大象传媒

Working at Minns' factory

This story was presented by Rosalie Pollitt to Mary Seers, who is one of our Clockhouse volunteers. Rosalie gave permission for Mary to type up and edit her words ready for submitting to the 大象传媒. Rosalie has two other stories in this archive: "Harry Pollitt and D-Day" and "The Displacement Camps".

When war was declared, I was working at the then called Wingfield Hospital. It was given out unless you were in a vital job, you would be drafted into the services. My brothers were already in the army; so my sister and I were left to care for our aged parents. We both left the hospital and went to work for Minns of Botley, for more money, and to be on exempt work.

This small workshop produced training riffles. We had to wood-fill the stocks and then french polish them. Lastly we added a bolt and a sight to them. When perfected they were used for teaching sighting and firing; but the firing was only with an arrow onto a target. Later, we were put on night work making clay pigeons. This went on at Botley behind the Black Horse. One elderly man made the boiling pitch. We operated a big wheel by hand, and poured the pitch into moulds and stamped them out and stacked them.

When the contract ran out, we packed big ends and steering wheels; we had to grease, and crate them as well as use a stencil to label the crates. We were not given any gloves then yet out hands were filled with this awful gunge or grease. And we were paid by results which was called piecework. However, we managed to keep more money coming in to the house so we could look after mum and dad until the end of hostilities. There was no help in those days from the Government; we all had our own struggles to survive.

I wonder if any of our friends are still alive and remember Minns?
I doubt it as I am 82 years old.
It would be good if we could get together or correspond.

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