Margaret was Margaret Howlett when she started at Mackintoshes in 1951 after working in Howlett and White’s shoe factory office. She stayed at Mackintoshes until 1961, wrapping chocolates.
Starting work at 14
Before I went to Mackintoshes I started work in Howlett and White’s shoe factory office with another lady in 1946 when I was 14. I learned to do shorthand typing while I was there but the wages were nothing, nothing.
Mackintoshes wrapping chocolates
I worked there until 1951 when I moved to Mackintoshes. I wanted to go and work with my two sisters who worked there, not in the same department. They loved working there. I was on the machines where you wrap all the chocolates.
We each had our machine with different chocolates next to a belt going down to a box at the bottom where there was a girl packing Quality Street. I was on the purple ones, brazils. The chocolates got mixed as they went down the belt into the box at the bottom.
I was also on where they join the Easter eggs. The chocolates came through two parts of the Easter egg with the Quality Street pack inside and you had this big metal thing to join them together. If you held them there too long they all melted [laughs]!
On the wrapping machines, it was quiet. A lot of us worked there. In the afternoons they used to play records while you worked. One afternoon we heard the news of when the Manchester United boys got killed in the plane crash in Germany.
It was noisy where the chocolates come through in the moulds. They used to bang the moulds down to get the chocolate out. I’ve seen it on the telly now, it’s different. There’s nothing like it now [laughs].
I stayed on that job until the forewoman, a very sharp sort of person but kind, called me into the office. They knew I was pregnant and you were supposed to leave straightaway. But she said that as it was getting towards Christmas they were going to let me stay on and get my Christmas bonus. I got £10 – a pound for every year I worked there. Then I had to leave at Christmas.
It wasn’t safe really for pregnant women, was it, with the machines and that. I was put on the Rolo machine, when she found out I was pregnant. All the Rolos come down on a belt and they get wrapped and get packed automatically.
Social life and the canteen
I was friendly with some of the girls and used to go out with them. We went to the Lido, Aylsham Road, and my sister used to take me to the Samson and Hercules. We used to have a dance practice before we went [laughs] I’m sure we must have driven my mother mad.
Once I got used to the girls I liked working there. We had a break in the morning and at lunch we had about an hour. We had a canteen where you could go and have something to eat, or you could go out. Sometimes we went down to St Stephen’s for something to eat out or took our own lunch.
There was a quarter of an hour break in the afternoon. If you wanted to go to the toilet you had to put your hand up. If you were on a machine with the others, we didn’t used to stop much because we worked on bonus. You didn’t turn the machine off for anything, you kept going.
If the machine went wrong sometimes the chocolates used to get crushed, and stuck and kept stopping to clean it all. If something was wrong we had to call the mechanic over and would be waiting because we wanted to get on. We would lose bonus because of that. We didn’t complain, just put up with it.
If anything went wrong we could go down to the nurse. And we had to go and get the nurse to come and look at our fingernails. If we had any nail varnish on we’d be standing in the queue trying to scratch it off cause it wasn’t allowed.
We wore a white overall and one of those turban hats. We would leave the overalls to go in the laundry but we used to take the hats home. On a Monday morning you had to come in and find your own overall; they’d all be lying out for us. And if you couldn’t find it, oh, you used to get told off!
You had to be on time. If you weren’t there at eight o’clock in the morning you couldn’t clock in and you had to go back at dinnertime; you’d have to lose half a day.
The men used to work nighttime on shift work. They used to go on our machines and muck ‘em all up and they hung rude things up as well! We were only young girls and we weren’t used to all that. They weren’t very nice, the men, but we never used to see them because by the time we got there they’d gone.
There were some men where they made the chocolate, but there weren’t any men in the packing where I worked.
Caley’s on Chapelfield
The Caley’s site was in Chapelfield Road, then it got bombed and it was built on that site where it had always been. Now flats have been built there.
My best memories of working at Mackintoshes are working with the girls, nice girls, mostly we got on alright. There was a pub on the corner there, and Christmas time we all used to go in there in the dinnertime and then we’d try go back in to work. We’d all get sent home because we’d all been drinking – they wouldn’t let you back in. Health and safety was strong and you had to do what you were told.
Favourite job
My favourite job was my first job being on that machine on my own, wrapping the brazils in the purple paper. And them in that red foil, toffee crisp? You were on different things, depending on where someone was needed.
The wrapping machine had a big round thing with holes in it all the way round and you had to put a chocolate in each hole and that wrapped it automatically. The holes were the same shape as the chocolate and we fitted the chocolates in. We had to wear rubber finger stalls, when you picked them up, It was more hygienic.
After Mackintoshes
After I had my little boy I as a school cleaner and then worked as a school dinner lady for eighteen years. My mother used to look after the children. I had to work in the school holidays because we used to do the cleaning as well. I went in at six o’clock in the morning and I had a baby as well.
Margaret Howard (b. 1932) talking to WISEArchive at The Forum in Norwich on 22nd March 2024. © 2024 WISEArchive. All Rights Reserved
