AAW Starting in the electrical industry
I talk about my father in another essay, He played no part in my life after about the age of 10, so we were a family of three.
At the very beginning of the war, my mother needed a hysterectomy. At that time only major hospitals carried out operations like my mother needed. Our doctor, in Twickenham, told my mother that he was unable to get her into one of the London hospitals as they were all being closed in expectations of war casualties. As it turned out, the "phoney war" meant that this precaution was unnecessary. More of my personal stories later on (if this part of my website is successful)
My mother was friendly with a lady in Bexhill on Sea who we visited often on holiday before the war. The lady (Mrs Kemp) replied to my mother's letter saying that she could take the three of us in (Mum, Len, my younger brother, and I). We duly left Twickenham and arrived at 14 Edinburgh Road Bexhill. (I wonder who is living there now!)
Mum got her operation at Bexhill hospital and I finished my schooling at the Downs School. My mother had a bit of recuperation at Mrs Kemp's and got a job at a ladies' outfitters as an alteration hand. She had trained as a tailoress in her younger days. I duly left school at 14. I don't know how I came to get the job. Perhaps Mrs Kemp had a few strings she was able to pull
The shop was owned by a miserable old sinner of a Christian Scientist. He had two staff who, I assume, did electrical repairs and installation. One of the chaps was a rather character and showed me the workbench in the basement of the shop. At the back of the bench was an array of sockets and leads and plugs that, I assume, were used to plug in the appliances to be tested after repair. At that time, electric fires had open spiral elements that regularly failed and need replacing. Looking back it is a wonder more people didn't get hurt with the crudeness of so many electrical devices then. But people a generation earlier had to be careful with candles and oil lamps. By the standards of 1940 we can be sloppy today in considerations of safety!
The array of sockets was due to the variety that were in use before the ware. Two amp, five amp, ten amp, and fifteen amp were all available in both two and three pin types. And the pitch of the pins was such that a two pin plug would not fit into a three pin socket. Nowadays, of course, two, five and thirteen are the only sizes normally available. During my contracting days, I have met a few specials that were not intended for common use. If a works had a special voltage or frequency supply, they may well have had one of the specials installed. The oddest one i have met was a Reyrolle plug and socket, where the earth pin of the plug was split with a cross-bar near the end, and it operated a switch at the back of the socket when pressed home for the last quarter of an inch. I can't think of a reason for the integral switch being operated by plugging in the plug.
At that time Bexhill had both DC and AC mains supplies. The workshop had both types of juice. Each supply was fed to the workbench. I don't remember much of the set-up, but I asked the chap "what would happen if I plugged that plug into that (other) socket. "Try it" he said, so I did.
From what I know now it must have been a pretty hairy set-up. Both mains service fuses blew and the total shop went into darkness. As I said, I got the sack. I know cartridge fuses were not common in those days, but to blow a pair of 60A service fuses indicates to me that the setup was pretty crude. It suggests that there was no adequate local fusing. I didn't know I had been sacked until the very end of the week. The chap who told me to "try it" was nowhere to be seen and I was a pretty ineffectual advocate for my own cause.
I then became an errand-boy for a large grocers until Mrs Kemp got me an apprentiship at a radio shop in the town. The errand-boy job was hard work as a heavy delivery bike with a large front basket took some trundling around a five-mile radius of the town. "Bexhill" is hilly, as its name implies