Mother's notes to Noel in Mattie's

The note reads;

Noel

Give her two love books and a quarter of chocolate sweets please

And two Ice pops

The shop also ran a swap shop which is what the love book refers to. These small A5 graphic novels were particularly popular with the customers of Mattie’s. Graphic novels were hand drawn pictures with speech bubbles telling the feelings of the main characters. The love books refers to romantic stories for the female customers and the equivalent for males were war comics. The war comics told stories told stories of truth and honour along with complex dilemmas that face men serving their country. The other comics that we stocked were DC and Marvel depicting super heroes who save the world. I’ve loved DC and Marvel my whole life and was thrilled when they were made into movies.

Further education was rarely an option in a working class area, where young adolescents had to leave school to find work and support the family. Many young men found work on the docks and the young women found work in the vast variety of sewing factories in the area amongst other employers in the docklands.