Unemployment My first job Wivenhoe, Anchor Hill, that’s where I first worked, and it was the Labour Exchange. And I did shorthand and typing there. Oh, a lot of people were out of work, yes. Terrible! Yes, there were. And I used to go home and say to my mum, ‘So-and-so, poor old boy’s been in, and his money hasn’t come through yet,’ because they used to have to send it, you see, an amount for them, and I used to go home and cry. And my mum said, ‘Well, that job is doing you good, isn’t it!’ I said, ‘Well, I feel so sorry for them.’ I said, ‘Poor old people, I think that’s terrible,’ I said, ‘never having a penny.’ And one poor old boy used to walk round, all round from Rowhedge, he hadn’t got a ferry, and he came right round Colchester to get here. So I said, ‘You didn’t!’ He said, ‘I have done.’ I said, ‘Well, you won’t do it going home,’ so I gave him the tuppence. So he said, ‘No!’ I said, ‘Yes, please.’ The ferry, I said, ‘Please take it.’ I said, ‘I’d give it to anybody if they wanted it.’ So, poor old boy, he took it. The bosses were nice
really. They worked for the government, you see, and there was one come
down from Kew, and in the office there was another office, and there was a
window looking into where the men claimed, and I knew all the men’s
names, their numbers, and what they did for a living, so they ought to
have shown me a card, but I didn’t want it, I knew it, and after we’d
finished, he said ‘How can you remember all those?’ I said, ‘Oh, don’t
know. But I can.’ I said, ‘I know all the men,’ I said, ‘and I
know what they do for a living.’ So he said, ‘Oh!’ He didn’t say
any more. I liked it, I liked working there. But I got married,
and my husband wouldn’t let me go. He said, ‘No. I married you to keep
you.’ And I said, ‘I don’t want you to,’ and he said, ‘Well, I
don’t want you to go out to work.’ I said, ‘Well, I might get fed up
being at home.’ So he said, ‘Well, you can go for a walk!’ No, he
wouldn’t let me go after I got married. I wasn’t very pleased, but I
put up with it, because I had a good husband. He never kept me short. I
had, you know, plenty. He earned good money, and he said, ‘I didn’t
marry you for you to go out to work,’ so, of course, I didn’t go. Rough times At that time, in the
Thirties, the Employment Exchange was based in Alma Street and the whole
queue, every morning, right up and turn right up towards the Grosvenor
there, that little road was called ‘The Cut’ then, there was this
queue because they had to go and sign their names every day otherwise they
didn’t get the Benefits. And at that particular time things were pretty
rough and Mr Gooch, who had the whole Wivenhoe Park, gave the unemployed
people permission to go and collect wood. Unemployed men - Don Smith
I had no personal
experience of poverty where one relied on soup or anything like that. But
I do believe some people did, in Wivenhoe. I think people who were the
hardest hit were people who had been in the shipyards and who had been
yachtsmen and that sort of thing. My father, he was a Colchester man and
he never stopped at home when he was out of work. He was always on his
bike, out and about, looking for work. Now, a lot of people who were
tradesmen, they didn’t take kindly to the idea of going out and doing
some other job. I can recall as a kiddie, every day, on the top of Station
Road, on the Grosvenor side – the public house, the Grosvenor – but
also on the other side, where the railway bridge is, there would be this
collection of men and their whole day was there, walking up and down,
chatting, smoking, having a half a pint. There was, at the time, at the
Co-op – up the top of the village – a Reading Room where one could go
and play cards and a lot of them used to go up there. A
pig of a man I was out of work
for a long while. And the dole was half-a-crown a week! A pig of a man
used to throw it at me! Down Alma Street, it was local. You signed on and
the boss used to find you jobs. The only thing he ever found me was
service. So I used to go, because you had to, but I used to tell the
people to put ‘Unsuitable’ on it and I got away with that for a while!
But you could only draw dole for so long. And then I went to the clothing
factory in Alma Street and never looked back. Unemployment I always remember,
as a kiddie, worrying would be not the right word, but thinking about him
[my father], when he was unemployed, because he used to go out and he used
to cycle miles to get work. And he was in the building trade then. My
father never stopped at home when he was out of work. And I was pleased
when I come home, and it was, ‘Dad’s got a job’ sort of thing, you
know. Cycled many miles. But there was hard
times. I believe things got to a point where, if you refused work,
probably your Benefits were withdrawn. A lot of them actually did work in
putting the sewer on in Wivenhoe. There was a man by the name of Mr Brooks
who was the Manager of the Employment Exchange. I believe he was an
ex-World War soldier, of a rank, and he was a pretty fair man. But I
understand from what my father’s told me many many years ago that he
didn’t want anybody pulling the wool over his eyes and if he thought you
weren’t prepared to work then he was no friend! So my father went out
and got work, he really did. Cycled many miles. And I do know that there
were two or three shipwrights who actually used to cycle from Wivenhoe to
Parkeston Quay, Harwich, when they were building the Parkeston Quay. Pride I can remember in
the 1930s, during the slump, there were terraced houses in Park Road, with
the toilet right opposite, and I’ve known women come out and shake the
cloth so that neighbours thought they’d a meal, and they hadn’t.
Pride, you know. Supplementing
the diet My dad used to kill
birds and we used to eat them for our dinner. Little birds! Poor little
sparrows! There was a house that nobody lived in and my dad used to put
all the bread down and over the top of it he used to put a netting, and
when he got them all under there he used to knock them and kill them. And
then my mother used to pluck them. But they didn’t have hardly any meat
or anything on it underneath! ‘You can go’ When I was small we
lived in a tied house at Alresford - used to get milk free and the rent
free. My mother stood on the fields plant pulling, and potato picking and
cabbage cutting, and sugar beet and things like that, they all had to.
Take people’s washing in and do it with the old board. Anything to earn
a couple of shillings. My father’s wages was 30 shillings a week. That’s
what a farm labourer’s was in them days. My father’s employer, Mr
Pilton, was away and my sister Molly was a maid in the house over that
farm. And Molly, she give her notice in, and Mrs Pilton went up to my
father and said, ‘Bill, your daughter’s given her notice in.’ So he
said, ‘I know she was giving it in, because she’s going to work for
Marriages’ – they used to have the flour mill in Colchester. And so
she said, ‘Well, if you can’t persuade her to stop,’ she said, ‘you
can go.’ And my father is a bloke who wouldn’t go back. And he said,
‘Where’s the reference?’ So Pilton said, ‘What reference?’ he
said. ‘Well, your wife sacked me,’ and my father wouldn’t go back on
his word. He accepted it and, of course, he come home and that’s how he
first started for the Barrells at Alresford Sand and Gravel, because they’d
just started and he went there and got a job right away. We came to
Wivenhoe and to this house over Stanley Road, 26 Stanley Road. I was
seven. A home fit for
heroes My parents were very
bitter because, before the First World War finished, England was going to
be a home fit for heroes to live in, and when Dad got home, there was no
work. And terrible living conditions until the slump came in the 1930s,
when I was at school, and I can remember when the men came down, they had
these marchers from Jarrow and there was no money, and we had a Labour
Exchange in Alma Street, and people were queuing there. And my father, he
went to saw wood on Wivenhoe Park, and Mr Gooch let the poor have the wood
to keep the fire going. It was dreadful. There were a lot like us. The
business people, of course, were better off, and the men who’d got jobs,
they’d lose them and go on the dole, and you only had so many weeks
dole, and then you went on to what was called ‘the transitional,’ and
when that ran out, bailiffs came round to see what furniture they could
take. Dreadful. Eventually, I think the Second World War broke out, and
put people on their feet again.
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