My Mother's teenage years

My mother spent most of her early teenage years in hospital, ans therefore did not get much of a secondary education. To make things worse, her mother decided that she would leave school at15, then the minimum age of leaving school, and go to work. My mother was not pleased with this, however she felt there was nothing she could do about it. She had been reared to obey her mother, and besides, she was so far behind at school after her stay in hospital with rheumatic fever that she was not coping.

She was apprenticed as a milliner, that is, a hat maker. Everyone, male and female, wore hats in those days of the late 1940s. She started work in work room on Broadway in the city and worked as a milliner until she left work to have her first child, then returned to work soon after, and did not leave until she was pregnant with me. The work consisted of hand sewing hats - fine stitches by hand for 8 hours a day. It was gruelling work, however my mother appears not to have minded it too much. At least she was able to sit down. She was weak from the sojourn in hospital and she commented to me that having no money to catch the bus from Central station to her workplace - a distance of about 1 1/2 kilometres - she had to walk and despite getting tired from it, at least the walk improved her fitness over time.

Interestingly it was at this time that she found she was severely myopic. She had been stumbling through life thinking she was just clumsy. She did not realise that her problem was that she could not see more than a foot in front of her face. On getting glasses at 15, she discovered that street signs existed, and what her mother and father looked like. She thought that everyone saw the world as she did - through a blurry lens!

As a milliner she become quite proficient and over time her ability to earn more grew, and, by the time she left the trade, she was earning good money for a female. (Recall that in those days females were earning approximately 2/3 of a male wage, merely because of their gender, and regardless of whether the work was equivalent or not. Parity in wages did not occur "officially" until I was working for about 15 years, and in reality had still not happened when I retired).

The photo shows my mother in the garden of her home at aged 15.