Friday night, coupled with the almost maniacal rage of Miss. Williams cracked my resolve. When I got home I collapsed in hysterical tears, when I had quietened down, Mum said, “You mustn’t upset yourself, you know you have not had the money, it must be one of the others getting the wrong change,” because I had told her about them helping themselves sometimes, yet, on the other hand on some of the days at the beginning of the week they hadn’t done that and it was still short. It was like living in a nightmare. .
I turned up on the Saturday morning, sick with apprehension, and sure enough we were two shillings short again. Strangely though, Miss. Williams did not fly into her usual rage, she just seemed tight lipped, and just before we all went home she gave us all our wage packets. This was always how we were paid. The packets came from Head Office, and were given to us at eight-o-clock on Saturday night when the shop closed. I suppose the reason for this was, that if they had been given out earlier, say, six-o-clock for instance, some mad fool may have decided to quit then, thereby depriving the employer of two hours work! Well, I was handed my packet, which felt strangely light, it had contained two half crowns on previous weeks. I did not say anything but thought, ‘they’ve stopped the shortages out of my wages’ and I‘ve got nothing. Though why they had given me an empty packet was a mystery. When I got home I handed it to Mum, who opened it and inside was a ten shilling note and a tiny typed slip of paper on which was written, ‘two weeks wages in lieu of notice’, nothing more, so I said “What does it mean?” “It means you’ve got the sack”. Said Mum. .
Of course I was very upset but Mum and Dad said, Don’t cry about it, the job was not worth the worry, we know you did your best, and Dad said ‘folks like that are not worth working for, you’ re better away from there’. I was very comforted by their attitude to what I thought was a calamity, and then came the wonderful feeling that I had no need to go to that hated job again. It was not until years later when I was more experienced in the ways of the world that I realized that Head Office had assumed that either, I had been taking the money, or I was an incompetent idiot. I am fairly certain that someone was helping herself, it must have been so easy. The fact that the sum short was always a complete coin, sixpence, a shilling, two shilling piece, half a crown, bears out this theory, if a mistake in change had been made, some odd sums would have occurred