Disappointing my parents, I wanted to leave school and I left one month after my 15th birthday at Easter 1963. I just wanted to be like my mum, who went to work bright, well dressed and could run for the bus in stilettos. She came home chatty, full of what had happened during the day at work, a very confident women who was for a time a union shop steward in the gents clothing factory in Leeds where she worked.

I could go into tailoring, but it had to be ladies and I had to attend night school for a certificate when I became an 18-year-old. I had been making a few clothes for myself, so it wasn’t a bad idea. Mum secured me an interview for a job in a ladies clothing factory called William Reads Ltd next to Leeds bus station. I remember going to that appointment age 14 in my school uniform, up marble steps and into a wood panelled waiting room with framed fashion pictures. I felt sick on the bus going home which must have been the first anxious moment in my life.

I got the job and started, felt sick on the bus on the way to work and back for almost six weeks but I never told anyone, I had made my bed! I found most of the other workers were very friendly, the canteen dinners were incredible and I soon learnt to avoid the grumpy folk. I was shown how to make every part of the garments, buttonholes, pockets, attach a zip and how each stage of the garment was put together. If you were quick to learn, as I was, you moved about from one job to another filling in for people who were sick or who had left. Every job from hand sewing on buttons, to operating a massive buttonhole machine which was loud and dangerous having a cutting knife which slammed down after the stitching was done about 6 inches from your face.

My wage was around £3 a week which I gave to my parents and had a sum back for spending. At first, I would save the spending money as my social life was still with old school mates but as friendships developed at work, and with other travellers on the bus, I soon had a busy world.

That summer of 1963, some girls and I would clock out at lunch time and go swimming at Union Street baths across the road from work, we made sure we were back on time as if you were one minute late 15 minutes was deducted from your wage, we called it being quartered. Other days we ran past Kirkgate slaughterhouse holding our noses, gagging, and trying to avoid looking in at the carcasses hung up to bleed. We were on our way to the Mecca Locarno Ballroom for a dance and giggle during the lunch time session at the cost of a sixpence piece. It was open from around 11 30am until 2pm, maybe we would meet some lads! There were all sorts of young workers there, shop assistants, hairdressers, and office workers all from different backgrounds and areas of Leeds, we grew up fast. William Reads Ltd became my extended family, a safe place, and life became exciting.

A speaker system played workers playtime throughout the factory, very low in the cutting room where the stuffy men worked but loud in the noisy places where the steam presses hissed and banks of belt driven sewing machines in groups of four or six would sit the girls face to face.

When you were the youngest worker, you were sent on errands to small companies within walking distance to pick up belts and buttons being specially made. The smells from other industries, workshops and factories were in the streets. There was a brewery on Regent Street, the air was full of the fumes of hops, small engineering works with their doors open had crashing sounds, flashes of welding and the smell of burning. Steam gushed from a laundry through pipes into the street which smelt like washday in the cellar at granny’s. Sometimes you were sent to Lewis Department Store on Vicar Lane for bagels as they had a fresh bakers and fabulous food store which was also full of amazing sights and smells. Passing the Hussars public house on Eastgate, the doors were open and the stench of stale beer and cigarette smoke drifted out.

You fell in with the rhythm of the other workers who were mostly on piece work being paid for each piece of work they accomplished. Heads were down in the morning to reach their target for the day which was a full day, 8 hours. There would be a bit of singing along with the radio but work was never interrupted. The afternoon’s work carried on but with a much livelier atmosphere especially on a Friday, if there was a wedding replicas of male body parts would be made from scraps of material and thrown around the factory much to the annoyance of the male pressers. Everyone would sing along “the bells are ringing, for me and my girl” and so on.

I was eventually slotted into a position early in 1964 with three other girls making the body of skirts, all different styles. Munrospun was the trade name for the Scottish wool tweeds the company was known for, the garments were high quality, all the checks had to match exactly, tensions and size of stitching precise and the correct colour threads to be used. Two of the girls on my bench were young, the other a little older, all immaculately dressed under an overall. After a few months the older lady left and was replaced by a girl from another department, I knew her as some days I would go to my granny’s on York Road in the lunch hour, she would make bacon and eggs for me, and this girl would be on the bus as she lived close by.

Fabulous times, by 18 years old I was earning more than my Dad, what a start to working life. I moved on and had a great career based on confidence.