Dewhirst Factory
Denise Gilmore (left).
I started work at the Dewhirst factory on the 6th of April 1970. I was fifteen and had just left Dene House Secondary School. I started off in the ironing and packing section of the factory. We got paid by the item, so to begin with I was earning less than £5 a week. Once I got up to speed and was packing 60-70 shirts per hour, my salary increased, and I started taking home around £10.
The cutting room was at the back of the factory. It was mostly men who worked there. The collar and cuff section were then on one side with the shirt backs, and the fronts and sleeves at the other side. The parts of the shirts were then brought together. There were strings with clips. These were pushed forward so that all the parts could be taken one by one with each machinist sewing their own part. The shoulder was sewn first, then the fronts and sleeves, and lastly the cuffs and collar. There were usually four of these lines with different styles on each line. The shirts were then inspected and passed to the finishing section, where they would be pressed, buttoned up, folded, and put into a bag before being boxed and sent to the warehouse.
Later I got a job in Time and Motion, which was a big thing back then. That however came to an end in 2000, when production was moved overseas to somewhere in the Far East. Around 700 or 800 people were made redundant. I was one of those kept on to process shirts being imported for the UK market. This prompted me to do an access course in the evenings at East Durham College. I finally left Dewhirst in 2004, to start a full time degree course in social work at Sunderland University. After graduating I began work in the Children’s Disability Team at Sunderland City Council.
Elizabeth Burrell.