Billeting hits the hat trade

 

The presence of so many troops stationed in Luton and St Albans was having a knock-on effect on the straw hat trade locally. Women who had devoted their time to producing hats were now spending that time catering for soldiers billeted in their homes.Hat sewing room 1907

The local correspondent of the Hatters' Gazette reported: "St Albans and Luton have been since last August military centres in out third line of defence, and as such have been filled up with Territorial troops which have in these centres been undergoing hardening and inuring training to fit them for even more arduous work at the front.

"These men have been billeted all round the sister towns and in the neighbouring villages, and while during the slack season the pay received from the military authorities for billeting was extremely acceptable, the presence of soldiers in one's house, for whom the good lady has to cook and wash, is an absolute debarment from doing any machining of straw hats.

"Therefore one finds in hundreds of cases the machinist who cannot, of course, get rid of her soldiers (not, for the matter of that, does she want to, for our citizens are nothing if not patriotic) is bound to give up her work and return her machine to the manufacturer.

"Local statisticians have been setting out some very ingenious calculations as to how many hats less will be made in consequence of this unlooked-for circumstance, and have produced to their own satisfaction, or otherwise, figures from which one might almost believe that the straw trade, both for men's and ladies' hats, will be put an end to.

"That, of course, is not the case, for making every due allowance for a considerable drop in output, by far the greater bulk of the trade is done in factories, and there are still huge numbers of machinists who can turn out the work in what may possibly be sufficiently large quantities, and who can do their work under better conditions than can be done in any small home."

[The Luton News, Thursday, March 4th, 1915]