Bill Simpson (b.1921)

I was born at Stoke on Trent...1921. Me dad, he was a printer in the pottery trade - prints as you used to put on plates and what have you. He had women working for him as was transferers, they used to put them on the plates for him. It was a poor job in them days, all the pottery, it wasn't like it is today, no money it.

Seven of us...originally they were army barracks but that's going back, I can't remember them as a barracks but that's what they used to tell me. So it was in a square and there were about 15 or 16 houses in this square. When they were all full there were no end of kids... They were all big families, like ours, seven at a time, so you can imagine how many kids there were about. The toilets were 20, 30 yards away. We used to have to come out the front door and walk all the way round to the square. About every winter all the bloody toilets were frozen over - terrible in them days.

Most of us - there were no end of kids growed up together and we all finished up in the potteries, you know, in the different trades in the potteries, warehouse lads and one thing and another. I were a polisher. When they used to fire them in the kilns and the little tiny bits come off and stuck to the plates we had to grind them and polish them off.

I went in the army when I were 19 or so I had five or six years in the trade. I was constricted I was...didn't like going in the army. I went to India to start with. From India I went to Iraq, Iran and all the way round the Middle East, I think it were about 13 or 14 different countries as I visited.

We got married and I came to Hinckley to live, that were in 1942 I think. It were all right, different altogether to Stoke...what with the different factories. At Stoke...it's all in them days what we used to call pot banks...in other words they were all factories which made pottery.

I came from out the potteries into the hosiery. Piece of cake, easy, nowhere near the hard work of the potteries, nowhere near it. It seemed to be more heavier. We either used to have to carry them (the pots) on our head or on our shoulders or in the arms - plates, you'd pile them on top of one another and put your arms under 'em like that and carry them...two or three dozen at a time stacked up. Cups, you used to put a tray on your head, a big long un and fill it all with cups and carry that from one place to another. Same with saucers, you used to carry them in a big round basket and you used to put your arm in it and swing it up and put it on your shoulder. Many time you'd drop them, you'd pay no attention to them.

Much better here than it were in Stoke. I think when I first went in...when I were 14, it were about 18 bob (90p) a week but when I went into the hosiery that 18 bob turned into about three or four quid, much better pay here. I thought I were well off money wise. It's a bit better here than it is in Stoke, I think so anyway.



New Buildings, Hinckley