Sound Recording, West Yorkshire

Description

Lily Gaunt, recorded at home in the Bramley area of Leeds; gives biographical information; talks about her family; parents' occupations; her childhood home; education; starting mill work aged fourteen; wages; future husband; work's outing to Blackpool (shop trip) just after Whitsuntide; the Christmas box; friends' weddings and trimming women work colleagues; going for a drink and a meal; mill owners (Yates) and successors; cloth products (worsted/terralene) - export, prices (for the workers); travel to work before the Bramley Estate was built; courting; the Pot Club; marriage and saving for the bottom drawer; describes a working day at Yates' mill - breaks, canteen, working Saturday mornings, cleaning machinery [collector refers to the name fettlers, known from the mill in which she worked]; describes the processes of cloth production at the mill; the value of employing other family members; attitude of management; wages; reduction in workforce; closure of the firm; changing demand; Yates supplying Burtons, Hepworths and Prices; doppers (youngest girls fetching shopping for others whilst at work). [Tr. 6] Lily Gaunt describes her work as a spinner and then a winder; doppers learning the job from older employees; noise at work (in the weaving shop); saving for Christmas fuddle - food, drink, music and trimmings at work; holidaying in Bridlington; names textile mills at Burley and Kirkstall; closure/demolition of mills/engineering works; manufacturing processes, including twisting and mending; the influx of foreigners, including evacuees (Polish, Dutch displaced persons), in the workplace; working at Yates' during World War Two (making khaki and Air Force blue); work clothes - pinafores, turbans; Murder Shops (cut price goods); the wash house; grandparents; education; mother's working life; [collector comments on the informant, some time after the interview]. [Tr. 7] 1 of 5.

Metadata

Identifier wbb9nw5s
IRN 414645
Class Mark LAVC/SRE/A594
Level Item
Type of Record Archives - ISAD(G)
Peristent Link http://prototype1.library.leeds.ac.uk/wbb9nw5s
Collection(s) Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture
Category Archive
Parent Record Audiotape Sound Recordings
Creator(s) Morris, Patricia M
Date July 1981
Size and Medium 1 audiocassette., Duration: 73' 20".

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