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Ron
Williamson
"I
was 14 when I left school. I left school in the morning, went to
the factory in Sydenham, the Aerograph Sprays, I went there and
I got a job and started the following morning. So I left school
twelve o'clock one day, and started work the following morning!
That
was ten shillings a week I got for that. Being a docker's family,
we were all expected to work in the docks at some time or other.
When I went to work at Butler's Wharf, my first wages there I was
still only just 14, my first wages there was seven and sixpence
a week, 37 and a half pence a week. That's for forty-eight hours,
eight hours a day, four hours on a Saturday.
We
used to cycle from Bellingham my brother and I, up to Tower Bridge
everyday, 'cause we couldn't afford the fair. Eight o'clock was
the starting time, but you had to be there at half past seven, to
start work at eight o'clock. Five o'clock knocking off time, and
an hour for lunch.
As
a boy you'd only do the odd jobs, sewing up bags and sweeping up.
When I first started work, I used to fetch my wages packet home,
and give it to my mother, and then she'd give you whatever she thought
out of it. I used to get six pence, two and a half pence, for my
pocket money for the week when I first started work.
What
did I spend it on? Well, my girlfriend and me we used to go to the
pictures on a Sunday night, at the Lewisham Hippodrome, tuppence
each to get in and a penny bag of peanuts each, and a little cuddle
in the back seat, and that was the pictures. And that was the pocket
money gone for the week."
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