What was the job of your grandmother?

Spec1alk

My maternal grandma worked in Horrock’ s cotton mill before marriage. Once her 4 children were grown up she worked in a biscuit factory. Prior to retirement she took a job as ‘ petty officer’! She worked in the local toilets!!!

Horrocks's cotton rings a bell.
Were dresses made from Horrocks's cotton with their label?

My maternal grandmother was widowed when my mum was nine yrs old and her brother two yrs old. To support them my mum was kept off school to look after her brother whilst my grandmother went went to work in Plymouth dockyard painting warships (it was 1940). Sitting on a gantry suspended off the side of a warship in drydock, I have a romantic image of her dressed in overalls with a top knotted scarf covering her hair, knowing nan there would have been a cigarette in the corner of her mouth as well......... The reality would have been very different.
Because of the significant disruption of the war (in Plymouth) the family managed to generally avoid the attentions of the school truant officer. When her brother was three yrs old he was able to start nursery and my mum was able to go back to school.
My grandmother continued working at the dockyard until her retirement, latterly in one of the staff canteens.

I have no idea what my paternal grandmother did for work but piecing together what I know I've long suspected she stayed at home to help her own mother keep house and look after her younger siblings. Then, when her mother died in childbirth with her youngest sibling she would have had very little choice but to carry on doing the same. They weren't that badly off for a working class family (her father owned two fishing trawlers and they owned their own house and had a car and a camera c.1920) so I expect her potential wages were not needed in the household. She was the eldest and she had 11 younger brothers and the twelfth and youngest sibling was a sister.
There were twenty years between the sisters so I expect grandmother brought her up like she was her own daughter when their mother died.
Two of her brothers died in WW1, she didn't meet her husband until she was thirty yrs old and she was forty yrs old when she had my dad, her first and only child, in 1930. Supposedly she was so ashamed she was pregnant for the first time at such an advanced age that she tried to keep it quiet. Her sister (who was on the cusp of marriage herself) guessed what was up and rallied the family to provide for the baby. She even persuaded her Victorian sister to abandon the idea of giving the baby the 'old fashioned' name of Albert in favour of the more 'modern' name of Derek......!

My maternal grandmother ran a B and B in Lancashire. She played the piano to entertain her guests. She loved walking and passed that interest on to me until she died when I was about 11.

My maternal grandmother was an army wife moving around, but brought up 5 children after grandad died, working at anything that she could to keep them fed and clothed.

My paternal grandmother had six children to bring up with no washing machine, no garden to let them out to play, no fridge - that was enough work

Both grandmothers were educated at home. Married and managed their domestic stuff. Their estates were managed by estate managers and their role were to arrange that provisions were in place and everybody was well fed and comfortable. Summers were the times when a very extended family descended for about 3-4 months to enjoy countryside, rivers lakes and forests and good life provided by them.

My maternal grandmother was born in 1877 in Burma. She was half German Jewish, half Indonesian. The 7th of 13.

She married my grandfather, an Irish engineer and became Roman Catholic.
I don't suppose she ever did paid work although her sewing machine was precious to her and I'm told she cried when in 1941 she had to escape from Rangoon to India when the Japanese invaded and had to leave without it.

Her husband and 2 elder daughters died but my DM, the youngest was married and living in England so eventually she came to live with her.

I never met her but she is buried in
the RC part of Kidderminster cemetery near where she had died in a
refugee camp in 1947.

My paternal GM was a New Zealand, farmer's wife. I stayed with her after my dad died when I was aged 6 or 7.
By then she was widowed and lived in
a cottage by the seaside. She
chopped firewood, grew vegetables,
and taught my sister and I how to
collect mussels, and cook them. She could make and bake on the range a batch of scones in minutes.
We "helped" her with ironing, collecting
eggs, running errands. She could be
quite strict but was fair. She enjoyed
painting.

She allowed me to look inside a
wooden trunk in her bedroom in
which she kept family photos. She
was the 7th of 8 but the last of the
girls and she missed her sisters very
much and talked about them to me.

Her own mother had come out to NZ
in the 1860s.

When we left NZ for England in 1958,
we waved goodbye to her from the
deck of our ship and never saw her again.

My maternal grandmother was a traditional housewife and when my grandfather died at the age of 50 she took in a lodger. He stayed with her for 30 years until he passed away. They became close friends, went on outings and holidays together but the relationship was purely platonic. She was also the unofficial midwife for her neighbourhood. It was a mining village in the 30s many people living in poverty. You had to pay for a midwife which most couldn’t afford. She reckoned she delivered over 50 babies before the NHS was formed.

My paternal grandmother (born 1885) worked in a cake shop which is how my grandfather (a journalist) met her. My maternal grandmother (born 1901) was a seamstress. She left school age 12.

Prior to marriage my paternal grandmother worked as a seamstress for Queen Victoria in The Vice Regal Lodge in Dublin. Not as glamorous as it sounds though because she worked on linens mending and embroidery on table cloths bed sheets etc. My grandmother worked as a seamstress from home at 14 in Dublin and then following a move to England was a manageress in a ladies shoe store until she was married in 1926. She wanted to continue but wasn't allowed to buy the company.

Notagranyet1234

Prior to marriage my paternal grandmother worked as a seamstress for Queen Victoria in The Vice Regal Lodge in Dublin. Not as glamorous as it sounds though because she worked on linens mending and embroidery on table cloths bed sheets etc. My grandmother worked as a seamstress from home at 14 in Dublin and then following a move to England was a manageress in a ladies shoe store until she was married in 1926. She wanted to continue but wasn't allowed to buy the company.

*great-grandmother

My maternal grandmother was in service in Newcastle and then at a castle near where I grew up. She was an excellent baker and made beautiful pastry. She taught my mother the proper way to iron shirts and trousers, and my mother passed the skill down to me. She had 6 children, 3 boys and 3 girls.

My paternal grandmother was the second youngest daughter of a blacksmith. They lived in a small village in Cumberland. I don't believe she ever had a paid job. She married my grandfather and went to live on the farm he owned. She had two sets of twins, my two uncles first and then my Dad and a little girl who died at about 10 days old. My Granny only mentioned her once to me, wondering if her little girl would have been like me.

My paternal grandmother worked in a jute mill until she married and had 6 children. My maternal grandmother worked as a clippie on the buses until the WW2 ended. During that time she also married and had 1 child. When her child grew up she trained as a nursing auxilliary

My father's mother looked after her husband.

My maternal grandmother worked with her husband to run the Post Office in Gwersyllt, North Wales for years and years.
Her one daughter, my mother, used to be very proud of her PO book, which was numbered 'Gwersyllt 1'.

My maternal grandmother was a "toe dancer", I believe it was the music hall equivalent of a ballet dancer. When she married my grandfather, who was a chauffeur, she didn't work again. My paternal grandmother had a very hard life. My grandfather was much older and when he died she worked as a washerwoman to raise her 5 children alone. They were very poor & the children went out to work as soon as they were able. My DF was a knocker up, he had a pole to bang on windows to wake the workers up in the morning from about 9 years old.

A carpet weaver at Templetons in Glasgow

I never knew my paternal grandmother because my parents divorced when I was very young.

My maternal grandmother married at 17, my grandfather was 29 when they married. He adored her and called her “Sweetheart” for as long as he lived. She loved him too.

My granny was an accomplished seamstress and a piano teacher and earned money by doing “invisible mending” - I particularly remember that she was known for her skill in repairing cigarette burns in “cocktail dresses” 😊 - and teaching piano. She was the church organist and was paid for that. She never worked in a 9 to 5 job but I know she earned her own money.

We spent a lot of time with my maternal grandparents when I was growing up and my memory of her was that she was intelligent, kind, loving, resourceful. And happy!

My maternal grandmother was born in 1911. She came from rather a well-to-do family, but my great grandfather was hit by a tram, broke his back and the family suffered considerably financially. Despite this, my great grandparents wanted their children, five girls and two boys to do well. All of the girls went into nursing. My grandmother started as a midwife and eventually became a matron at our local hospital. She was rather formidable! 😁 Dad’s mum was born in 1899. She was a housewife, raised three girls and three boys. They too saw the benefit of education and did their best to encourage their children, but could only really afford for my dad to get the education he deserved. He did a BSC and MSC and taught at university. He always regretted that his equally promising siblings weren’t able to reach his heights, (as were my grandparents) but their finances wouldn’t allow otherwise.

Maternal GM was a tailor, very talented too. She could make a man’s suit, waistcoat and all, from scratch. She worked from home on commission to a couple of well known men’s outfitters.

Paternal GM was PA to the MD of a forerunner of British Steel. Both continued working part and full time till they reached retirement age.

Maternal GM never understood the desire for equality with men because ‘Women have always been far superior in every way’.

Go, Grandma!

Both my grannies left school around 11-12 and were mill workers in Lancashire.
Paternal gran put into service at 12 or 13. Hated it, got herself and younger sister from Coventry to the north west in the early 20th century where they got taken on at the mill

I never knew my paternal grandmother as anything other than an elderly lady who was a housewife.She died in her lte 70's in 1962when I was only aged 7 so I never had the chance to ask her about her life when she was younger.

On my mother's side, she was adopted as a baby but knew her birth mother as a friend-of-the-family kind of aunt; Aunty Kitty, as I knew her, was a stage actress/music hall performer in the 1920's and 30's and in the 1940's was working as the manageress of a dress shop where incidentally my Mum was a shop assistant, Mum and Aunty Kitty were as like as two peas in a pod and I believe this was commented on, but they managed to laugh it off as a mere coincodence.

My adoptive grandma, who I referred to as Nanna, was a cook in domestic service before the first world war, and after marriage to my grandad just after the war was a housewife till the end of her days.

My paternal grandmother was a lacemaker and later worked at Raleigh. Their house was just over the factory wall.

My maternal grandmother worked on one of the bid Irish estates as a maid(?) then helped her husband run a pub in Sheffield. My maternal grandmother was a housewife who joined the industrial effort in ww2 and was a Sheffield Woman of Steel. Her sister however, was a strong woman in a travelling circus.

Maternal grandmother, I was very close to,was a pub landlady, died aged 99, paternal grandmother was married ti a soldier, had 8 children and was a full time wife and mother and died when I was 6 yrs okd

My maternal grandmother had 7 children. Her first was at the age of 16, my mum. While her husband went off to fight in WW2, she with help from her own family was able to work full time to help support her two children she had during the war. She worked, as most of my family did, in the textile industry. When her husband came home from the war, she continued to work. Later in life, close to her retirement years, she worked as a cleaner, while my grandad worked as a textile overlooked. Upon her retirement, her state pension gave her enough to buy 10 woodbines.
My great grandma during WW1 worked in the ammunitions factory, where she was injured by a shell falling on her leg. My great grandad returned home from the war, and one year later (1919) they married and went on to have 3 children.

Maternal grandmother was a nurse, runs in family now with nurses and a doctor, my daughter is a paramedic and granddaughter studying paediatric nursing at uni. Paternal grandmother died before I was born.