Bretta McGinty interview transcript
I wanted flowers
"We lived in Lemon Street, a stone's throw from the docks and I hated it. I hated it because when I started to grow up I wanted, I wanted flowers, I wanted a bathroom, I wanted it warm. You know, it was, it was, it had been hammered in the war and it was always draughty and cold and I just hated it, back yard, outside loo. We used to go to an aunty in Huyton, me Mam's sister, she was brilliant. And I used to stay there sometimes. We'd stay the weekend, and I thought it was marvellous because you could have a bath on your own, you know like. You know you weren't bothered about locking everyone out of the back kitchen while you got the tin bath out, and you lit the gas stove to get warm, and all that messing. To me, that was luxury. I always thought there was better. I think that was why I started travelling, because I always thought there was better than this."
new in New York
"I went to America in 1957. I went on the domestic scheme. There used to be a scheme in the 50s. It was always advertised in the Echo or any paper, and it would be, you know:
WANTED: English girls to work as nannies and au pairs.
So I go down to this agency, all dressed up (laughs). Everybody's sort of in their uniforms, because if you're going to work as a waitress you go prepared to work that day, so everybody's in like white. And they're all in these corridors and I'm dressed up like a dog's dinner, and these guys, little Jewish guys, are running around going, "You wanna work today, you wanna work today, you wanna work today, honey?" And I'm going "Excuse me, I'd like a permanent job please", "What are you saying, what's she saying" you know, and there's all this you see. There's this voice of a woman saying "Honey, you, you, you in the coat, you in the coat" and I'm looking and there's this woman, a little woman about 50 odd sitting behind this desk. She's saying "Yeh, yeh, come here, come here you". She looked up and she went "Sit down", so I said "Oh thank you", "You're welcome" (laughs) like, who says please and thank you in New York - nobody (laughs).
So I sat down and I'm like this, so she said "What are you looking for?", so I said "Just a permanent job", so she said "I'll send you here". So she rang this man up, Jack. So she said, "I've got a girl for you for the upstairs place". She put the phone down and she said to me "Here, go here", so I said "Okay thank you". As I was walking out, she said "Hey, come back in September when you've had some of the green rubbed off you, and I'll give you a decent job".
It was a smashing job, I was 4 years there, and then from there I went to a restaurant just off Broadway and 43rd Street and I used to work waitressing there on the tables. I wasn't there long, and I got up on the banqueting and I was there for another 4 years, I was there for over 4 years there.
I worked in Florida, after that I went to Florida for a season, the winter, and that was brilliant, and then I came home."
away to sea
"I came back from America when I was 31, and I was working in Bernie Inns. There was a wine waitress and she used to go away to sea and we were talking one day and she said to me, "You should go away to sea Bretta, you'd love it". So I said, "Oh, I'm too old now", you know, I said "I wanted to, it was a choice of going away to sea, or going to America and America won", I said, "But". So she said, "Oh no, you can still go". She said to me, "They're hiring for the Empress of Canada, and the office was at the bottom of Old Hall Street, the very bottom of Old Hall Street on the way to the Pier Head". And, she said, "If you go down there, there's a Mr Robertson".
So I went every afternoon, from the Monday afternoon, I'd walk down, and I went into the office and I told him I wanted to go away to sea. People were coming in, signing on, giving their papers in and all this, in and out, and nothing for me. It was the Friday afternoon, and they were all going on the Monday morning. There was a special train from Lime Street, went straight down to Southampton docks at half past seven. So Friday, a friend of our Eddie's (our Eddie went away to sea) my brother, a friend of his, he walked in and he looked at me and he said "What are you doing here Bretta?", so I said "Oh, I was hoping to get on the Empress of Canada", I said, "but it doesn't look like it". So he said to this Mr Robertson, he said "Robbo do you know this is my cousin?" He said, "She never told me that Tommy". "Ee are girl, go and get your books",
I gave my notice in at work. I finished on the Sunday and I was on that train on the Monday morning. My Mam made me a big pile of sandwiches and I said "I don't want them", she said, "You'll make all these friends on that, because there'll be none of them will have a butty. They'll all have plenty to drink, but there'll be none of them will have a butty". I went on this train surrounded by all these men, and this fella said to me and I've never forgotten it (and I've always said it myself now) he said, "Do you want a gin and tonic?" and I said, "It's only half past seven in the morning" and he said, "But it's half past six somewhere in the world" (laughs) "The sun's over the yard arm somewhere in the world" (laughs). And they devoured these butties (laughs), absolutely devoured them."
the two empresses
"When I started at sea, I started out in the laundry (laughs). I was sick as a dog for 5 days from Southampton to New York. I went from laundry maid to stewardess, to captain's tiger to saloon steward, yes did it all. When I was on the Empress of Canada, the second year I was on it, when the stewardesses, any stewardesses, wanted to come home they'd fly stewardesses out to take over their section. There was a group of fellas on the Canada very union minded, and really very, very fair. They were the ones who put it forward that if these stewardesses wanted to come home, then laundry maids should get the option to be stewardesses even for just this one trip. So it happened, the money was fantastic, the job was good, and it was an absolute eye opener to be a stewardess from slogging in the laundry. But, for some unknown reason, they wouldn't put it in your book. So you had this discharge book and you'd done stewardessing, but nobody would believe you, because nobody had stamped it that you were a stewardess, even for this short space of time.
So I left the Canada just before it folded, and I applied for the new 'Butlins on water' called the Ocean Monarch, which was Shaw Saville, which used to be the old Empress of England and they were taking all of these women, which had never been heard of to advertise for women at sea, big articles and everything - that was an eye opener.
The ship was only half finished, it was complete and utter chaos. There were all these girls, 75 women who thought it was, they'd been let out of convents, you know what I mean, that it was - this is a wild life, this is a wild time. It was a great ship for, sort of loyalty, if you were on the Empress, if you had been on the Monarch it didn't matter where you went after, whoever had been on the Monarch with you, they made such a fuss of you. You could have everything that was going on their ship, or ferry, or whatever I suppose you were on. There was this companionship and this loyalty. I think it was because they were all thrown together, there were only about 10 of us that had been to sea before."
strike and protest
"So I started off in the laundry, went stewardessing, then cashier on the Belfast boats. Then did some stewardessing on the Belfast, then went waitress on the Ocean Monarch, then went saloon steward which was a boss job.
I had a head waiter, a fella called Tony McDonough and he and I used to have a little perk where we sold Gaelic coffees (laughs). We used to buy the booze and we used to pay the pantry man for the cream, and we'd pay someone else for the coffee. Everyone made a little something and we sold these after dinner drinks and that was our perk.
It was a great job and then we went on strike (laughs) and that put paid to that. We were all flown home from Australia and they tried to split us all up, give us different flights, different times, different delays, but we'd already decided we were all meeting in Heathrow. It didn't matter how long you waited in Heathrow, you waited for everybody to get off a plane.
When we were all home and we were out down at the Pier Head protesting, and it was the Union, we couldn't get a job anywhere, and I, that was when I first tried for Cunard. This fella said "You've worked in the laundry?" and I said "Yes", "Empress of Canada?", "Yes", "You've done a bit of stewardessing?", "Yes", "But mostly in the laundry?", "Yes", "Would you be willing to go in the laundry?", I said "Yes". He said "Give us your book", and he opened the book and he put it back and he said "No thank you". Because I'd been flown home from the Ocean Monarch, nobody would give us a job. So this went through for a few days and the union stepped in again. So the union told all the shipping companies that they couldn't employ anybody from outside the ranks until everybody who wanted a job from the Ocean Monarch got a job."
couples at sea
"I went with my husband when I got married. I went to sea with him. That was the start of officers and their wives going away to sea because it never happened before. You weren't supposed to be married, everything was always, all the couples that were married at sea, it was always a secret. She still sailed on her own discharge book because you weren't allowed to be married at sea, but they decided to introduce this 'couples at sea', and that was in the Daily Express when I was, we were the first couple.
I got married in 1975, so it could have been late 1976 early 1977 I finished. What I found difficult to accept, was the fact that I'd given it up, I really did enjoy it, I've never worked so hard in all my life, but I really enjoyed going away to sea. It was something that I've always been happy that I got the opportunity to do it more than anything else. I fitted and I gelled, and it didn't bother me that you weren't home for weeks and weeks on end. And that coming home, that coming home was always great, but so was going."
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