She had her own place and it had a sign outside the door ‘Glove Makers and Engravers’
Me mam was a qualified upholstress and she used to do work in the house for Dukes and Marcus and companies like that and it wasn’t always ideal to have all this stuff all over the house especially as we lived in flats in Wallsend and ironically the flats were just outside the shipyards at a place called Geralds Street.
So she did that for quite a number of years and me dad came in this time and he told me mam that they were looking for a part time worker, or a short term worker to make the PPE, the personal protective equipment, for what they called the black trades, so your welders, your burners, your shipwrights, your platers and it just protected them from the sparks when they were working and this job was supposed to last 4 months.
Me mother was very, very apprehensive about going into the shipyards because I would think at the time a lot of the women who worked in the shipyards, they didn’t have a good name you know.
But anyway, me mother went to see about this job and they nearly took her hands off because of her experience and later that day me mam got a visit from two of the union men to tell me mam that she couldn’t work in the shipyards on the rate of pay that they’d negotiated at the interview. Me mother, she was just going to walk away from it but they came back and said we’ve got your pay lifted up because you’re a union card holder. The shipyards in them days were what you called a ‘closed shop’ so you had to be in a union to work in a shipyard.
I’d started serving me apprenticeship in the shipyards as well as a carpenter and she got this job and she had her own place and it had a sign outside the door ‘Glove Makers and Engravers’ and so at some point somebody else used to use this workspace the engravers, I’m not sure what the role was in the shipyards and that sign soon become ‘Lovemakers and Ravers’. It wasn’t a big deal, it wasn’t in them days, you know. So, she was there fourteen years and she retired when she was 60.
During that time in the shipyards she made many friends, she was treat very, very well. She would have like a little concession where she would get out 10 minutes earlier so she could get up that bank at Swan Hunters before the rush started. Like, same of a lunch time, she used to go up and get her shopping at Wallsend, so she become quite well known in the area.
She had a friend in the shipyard called Ripyard Cuddling. Ripyard Cuddling was a welder, and that Ripyard Cuddling was his pseudonym. His name was Jack Davitt and he wrote a poem about me mam, The Leather Queen, and there was no smut or anything about it. My mam and dad become friends with Jack Davitt and his wife. The poem’s there to be seen and you can buy that book in North Shields library.
Another claim to fame that she had, she was very ill with emphysema, she was going to raise money for the lung foundation, what did she do? She does an abseil off the Tyne bridge.
You had the marines up-a-height and that sort of thing helping her but when she come down, she came down really fast and the rope had bounced and she took it off, got her inhaler out, had a puff and I says, “What are you doing?” she says, “I’m going to do it again”. Her claim to fame got bigger and bigger. In fact, people used to stop her and give her money to give to the lung foundation.
The leather she used wasn’t sort of smooth leather, I can’t remember what they called the leather, but it was rough and there was dust come off it but we never done anything about it at the time.
Everybody knew her, there was 8,000 people worked in Swan Hunter’s and they all knew me mam.
Their lives changed as well, me mam and dad. Where, as kids we’d go on holiday, we’d go to Crimdon Dene and places like that and we thought we were going to the other end of the world on the bus, it used to take all day to get there. But me mam and dad’s lives changed, they started going on holidays abroad and things like that so it was a really good thing for them.
When me mother started, you couldn’t just walk into her place you had to make sure the gaffas, the managers weren’t watching, and the managers would come and get their briefcases sewn and stuff like this. It was alright for them, but it wasn’t alright for us you know. So, we had to be careful when we went in and especially the winter months, me mam was somewhere warm, the conditions on the ships were terrible.
You had the women who worked there, you had your administration staff, you had your time-keepers you had your pay clerks but you also had the ladies who worked on the ships and they were cleaning and they had these big steel paint tins, 5 gallon paint tins and they used them as a basket sort of thing you know.
The women on the ships didn’t get any concessions you know, none whatsoever. They were just treat as any other worker was treat, it must have been hard for them because it was strenuous work they were doing and then they were going home of a nighttime making dinners and teas for their families, that sort of thing.
Tony was interviewed in 2025 as part of the Women in Shipbuilding project.