The Story of three of the Ricciardo sisters – working in Saltaire

The Ricciardo sisters came from Italy after the Second World War to work in the Bradford area. Their story starts in a separate post and continues here…

The mill the sisters had been recruited  to work for was not Salts Mill (but there stories will be similar to the many Italian women who were recruited at the same time for Salts) Their work was to be at Henry Mason’s mill in Shipley just a little further down the canal from Salts new mill and it was situated on the site adjacent to the Inland Revenue Office. Henry Mason’s mill was a weaving mill and this mill didn’t wash or scour raw wool. The wool arrived in a ball of yarn and gill boxes took the woolen yarn and drew it out until it was transformed into finer thread.  Dora was employed as a ‘gill minder’, which involved looking after two large boxes to make sure that the weight was always balanced. ‘When pieces of yarn were broken, I had to mend/tie these and then load them on to the bobbins. Where yarn was broken, I had to put a cross onto the bobbins’.

When Margherita started work, it was in the winding process room. Her overlooker was married to an Italian and had learnt the language which was helpful. The sisters each earned £4 a week, though Margherita was on piece work and she could at times earn a little more. They recall how cold England felt.  Dora only had a thick cardigan with her on her arrival and the sisters had to go to a local market for material to make her a coat.They had only seen snow once in Italy and during the first snow experienced in England Margherita’s little boots wore out, they were not made for English weather!

The sisters also experienced some prejudice from the English people they met and worked with – only a few – but it did hurt their feelings.  Some people said ‘you don’t belong here’ or ‘if you don’t like it go back to your own country’.  The sister were able to send £30 a month home to their father and mother, each contributing £10 which was a welcome relief for the family in Italy.

The sisters lived in a hostel built to house the Italian mill girls that was situated on Otley Road, near the Baildon traffic Lights. There were 8 girls already living there and 16 newcomers increased the number to 24. The sisters recall that living in the hostel was great fun except for the need to share a kitchen with very limited facilities. Eventually this hostel was extended to become home to 40 young Italian women. They attended Belle Vue Upper School on Wednesday and Thursday evenings to learn English, though these lessons were not compulsory.  At work they got by with sign language at first and did make many English friends, but the language barrier was very hard at times. ‘It was always nice to get back to the hostel where we could all understand one another’. The English classes did help but Dora and Margherita found their husbands to be the most helpful and they recall that their conversational English improved after two years or so. Dora found reading the Daily Mirror helpful also.

Dora, Velia and Margherita continued to work in England, and all eventually married and had children. The first time the sisters went home was after three and a half years in England and they saved up to go for 6 weeks in August 1960, to have an Italian ceremony for Margarita and her fiancé, Alan’s wedding. The mill paid for two weeks of that period but the remaining four had had to be saved for.  Whilst there, Alan was amazed at the way Italian men were treated ‘like kings’ and didn’t have to fetch and carry water, make coffee, wash up and so on. The sisters didn’t register for British Citizenship until 1967 and initially, they lost their Italian citizenship, though this was conferred back to them in 1994, enabling them to have dual citizenship. All three sisters were married in St. Aidan’s Church in Baildon, by Father Villani (from the Italian Mission in Bradford) and all their children went to catholic schools, initially St. Walburga’s primary school in Shipley. The sisters record that they now think and dream in English and have lost their past fluency in the Italian language – having to think carefully about how they say things when speaking to other members of their family. They are clear however that they have had a happy life and that they would not change how life has been for them in England.

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