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MEMORIES PROJECT

Interview with Mrs E B Matthews
DOB: 26/12/25

Interviewed on 21/09/05

Just, can you remember how old you were when the war started?

Er, just going on to thirteen, yeah.

And you were at school…

I was at the Grammar School, yeah.

Ok. Were you evacuated [at all]

[No, no.] There was a question- er my father thought it might be a good idea and they’d got er some relatives in Canada but then there was a- a ship torpedoed and er, so we didn’t- and my mum didn’t want us to go anyway.

Were any of your family, relatives, evacuated?

No. No.

No, and were any of your other- any members of your family in the forces?

No we were lucky, we didn’t have anybody in the forces. I’ve got a- two uncles and one, er, I think he was too old and the other one, he worked for erm (Moorlands), the Shoe Factory down at Somerset and I think they made airmen’s boots. Fur-lined boots and things like that, so that was a- a reserved (occupation)

So as the war progressed, what are your memories of the war?

Well, er, I remember er, being at school because er-erm-er- . How it was there- they built some erm air raid shelters on the school field which us up Park Road at Monton and I think recently they’ve been found those and I was wondering if they wanted us to get in touch about that but the erm, the air raid shelters were up Park Road so when the- when the air raids came we all had to take our school bags and our gas masks, which were in the cardboard boxes on a piece of string and run through the streets <laughs> to Park Road to get to the air raid shelters and of course, if there was a plane about we used to stand and try and look at it but- teachers- our teachers were having to get us down into the steps into the air raid shelter and one of the things we all remember, we er, er used to take some chewing gum with us because when- if you put your air raid- your gas mask on, you er- er…couldn’t eat any toffees to take your gas mask off er so you ate some chewing gum with your gas mask on <laughs>

So you could get chewing gum then could you?

Yeah. Well yes it didn’t taste very nice. There was hardly any taste in it but there weren’t many sweets about because — and that was another thing - there was a shop near school that sold er little gelatine sweets, just like it might be shape of your thumb nail and er they had no taste but we used to go and buy them for something to suck <laughs>

Did- did they make them themselves [or..]?

[I don’t] know how they got them

Did they name names on the packets?

No. no. There were virtually no names of anything, so there wasn’t much in the way of foo- and er the- the- but we did, coming out of school er we must have lined up in a- houses. We had four houses errr named after Stuarts, Tudors, errr Saxons and Normans and er the teachers lined us up in those. I think so as they could check us and then check us when we got to the air raid shelters. Oh…

Are there any other memories of being at home if- during an air raid?

Yeah. We- my mother had to go to work, I think to pay for my uniform to school, so I had to stay at school for school dinners er which weren’t very interesting an- they seem to be- I remember sort of lamb stew which was nearly all bones and beans with it. We had a lot of beans. But er, er really we must have- you know, we had enough to eat, we can’t grumble about that but it was mostly uninteresting really and erm, then when the raids started, er, where we lived was an air raid shelter in- on a croft at the back of us. We were- lived opposite the railway near erm, Pa- Patricroft Station and it was very busy then, the railway, because there was erm, the mar- what they call marshalling ( ) as all the trains came in and changed over, it was very noisy-

-Was that at Patricroft?

Mmmm and there was er They er a coal lift thing so they were always shovelling coal and er there was a railway line of course that went through Monton then, er across where the Monton House Hotel is now and er so there were- the trains used to go up there, it was very noisy and erm so, when it was an air raid, er sometimes, some of the lights used to go out er just a few and they knew they were in what they called ‘Amber’ then — early warning system really and then if they all went out, well you knew there was going to be a raid and across the back of there as well was the ROF and er so that used to- it couldn’t always turn the lights out of course, they were still working, but some of them used to go out but I remember that as being very noisy because they were on shift work so they worked all the time and at night time sometimes, used to be so noisy because they had music while you work and things like that, entertainment them. So you were in bed and you could hear the ROF entertainment, erm.. so erm.. the- the lights used to go out because they used to say that er, especially if it was moonlight, er the raiders could see the canal water and the railway lines.

Did you- where you lived, did you not have a back garden then?

We only had a yard

A yard

And a little front garden.

So that’s why the air raid shelter was [built]

That’s right, yeah.

Now you mentioned that er your mother worked. What- what did your mother do?

She was a confectioner, yeah. Which er- well thinking about it, I don’t know how she- how they- managed really, but they used to use sort of erm austerity ingredients but they used to use dried egg and things like that and there wasn’t really cream, it was sort of a whipped up margarine I think if you hadn’t any cream or anything. So they still kept the shop going and she could have worked for somebody else but er- she always worked but I can’t remember- there was er- really shortages, they must have been [some-]

[Did she] work for somebody?

Yeah, yes.

Can you recall the firm she worked for?

Yeah, it was Copelands at Peel Green. Near the er Unicorn.

And you- you- during the conversation you mentioned the- you used the words ROF. What would ROF [stand for]?

[Oh], The Royal o- (Organs) Factory which is er in the old (Maisley’s) building on er canal bank and they made er- their occupations were all protected because it was work of national importance so er- a lot of people worked there, a lot of our friends worked there.

And did you experience any er- bombing at all?

Well, not as such for us but it was noisy all around when there was a raid and er I think the nearest to us was at Winton here, a bomb fell there and someone was killed but mostly it was the erm, R- the R- I’m trying to think of the word…Ack-Ack gun, which is erm, anti-aircraft. There were some in erm- the bottom of erm Stafford Road in erm er….Monton an Ack-Ack gun there and when that used to go oh, it was really noisy. We did get the- there were- erm- balloons up. The er-

Barrage

Barrage Balloons and I remember one of those got loose one time and and- trailed its er- er- mooring things all down our road but they must have caught it in the end but they were all- all around so I think they kept a lot of things away, you know, but er- the thing that sticks mostly about the war is - in the raids - was in the Christmas blitz. Which most people were- it were terrible that and it was all on- on the erm, you could see it in the sky er- like- burning things off the docks and towards Manchester and I c- one thing that sticks in my mind is the smell of burning sugar because Tate and Lyles had a place and that got bombed and you could smell the sugar burning.

Was this Christmas blitz- was that 1941?

Yes, yeah. And er- you see we were lucky because later on in the South they got the doodlebugs and things like that but we didn’t get that. Er, it was mostly ear- earlier on I think really.

Do you remember rationing

Oh yes. Yeah.

So what are your memories?

Well I don’t- I don’t remember too much about when I was young I- I- I was going to do that when I got a bit older-

[that’s fine]

-[when I took] responsibility myself because my mum looked after things you see but you couldn’t get er fruit and ve- I remember we couldn’t get an onion but you did used to get leeks and things. We used to use some things that we’d never used before and I remember dried egg a lot because we used to have that for scrambled egg and er…erm as I say, my mother looked after it but even at the end- after the war was over we still were rationing. That’s when I more or less took responsibility myself and the blackout well, where we lived at Patricroft er, we had an old p- a piano in the middle- there wasn’t much room but the pia- we went and stood on the piano to- to stick the blackout curtains up <laughs> I remember now. And er, you know, you had to be very careful not to erm..er…show like, and there was- if we went out to the pictures- pictures stopped at the beginning er for a little while and then they started up again and we used to go and you were given the option of coming home if you wanted or staying in and they used to flash on the screen ‘An air raid is in progress’ they [used to come-]

[-they used to stop] when an air raid was about to happen?

Yeah , well they couldn’t- they didn’t always. Later on they just kept the show going and you could stay in or come out, it depended on- sometimes you could hear, er, the noise of guns and things falling but er, some- it depended really how bad it was whether you wanted to go home or not, er, but erm, in the blackout- walking along — er you’d got to have you have your torch with you and torches were like gold and batteries for torches, number eight batteries, if you got one of those you were in heaven er, because you couldn’t get them and you used to have a little er disc like a cardboard er badge that you could pin on your coat and it was covered in something florescent so if you- left it out in the day time to absorb the light, or shone your torch on it and then went out at night with it so people could see you coming along the road and er you shone your torch down, but you had to have a mask on the torch, you couldn’t have a full torch light I- it had to be masked. Same as the few cars that were about, they had to have a mask on their headlights.

And wer- did you have to recycle the batteries?

No, we couldn’t’ do that then. No. We weren’t that modern I don’t think! <laughs>

Now you mentioned going to the cinema. Can you recall which cinemas you used to go [to-]

[Oh yes!]. It was Broadway and the Majestic

And where- the Broadway was in Eccles?

Yes, the Broadway in Eccles and the Majestic in Patricroft and the Palladium in Patricroft and the Crown in Eccles.

And when you left school-

Yeah, well-

Did you go to work?

Yeah. I got- I stayed at school and got school certificate exam and er I really would have liked to have gone in the Land Army but er I felt I’d got to go to work to help my mother out, you see. And er so er it would have to be work of er national importance and er I saw an advertisement for this job and it was in Salford, er, near Adlephi Street near the old Salford Royal, and there’s a firm there called Sir James Farmer Norton, a big heavy metal kind of firm who had a subsidiary called Wire Drawing Dyes who, again, were setting up another subsidiary, it was called (Clemmington) Dyes and this- it was very new, a little factory in (Clemmington) Street at the back of Salford Royal and er, I think they were really trying to make it into a show er place and they were trying to er get people who had got a er qualification, so I got this job and there weren’t many girls there then, they were just recruiting them and it was erm…there’s a things called ‘Drilling Dyes’ which er in Farmer Nortons and Wire Drawing Dyes they were big pieces of round metal with a hole in the middle, which they used to force steel through er to make steel rods of certain shapes. Well ours was going to be a small one and it- they were little dyes, not much bigger than erm a pound coin really, a little big bigger, with a hole in the middle which had a diamond in and — industrial diamond of course - and that was pierced to make a shape to draw fine wire through and er, the way- you could only drill a diamond with a diamond and so on the bench there were a lot of erm little lathes or- electric motors setting them going and on one side you had the diamond- the dye with the diamond in er and you put some oil in that with diamond dust in it and then a metal needle went backwards and forwards and- to pierce it to a certain shape. You had to grind the needle to a shape er to get whatever shape wire you wanted and the wire was, some of it was finer than a human hair so we had to have microscopes to- to do the holes and er it was used er for all sorts of electrification then but one thing I remember was air- heated air- heated suits for airman but a lot of- some was used for gold braid which you don’t think- but of course, a lot for electrical wiring of various sorts so that’s the work that was going on there and it was funny really because there was one or two of us that had been to grammar school and things like that but- they were a nice lot of girls and we were worked ok, you know at different things but- and they re- eventually recruited people from- other people got sent there, you know, I’ve forgotten- they were- they used er, you were sent to an occupation if you needed a job sometimes and er we found afterwards that really a lot of the girls who were best at the job were machinists that had worked in er Greengate and Irwell Factory making Macintoshes and things like that. The machinists could handle the machines better than we could really but I’d always wanted to go in the laboratory and they said I would go eventually, which I didn’t really I just went in the office eventually, out of the works- and er one of the jobs that I had to do there was weighing the diamonds when they came in er because they- of course they- every one was counted. Er…we had bags of diamonds come and er I had to weigh them and count them. Weigh them as a whole and then count them and then weigh them individually because they all went out into the works in a packet, one for each machine and er if you dropped one <laughs> you had to go round the factory sweeping every little bit of dust until you found the diamond er, we usually did fine them but it was er a messy job, you can imagine but we daren’t lose them.

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