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their heads or shoulders every night around five or six o'clock, coming away from the factories where they went to get their work. They came home and you'd see them sitting around the lamp (kerosene, sometimes gas) and there would be grandma, grandpa, papa, the young boys and girls and the children. The children would be snipping the bastings and snipping and sorting the buttons. The finishing was all done at home - they took out the bastings, they sewed the buttons, and so forth.

Much of the millinery trades was carried on at home in tenements - the making of artificial flowers which were very lavishly used in those days for trimming hats and trimming dresses, the other trimmings for hats, willow plumes and passementerie and braid trimmings, and even some parts of men's hats such as the sewing of the lining, which was done by hand. Many toys were made at home; all the soft, cuddly toys for babies were farmed out for home work. The making of head dresses made with human hair - wigs, front-pieces, switches, toupees, hair nets - all were done in Allen Street and the vicinity around there.

I was actually the investigator on this. Sometimes I had people to help me, but I did the major part of it myself. There wasn't anybody else. So, as I say, social work gave you a big experience in those days. You weren't just