To think that schoolchildren were taken to the leather works as career guidance/education! The stench lingers still!
Sometime between 1958 and 1962 I went with the school to a launching at Cammell Lairds and on the way back to school we passed an open doorway in the tannery where I saw a worker iwearing an apron and wellies dipping large pieces of leather into a large wooden container full of brown liquid and I thought I wouldn't like to work there.
Guess what?
When I left school I got a job there as Trainee Transport Manager and was the only job I had until 1993 when it closed.
You got used to the smell of leather except maybe once a month when they stirred the tanning pits which where nearest to the main road, but the worst smell (like rotten eggs) came from Thomson Bros next door.
Whole families often worked there and besides those jobs that handled the wet hides there were typists,joiners, fitters, mechanics and stacker truck and lorry drivers and apprenticeships to these.
I think the wages were above the average going rate in Birkenhead