HEADSCARVES EXHIBITION

Stories of Women’s work in Hull
in the 20^th Century

“Sat talking about it – It’s like it was yesterday”

Personal testaments of how women lived and organised their
working lives years ago ... seen through their headscarves.

placing your mouse over the main image will enlarge it for you;
clicking the little headscarf logo will show it full screen - use F11.

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Working lives

Then, as now, the woman who did only one job in her life was the exception to the rule.

Many changed occupation throughout their lives, whether due to family commitments, temporary contracts, redundancies in the Seventies, or the (what now seems a brief) period in the Sixties when, “Jobs were easy then. You could leave one job on a Friday and go in to another job by Monday.”

The story extracts here are a sample of the range of work participants did throughout their and their relatives lives in the last century.

We are looking forward to representing all the contributions we received at our celebration and exhibition in 2021.

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~*~ “My elder sister’s first job was at the Waddington Glove Factory in Cottingham Road. She later transferred to the one in Cottingham village.

Like most working young women, they cycled everywhere proudly wearing their headscarves.” ~*~

~*~ "My Mum always wore the turban when she was doing her house work. It was just a thing she’d done all the time.

She’d put her curlers in. She’s always wears a headscarf now; she still likes one, but she wears it the proper way now, tied under her chin.

The Lily Bilocca look!” ~*~

You can read Lily's story, and that of her friends, all about their tremendous fight for safety at sea for Hull's fishermen in her entry in Wikipedia here.

~*~ "I can still put a turban on. The knack is to take your corner, put your headscarf on as a triangle.

Put the triangle bit at the front, bring it round bring it round by your ears.

Tie it and then loop that bit over onto where you just tied it and tuck it in.” ~*~

You can find advice and fashion ideas on how to tie a headscarf online; try "Wikihow".

Here is another advice page from MacMillian's support pages

~*~ “We looked down on people with Headscarves. There was a definite social hierarchy. I was only from Sutton Trust Estate, I wasn’t from anywhere posh, but we still looked down on factory girls.

I don’t mean everybody, but it was a social thing. Factory girls weren’t like us, who worked in shops and offices.

We were always envious of the girls who worked as packers - especially on a Friday night. The girls on the floor always wore turbans, with their hair in rollers or done up - and they could go straight out from work after taking their turbans off.

We had to go home and do our hair before going out!” ~*~

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