Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Lily the link with the past who helps bring old jute mill to life
WHEN visitors tour Verdant Works it’s fun, intriguing and interactive.
But in the same way that a war museum can’t quite convey what it’s like to be shot at, can a carefullyrecreated factory give a real taste of life in a tough and long-gone industry?
The answer is yes — if it still has an actual worker.
Lily Thomson is 77 and volunteers at Verdant Works to explain mill life to visitors. She is very much the real deal.
She grew up as one of a family of six in Park Lane off the old Hawkhill and now, ironically enough, lives in the Coffin Mill off Brook Street.
She and her family had just two rooms – the tiny kitchen was also the living and eating area, while through the back there was a bedroom. They lived in a three-storey block with a communal toilet which served up to 14 people. There was no hot water — unless you boiled a kettle — and there was only gas, no electricity. It is astonishing to think that this scenario is not from some Victorian history book, but in the reasonably recent past was reality for the vast majority of Dundonians. But Lily said: “We didn’t feel that we were hard done by. “It’s just the way it was. Life was hard, of course, especially for my mother after my dad was injured in the mill and then died of pneumonia. She worked in a mill herself and started when she was only 12.”
Born in 1939, Lily started work as a weaver when she was aged just 14.
A year later she moved to Thomson and Carter in the carpet industry, then to jute again with J.F. Robertson. As a weaver her working day started at 7.30am and finished at 5.30pm, with an hour for lunch.
Lily said: “I’d spend some of it cleaning-off the looms because the dust caused fires.”
Her first pay packet was five shillings – 25p in today’s money.
Lily’s mother, grandmother, brothers and stepsisters also worked in the mill, and not only was it dangerous — being snagged into a machine could be fatal — there was a lot of scope for “lumps and bumps” if a shuttle flew off and struck a worker.
Jute was very flammable, fires were common, and the bonus for helping fight them would be seven shillings and sixpence.
“The atmosphere was good, amongst the workers I mean, not in terms of the dust that was everywhere, even in the tea,” said Lily.
“I looked after six looms and if a thread broke or the loom was off somebody would help you.
“Everyone was the same. You were working for a living, not luxuries.”
After almost 20 years in the mills, Lily left.
By then plastic had replaced jute and India became the dominant force in the industry.
Ironically Lily has now spent as much time in Verdant explaining mill life as she did actually working in it.
But she is a link to the past — and a visit to the building is all the richer for her presence.
In tomorrow’s edition, Verdant Works — a jewel in Scotland’s tourism crown.