NCR encouraged all-rounders

Our main picture today shows cast members in a production being staged by the operatic society attached to NCR, once Dundee’s biggest employer.

The vintage photo belongs to Ms Anya Lawrence, whose mother May Seaton is shown fourth from the left in the back row.

Anya emails: “I don’t know any of the rest of the cast, although I vaguely remember the girl to my mother’s right being called Alice.

“I’m not sure what the production they are dressed for is, but it may be – from the way they are dressed – Maid Of The Mountains. They put on a show every year and my mother often took me to rehearsals.

“I was even a drummer boy in The Desert Song. I recall her being very glamorous in an evening dress for Call Me Madam.”

Ms Lawrence says the US-owned cash register manufacturer had “lots of societies” to choose from, and that May particularly loved tennis and often took her daughter to the company’s tennis club at its Camperdown grounds.

She adds: “They had their own courts and clubhouse near where the ice rink is now – she also played golf with the golf club. There were also football teams, I believe, and there may have been other societies that I’m unaware of.

“Every year the NCR hired a train and took the workforce on a day out. I remember going to Whitley Bay, which seemed a very long journey from Dundee and very exotic as people spoke differently. They called an ice cream cone a ‘cornet’. Societies and works outings were common in the 1950s in lots of places. Does anyone remember them?”

If you have a story to tell about NCR

Operatic Society or any of the company’s other recreational groups we’d love to hear from you.