The Sugar Girls: Tales of Hardship, Love and Happiness in Tate & Lyle’s East End

The boys bided their time until after breakfast, when they saw Julie McTaggart go into the office to talk to Peggy Burrows. A quick wink between them signalled the moment, and once again Joey was dispatched to distract the unsuspecting Gladys.

‘I think your ink duct needs refilling,’ said Joey, struggling to keep a straight face.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Gladys, raising her eyebrows. ‘What are you buggers up to this time?’

She turned and caught sight of Barry and Johnny attempting to sneak up behind her. ‘Oh no you don’t!’ she called, setting off at a sprint across the room. ‘You’ll have to catch me first!’

The boys gave chase after Gladys, whose years spent playing football in Beckton Road Park had made her a lithe and speedy runner. As she zigzagged in and out of the machines she elicited cheers of ‘Go, Gladys!’ from the other girls. But with four boys to contend with she eventually found herself cornered.

‘You won’t find nothing in my turban but my brothers’ old socks,’ Gladys told them.

‘Oh no, we’ve got other ideas for you,’ Barry replied, as they scooped her up and carried her to the opening for the telpher.

‘You’re going on a little trip,’ said Joey as they deposited her into the crate.

‘Oh am I?’ said Gladys. ‘Fair enough then. I quite fancied some air!’

She waved as the telpher set off on its jaunty journey and the boys waved back, clutching their sides with laughter. Gladys sat back in the crate, taking in the view of the sky while it made its way along the cable. It wasn’t a bad way to get out of work for a while, she thought to herself, although it was probably best not to look down.

Eventually the telpher arrived back where it had started. Gladys scrambled to her feet to alight from the crate. ‘Anyone else fancy a ride?’ she called cheerily. Then her heart sank.

Waiting for her by the opening was Miss Smith. ‘My office,’ she commanded. ‘Now.’

4

Ethel

Up in the Hesser Floor office, Ethel was settling in well. She was thrilled to have taken her first step up the company ladder, and keen as ever to live up to her mother’s high expectations. The office work was dull, but much easier than the physical labour of manning the machines. Her duties included calculating the overall tonnage of sugar packed by the department, checking the time-keeping records for the girls on the factory floor and liaising with the delivery department about how much sugar was ready to be sent out.

There were no typewriters in the office, so all the writing was done by hand. Ethel’s friend Joanie Warren, along with two other girls – Iris Lawrence and Beryl Craven – would sit hunched over their desks, scribbling away under the watchful eye of the forelady, Ivy Batchelor. Ethel found she clicked much more naturally with the girls in the office than the rough-and-ready types on the factory floor, and soon started going out with her new friends to the Imperial cinema in Canning Town or to the roller-skating rink at Forest Gate.

But while her social life was improving, Ethel’s love life had hit a new obstacle. One by one the boys in her old gang had begun to volunteer for the forces. First Johnny went into the Air Force, then Alf and Lenny signed up with the Army. Ethel knew the inevitable was coming, and sure enough, her beloved Archie soon followed in their footsteps, becoming a private in the Royal West Kent regiment. He was sent to Germany, and from then on the two young lovers only got to see each other every six months, although they wrote to one another devotedly every day.

One evening, Ethel was surprised by a visit from a neighbour – the only resident of Oriental Road who owned a telephone – announcing that there was a young man on the line for her. She rushed next door and grabbed the receiver, thrilled at the prospect of hearing Archie’s voice, but terrified that something might be wrong. What was so urgent that it couldn’t wait for a letter?

‘Arch?’ she shouted down the line. ‘Is everything all right?’

There was a pause, and then she heard a voice she hadn’t expected.

‘Um, hello, Et. It’s Len here.’

‘Oh, Len …’ Ethel hadn’t seen Lenny Bridges since the boys had all signed up together. ‘What are you doing ringing me?’

‘I wanted to ask you something,’ Lenny replied, hesitantly.

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I was wondering …’ Lenny’s voice trailed off.

‘What is it?’

‘I thought maybe you might like to marry me.’

Ethel was flabbergasted. Lenny knew how devoted she was to Archie, and Archie was one of his best friends. Was it possible that all this time he had been harbouring his own feelings for her?

‘No thank you!’ she said shrilly, hanging up immediately. She backed away from the phone and rushed out the door.

As soon as she got home, she wrote to Archie, explaining what Lenny had said to her and asking if he could shed any light on the matter. For the next few days she waited anxiously to receive his reply.

When the letter finally came, Ethel couldn’t believe it. Far from the angry tirade she had been expecting, Archie’s response was calm and philosophical. He told her that he and Lenny had been drifting out of touch anyway, and this only served to make it more final.

Ethel knew that in Archie’s shoes she would have responded very differently, but her mind soon turned to another question. Wasn’t it a bit odd that Lenny had beaten Archie to a proposal? Ethel had always assumed that they would marry once he came out of the Army, but he had never actually made his intentions clear. Soon she was worrying again, on this new, more troubling score.

Not long after, Joanie Warren invited Ethel over to her house in Canning Town for a party to celebrate her grandfather’s birthday. It was a good old-fashioned knees-up, and by the time she arrived the alcohol was flowing freely.

‘What’ll it be, young lady?’ the host demanded, as she entered a room which was full to bursting with people having a good time. Ethel realised that she didn’t know how to answer. She wasn’t normally the type to go out to dances or parties, and barely ever drank. She dimly remembered her father pouring her mother a port and lemon in the past, so she asked if she could have one of those.

The drink arrived and Ethel discovered it was surprisingly tasty. She knocked it back more quickly than she had expected, and soon asked for another. Apart from anything else, it was a useful way of avoiding joining in with the general singing and dancing going on around her.

But after a while, with her glass constantly refilled, Ethel found she wasn’t quite so averse to joining in after all. Before long, she had linked arms with a circle of people and was jigging around the room. She had spent her life always being the sensible one, and this new wildness felt wonderfully liberating. Soon she had lost count of the number of port and lemons she had necked, and was well and truly letting her hair down.

‘I wish the party could go on forever!’ she announced to a rather surprised Joanie. The evening was beginning to wind down, however, and it was time for people to make their way home.

Ethel’s body was not used to alcohol, least of all the impact of innumerable port and lemons – made worse by the fact that she and Joanie had also gobbled a large quantity of sweets, bought using some ration coupons they had found in the street. By the time she got home her stomach had begun to protest, and soon she was hit by an overwhelming wave of nausea. She did her best to ignore the persistent lurching feeling, but it grew worse and worse, so she took one of her mother’s buckets out of the scullery and put it within easy reach of her bed. It wasn’t long before she was making good use of it.

Every time Ethel was about to drift off to sleep her stomach began to convulse again and she clambered frantically over to the bucket, holding back her dark frizzy hair as she threw her guts up once again. This sorry routine continued all night long and she was retching well after the last of the weekend’s excesses had been expelled.

On Monday morning, as the first rays of light began to stream through the curtains, Ethel felt like each one was stabbing right into her brain, and her stomach was still doing somersaults.

‘Time to get up!’ her mum shouted, at what seemed like a deafening roar.

‘Too sick,’ Ethel croaked, pulling the bedclothes over her head. Missing a day at Tate & Lyle was almost unthinkable to her, but on this occasion even she had to admit defeat. She spent the rest of the day in bed, and at lunchtime Joanie came to see how she was doing.

The next morning Ethel’s stomach was still in a pretty tender state, but she managed to haul herself into work regardless. When she got up to the office, Iris, Joanie and Beryl had their heads buried in their work, and Ivy Batchelor was waiting in the doorway.

‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ Ethel said anxiously.

Ivy looked at her with an expression of disappointment. ‘You’ll be back on the factory floor today, Ethel,’ she told her, ‘packing on machine number one.’

Ethel was crushed. ‘Yes, Ivy,’ she said quietly. She went down to take her place on the belt of the machine, trying to avoid making eye contact with any of the girls around her. She was sure they would be having a good laugh at her expense.

The packing was every bit as exhausting as she remembered, and it did nothing for the queasy feeling in her stomach. At the height of summer, it was now desperately hot on the glass-roofed Hesser Floor, and the girls were soon dripping with sweat. A girl from the canteen brought up a jug of so-called Jungle Juice, a concoction specially formulated to replace salts lost from their bodies, but in her delicate state Ethel found it virtually undrinkable.

She also struggled with the rowdy culture on the factory floor, which seemed more raucous than she remembered from her previous stint on the machines. While they were working, the Hesser girls would shout and joke non-stop, and whenever a poor boy was sent to the department to plug a gap in numbers, the teasing would be merciless.

‘Come on then, pretty boy!’

‘Ooh, get a look at those big, strong arms!’