大象传媒

Dorothy was born 10 May 1922 in Higher Broughton. She worked in a factory lagging aircraft pipes with asbestos in 1943. No-one considered asbestos dangerous. The asbestos was floating around in the air and it was thick on the floor. A friend would pick the asbestos up, make it into a ball and bang her hands together, never realising it was lethal really. I worked there for 2 years. The factory was Bells Asbestos firstly near Trinity Church in Higher Broughton and then we went to larger premises in Nicholas Croft off High St. We would lag all sort of pipes from Big Berthas to the tiny ones. We put the asbestos in layers, glued it on and then sewed a cotton asbestos over. It was called lagging and we were called sillicators. We wore a blue overall. The asbestos stuck all over it with the glue. There was a big table and a lady called Tilly cut out the patterns for the pipes. We sat on other tables fixing the asbestos on the pipes. It was all women working, maybe about 50 of us on the one floor. We sat on benches and worked in twos. I would hold the pipe up and my friend sewed or the other way around. The pipes were for aircraft like the Lancaster bombers. When the war ended some went to work on firemans things and so worked with asbestos for another 2 years but I only worked for two. I reckon we were very lucky. We worked from 8am until 5pm with an hour for lunch. We had weekends off but many a time they needed us and so we often worked 6 days a week. They were happy days. We used to have workers playtime on to cheer us up. There was a lady called Kathleen and she loved classical music but the majority liked the workers playtime so we made a pact with her that she could listen to her classical music and they would tolerate it. Another girl called Kathleen had a beautiful voice and as she was working, many a time she would break out into song. Really she did not have a lot to sing about because her husband had been taken prisoner of war and it was a very worrying time but she kept us all going with her beautiful songs. They were a nice crowd of women. ..I wish we had kept in touch. We were all good friends. You have a bond when you are working in a factory. We felt we had done our bit towards the war.

I remember being very sad when Doris the under manager heard that her husband鈥檚 ship had gone down. He was in the navy. We were heartbroken over that. I met my husband there. I worked with his sister and she always wanted to introduce me to her John. When he came home from the army, he came to the factory and we met, fell in love and got married. I just had a short blue dress, not a white wedding. There were just about 20 at the wedding.

John and I were married at Stand Church in Whitefield on 24 June 1944. We held our reception at Tower Buildings, Prestwich. Due to rationing through the war, John went with his brother Arthur into Prestwich Village to try to get a drop more wine. When I saw Arthur a short time afterwards, I asked him where John was. 鈥淗e鈥檚 gone to a wedding鈥� he said. 鈥淥, very funny鈥� I said. Well it seemed that he had. As John was in his soldiers uniform, a man approached him and asked him 鈥榃ould he be best man at his daughter鈥檚 wedding鈥� at our Lady of Grace Church. He explained that their best man had not managed to get there in time because his train had been delayed. So after officiating for them, back he came to his own reception. There is something of interest to finish with. 13 years later my sister-in-law came to visit us. A neighbour invited her in because she knew that I had gone shopping. She told Lily that she didn鈥檛 know our surname. When Lily told her that it was Frankish, she said 鈥淲ell after all these years, I鈥檝e just discovered that our best man lives near us.鈥� What a surprise for all of us!

At our wedding my mother, neighbours and friends all mucked in to make the reception. My uncle ordered a Rolls Royce for us and payed for us to have a honeymoon in Fleetwood. He was as good as any father would have been.

I was 17 and worked at Lewis鈥� at the outbreak of war. On the day I was visiting an elderly relative in Higher Broughton when war was declared on the radio. When I went to work the next day. I was sent from the jewellery department where I worked to where the torch batteries were sold. The crowds were all over, all around the bottom floor, queuing all day for these batteries.

One day my grandma was ill in bed and I was handing her a cup of tea. It was a Sunday evening at the beginning of the war and there was this crash. The cup and saucer went flying. A man had been killed on Phillips Park Rd, a bomb had been dropped.

Coming out from work on 2 occasions I walked home from Lewis鈥� because the sirens went and I was always scared of being buried alive and would not go in a shelter. So I walked it. It was just a phobia I had.

We had incendiary bombs. We did not go in a shelter because my grandma was ill in bed and we could not possibly be disturbing her every night so we stayed in and crossed our fingers. We could hear the planes passing very low. We could hear the throbbing of the engines. You sort of got used to it really.

I was called up. I could have gone in the forces or gone to train as a nurse but my mother had my grandma ill and she did not want me to go away from home so I was sent from the labour exchange to this factory. You had a green card and it just told you to go for an interview. I nearly dropped dead when I was told to start at 8am Anyway you got used to it. I was very proud to have worked with them. Some people look down their nose at factory girls but they were the salt of the earth.

We went dancing and I would stay with a friend.
After work I would get off the bus at Pinfold Lane and run in the blackout like mad to get home. My mother eventually gave me a hat pin and I would hold the hat pin. I thought if anyone comes after me I will jab them and run.
The worst was in the fog. I would be going down the lane and going up the paths of the cottages because my sense of direction was no good.

We managed with the rations.
When I got married I was dying to do a bit of baking but the rations were so precious and not being sure if it would turn out. Someone told me you could use liquid paraffin. It was colourless so I took a chance and made sponge cake and do you know it was delicious.

We listened to a little wireless. We used to take the batteries to have them charged. We heard Lord Haw Haw but I think the majority of people ignored him.
You just wondered when it was going to end. You felt so sorry for the people in Coventry, Liverpool and so on, who were bombed badly.

Her husband was in the regular army and had been abroad for 9 years. When he came back he wasn鈥檛 well and was in hospital for a time with his nerves. I didn鈥檛 have a child until after the war. Married 24 June 1944. My husband didn鈥檛 go abroad after that.

VE Day was on my Uncle鈥檚 birthday 8 May and VJ Day on his wife鈥檚 birthday.

We went to the Mayfair Cinema occasionally and we would go to Finnegans Dance Place occasionally.

Somebody got this brown material and we had a coat each made of it. We must have looked like a pair of bears but you were so glad to get something a bit different. We went to Blackpool one weekend with these coats! We laugh about it now.

A friend鈥檚 husband was home on leave and although she had a terrible cold and was aching all over she made him a really nice breakfast from the dried egg and someone had given her their ration of bacon before he went back and that was the last time she saw him because he was killed.

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