Girls left notes for the heartthrob in the shoe boxes
It's a well-known fact that Northampton was once the heart of Britain's shoe industry. At the start of the last century, there were around 150 factories across the town churning out hundreds of pairs a day.
But in the early 1960s, one factory received an order for a number of suede shoes in a variety of different colours. Not a very unusual order, especially for the W. Barratt Boot and Shoe Company, who had been making fine shoes since 1903. That's until they saw the order was for a certain Mr Elvis Presley.
"The hours were 7.30 in the morning till 5.50 at night. Saturday mornings as well, 7.30am till 12pm," she said. "All for £3 and 15 shillings a week. There must have been 200-300 people just in my closing room and I suppose we must have churned out hundreds of shoes a day," she continued. "And you weren't called a machinist until you'd machined your finger either.
"From the closing room they went up to be put together and then up to the finishing room at the top," Ellie said. And it was here that all the girls left notes for the heartthrob in the shoe boxes. We used to write notes and then give them to other people who worked their way up to the boxes. They mainly said 'would you marry me' or 'take me from this place'," the Kingsthorpe resident continued.
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