Industrial History

Ms Formerly Aldgate couldn't quite credit the story I told about my mum assembling lipstick cases when I was little in the early and mid 1970s. We'd been discussing illnesses and in the past mum has sometimes blamed the work for sparking off her rheumatoid arthritis, though I'm not sure it would have contributed. You could blame it for being numbingly dull, repetitive and exhausting. And it was outwork, of a kind which barely exists in developed economies now, though it's by no means uncommon elsewhere. I thought it was worth telling you about.

US cosmetics firm Max Factor was a major manufacturer in Bournemouth at one time, and this website gives an insight into its West Howe factory, together with some brilliant photographs of the site in 1947, when it opened. The page mentions Edward Webster Ltd of Ringwood Road, another local firm which manufactured some elements of the lipstick cases; what it doesn't mention is that it was Webster which directly employed outworkers like my mum.

Boxes of the components would arrive at our house and mum would assemble them, ready for the cosmetic to be inserted. The metallic 'goldies' that would eventually hold the lipstick itself were the most fiddly element, and I remember mum being very anxious that anyone who helped her should get that right, as they couldn't be put in the wrong way. Dad could never get his fingers round the lipstick components, but occasionally my grandparents would take a bag away to help out (my contribution was strictly limited). What I remember most vividly was the sheer scale of the boxes of parts, which seemed enormous to me and which were huge fun to run my hands through; and the faintly greasy smell caused by the lubricant on the goldies. 

I also remember the sheer amount of time it took, which mum usually spent sitting on the floor of the living room, surrounded by plastic bits on one side and a box of completed lipsticks on the other. Each lipstick had three components, and each batch comprised 15,000 units - 45,000 pieces in all. For that, mum would earn £5. It's hard to know how that translates into modern terms, and I'm not sure how long a batch would take to assemble, although it often took mum late into the night to complete before the deadline; however, even if you assume a fast assembly rate of, say,  3 seconds per unit, that's not a high rate of pay in anyone's terms (perhaps Professor Abacus can enlighten me further). 

Mum recalled that several of her friends and neighbours tried lipstick-assembly out, but decided it wasn't worth their while. It must have been worth hers, to augment my dad's limited income as a car mechanic (I think it may have been the Three-Day Week measure of 1973-4 and the resulting drop in dad's wages which prompted her to start doing the work). But in retrospect there's no escaping how gruelling it was, and I wonder how many similar stories there are in living memory, as it's hardly that long ago.

PS. Professor Abacus has indeed been in touch and informed me that £5 in 1974 would be the equivalent of £48 today, if uprated in line with inflation, or £73 if uprated in line with wages. Assuming my mum spent 12 1/2 hours assembling a batch of 15,000 units, that works out as £3.84 or £5.84 per hour depending which measure you use. I think 3 seconds per unit is very optimistic, and a longer assembly time would lower the putative hourly rate, but clearly the flexibility of being able to earn some money without leaving the house suited, at the time.