Tom Hepburn’s First Job

When my apprenticeship finished in 1897 I found that I would still be kept on at the same kind of amateurish work printing bills of material with an occasional drawing to copy. The starting wage for a junior draughtsman in that office was only 18/- a week. I decided to try my luck elsewhere. I answered several advertisements for junior draughtsmen. Two days before my five years were finally up I got the offer of a job at an engineering firm in Greenock at 25/- per week (~1897)

The name of the company was J.R. Houston & Son. They did general engineering work for the sugar mills in Greenock and other odd jobs. There were five draughtsmen in the office, all young fellows like myself except the Chief Draughtsman who was an older and rather sulky individual. He, I must admit, did as much work on his drawing board as all the rest of us together. Our office boy was a lad just out of school, a nephew of Mr. Houston. He was a mischievous youngster. He rather took a fancy to me unfortunately. He seemed to be always in need of pocket money and had skilful ways of worming it out of anyone who would listen to his plaints. His promises to return the loan were seldom honoured. So, we had to harden our hearts or go short.

My nickname in that office was a revival of my school handle: ‘Heppy’. It seemed to come naturally somehow. The name our chief had acquired was ‘Screnge’. Sometimes the Chief Draughtsman had to run to the general office or the engineering shop which was up on the next street. Then work in the office would slacken off and we all joined in a little pleasant conversation. The draughtsman who was nearest the door could hear the footsteps on the stair when the chief returned. He would bend over his board and make a noise like a rusty door hinge creaking. It was his way of pronouncing ‘Screnge’. This young draughtsman was the son of an English church minister whose church was in Gourock and who had died recently. He was a bright lad and he often invited me for an evening at their home. He had two sisters, one older and one youngster. The little girl was a better companion than the older one. The elder miss was looking for someone with a position and I did not fit the bill.

I had lodgings with an old lady on Lyndoch Street in Greenock, Mrs. McCulloch. She kept a remarkably clean house and I was her only lodger the first year I was there. It was a better room and a much cleaner house than the one in Eglinton St. I paid more for it of course because I was now earning 25/- per week. In fact, I had enough money left over after paying my landlady to pay my train fare home to Lochwinnoch for the weekend. We had to travel back to Greenock on Sunday afternoon changing trains at Paisley for the Greenock line. I did not go home in the winter every weekend and so saved a little cash. Mrs. McCulloch’s flat was up two stairs and the other door on the same flat belonged to the Lindsay family. Mrs. McCulloch did her best to get her new lodger acquainted with the eldest girl of the family named Effie Lindsay. I was a little backward, however, and any time I met Effie on the stairs I just passed with a word and a smile. Effie was a well-built girl with great bunches of dark curly hair. She was shy like myself and I found out that she already had a boyfriend who eventually became a minister. Years later he and Effie called on us once at Lochwinnoch and we spoke of old times at Greenock.

Greenock was a nice town to stay in. There were many good concerts in a large hall and there was a good lending library downtown. I joined the library and patronized it often but I did not go to many concerts. The library was free but concerts needed to be paid for. As usual, I read too many books and often stayed up late with an interesting book until Mrs. McCulloch wondered why her gas bills were getting so high. Finally, one night she saw my bedroom light on at midnight and spoke to me the next day about her gas bills. I promised to amend my ways but after then when she happened to see my light shining under my door I would hear her rat-tat-tat on the door. Then she would say, “It’s after ten Mr. Hepburn.” I even offered to pay the amount her gas bills were above the normal to avoid having to close my book as it was getting interesting but she was offended by my suggestion.

In the summer evenings I often walked along to Gourock to stroll along the waterfront as far as the Cloch Lighthouse where the Firth of Clyde bends to the south. My friends from the office were often there and I met some of their girlfriends. I enjoyed the evenings the most when we hired a boat and three of us would row out among the hundreds of sailing yachts anchored in Gourock Bay. One time we rowed away over to the opposite coast and started fishing for saith and lythe (also known as pollack). These were fish the size of large herring that sometimes came in to the Firth in shoals. Our flies were white for night fishing and we trailed them behind the boat on a strong cord. We ended up in the middle of a great shoal of fish. Within an hour’s time there were over two hundred saithe and lythe in the bottom of the boat. Only a few were under a pound and some weighed over two and a half pounds. When we got back to Gourock Bay the problem was what to do with all the fish? We tied up a dozen for each of us to take home but that did not reduce the number by much. So, we went around to the crews of the sailing yachts giving away fish by the pail full until we got the boat empty. That was the biggest catch we ever made but most times we did not come back empty-handed.

I often called on a family in Greenock who were related by marriage to my mother. McLean was their name. The father had a plumbing business with his son helping out but it was the daughters I went there to see. There was Mary who was a teacher of deaf and dumb children. Ina taught in a board school and Daisy was a school girl. There were two older daughters but they taught in Manchester. Flora was one and I think the other was Kate. Their mother, Mrs. McLean, was a sister of my mother’s Aunt Orr of Kaim in Lochwinnoch. The girls often came to visit Aunt Orr at Lochwinnoch and so we occasionally saw them there, also. Our Aunt Orr, Mrs. McLean and another sister, Mrs. Kerr of Loch Ranza, were the daughters of a schoolmaster at Loch Ranza in Arran named McBride. Many years later Mary McLean married Henry Muirhead of the Bridge of Weir Tannery. Ina became the wife of a second cousin, Bruce Dickie and Daisy married an official of the Arrol Johnston Car Co. after I had been in Canada for some time. They were a bright family and we will meet them again later in my story.

My work in J.R.Houston & Son was not very interesting but I got experience and was now quicker with the drawing instruments. I got some experience in drawing machine parts but most of the work was copying other drawings without much original designing. The Chief Draughtsman kept that work for himself. I had an occasional visit to the sugar factories to measure parts that required repairs or redesigning. These five story brick factories had great flats full of boilers, strainers and centrifugal driers. I was up three stories once on my way to measure a machine part and was directed to a very warm room where women were shovelling sugar into sacks and paper bags. I didn’t hear what the man who directed me said because of the machinery noises. I opened a door to step through when there were shrieks and shrill tongues crying something at me. All the women were diving for their clothes hanging from pegs on the wall. It was then that I noticed that they were working in the heat of the room with nothing on but a pair of pants or linen drawers. I got out in a hurry with a very red face. The fellow who had spoken to me came up. “Give them half a minute to cover up,” he said with a laugh. I had to go through the room again a second time and the women and girls had got over their scare. They all smiled at me over their shoulders. “It is all right,” said a saucy lassie, “You didn’t know any better.” I am sorry,” I shouted above the din. She waved me on. “Nothing at all,” she said, “It wasn’t me you saw.” And gave me a glint through smiling eyes.

The sugar came in a raw state from the West Indies and other places in coarse sacks of one hundred pounds. These were unloaded from the ships at Greenock dock onto low two-wheeled carts. The dark brown or yellow stuff occasionally spilled on the street as the carts rattled along. Greenock children followed behind to scoop the dirty stuff from the ground. To get the carts up the hill, (all the sugar factories were at the top end of Greenock), another trace horse had to be hitched in front to get the load up the hill. At the refinery it was boiled in great copper vats and refined by running it through bone charcoal into the settling tanks where it crystallized. The syrup was then strained out by centrifugal machinery and the sugar piled in great white mountains on the wooden floor. Then it was loaded by women into sacks and bags for the grocery trade. I was once told by a worker in one of the sugar plants that it was always a good thing to throw out any small lumps that were found in the sugar cake. I asked him why. “Well our factory uses women for shoveling into sacks. That’s all right, but others use men and the men spit.” I saw the point but at the time I thought he was pulling my leg until in another factory I did see a man shoveling sugar while chewing tobacco. I noticed that he didn’t seem very careful about spitting. That was in the olden days. Methods in the refineries may have improved since then.

The bone charcoal was made in Greenoch at a factory near the sugar mills. The local name was bone char works or sometimes the ‘stink works’. It was an evil smelling location, close to the railway near the Lyndoch Street Station. Passengers stepping down there knew at once by the stink that they had arrived at the sugar metropolis. The cause of the evil smell was the great pile of bones gathered from all quarters of the countryside. They came from butcher shops and slaughter houses and lay in the yard of the char works ready to be burned to make charcoal.

I worked for J.R.Houston & Son for about nine months before I decided to move on (~1898). I was not learning much, my salary was not increasing and I wasn’t getting along well with ‘Screnge’.