ROF Stories:
Tabulating Office
Vicky Dugdale came to Newport in September 1940 when her father, the Sergeant in charge of factory police, was transferred from the Royal Ordnance Depot at Chilwell, Nottingham to the Royal Ordnance Factory in Newport.
This is her story.
"My mother, father and I initially lodged in Hathaway Street and later moved into one of three police houses within the factory perimeter. I had a bedroom on the ground floor. Made from reinforced concrete it was designed to be used as an air raid shelter. It had steel shutters which would be closed in the event of a raid. My younger sister was born in that house in 1944, the first child to be born in the Factory!
When I was sixteen in March 1941, I began work in the ‘tabulating office’ where we were taught to use the rather unusual Hollerith punch card system. For a while I was the youngest person working in the Factory.
My wages were £1 1s 0d per week and rose to £1 10s 6d when I was seventeen. We worked from 8.30am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday and until 1.00pm on Saturdays. On payroll days if the payroll wasn't complete we had to work until it was finished. Sometimes we were there until midnight.
Because I lived in the Factory, I didn't usually eat in the canteen but on Saturdays, we used to go there and get a really thick slice of bread with beef dripping for 1d, a real treat.
During the working day, tea and buns were brought round on a trolley. The cakes came from Walter Sweeting's bakery on Corporation Road.
After the war father was transferred to the Royal Ordnance Factory at Llanishen. I carried on working for Standard Telephones and Cables who took the factory over on 11th November 1945 and employed many of the wartime staff. I left when I married on 31st August 1946."
- Victoria Parsons (née Dugdale)
May 2005
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