Doreen Foggett

After she was married, Doreen worked in Marriott's finishing room from 1955-59 sewing ribbon edging and labels on to the blankets, for which she was paid piecework. Her mother and her mother's five sisters all worked as weavers for Smith and Philips' and Early's, joining the mills during the First World War when there was a shortage of male workers.

She recalls that she was expected to work hard but that there was a nice atmosphere in the mill. She found the tremendous noise in the weaving sheds awful but didn't have reason to go in there very often. There were slack periods in the year when blanket orders were scarce, so the women in the finishing room would always have a piece of work by them so that they could look busy when the bosses Mr Dominey and Colonel Micklewright walked through their section.

A recorded interview with Doreen is available from Oxfordshire Studies - details are available on the Search the Collections page (search for her name).