 |  | | | Dundee Jute Mills 1940s/1950s | There are 10 messages in this section. |
Jean Hunter from Bankfoot. Posted 12 Mar 2002.
My mother spent her entire working life in the jute mills, from starting as a teenager to the day she retired.
She was a weaver and we were always made aware that there was a definite hierarchy at the mill and that weavers were much higher up this pecking order than spinners. As if to emphasise this my mother would leave the house every morning wearing her hat & gloves, no matter what the weather, so that everyone would know she was a weaver! | | |
|  | Katie. Posted 20 Nov 2002.
If anyone has any more stories about working in jute mills in Dundee I would love to read them. Or if anyone has comments on how Dundee has changed from the closure of all but a few of it's mills, from then 'till now.
Any thing would be most appreciated as I am very interested in Dundees recent history to do with the mills. (I am 21 amd studying at Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee - doing Interior Design - and I am researching for my 4th yr dissertation)
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| | Dave Perks. Posted 19 Dec 2002.
Hi Katie if you go to yahoo Dundee history groups, you will find a wealth of info on the jute mills of dundee
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| | Dave Perks. Posted 19 Dec 2002.
That was very true. My wife was also a weaver in Dundee right up until 1965 when we came to Canada. The highest was the weaver down to the lowest which was the sweeper in the mill.
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| | Sheila Wilson from Canada. Posted 5 Jan 2004.
My whole family worked in the jute mills in Dundee from the 1930s to the big closures in the 1960s. Before she retired Mum was a weaver in Fergusons and my Dad was a foreman in Marshall and Brush. I had an aunt who worked in Cox's for many years (Nan Bruce) but they all worked in various mills during the course of their lives. In fact, when Dad was a young man working in Baxters as a mechanic, he patented a machine part, though I can't remember what it was.
I worked in a jute brokers office, then in the sales office of Thompson Shephard. I recall an incident at Thompson Shephards that played out like a Keystone Cops movie. The batching house frequently had fires, and on one of these occasions the fire brigade jumped into action as usual. However, they must have had a new fireman working that day, because in an attempt to get into the batching house, he put his shoulder to the batching house door. Unfortunately, he didn't know that these doors had several feet of a drop on the other side as this is where the jute bales were unloaded from the incoming trucks.
When the doors burst open he disappeared over the edge. One of the foreman, while running to call an ambulance, fell and broke his ankle, and off he went with the ambulance when it arrived.
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| | cathy clyde from Arbroath. Posted 5 Jan 2004.
In the sixties I worked in Cox's Mill. Cox brought Irish workers from County Fermanagh and gave them houses in an area of Lochee known as 'Tipperary'. Coxs Mill was the largest in Europe in the early 19OOs.
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| | David Graham from Australia. Posted 31 Jan 2005.
While researching my Scottish ancestry I came across an death extract of a family member who died from burns to the body. I also noticed that she was a jute mill worker. Having read the previous entries I am now thinking it possible that she was severely burnt by a fire in a Jute Mill. I was also wondering how detailed are the records for jute mills? I assume that she would have worked fairly close to where she lived so is it possible to locate the jute mills that existed around the area?
Thanks
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| | helen boyd from glasgow. Posted 15 Nov 2004.
I am working on project for the BBC entitled 'Immigration'. We are interviewing immigrants all over Scotland, and are looking for an Irish immigrant (male or female)who worked in the Dundee mills to be interviewed for the programme.
I would be very grateful if anyone who knows of a relative, friend of the family or perhaps neighbour who travelled to Scotland from Ireland, and who went on to work in the Dundee mills could contact me on this email address - [email protected].
Thank you for any assistance you can offer.
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| | Lawson from Dundee. Posted 15 Mar 2005.
David Graham asks the question about his relative who might have been burned in a fire in a jute mill. And earlier an apologetic Cox descendant identified herself at Verdant Works - the mill museum.
Jute was so important to jute mill bosses that they would not allow the municipal fire brigade to attend a fire in a jute mill - they caused too much damage to the jute. Jute mills had their own fire fighting services who knew that above all the jute had to be saved. Mr Graham's relative might just have been collateral damage.
And I'm sure the Cox family descendant would not these days operate as her ancestors did.
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| | Jane Millar from Dundee. Posted 12 Jul 2006.
My mother started work as a halftimer in the mill at the age of eleven (half day school and half day at work). She worked in various mills around the Hilltown area. Her name was Margaret Aitken later to be Hirst. She always said that the mill workers were the best and ready to help one another. She was a mill worker all her working life as was my Dad George.
Mum was a spinner and Dad worked a carding machine, the last place they worked was the F.L.C.B. which was a experimental factory for new machinery (Fairbairn, Lawson, Coulm and Barber).
When she was in the mill in constitution street (Grants) it was my job at the summer holidays to get money from her at dinnertime and get nine ice cream cones and run across the road to the mill at two thirty. She would run down the mill yard for them to take to the other spinners. We lived along the street in the Pearl Laundry Pend, that was number 40 constitution street. Life seemed much simpler then.
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