One evening in early January 1937, there was an advertisement in the ‘Sentinel’ for a junior assistant at ‘Hunters’ The Tea men, Victoria Street Crewe. I said I would go on my bicycle the following morning to apply for the job. Now, Mum usually did her shopping in Crewe, but always at the ‘Home and Colonial’ or the ‘Maypole’. .
There were quite a lot of ‘multiple’ grocers, with branches in most towns. They were bright, smart shops, with mainly white tiled walls, black and white tiled floors, plenty of bright lights, lots of assistants, mostly young men, and usually a boy, recently promoted from an errand boy to a coveted job ‘behind the counter1. The ‘Home and Colonial’, and ‘Lipton’s’ were among the larger shops, then came the ‘Maypole Dairy Co’, and the ‘Meadow Dairy’. These last two started out as just specialists in butter, cheese, and related dairy produce, but they gradually increased their range to grocery lines as well. Then came ‘Melias’, and definitely bottom of the scale as regards style and quality came ‘Hunters’. .
All the multiples sold popular, essential foods at competitive prices, as opposed to the small private grocer, who stocked a far greater range of high quality goods, allowed their customers to have monthly or quarterly accounts, knew all their customers little likes and dislikes, and, in short, catered for those who could pay for quality and service. There were not many of these in Crewe in the Thirties! All the multiples had branches all over the country, but Hunters had only two hundred shops, with the Head Office in Hyde Road, Manchester. The branches were spread over Lancashire, parts of Yorkshire, Cheshire, and Shropshire. They catered for the very poor. The premises were clean but very old fashioned. A few white tiles behind the provision counter, which was white marble, as were the shelves at the back of the provision window, on which the bacon was displayed. The rest of the shop was dingy, inadequate lighting, a wooden floor, dark brown wooden fixtures, no concession to modernity at all. The directors were hardheaded Lancashire businessmen, who did not believe in spending ‘brass’ on non-essentials. Mum was quite keen for me to apply for the job, though she did say that it was a shop she had never been in to! It was a wet morning when I parked my bike outside the shop, the layout of which, I will describe briefly. .
Fronting on to Victoria Street was a square ‘provision’ window, then a recessed doorway, and a large rounded window turning into Market Terrace. The shop was long and narrow, and on the Market Terrace side were several flat windows along the length of the shop. The wooden floor was thickly covered in sawdust. I must just say that you would find sawdust on the floor in all grocery shops those days, no matter Whether the floors were tiled or covered in linoleum, private grocers or multiples, they all put sawdust down. It served two purposes, one, it soaked up the moisture brought in on customers feet in wet wintry weather, and it also prevented anyone from slipping on any bits of fat or grease that frequently found their way onto the floor. Behind the shop were two fairly large storerooms, a big yard and a building that may have been a stable in years past. Upstairs were offices rented to an accountant, who had a separate entrance in Market Terrace. The manager of the shop was Jimmy Pennell, and he came forward to greet me when I went in to ask about the job. He was of medium height, light brown hair, not what you could call handsome, but a very friendly pleasant face. He was about the same age as Dad. He introduced me to the only other member of the staff, Tommy Jones. He was tall, with fair curly hair, and a very infectious grin. Mr. Pennell explained that he could not give me the job, only a form to fiill in to send to ‘Head Office’, but he said he would like me to get the job, as, ‘we have not had a girl assistant before’. I took ‘he form home and filled it in, the final question was, ‘state salary expected’ “What shall I put?” I asked Mum “Oh I should put ten shillings a week, she said, they can always knock it down a bit if they are not willing to pay that much”, so very daringly I put ten shillings, and sent off the form! Of course in those days a letter that caught the evening post would be delivered to its destination early the next morning, at the cost of a three-halfpenny stamp. So on the Friday morning I had word from Hunters to report to the Victoria Street shop, that day. No mention was made of my presumptuous request for ten shillings a week, but in fact that was the amount of my wages for quite a long time. On that first Friday morning I went on the bus. (Eight pence return). The shop did not close until nine-o -clock in the evening, so it was going to be a long day. In fact the time passed very quickly. The two men treated me very kindly. They called me “Miss”, just that, not Miss Rosson, and certainly never Brenda! They were Mr. Pennell and Mr. Jones to all the customers, and only members of Tommy’s vast number of brothers and sisters ever called him by his first name. .
On arriving, I was given a cup of hot strong tea into which Tommy stirred a large spoonful of sweetened condensed milk. I did not like the taste but could not bring myself to say so, they were obviously so anxious to make me feel welcome. It was the first of many such cups, and I did manage to acquire a taste for it over the years. So many things amazed me, like the bread piled high on two makeshift tables at either side of the doorway. Two pound, unwrapped, box shaped loaves, they sold at four pence halfpenny. Wrapped loaves were five pence. (No sliced bread yet!) I remember most of the prices because they were constant for a long time. One of the best sellers was the skimmed sweetened condensed milk, used, as I have said for our tea at the shop, and used by about three quarters of the customers regularly. The price was two tins for four pence halfpenny, and large letters on the tin, proclaimed it UNFIT FOR BABIES, lots of babies those days were fed on Nestles or Fussels milk, the difference being that these two brands were made from full cream milk, whereas there was very little food value in the skimmed kind, though I would not be at all surprised if some desperate mothers gave the cheap kind sometimes. Tommy asked me to help him with an order he was putting up for a customer; it was to be delivered later by the errand boy after school. The first item was ‘twenty four loaves’, so I thought it must be for a small shop or a school. When I said this, Tommy laughed and said, “No they’ve just got a big family like ours. I’ m one of fourteen children. When we were all at home we only had three chairs, so it was my turn to sit down every other Friday.” He joked like this the whole time. In fact, though it was true that there were fourteen of them, they had not been brought up in poverty. The father worked on the Railway, and of course there were always one or two older ones working, to help to keep the younger ones. .
They were a happy family, and all seemed to have Tommy’s gift for seeing humour in every situation. I got to know most of them in time, though at first it seemed that every second person who came into the shop was introduced as ‘our Bet, our Nell, our Alfie, etc. Tommy’s wife, Tilly, was very pretty with dark wavy hair and lovely brown eyes. She too had a great sense of humour, but as she used to say, I’d have to have, to marry into this family”! Head of it all, the lynch pin, was “our Mam”. Surprisingly, a very quiet woman, but as Tommy used to say, “We let her talk at Christmas”. They were a great crowd. We continued with the order, ‘twenty four tins of condensed milk, four pounds of margarine, (five pence a pound) Two quart bottles of ‘Hammonds Chop Sauce’, one red, one brown. This cost sixpence a bottle, it must have been mainly diluted vinegar with a little colouring, but it sold very well. Smaller bottles of the same thing were two pence. I cannot of course remember everything on the order, but the last items were, two large tins of pink salmon, (five pence a tin) and two large tins of pineapple cubes, (five pence halfpenny a tin). These would be for Sunday tea. It must have been a family with several members working. I remember the address was Bluebell Cottage, which really was the name; it‘s funny how bluebells will get into this story, even in unlikely places. It was out at Coppenhall and perhaps in the distant past there may have been Bluebells in the vicinity. Towards the middle of the morning we had tea and biscuits. The kettle for making the tea stood on a gas ring that was balanced on an upturned biscuit tin at the bottom of the cellar steps. The cellar was large and was used as a storeroom for bacon, cheese, and butter, among other things. There was no fridge, so the cellar was the coolest place. When ‘dinner time’ came, Tommy went home as he lived in Albert Street, which was quite near to the shop. .
Jimmy Pennell lived out at Wistaston with his wife Lucy. They had no family, it seemed a pity, and he would have made a lovely ‘dad’. Lucy was not pretty but she had a very pleasant nature, and was soon inviting me to tea. Back to my first Friday though, Jimmy and I had our sandwiches and more ‘sticky tea’, sitting on two boxes, the food and drink on an upturned tea chest that served as a table. This was in the back storeroom, and two hundred weight sacks of sugar, smaller sacks of peas, rice, and barley etc surrounded us on all sides. In fixtures along one wall, again, these were tea chests, were slabs of cake made by the ‘Park Cake Co’. ‘Regal’ was ‘jam and cream’, a dry Madeira type, very yellow, and, through the centre, like a thread of red cotton was a layer of red sweet substance that purported to be jam, and about an inch below that was a layer of what I suppose was the cheapest margarine with a little added sugar. It sold very well at sixpence a pound. That was not the cheapest cake, at four pence halfpenny came ‘currant cake’. This again was bright yellow, dry, and certainly here and there were one or two tiny currants. Then there was ‘Dorset’, and surprisingly this was only five pence halfpenny a pound, yet it had quite a lot of sultanas and even a few chopped nuts on top! The most expensive, therefore the one we sold least of, was ‘Genoa’, in addition to currants and sultanas, this had a few halved glace cherries, but at eight pence a pound not many could afford it. The dinner hour passed pleasantly, sitting on our boxes in front of a bright fire. Jimmy told me that he had been ‘first hand’ at ‘Liptons’; so becoming a manager was a step up, though he was a bit apprehensive about the future, as he was the eleventh manager in two years at that particular branch of Hunters! Later, I was to discover the reason for this terrific turnover in managers. During the afternoon we became reasonably busy and Tommy said “you can try your hand at serving, I’ll just check your change for a while ‘till you get used to it”. .
Money taken for grocery was put in a ‘National Cash Register’ Till. Provision money went into a ‘Gledhill’ Till. This was a wooden box with a little window in the top, inside was a roll of paper, and each time money was put in the assistant wrote the amount beneath the window, and as the drawer was opened a bell rang And the paper moved up one space. My first sale was a ‘Tip Top‘ malt loaf from a pile on the counter, price two pence halfpenny. After that I became quite confident. Some customers ordered goods, paid for them, then left them to be parceled up and delivered by the errand boy. The parcels had to be neatly packed and tied tightly with strong twine. The errand bicycles were specially constructed with a very deep basket at the front, and it was amazing how many parcels could be packed into it. It was very dangerous and it is surprising that we there were not a lot of accidents. I’ve seen quite small boys setting off on a round, just able to see over the top of a load of parcels. Not everyone could afford to ‘order and pay’, despite the fact that the cheapest tea was Four pence halfpenny a quarter, and sugar was four pence halfpenny For two pounds. The sugar was stacked under the counter, all weighed by hand, and in addition to two pound bags there were one pound and even half-pound bags. The policy of the company was strictly cash, no credit to anyone, but on the other hand, memos from Head Office would come in, screaming, “We note turnover down ten pounds at your branch last week, this will not do, get things moving this week!” So it was very tempting for the manager to allow a ‘safe’ customer a few shillings ‘tick’ as it was called. Most were honest and had a horror of getting into debt; therefore they would pay at the weekend when they came in for the weekly order. If you had ‘sneeped’ them by refusing credit they would take their custom elsewhere. I make no apology for using this North Staffordshire word, which seems to describe so aptly, the act of embarrassing someone. .
I soon settled down quite happily at Hunters, and Mum often used to say in later years how relieved she was when I came home at night telling of the amusing things that had been happening that day. I cycled to Crewe unless the weather was very bad, Mum always gave me my bus fare on Saturdays. (Four shillings for the week), so I was a bit of money in hand if 1 cycled. I enjoyed the ride much more than going on the bus. Some nights Jimmy Pennell would ride as far as McCracken’s Corner with me, then turn and go back to Wistaston which was a long way in the opposite direction. It is a sad fact that this could not happen today without adverse comment. The truth was I think, both he and Lucy came to regard me as the daughter they might have had, as for me it was just like riding along talking to Dad, and Mum was always pleased when I said “Mr. Pennell rode part of the way home with me”. I must just say that in all the time that I worked with those two men they never embarrassed me in any way by their conversation either to me or between themselves. That spring Dad bought a greenhouse, it came in sections, and one Sunday Jimmy and Lucy came to Alsager for the day, and Jimmy helped Dad to put the greenhouse together. They got along fine, and had many laughs while sorting the pieces out. Dad told Jimmy a joke, which he repeated on many occasions afterwards. It concerned two men discussing their respective jobs. The first one said, “we’re doing some fine work at our place, we have to work to a thousandth of an inch”. The second one said, “Oh, that wouldn’t do for our boss, we have to damn well get it right”. Dad gave them some plants for their garden, and a few weeks later, Lucy was talking to me in the shop and said, “I wonder if your Dad has got any more of those lovely pink Flowers to spare. I could not think what they would be, so she said, “Well anyway, all come to tea on Sunday, then I’ll show you. “; When we went on the Sunday, Dad laughed when Lucy showed us the pink flowers, they were weeds that had got mixed in with the plants! .
The shop hours were very long and there was little time for social life. The shops closed at seven-o-clock on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, one-o-clock. Wednesday, nine – o- clock Friday, and eight-o-clock Saturday. You could not get away as soon as the shop closed, there was a lot of clearing up to do, and on Fridays and Saturdays there would be parcels still on the floor for the boy to deliver, plus the fact that there was always someone who would sneak in just as the door was about to be locked. One such customer made a regular habit of coming at ten to nine on a Friday night to give her order. Then of course it had to be delivered to Culland Street, which was off Nantwich Road. She always smiled broadly when she came in, making some remark, “you can tell the time by me can’t you” or, “had you given me up?” She often had her granddaughter with her, the child’s name was Hermione, and the Grandmother always called her ‘Hermyown’. This irritated me, the fact that she could not even pronounce the name properly, but I detested her because she deliberately came at the same time every week, and she knew she had us in her power because she was a good customer, she gave a large order and always paid cash. She would settle herself down on the shop chair, and look around while deciding what she needed, saying at intervals, “Hermyown shall we have pears or peaches this Sunday?” or, “Do we need flour this week Hermyown?” I could cheerfully have tipped the pair of them head first into a sack of flour. I can truthfully say that she was the only customer that I really disliked. It was usually about ten-o-clock before we could get rid of her, then of course the poor errand boy had to take the order, then he went home on the shop bike. This was something else that was not supposed to happen. The boy was not allowed to take the shop bicycle home, but as with so many of the rules, the people who made them did not have to carry them out. .
Next door to ‘Hunters’, was ‘Holland’s.’ This was a private grocers, they had a few shops in Crewe and one in Sandbach. The manager was Clem Vaughan; he had a very loud voice and always wore his trilby hat at all times in the shop. He had the usual white grocers coat, but a always his hat, winter and summer. There were four or five young men assistants, and a girl who sat in a little glassed in cash desk. When a sale was made the assistant unscrewed the lower half of a small metal cup which was attached to a wire above his head. He put the money and bill into the cup, screwed it up, pulled a lever and the money sped along the wire to the cash desk. The bill and change, (if any) was returned in the same way. There were several wires from various points behind the counter. Many shops used this method. During the early part of the week every spare minute was spent ‘weighing up’. Sugar was a big job, as we sold so much, it came in two hundred weight sacks, and three sacks were the minimum we could get by on. To get through it quickly, it needed three people, one to scoop the sugar into the bags, one in the middle, weighing it (exactly), one at the other side tucking the top of the bag in. There was a knack to doing this skillfully. Then there were cereals, rice, sago, barley, lentils and split peas, small blue peas, marrowfat peas, porage oats, (two pounds for fourpence halfpenny). There were not many packeted fancy cereals, Corn Flakes, Force Wheat flakes, Quick Quaker oats, Scott’s oats were sold in some shops, but as I have said, Hunters catered for the very poor. .
Dried fruit was another awful Job. When it was taken out of the box that it had arrived in, it was in a solid lump, so before weighing could commence it had to be loosened and separated so that a nice neat packet would result after weighing. It was weighed on a flat sheet of paper, blue for sultanas, purpley red for currants, and it was not easy to achieve both a neat appearance and a firm wrap. It was essential for every packet to be leak proof when it was packed into the shelves, partly in order to maintain a tidy appearance, but more importantly that the weight should be correct. the ‘weights and measures’ Inspector made fairly frequent visits to most shops, and to be found guilty of selling short weight, however innocently, was death to the reputation of any shop. Butter, margarine and lard all had to be weighed in half pounds. Australian butter was one shilling and a penny per pound, New Zealand one and two pence. We did not sell Danish butter, which was about one and four pence. I don’t know the country of origin of Hunters bacon, it looked alright but had the most peculiar flavour. Mum tried some once, but although she agreed to have a small order from Hunters because I was working there, she would never have bacon again. Cheshire and Cheddar cheese were seven pence a pound, but we also had Dutch ‘half meat’ cheese, it must have been made with skimmed milk and when it was put on the cheese board and cut through with the wire, sour smelling whey poured out of it, (all down your overall and on to your shoes if you were not careful). It had absolutely no taste but at five pence a pound it sold fairly well. We used to open six-pound tins of corned beef for slicing at two pence a quarter. Twelve-ounce tins of Fray Bentos corned beef were seven pence halfpenny, eight-ounce tins of John West salmon were ten pence halfpenny, we did not sell many of those but sold a great many tins of ‘pink’ salmon at three pence halfpenny. Nearly all prices were ‘something and a halfpenny’. Another commodity that I am sure only Hunters would have stocked, was cheap jam. This was a two-pound jar of ‘mixed fruit’ jam, for sixpence halfpenny! It must have been mashed turnip with colour and flavouring. The popular brands of jam were around seven pence halfpenny for a one pound jar, and were required to have a label stating that it was full fruit standard, or in some cases lower fruit standard, but at least they had to contain some real fruit. I well remember a family who lived in one of the streets off Victoria Street, near to the shop. The father was out of work and they had three children. Every Monday morning he came into the shop with the children, for a jar of sixpence halfpenny jam, a loaf and half a pound of margarine. He was always very clean, and wore a white muffler to hide the fact that he had no collar on, he may in fact have had no shirt, but it was obvious that he was desperately trying to maintain his self-respect, in spite of a deep sense of bitterness and despair. .
Eventually he brought in a relief voucher. These were handed out from an office in the municipal buildings, always referred to as the ‘buildings’. For the solution to all manner of grievances and problems, people would resort to ‘going to the buildings’ about it .
The relief vouchers were bright pink forms, (why did they have to be pink?) entitling the bearer to groceries. The amount varied but usually was five shillings for a couple, seven and sixpence if they had a child, or ten shillings if they had more children. The grocer was supposed to fill the form in at the time it was exchanged for food, (strictly essentials only). We used to take them folded up and passed over as surreptiously as possible, to be filled in later, usually by me. The customer would invariably whisper a request for ‘twenty Woodbine cigarettes’, (eight pence) or in the case of an older man, an ounce of ‘twist’ tobacco. .
We never refused them these small comforts, and they were written down as grocery items. I believe similar vouchers were provided to give to the coal merchant. For many, relief tickets were the ultimate degradation. During the week some customers would send a child into the shop with a little note, saying, ‘please can I have these few things till Friday?’ Then followed a list of what they needed. Quite a lot did pay, but many quickly got into debt that they could not manage, and then they would agree to pay cash on Friday for the order, and sixpence or a shilling ‘off the book’. After tea on Friday night I had to go round collecting these sixpences and shillings from those who had not been into the shop, because some people would take their order and cash to another grocer, establish confidence there, and repeat the process. I quite enjoyed going out on my collecting round on Friday, and certainly got to know all parts of Crewe. .
There were some houses in one part of the town, known as the ‘sunshine’ houses, they were fairly modern and had big windows, but were badly built, and Tommy used to say that they called them the ‘sunshine’ houses because the sun shone through the roof as well as the windows! .
I had an embarrassing experience one night. I called at a house where the eldest daughter, Fanny, looked after the family. She would be in her twenties, and there were several younger children. She did her best, but had got a bit out of her depth and owed us about thirty shillin9s. The father was working, and he came into the shop and said there would be a shilling left every Friday if someone would collect it. He was a very stern man, and I’m afraid poor Fanny must have had a hard time with him. This particular Friday I knocked as usual, and a girl came to the door and said, “Oh you’d better come in, Fanny is just having a bath.” I followed her into the living room, and indeed Fanny was having a bath, in front of the fire! Now of course there was nothing strange about that but I sat in a state of acute embarrassment at the side of the fire while Fanny finished her bath and dried herself before going to find the shilling for me. .
Another family, called ‘Shepherd’ had eighteen children. The mother would joke about the suitability of the name. She had a big old pram that always seemed to be crammed with babies. The latest one was swathed in blankets at one end while two or three ‘hangers on’ were perched at the other end. The children were all beautiful with big dark eyes and lovely skin, and always clean. A few of the older ones had ‘errand jobs’, and the father managed to get a bit of casual labour from time to time, and Flo lurched uncomplainingly from one small disaster to another. .
She was not always in debt but when she was, I had to call on Saturday right for the shilling, or sixpence if things were very grim. She would be sitting by the fire, round which stood an enormous clothes maid, packed with clean ironed clothes, ready for Sunday morning. .
I could just tap on the door and walk in. She always greeted me with a smile, albeit a very tired one. She would raise her eyes upwards, saying, “The younger end are all in bed thank goodness.” From upstairs came a noise like a classroom when the teacher is absent, but everywhere was clan and tidy .
. I’m sure they were a happy family despite the extreme poverty. On the subject of large families, we had an errand boy once, whose proud boast was that in addition to there being enough of them to field two football teams, (twenty two children) they lived in two houses. The council had allocated two houses side by side and knocked out a door in the middle. .
Every Monday an order for goods required had to be sent to Head Office, and they would be delivered on Thursday. Everything was charged to the shop at the retail price. A man came from Manchester every three months to ‘stock take’, and to put it quite simply, if you had had a thousand pounds worth of stock over that period, then the Company expected you to be able to show that sum in goods or cash. It was quite impossible. I have said that most things had to be weighed and so a small loss was made over that, bacon and cheese dried out, thereby losing weight, and also, a middle of bacon was charged at say, eleven pence a pound, but you could not get eleven pence a pound for the end bits. Cooked meat on display dried out overnight, and the first slice would have to be cut off the next morning in order to maintain a tempting appearance. Hot weather was a nightmare, as there was no fridge or cold display cabinets, so things went bad, and there were always bluebottles depositing their eggs on the hanging bacon. The men used to wipe the bacon with a muslin cloth, but it was very easy to miss a small area, then you would have a writhing mass of maggots and that part of the bacon would have to be cut off. It was easy to see why that particular shop had broken so many managers. On one occasion Jimmy received a memo from Head Office stating that we would be receiving a crate of Chinese eggs by rail. “These should sell well at eight pence a dozen and we expect to have your repeat orders soon.” .
Two railway men arrived with an enormous wooden crate, it was about six feet long and three feet wide, and as they brought it into the shop one of them said ,”I’m glad to be rid of this bugger, what on earth is it?” The most awful smell filled the shop Tom and Jimmy carried it into the back yard and levered the top off. The best thing you could say was that they were well packed in straw! Some were black, some were green, and here and there were a few white ones. .
Tommy came back into the shop to me, saying, “just go and have a quick look, but hold your nose.” Even outside, the smell was unbelievable. The errand boy came early that afternoon, so Jimmy said, “get a box and pick the white ones out of that crate of eggs in the yard, you’ll have to hold your breath and keep dashing indoors to breathe.” .
I can’t think why he imagined that because the shells had remained white they would be all right; I suppose he was hoping to salvage something, It was Friday and the shop was fairly busy. Presently the boy appeared at the end of the counter with a few white eggs in the bottom of the box. .
“What shall I do with these, Mr. Jones?” He whispered to Tommy who was busy serving a customer, so, ever ready with a jokey answer, Tommy whispered back, “well, you can either take ‘em home to your mother, or chuck ‘em over Holland’s’ wall”. .
A few minutes later, Clem Vaughan, the manager from Holland’s’ came rushing into the shop, his face red, and his Trilby hat almost jumping up and down. “What’s going on?” he shouted, “I’ve just had a delivery of soap powder left in the yard, and it’s covered in rotten eggs, Ernie saw them come over.” Of course Tommy went round with the boy to help clean up the mess, and we could not help laughing, though Jimmy said, “I’ve told him many a time, somebody will take him seriously one day.” .
After that the boy always looked earnestly at Tommy when being given instructions. A few days later, Tommy was loading the bicycle with parcels, saying, “those two are for Bradfield Road, and these four are for Bluebell Cottage, that’s right, four for Bluebell. Just as the boy was going, Tommy said, “just one thing, don’t scratch their Rolls Royce with your bike as you go past it in the entry”. The child looked puzzled for a while, then his face creased into a smile and after that he knew when Tommy was joking. .
As for the eggs, Jimmy went round to the ‘buildings’ to ask for someone to come to the shop to condemn them as unfit for sale. This was a very last resort when something was bad, and in that particular instance there was no ‘rocket’ from Head Office, lust a credit note for the price of the eggs. we often wondered how many crates had been bought, and whether the buyer concerned got the ‘come-uppence’ he so richly deserved. Not all of Hunters shops were staggering along on the brink of disaster. .
Some of them, mostly the ‘country’ shops, did quite good business .