Monday 5 May 2014

Window Cleaners Helped Each Other In 1958

ON YER BIKE: Members of the Grimsby and Cleethorpes Master Window Cleaners' Association get ready to go into action to help a sick member in July 1958.
http://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/good-turn-cleaning-windows/story-21058271-detail/story.html
Their good turn was cleaning windows: Carrying buckets and window leathers, or riding bicycles with ladders attached, between 20 and 30 men from Grimsby and Cleethorpes met in Oxford Street, Grimsby, on July 29, 1958, to do their month's good turn – cleaning windows.

The Telegraph reported: The men, all members of the benevolent scheme of the Grimsby and Cleethorpes Master Window Cleaners' Association, were there to do the round of one of their members, Mr Harold (Ted) Shelton, of Marton Grove, Nunsthorpe, who has been ill since Christmas.

Each month, after their normal day's work finished, they get a quick tea and then start work again. Those who cannot manage it, complete their share of Mr Shelton's round in their own time. Organiser of the scheme, the secretary, Mr Ernest Wiles said: "We do this for all our members who are ill. "The idea is to keep their rounds going so that they will have a business to come back to when they get better. "A man lying ill has no incentive to start work again if he knows his business has gone down while he has been in bed."

The treasurer, Mr Horace Hotson, of May Street, Cleethorpes, explained that the first four months' payments made on Mr Shelton's round were handed over to him, but recently he has been receiving a fixed sum each week. When Mr Shelton returns to work he will have some more money from his round paid over to him to help him over the first two weeks.

One of Mr Shelton's colleagues who takes his turn, Mr Fred Coulam, of Farebrother Street, Grimsby, has only returned to work in the last few weeks after breaking his spine. "My ladder slipped off a window sill," he said, "and I was off for 17 weeks, 12 of them in a plaster jacket." The oldest member of the scheme who does his share to help Mr Shelton is 76-year-old Mr Richard Skells.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

It would be cool if all of the companies that do the same thing could combine. Do you think that is what they did in 1958? I wonder how it worked out. http://www.performancep.com/

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