I Spent the Bus Takings on my Wedding Hat

This story was submitted to the People's Was website by Judie Krebs from the BBC GMR Action Desk on behalf of Mrs Vera Mason and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands website's terms and conditions.

Vera Mason was born Vera Plenderleith , elder daughter of May and Alexander. When war started the family was living in Conningion Avenue,Blackley, Manchester 9, for a weekly rent of 15 shillings (75p). Although both Vera and her sister Iris passed scholarships to go to high school, their father did not believe in education for girls and Vera’s first job was at the CWS biscuit works in Lower Crumpsall. She was among the first people in the country to graduate from the Open University and ended her working career as a probation officer.
I was getting married in June, 1941 and working as a bus conductress. Rationing came out the month before but hats weren’t rationed because they were deemed to be a good morale-booster. One day, the bus was between Moston Lane and Rochdale Road and I saw a milliner’s with a beautiful maroon hat with a blue ostrich feather in the window. I thought it would just go with my going away outfit which was a blue costume.
I jumped off the bus and ran into the shop. The proprietor didn’t tell me the price. She just put it on my head and I emptied my takings on the counter. The total came to three guineas [£3.15p]. It was and she even put it into a hatbox for me. I got back on the bus and modelled it for the downstairs customers. Then someone upstairs said: “Aren’t you going to show it to us?” They’d all seen me leave the bus and go into the shop.
We went to Llandudno for our honeymoon and I’d never been anywhere so posh, but the lady at the reception desk made me feel really good when she said ‘What a beautiful hat.’
The money I’d paid for it was exactly a week’s wages, which was pretty good for those days — I’d only got half that amount at the biscuit works. I remember being told that women were being paid the same rate as men at the insistence of the Transport and General Workers’ Union because they were worried about men getting their jobs back after the war if the buses could be run on cheap female labour.
I met a former colleague after the war who told me that all the conductresses received dismissal notices on the same day, but that the council had put on a big party for them as a consolation.

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