Category: Location

George Clark takes us back to London’s Fleet Street, from the 1960s onwards.

FIRSTLY, there is something which I think I should explain. I have been as guilty of this as much as anyone else. In referring to a “Ship” I have failed to precede the word with an apostrophe. It is in fact an abbreviation of “Companionship”. When I entered Print in the 1930s printers had their own vocabulary, a layman would have been mystified to hear Compositors conversing in those days. A body of Compositors were known as a Companionship. Read the Full Article . . .

George Clark tells us about his 22 years on the Sunday Telegraph and takes issue with a couple of points made in Malcolm Gregory’s “Fleet Street Piecework” story.

MALCOLM GREGORY paints a very black picture of the S.T. Grass Ship, as one who served on this Ship from April 1964 retiring as a “Regular” on 29th March 1986 I feel I should give a clearer picture. Read the Full Article . . .

Malcolm Gregory describes his time working on the Daily Telegraph in London’s Fleet Street from the early 70s to the closure in 1987.

I WAS working on an Intertype at the Walthamstow Guardian when I managed to get a ‘Grass’ on the Sunday Telegraph (this meant working the Saturday as a casual operator) through a fellow operator who put in a word, knowhatimean? Read the Full Article . . .

George Clark sent in this very interesting list of old printing trade terms.

A Chapel.-A meeting of compositors is called a chapel, and the members of the chapel form a companionship (shortened to ‘ship) pledged to watch over the interests of the London Society of Compositors (L.S.C.) and its members in the chapel. Read the Full Article . . .

Dave Hughes tells of his time on the Yorkshire Evening Press and South London Press, UK.

I WAS first introduced to the Linotype machine in the mid 1970s when I started work as an Apprentice Compositor at the Yorkshire Evening Press, then located in Coney Street, York. Read the Full Article . . .