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Hilda said she was 16 when the war started, she wanted to go in the landarmy but her father would not let her go — in those days you accepted what your father said!. So she worked at Henshaw’s Blind Institute finishing operation stockings. The blind people made them and then she had to sew them up and wash them by hand, stringing them up on a clothes line.
She lived near the railway and the docks, and cycled home where her mother would have the dinner ready, but they rarely ate this at the table because the siren would go and they had to eat in the Anderson Shelter in the garden and stayed there all night. T
Her three brothers and mother had to use a bucket when needed.

Her wages were 9s a week and she only 1s6d of that for herself of which 1s went to pay for the bike.
Hilda and Lillian both said how much more friendly people were, but on the other hand there was a lot of looting. For instance a friend of theirs cam home from the night shift to find his house destroyed. He put his tool bag down to search for his family, and when he went back it had been stolen. Luckily his family were safe. They had been in a Morrison Shelter in the house and it withstood the blast. The story was in the paper and they got the money for the shelter refunded to them as it was good advertising for the Company who made them.

Lillian recalled how she had longed for a pair of nylon stockings and one trade said he would let her know when some came in. When he did say he had them he said she could have a pair on one condition, that she let him put them on her! No way!

It was so profitable to sell nylons that there was one market stall trader, who was regularly sent to prison, but came out after a couple of weeks and went back to getting the stockings and selling them.

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