Harry Beazley (b.1909)

My father used to carry the night soil in those days (in Mansfield) from the toilets - used to call it the night soil. Well, it was a job you see, it'd got to be done. There were no water toilets but all there was was a huge tin and there was a huge cart that used to come - an awful filthy job but a job that had to be done.

I was the youngest of five. My sister was a seamstress and a mender - she worked in a hosiery factory. My brother was a master butcher, he slaughtered for Walkers in Leicester in later years. My other brother, he started work at spinning mills and then he went onto the train, first as a cleaner - there were engine sheds in Mansfield - and then as a fireman and finished up as an express driver for the LMS. My other sister worked in the cotton mills and died early.

My sister worked in the factory and there was an opportunity for what they call a belt boy. I left school at 14. Some of them went to grammar school but I didn't 'cos I knew I had to go to work. I knew very well that my father and mother could use the money.

All the machines were driven by belts - no chains, all belts. You had one huge AC motor with a huge flywheel and the complete thing was driven by one main shaft that went right from one end of the room to the other. It was all a mass of belts. You may have a row of machines and then a belt came from the machine onto a set of hangers and then the shaft was on the floor. Some of the belts were huge and long and I learnt how to mend them. Sometimes they'd last for ages but when the main belt went, it

The first day at work I can remember my mother brought me some overalls but they had to cut them down because they were too big. And the smell, that was another thing, I had to get used to the smell of a factory, it had got a smell of its own. It's hard to describe but it's a factory smell - if you went in - it's a smell of oil, it's a smell of waste, it's a smell of yarn, bobbin, fabric, all together. You can't hear yourself speak. People who work in factories have got a language all their own. People say 'I couldn't work if it's this loud', but you get used to it. That's another marvellous point in a factory. You can have all this machinery and it's loud as anything and yet two men can talk or just shout to each other. Once the machinery's still it seems eerie, it seems funny. I started in 1923. I was seven years there and of course from belt boy I started to watch the machines and learn how they worked. There were other men there I used to go round with and all the time when they were doing jobs I used to watch them. I'd got a flair for being in the mechanics shop and I supposed the flair carried me through and I enjoyed it, I understood the machines and got on well. I was in a factory where there were such a lot of different machines and I learnt to be on the shop floor - I learnt how to use a vice, how to drill, how to file properly, how to use a grindstone and all that sort of thing.