Employment

Work was a recurrent theme in these one hundred autobiographical accounts, with many of these individuals following the same patterns of employment as the generation before them—entering into full-time work as soon as they left education and remaining in work until retirement or marriage (depending on their gender). As Jack Vallance noted, he left school ‘on a Friday and started [full-time] work on the Monday’. For many of the autobiographers, their occupation was a central point of their narrative, and like Les Moss whose quote begins this title, they were eager to leave school and enter into the adult world of employment and contribute to their family income. Their entry into the workplace, therefore, marked an important step—their progression from childhood into adulthood. However, their employment opportunities were shaped by certain factors including their gender, family responsibilities and mass unemployment in the interwar period.