The Demographic of Employees

AFC 341-S8-I11 Hosiery mill sewing area; Hines' Studio Collection 1915.jpg

A photograph of the inside of an unknown hosiery mill in London between 1914 and 1919. It depicts a different angle of the knitting room and shows women working on different knitting machines and some doing hand sewing. Note: At the back of the room you can see the women's coats and hats hung up! AFC 341-S8-I11. Hines' Studio Collection, Archives and Special Collections, Western Libraries, Western University.

Former employee Margaret Ward describes the gender difference between jobs at Holeproof Hosiery in the early 1960s.

Former employee Annecke Somann describes what types of job men and women did at London Hosiery Mills from the late 1970s to the early 1980s.

Hosiery factories, including Holeproof and London Hosiery Mills, had a predominantly female workforce. Generally, between 50 to 70% of a factory’s employees were women. These women were responsible for the bulk of the labour which included running the knitting machines, working in the company offices, performing hand sewing, folding the stockings, and packaging them. The men who did work at the factories typically held positions of authority, like foremen and mangers, or worked as machinists – employed to keep the machines in working order and fix them when something went wrong.

The Demographic of Employees