The Osbourne's Early Married Life

Detailed Accounts from the Osbourne Family Archives regarding their 1939 touring honeymoon, their first furniture purchases and an inventory of the household contents.

When Mr. and Mrs. Osbourne were married in July, 1939, just before the outbreak of the Second World War,

they embarked on a touring honeymoon and their outgoings for the honeymoon were meticulously recorded by Mr. Osbourne and that social document has been kept in the family archives, together with records of expenditure etc. during the first few months of their marriage. Details of these are given

below:-

HONEYMOON -

Hire of Car £1. 0. 0

HOTELS

Lygon Arms £4. 5.11

Devonshire Arms £1. 0.10

UIlswater £8.17. 6

Craven Arms £1. 3. 0

Luttrell Arms £1.10.11

New Inn £2. 5. 0

Seymour £1.13.11

Manor £1.14. 4

Petrol - 35 galls.@ 1/7 (1493

miles)!!! £1.16.11

Tips say £2. 0. 0

Odds and Ends £5.11. 8

Total cost of Honeymoon £33. 0. 0

SUMMARY OF INVOICE FROM WARING & GILLOW FOR NEW FURNITURE

P.L.Osbourne 12th June, 1939

1 4' Light Walnut Wardrobe,

Dressing Table to match and

fitted Gent's Wardrobe to match £44. 5. 0

4'6" Walnut bedstead £8. 8. 0

A"Stanhope" settee and

2 easy chairs £25.15.0

-------------------------------------------------------------

1939 INVENTORY OF HOUSE CONTENTS AT 11 ULVERSTON ROAD, LONDON E.17

(perhaps compiled in case of possible bomb damage)

Maples Dining Room suite £42. 4. 0

Bedroom suite £52.13. 0

Lounge suite £25.15. 0

Slumberland mattress £8. 8. 0

Slumberland base £2.17. 0

Bedroom stool & chairs £5. 7. 6

Curtains (kitchen & bathroom) 8/7d

Rug 16/11d

Carpet and felt £ 9. 9. 0

Blankets £5.13. 5

Pillows 15/2d

Stair clips & screws 8/4d

Tools - Screwdriver, gimlet and

ruler 3/-d

Mirror, hallstand, fire irons, coal

box, medicine cabinet £7.15. 3

Curtains, bedspread and

eiderdowns £8.11. 9

Ironmongery - pail, broom,

brush, dustpan, stain,

brushes, nails, etc. 4/-

Paint etc. for bathroom 7/6d

Stain 3/6d

Mappin & Webb cutlery £11. 7. 4

Door chain 2/9d

Towel rail, rawlplugs, turps. £4. 11. 0

Secotine, plate rack, soap dis,

splash plate 4/6d

Lamp shzades, wireless table,

fly swat £2. 0. 0

Saw 2/6d

Job Memories from Mavis Still

My first job with H.J.Heinz (57 varieties) and office life in the 1950s

I left school in April 1950 at the age of 15 and my first job was as a junior typist at H.J. Heinz (57 varieties) in Waxlow Road, Harlesden, NW10 in the General Office. One of my tasks was to send out a booklet introducing babies to Strained Foods called "From Milk to Mixed Diet" and performing general typing requirements. I had learnt shorthand but was not confident enough to use it, but after about two months in this department one of the secretaries in the Export department was off sick so I was asked to take some letters down in long-hand. I thought this was a good opportunity to use my shorthand and this resulted in a move to the Export department working for the Shipping Manager.

There was a lot to learn, e.g. typing all the documentation required to export to many countries. A lot of these documents had up to 8 carbon copies (which entailed a very heavy hand on the keyboard to make the copies legible) and if a typing mistake was made it entailed a lot of rubbing out, or re-typing - there was no such thing as Tippex at that time.

My first typewriter was an Underwood, which required a heavy hand to use the keyboard. The tabs had to be set by inserting a piece of metal in a ratchet at the back of the typewriter. I then became the proud user of a top of the range Remington typewriter. It was really exciting as the tabs could be set by pushing a button.

During the 1950s there came on the market Tippex, but not the fluid Tippex as of today but this was a powdery substance on a piece of paper, which you put on the top copy of your document and typed the incorrect letter with the Tippex held over the paper, then took it away and typed the correct letter. If you didn't rub out the carbon copies before doing this it produced a bit of a mess. This was not very good as the powder could come off when the letter arrived at the other end.

After some time I had an Imperial typewriter which was even better than the Remington Rand. By this time Tippex in fluid form was on the market. However, Heinz were very strict on how the work was presented, i.e. grammar, spelling and layout, and we were only allowed to make three mistakes on a document; after that we had to re-type it. I used many typewriters during my career, which included electric typewriters with daisy wheels and a 'golf ball' that had the letters on them; also an electric typewriter with a built in (limited) memory which enabled you to type the sentence or paragraph before putting it on to the paper.

Another memory I have is that we had to take it in turns to audit a ledger and if it balanced at the first go we got a day off. In those days the ledger was a great big heavy book, and was the only record Heinz had of transactions, so when we had fire drill certain members of staff were told that in the event of a fire they had to grab a ledger from the cabinet.

The office of the 1950s did not have photocopiers, so if you required a mail out it had to be typed on a special waxed paper which resulted in the letters being punched out. Typewriters had three positions for using the typewriter ribbon, red, black and no ribbon. No ribbon position was used to type the letters on to the waxed sheet. This was then put on a machine (either a Gestetner or Roneo) which had a big drum filled with black ink and the copies run off. If an error was made on this waxed paper whilst typing there was a special fluid which had to be put on to enable the incorrect letter to be painted out and then the correct letter typed over it. For the names and addresses there was a machine called Addressograph Multigraph which had all the names and addresses punched out on a metal strip, which were then punched on to labels.

Another way of producing many copies was on a machine called a Banda. This also had a drum but used a clear liquid to produce the documents. These were typed with a mauve carbon on a special shiny paper with the mauve carbon put right side to right side, which produced the words in mirror form. If a mistake was made a razor blade was used to scrape the incorrect letter or word(s) off and then an unused piece of the mauve carbon had to be torn off to re-type the correct letter or word(s). This was a very messy procedure.

I also had to use a Telex machine (no fax machines then). This had a telephone connection and the Telex number was dialled and the message had to be typed whilst 'live' on the line. A later Telex machine enabled a message to be punched on to a tape (made from paper). Telex then bought out a machine that enabled you to type the message into memory before you dialled.

The final stage in my career was, of course, computers, which I enjoyed immensely and I was very knowledgeable on these, which was due to my husband teaching me. He knew everything there was to know about computers, as he had worked on them from an early stage, and had to write his own programmes to produce the answers to various parts of his job. These were written in different computer languages, e.g. FORTRAN (Formula Translation), ALGOL (Algorithmic Language) and COBOL (Common Business Orientated Language), amongst others. The computers were in a room on their own, as they were very large and had big drums of tape.