MISSING . . . and FOUND!
THE DAILY MAIL offers readers a unique opportunity to re-establish contact with long-lost relatives and friends. Each week, MONICA PORTER features the story of someone trying to find a missing loved one, as well as a tale of people reunited. This column is produced in conjunction with the voluntary tracing service, Searching For A Memory, run by Gill and John Whitley. Marion Binnie and her friend Betty Walker would like to get in touch with their old workmates from the Forties.
Marion and Betty worked at Mitchell’s Tobacco Company in St andrew’s Square in Glasgow from 1944 to 1950. They were girls straight out of school, aged between 14 and 16, just like their colleagues Cellie Crooks, Babs Scullion and Winnie Kelly.
They all worked in the pipe t obacco department as spinners. Marion and Betty — who still meet up every week for shopping, lunch and a gab about the old days — believe that Babs and Winnie both emigrated to Canada years ago but have returned home to Scotland.
Marion’s f i rst wage was £1 7/-, given to her in a brown envelope each week. The girls worked from Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm, with overtime on Tuesday night and Saturday morning, and an hour off for lunch.
Marion recalls that in the morning you lined up and an elderly woman checked how clean your hands were. if you were prone to ‘hacks or splits’ on your fingers, she applied methylated spirits ‘ which really stung if the skin was broken! But it did help to heal them up’.
Marion and Betty went to the Barrowland dance hall in the Gallowgate at weekends or sometimes, for a change, to the Dennistoun Pally in Duke Street. Betty was Marion’s Best Maid at her wedding and Marion was Betty’s at her wedding. Best pals indeed! Marion went on to have three children; Betty had four. Sadly both women are now widowed. in MarCh Mary oram asked for our help to find members of a family she had been very friendly with in London many years ago.
‘i was a great friend of the Condon family,’ wrote Mary, ‘and spent many happy times with them. Pat Condon played the accordion and in october 1968 played at my wedding. i lost contact with the Condons in the nineties and despite great efforts have not managed to trace any of the family.
‘My photo was taken in 1967 and shows me and the Condon family; it was taken outside Pat and Bridie Condon’s house in Clapham Common, where we lived during the Sixties. They had two sons, Jimmy and Terence, and a daughter, noreen.
i moved away from London in the Eighties and now live near Wareham in Dorset. it would mean the world to me to reunite with any of the Condons and i do hope you will be able to help me.’
Mary has now updated us: ‘ The day after the story appeared i heard from an online researcher, who gave me an address for noreen. i was sad to learn that noreen had died but i wrote to her husband Vince, who passed a message on to their daughter Bernie, and soon afterwards i had a phone call from her. She told me the family had moved to Waterford in Eire in 2000, and gave me contact details for her grandparents, Bridie and Pat. So i called them and now we are on the phone every week.
in June, i went to visit the family in Waterford. What a reunion after 40 years plus! it seemed like only yesterday that we were together. Jimmy and Terence were there too, and Bernie and her young son Charlie. now we’ll remain close friends for ever. This has been better than winning the Lottery. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.’