Mr George Bates, interviewed in 1986, on working at Ashcroft's Butcher's in Liverpool during the Great Depression

Mr George Bates was born in 1912 and was interviewed in 1986 for the 'Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900-1960' oral history project. He remembers finding work at Ashcroft's Butcher's in Liverpool during the Great Depression.

Transcript

GEORGE: Depression came and I decided to hit the track and I hit the track, in other words the swag, on account of the Depression coming on very hard, and I landed in Liverpool right at the railway station with my swag and everything and I camped there for quite a while under the trees there. Then I used to go down to the Old Men's Home, go down and have a meal and one thing and another and then, whilst I looked around, and I got the fortune of getting a job at Ashcroft's Butchers in those early days and just sweeping and doing the papers and then giving a hand with the sausages and I eventually got the great distinction of working there for twenty years. So I've seen Liverpool grow like one thing. In those early days Ashcroft's was a tremendous big butchery there, and they had approximately, of a morning, about twenty butchers minding their big butchery in Liverpool, and they'd supply all the hotels and that in Sydney and one thing or another, institutions and that. And they'd start at four o' clock in the morning the butchers would.