Sock Making and Griswold Machines

A: His trade was hosiery, and he finished up, er, after me mum decided she didn't want to do the fish and chips any longer, and that, so the shop opened as a hosiery shop. And he used to, er I, when I was getting a bit older, and me brothers, they used to have to, he'd do the winding, the wool, and he'd got ladies that'd got Griswold machines, and we used to have to take the bobbins of yarn, as we called it, down to these different places, different houses where the ladies did the socks and that, and then we'd had to go and fetch them back when they'd done them, take them somewhere else so the ladies could 'toe' them - you know how they have to 'toe' them - and then we'd have to take them down to, at the corner of Jarrom Street and Asylum Street there was a, a factory where they, er, pressed them... can't think of the names... there was a factory where they were pressed there, and folded, and then, er, my dad had to have them back, put them into boards, do them up, and he was doing them for a, er, school down, er, somewhere down south - not right down south - Oxford way, he was doing them for a school 'cos they had to have a, er, stripe round.

Q: So it was like a special commission?

A: Yes. He did that for years. Yeah.

Q: So would that have been the main thing that he did, for this school? Or were there others?

A: Oh he did, he did others. He did the, er, just the ordinary socks, er, and me mother then, and I've been as well, er, she'd meet me out of school and we'd go over to, er, Coalville - miner's socks - we had a stall over there, at Coalville.

Q: So you sold from a stall?

A: Yes. And it was in front of a butcher's shop. Yeah. I remember that.

Source: East Midlands Oral History Archive (Accession Number 000762 Collection Number WS/001/16)