My first job after leaving school at 15 was with Gouldings & Sons Sheet metal and Wireworkers where a lot of local boys had their first taste of working for a living. They had two factories, one in Yamburg Ave (Wireworks) and one in the old market building down on the corner of St. Annes Road (Sheet metal),
I worked at the wirework factory which was only a few minutes walk from Beach Road, my starting wage was 10 pence an hour - a grand total of One Pound Sixteen Shillings and Eight pence a week, of which I gave my Mum one pound. Can you imagine the outcry if you asked your kids now to give up over half their gross income towards the upkeep of the family!
The foreman at the wireworks was a man called Arthur Richards and a nicer man you would not meet, his tolerant attitude to the boys who had just left school helped us to acclimatize to the workforce, when you start your first job straight from school you need a man like Arthur to ease you into adult life not some boss or foreman who think their sh*t doesn’t stink and play all kinds of idiotic tricks on you.
When you had learnt the basics of the job the pay went up to 1 shilling an hour and you were put on piecework which meant the faster and harder you worked the more money you ended up with at the end of the week which was another good lesson in life (work hard and you will prosper).
Mr. Goulding the boss left the running of the factories to his foremen and did not visit the factories all that often, when he did he reminded me of Winston Churchill as he was very big and smoked a cigar.
We all looked forward to pay day and the visit of the Telfer Pie man from whom we bought pies, sausage rolls and slabs of cake and when you came from a poor family the pride in taking pies and sausage rolls home on pay day was tremendous.