Molly Traill Archive

This should be read in conjunction with the Training Scheme correspondence and documentation on the Severn & Canal Carrying Co. page. The documents reproduced below from Molly’s scrapbook are undated but probably date from c. 1942-3. They describe conditions of service, pay rates agreed with the Transport & General Workers’ Union, leave entitlement, etc. I submitted these and they were added to the TUC’s “The Worker’s War: Home Front Recalled” website in the early 2000s.

This is the letter that prospective applicants to the Training Scheme would have received from the Grand Union Canal Carrying Co.:

From above “… you will be required to sign a simple form of agreement, a copy of which is attached hereto”:

This would have been sent to the trainee shortly before commencing service:

It is interesting to read above that “A certain amount of instruction will be given in the care and running of the engines, but it is emphasised that you are not required to be mechanics and repairs to engines are carried out by an experienced staff of fitters …”. Before joining Daphne March, Molly spent two and a half days at Braunston with Cope(?), the Petter agent, learning “all there is to know about a Petter engine”. See her letter home dated 8th February 1941. And in her letters she talks about doing repairs to engines herself on more than one occasion.

Website by Crispin Partridge – Grandson of Molly Traill.