EDUCATION
Mrs. Stewart calls herself a "Portonian", having lived in Port Glasgow all her life. She went to
school at St. John's and recalls that when her older sister got into trouble at school, "they always sent for me to clipe on her." On one occasion, Mrs. Stewart's sister was "all over the desks" in the classroom, throwing inkwells at the teacher who was chasing her with the cane and the strap!
She was expelled after receiving a "leathering" in fact.
Mrs. Stewart recalls that her sister was expelled from "two or three" schools, but reckons that she wasn't "wild", just "harum scarum".

Mrs Stewart

"I left school in the month of June. I wasn't fourteen till August but I went up to the Mill. I asked my sister to speak for me, I'd two other sisters in the Mill. Hannah said no, she'd spoken for a friend who'd let her down. She wouldn't speak for anyone else.
The head mistress stayed down the street from us, so I went up to her. I thought she could get me a job. She said, "Are you out of school yet?"
I said yes. She said, "When can you start?" I said I could start on Monday. She said, "Oh, that's all right. That'll be three of you in the one place."
"So I got into the Mill and one day she said, "You remember to bring in your birth papers." I said yes, knowing full well I was wrong, I wasn't supposed to be there. Hannah said, "You'll get into a row."
I said, "I'll just say I forgot." Then she said, "Remember your birth papers are up at the old house in Govan."
I said, -Get them down, will you." When I got the papers, the Mill was closing down for the holidays. When I brought them in, the mistress said: "Do you realise you were working before you should have been working, my girl?"
I said "I didn't know." Never mind, I got my job.
"I was an examiner and then I used to do the wee books for the workers, used to make up their books. Did a wee bit of this, a wee bit of that. I was in the Mill for eleven and a half years. My sister was in for fortyfive years, from fifteen to sixty. I left to get married."

Frances Cairns Foley

As her father had poor health, Elizabeth Rooney's mother had to work as a weaver in the Glen Mill and on leaving school, Elizabeth went to work in the Birkmyres Mill preparing twine for rope making. Two men teased out the twine by machine - this process was known as "heckling" - and the material was then sent to the -spreader" and then on to the box-maker. This stage was Elizabeth's job. She left the mill at twenty-one to be married.

Elizabeth Rooney's husband worked in Hamilton's which was known as the Glen Yard, as a rivet-heater. Three men were involved in this work - the riveter, the "hauder-on" and the heater. Red-hot rivets. were taken out of the fire with tongs and given to the "hauder-on" who put them into the holes between the two plates and the riveter secured them in place. Wages were not high, but there was a lot of work around.

E Rooney

At fourteen, Martha McNicol's Uncle Willy got her a start at the Birkmyres Mill in the Weaving Department. For six weeks she was put on to one of the looms and on the seventh week she was given the job of weaving canvas.
She continued to work at the loom for some time until she developed a bad attack of influenza. When she was pronounced fit to work, Martha went back to the mill where she was assigned to the "98 Loom". This was the largest loom in the Mill and the work proved to be too heavy for Martha after her illness. Martha McNicol Senior took her daughter away from the mill and young
Martha spent the rest of her life working in the family home and at her mother's grocery shop.
The shop - "Martha McNicol was the name above it" - was strategically placed in St. Lawrence Street and sold all the necessary groceries - "just the usual cheese and jam and that. Children used to come with a cup to my mother and she'd give them half-a-pound of jelly in it!
"We sold cheese and butter loose. You got the bulk of butter and you weighed out half-a-pound or whatever, or if they wanted a quarter, they got four ounces. It all came from Luss the Grocers in Tobago Street. It was a big store."

Martha McNicol

"At the time of the unemployment, the lady comes to me and says: "How is it that your two daughters are so nicely dressed and your husband's on the buroo?"
"I don't know," I say.
My sister was getting material and making them dresses and I was knitting the boys' pullovers. She knitted the socks with the white. That was how we did it.
"He wasn't unemployed for too long though. He was a welder in the shipyards but they wouldn't let me out to work. My husband said I'd enough to do. I used to say:
"Look at them all going out to work and here I am, knitting like a fool!"
I was bringing up a family and my father would have been angry too. He'd say: "You'll have to go where your husband goes. You have a home to look after."
He was one of the old-fashioned ones!
"I don't see why you've got to go out to work"
No, my husband wouldn't let me, he would say
"I can keep you yet!"
"I had a good husband but I had to go to Port Glasgow to stay. I didn't like it at first, but we got a new house up in Parkhill Avenue. It had a great view, you could see all the way down to Greenock.
"My husband never saw that house in the daylight for a fortnight, he was working that much overtime. He says
"How does this house look in the daylight?"
I says: "Oh, it's champion!"
And the family were greatly taken with it.

Mrs. C Murdoch

Memories Collection 2

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