Bugle Annual’s cover star was Sankey’s tea lady Ruth
AN apology to readers of this year’s Bugle Annual – some of you will have noticed that we missed out the details relating to the front cover photograph.
It was in fact loaned to us by Wolverhampton Archives, and our thanks go to them for a wonderful image.
Local author Ned Williams is more than familiar with that picture, and can make up for our oversight. Ned writes:
“It is in fact a picture I obtained in the mid 1980s and deposited in the local archives. It shows Ruth Brown (nee Cooper) who was in charge of the tea trolley at Sankey’s ‘Top Works’ in Bilston. The picture was taken about 1937, and was in a set of pictures of the works – decorated with some flags etc for the Coronation of George VI.
“Ruth is on the left of the picture, wielding the teapot. Behind her are two tool-setters, Mr Morris and Mr Jones. I don’t know the chap hidden behind the trolley but the chap on the right is Mr Hill, who was a handyman and timekeeper at the works.
“Ruth herself was a machinist and Charles Sankey had ‘promoted’ her to taking the tea trolley round twice a day – on top of her normal work. She earned a small sum for doing so and if she was lucky with her machining sometimes made £2 a week. She left the firm in 1942 after twenty three years’ service.
Investigations
“As soon as I first saw the photograph I set out to find out who the people that are in it, and if possible find Ruth herself. Someone I showed it thought she had also worked in Bilston Market so I asked everyone I could find in the market who looked as if they might have been around long enough to know something useful. That helped me to find out her name.
“I then went from person to person in Bilston trying to find where she lived! Everyone knew someone else who was bound to know.
“In the end I was told Ruth’s address and I went round and knocked on her door. She was very surprised to see the photograph and invited me in for a cuppa while she told me all about it, and about her work at Sankeys.
“Ironically, Ruth also told me that if I had called a year or two earlier she probably would not have able to help me as she had been ill, but had since recovered and regained her memories.
“Looking at information currently on the internet I am guessing that Ruth Cooper was born in Bilston on 13th May 1903 and married George Brown in the autumn of 1937. In the 1939 register she is described as a press operator and he is a Tool Room templatemaker. Possibly they met at Sankeys?
“It is now over forty years since my first seeing the photograph and going off in search of the ‘tea lady’!