Tag Archives: laundry

Stella Ridley: Laundry, Yarmouth 1960s

Working in Yarmouth Laundry

1965 and I had a few weeks of the Summer holiday to spare, so thought I would get a temporary job. There was work going in Yarmouth Laundry but I was told by most people that I’d hate it, my family in particular were very disapproving  – so as a teenager I obviously had to give it a try!

The people were welcoming; my work was to help an older lady and a girl a little older than myself to process all the incoming laundry. This included hampers from hotels and guest-houses and private laundry also. All had to be separated and marked before it went for processing through the washing and pressing.

The noise level was high, there was a lot of steam and I wasn’t allowed to play with the interesting machinery, but there were regular breaks and the work wasn’t difficult, just continuous, though not very pleasant. Some of the laundry was quite stinky, especially chefs’ clothes from the hotels.  When the incoming laundry was finished we were straight onto helping with other jobs such as wrapping laundered items for return, not a minute seemed to be wasted.

All was well until some days into the work, during high Summer and a hot spell of weather, when some of the hampers from hotels (and one Yarmouth one in particular) contained not only dirty laundry but copious numbers of maggots feeding on it. I was really squeamish about this and couldn’t ‘just get used to it’ as I was expected to.  So there ended my brief career as a laundress, others were braver.

I still flinch at the idea of anything maggoty to this day.

Rodney Corbett: Services, Fire Brigade 1950s

Fire Brigade

Fire Brigade 1950s

Now my Uncle Ted as a young man was the ‘leader of the band’ of mostly builders who used to run with this handcart if anywhere was on fire. The handcart was kept in the Town Hall; they didn’t even have a horse. It must have been a very slow turn-out – to go round gathering the men in to run with the handcart. The handcart brigade would deal with anything round the town.

Just before the war they decided that Yarmouth would have to have an Auxiliary Fire Service team and Ted got ousted because it was all made up of Bucketts.  Ted went off in a fit of pique and joined the Home Guard. In the war it became National Fire Service from Auxiliary, and after the war they were put back to the local Councils and then became the Isle of Wight Fire Service.  When I joined, the original Fire Chief for the Island, Sullivan, was still there and how many Chiefs did I see? – dozens. Rod Corbett b 1943

Fire Brigade in action

Fire Brigade in action