Vera Waites

A Memory of Stanford-le-Hope.

My mother-in-law has just passed away and we found this in her papers.

My years at Stanford-le-Hope Laundry.

I lived in a village where my mum and family had lived for generations. A signpost at the top of our lane said '24 miles to London'. Our house was in the last road on one side of the village before farm land, and almost a mile from the River Thames.

It was the last week of our school holidays and my dad told me, when he cam home from his work at the oil refinery, that the next day I was to go to our local laundry and ask for the manageress. I knew this laundry as one of my aunts lived close by, and our best Sunday School dresses had always been sent there because my mum didn't have an ironing table or sleeve board, just the kitchen table. Our dresses were always the same colour for the three of us, and had long sleeves. My young sister had to wear the same style for years.

Anyway, off I went, rang the bell and what I thought was a very old lady came to the door, the manageress. I was tall and very thin. She asked me how old I was and I said "Fourteen today". I started the next Monday. I was to work in the packing room, the youngest in the whole laundry, all local girls. So started my seven years from 1937 to 1945.

Miss Eastland, who I worked with for the first two years, was an old-fashioned lady. She only ever spoke to me about the work but I loved her, she was a true lady. We had a royal crest over our door because we did the laundry for all the grand houses. I got to pack beautiful linen, such I had never seen before or since. The girls were wonderful. I got my college education from those girls. My eyebrows were plucked and my hair styled. I didn't know anything about were babies came from but this was put right in the nicest possible way.

My job was to collect the laundry from all the parts (?). Our room was completely shut off from the rest. We had barrows to load up. We had journies - the vans collected, which we packed, sheets and towels first, all flat work, then shirts, maids' frills, aprons and hats were last place in the hampers, then boxes and parcels came last. We had a hot room to hang dresses and blankets where we went to get warm in the winter. The hours wer 8am to 6.30pm but for the first year I finished at 6pm. One hour for lunch, and a 15-minute tea break in the morning and afternoon. The best time was before the manageress arrived at 9am from her home across the road, 1-2pm when she had her lunch, and Friday afternoon when she did the wages. She caught us out lots of times by I can't remember ever any great troubles.

The war came and we had to do lots of extra work from the factories and some of the big houses closed, leaving just a few staff.

My first sweetheart was a va boy called Gerald Lyons. He didn't last long at the laundry and at sixteen left to work at Batas shoe factory before going in the airforce at eighteen.

We had loads of happy times and always went to the church dances and trips to London. I saw Ivor Novello in 'The Dancing Years' at Drury Lane, aged 14. Mary Ellis died last month at 104. I think I thought, and still do, it was the most beautiful show I had ever seen.

We were nearly all Methodists and the cast of the church panto and plays were nearly always laundry girls. It was the only place, apart from shops, for girls to work. It seemed you started from school and left to get married.

I learned so much from those girls and I lived in that village untio 1983 so never lost sight of them.

Vera Waites 2003.