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I went to work at Wills Cigarette Factory, during 1930 when I was 15yrs old and I worked there throughout the 1939 — 1945 war. I was in the stripping room, you had to take all the tobacco leaves off of the stem, and then put it into a basket, by your side. You had to strip off 80lb a day. You can imagine how many leaves that were required to make this amount. There was a huge demand for cigarettes as everyone smoked. They were good payers, I started on 17/6d a week. By the time the war started you earned £3 or £4 and you earned 1/2d for every extra 1lb of leaves done. Hours of work were 7.30 a.m. to 5.10 p.m. overtime could be until 7 p.m. We had a 20 minute tea-break in the morning and one hour for lunch, which was often a cooked lunch.

When the bombing raids started, the air-raid sirens would be screaming. We went down to the shelter when we were told, I was not particularly frightened, I can remember standing outside in Totterdown where I lived and watching the planes dropping their bombs on Castle Street, Old Market, Stratten Street and Mary Le Port Street but they did not come as far as Wills' factory.

I was married during 1941. We obtained a special licence on the Saturday morning and got married at 2 p.m. in Filton Church. Tom and I spent our honeymoon at Weston-Super-Mare. We stayed in a hotel on the sea front for five days as Tom had one week's leave. Tom went back to the army, he was a driver and went to France and then on to Italy for four years. I never saw him at all during those four years, until he came home.

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