Life in a wartime newspaper office

Published 24 Mar 2010 13:00

THE Post continues the retrospective theme this week after the town took time to reflect back to its losses in the Second World War during the recent Blitz services.

In 1943, as Clydebank was still in the midst of war, Lottie Findlay was a 16-year-old and just starting work at the Clydebank Press, the predecessor to the Post.

Lottie, now 84, worked at the newspaper for 10 years and she wanted to share some of her memories of that time with fellow Bankies.

Like countless other Clydebank families her's had been bombed out of its home during Blitz.

Fortunately they were taken in at Gavinburn Farm, Old Kilpatrick.

She said: "I remember somebody telling me that there was a job going at the Press and I thought it would be very interesting."

Lottie was not a reporter but did have to deal with people coming in with news, as well as gather information about community events on top of her advertising and sales role.

Lottie, now living in Radnor Park, said: "I had to go out around the newsagents and try and boost up the sales and I had to go around the different areas, into Knightswood and places like that, and collect news."

The Clydebank Press had been established in 1891, only five short years after the town became a Burgh.

It was essentially born with the town, and remains, 119 years later, a vital source of information for Bankies.

This role was even more important during the war years with Bankies having friends and relatives dispersed all over the world in the war effort.

Lottie said: "People came in to tell us about what had been happening.

"We got news in from people who had family that were out fighting in the war.

"There was also people putting in memorials saying that they'd lost somebody.

"A lot of people came in and out of the office with stories.

"I handed them over to the editor but there were quite a number of things that we wouldn't have published.

"We also put in stories about what new houses were getting built after the Blitz."

Few Clydebank families escaped the pain of war, and Lottie's was no exception.

She said: "My brother Jimmy was killed near the end of the war.

"He was only twenty-one and he was shot down over France delivering leaflets.

"We put a bit in the paper about it but not much because there were so many people being killed at that time.

"The Dalmuir Former Pupils group put something in about him and also about some of the other men that had died."

She added: "When the war ended we closed the office for a couple of days because we were all taking part in the celebrations."

The working environment when Lottie started at the Press was also rather different to now.

The office was located in a now demolished tenement which stood where Solidarity Plaza is now on Dumbarton Road.

Lottie said: "They only had one phone, it was a wall phone and there was a desk underneath it so you sat there to write things down when you were on the phone.

"The reporters were always on the phone but they had to get up off their desks to answer it - it was so old fashioned.

"And you had to go upstairs to use an outside toilet that was shared by everyone in the close.

"The paper was printed in Govan and when I went over to Govan Road to printers John Cossar I had take the tram into Yoker, then the ferry over the Clyde and then a tram from there.

"They would sometimes let me do a little bit of the setting.

"It was all men apart from me and when I went over to Govan it was all men there as well."

She added: "I still get the Clydebank Post every week."

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This article appeared in Clydebank Post 24 Mar 10

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