Book description
Tales of Hardship, Love and Happiness in Tate & Lyle's East End Factories
'On an autumn day in 1944, Ethel Alleyne walked the short distance
from her house to Tate & Lyle's refinery on the shining curve of
the Thames. Looking up at the giant gates, Ethel felt like she had
been preparing for this moment all her life. She smoothed down her
frizzy hair, scraped a bit of dirt off the corner of her shoe and
strode through.
She was quite unprepared for the sight that met her eyes …'
In the years leading up to and after the Second World War thousands
of women left school at fourteen to work in the bustling factories of
London's East End. Despite long hours, hard and often hazardous work,
factory life afforded exciting opportunities for independence,
friendship and romance. Of all the factories that lined the docks, it
was at Tate and Lyle's where you could earn the most generous wages
and enjoy the best social life, and it was here where The Sugar Girls worked.
Through the Blitz and on through the years of rationing The Sugar Girls
kept Britain sweet. The work was back-breakingly hard, but Tate &
Lyle was more than just a factory, it was a community, a calling, a
place of love and support and an uproarious, tribal part of the East
End. From young Ethel to love-worn Lillian, irrepressible Gladys to Miss
Smith who tries to keep a workforce of flirtatious young men and women
on the straight and narrow, this is an evocative, moving story of
hunger, hardship and happiness.
Tales of adversity, resilience and youthful high spirits are woven
together to provide a moving insight into a lost way of life, as well as
a timeless testament to the experience of being young and female.
Also includes personal photographs of the sugar girls and life at the
Tate & Lyle factory, available in the ebook edition only. 'An
authoritative and highly readable work of social history which brings
vividly to life a fascinating part of East End life before it is lost
forever.' Melanie McGrath Duncan Barrett studied English at Cambridge
and now works as writer and editor, specialising in biography and
memoir. He most recently edited The Reluctant Tommy (Macmillan, 2010) a
First World War memoir. Nuala Calvi also studied English and has been a
journalist for eight years with a strong interest in community history
pieces. She took part in the Streatham Stories project to document the
lives and memories of people in South London. They live in South London.
