Alexandra Holmes

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After Hours - Wives and Girlfriends

These pictures were sent in by Alex’s husband, Rob. Rob says Alex loves to dress up and do a bit of home modelling for fun. Rob’s hobby is photography; mind you, yours would be too with a wife like Alex!

Alex is from Sheffield, is a mum and works part time as a cleaner.

Alex can clean my house any day she likes!

Seamed stockings and proper knickers complete the perfect ensemble for aficionados.

If you'd like to see more of Alex, then please hit the Like button. She might just return and surprise you some more.

Dorothy Bendal and Kay Bendall

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Dot and Dash

Housewife DOROTHY BENDALL is Dot to all her friends. Dot is happy, lively and fun, but all the dash around the house comes from her daughter KAY. She's helter-skelter youth while Dot is jolly Mum.

They're more like sisters, actually. They go to dances together and run for a bus together. They live in Hampshire and make every day full of fun and giggles.

Hazel Poole

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Bingo

" I say," said the smitten bystander.

A perfectly exquisite pair of legs had just gone by. They belonged to mini-skirted housewife HAZEL POOLE, and the bystander, who wasn't doing anything except waiting for a bus, felt floored. Gad, bingo! he thought.

Hazel's lovely legs go wherever she goes, which makes her ever so good to look at when she's out shopping, or at home trying on a new pair of stocking-tops.

"Are you engaged, wonderful one?" asked the bystander, forgetting about his bus and catching her up.

Hazel coolly informed him she was married and that her husband packed rather a large wallop, and the bystander, a fine upstanding young bloke, sighed and said, "Well, anytime your lovely legs aren't doing anything special please come and stand them in an empty picture frame of mine."

"Oh, sauce box, are we ?" said Hazel and pulled his hat over his eyes.

Beautiful Britons No 240 - July 1975

Linda White

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What's New?

What's New?

Nothing really. Everything is merely an improvement on the old. Irrelevantly, we'd like to mention that

LINDA WHITE is the most photogenic hair stylist we know.

Beautiful Britons No 122 - January 1966

Jill Millward

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Quite A Change

When the good old Windmill closed its doors and its nonstop revue disappeared into the pages of exotic history, one of its youngest girls decided she wasn't going to queue up at the agencies to find similar work.

Not a bit of it. JILL MILLWARD decided on a complete change of occupation. Know what she is now? A children's nurse. Gad, those lucky children. Wonder if they realise how good life is to them?

Span No 167 - July 1968

Janet Neill and Sadie Milligan

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An Update from Saltcoats

Janet Neill was born in 1937 in Kilwinning, just a couple of miles northeast of Saltcoats. She married George Fleming on 30th March 1959 at Barony Church in Ardrossan, which was recently sold and is now being redeveloped. At the time of her marriage to George, Janet was living at 4 Galloway Place - a small, terraced house not far from the sea front in Saltcoats - and was working as a Dental Nurse. What’s interesting to note on her marriage certificate is that Sadie Milligan is one of her witnesses.

Sadie (Sarah) Milligan was born in 1938 in Ardrossan. She married Patrick McAteer on 4th August 1962, and was married at the same church as Janet in Ardrossan. At the time of her marriage, she was living at 3 Caledonia Road Ardrossan - though it looks to me like the original house is now gone. Her profession is shown as an Explosives Process Worker; there was a large explosive factory in Ardeer just south of Saltcoats.

I often wonder, as I put things together and look at the local area, how they met and became friends. Janet was on the scene much earlier than Sadie, first appearing in May 1956. Sadie’s first pictures were not seen until June 1958, some 2 years later. Sadie, of course, was roughly 2 years younger than Janet, but both girls would have been about 19 or 20 years old for their first photo shoots. It certainly does make you think who else might have worked at the Explosives Factory, as it was such a large local employer. Julie Scott appeared in a couple of two-girl sets with Sadie, so perhaps she worked at the Explosives Factory as well.

You can just image the talk that went on during breaks about showing your stockings and knickers to a local photographer for some extra cash! I wonder if they are both still with us; Janet would be about 83 now and just full of great stories to tell us all.

The pictures of Janet are taken from Span No 54 February 1959 - just a month before she was married; what a lucky man George Fleming was!

The pictures of Sadie are from Spick No 105 and Beautiful Britons No 82, both published in August 1962 - the same month that Sadie was married. Oddly, both sets are of her in Directoire Knickers and in magazines published in the summer; not sure what that was saying to Patrick, her new husband!

Both girls though went on to appear in ToCo publications after they were married, so it was presumably something that their husbands approved of.

From Wikipedia

The Ardeer peninsula was the site of a massive dynamite manufacturing plant built by Alfred Bernhard Nobel. Having scoured the country for a remote location to establish his explosive factory, Nobel finally acquired 100 acres from the Earl of Eglinton, and established the British Dynamite Factory in 1871, and went on to create what was described then as the largest explosives factory in the world. The factory had its own jetty on the River Garnock in Irvine Harbour serving ships disposing of time expired explosives or importing materials for the works.

At its peak, the site employed almost 13,000 workers in a fairly remote location and had its own railway station. The station was used solely for workers and those special visitors with business in the ICI plant, and was never a regular passenger stop. Until the mid-1960s, there were two trains per day to transport workers. Although the line no longer exists, the abandoned platform remains, hidden beneath dense undergrowth.

Many thanks to David for researching this.

Marilyn Ward

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Cover Girl

Making our cover look colourful and fetching this month - at least, that was our intention - is Bournemouth boutique girl MARILYN WARD. Marilyn was a model before she took over her boutique.

We usually buy our clothes from Ernest's in the High Street not far from here, but if Marilyn would only stock bowler hats and pin-stripes we'd give up going to Ernest's.

Ernest is quite nice and always very polite. Nothing is too much trouble when he's explaining and illustrating the merits of a forty-guinea waistcoat.

"Look, we don't wear waistcoats."

"Then sir is losing the opportunity to become utterly ravishing, sir." "Look, we bet Marilyn Ward wouldn't try to sell us forty-guinea waistcoats when all we want is a pair of socks with a red stripe.' "Sir is joking, of course. Sir is vainly resisting. Hold him, Montgomery, hold him, Lancelot. There. Now what does sir think of himself? Sir looks beautiful. How can sir think of mere socks when sir is adorned in a waistcoat like that?"

"All right, you win. We'll have it on the never-never. Put it in some brown paper and deliver it. We're off to Bournemouth to buy a pair of socks."

Beautiful Britons No 155 - October 1968

Hazel Shaw

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Backgrounds Don't Matter

Whether indoors, outdoors, or down in the cellar holding up a ladder, HAZEL SHAW is photogenically whizz-oh.

Unless you're a perfectionist backgrounds don't matter. It's the subject that counts. Hazel is the most entrancing of subjects. She's a blonde Scot and representative of why impressionable young men wander in a daze all over the Highlands.

One look at Hazel and they've lost their way.

Can't wonder at it, really. World is full of unimpressive things, like concrete bridges, council garbage trucks and telephone wires. When people jump off concrete bridges it's not always because of some complicated Freudian problem, it's often because concrete bridges send them bonkers. They're the aesthetic types. Far better to fall in love with a vision like Hazel and wander dizzily and happily around the Scottish Highlands. They've got some lovely scenery up there.

Including Miss Shaw.

Beautiful Britons No 155 - October 1968

Angela Jones

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Time For Dreaming

Dreamy indeed is ANGELA JONES, popular young model from the Midlands. Angela is a busy model, but there is always time to dream. She can do it in between poses or when her boyfriend is talking soccer to her.

Jean Dickinson

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Jazzy Sec

English girl now living in Vancouver is JEAN DICKINSON. Jean is a secretary who helps her bank balance by working at nights as a jazz singer in Vancouver clubs. Outside of work she skis in the winter, rides a surfboard in the summer, collects jazz discs and reads biographies.

Span No 125 - January 1965

Elizabeth Gallacher

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Send Us A Snap

Keen on photography is ELIZABETH GALLACHER, and when it comes to putting herself on celluloid it’s just what the doctor ordered — as far as we’re concerned. “What d’you think?” asked Liz modestly. “Send us a snap."

Jill Lucienne - Update

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Jill Lucienne - Update

Thanks to David I can update some information on Jill Lucienne’s home page with accurate dates, who she married and that she did not, after all, emigrate to New Zealand.

Funfare No 21 - September 1959

Patricia Garland (Susan Douglas)

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Black For Preference

City secretary PATRICIA GARLAND, like many other secretaries, dresses with the elegance typical of the clan, and underneath the outer elegance the foundation is black for preference.

Smart and sophisticated—that's Pat But she's also a bubbler. What’s a bubbler? Well in this case it’s a girl who bubbles over with vitality and merriment. Having met her a couple of times, our opinion, in fact, is that she laughs her way through life.

Beautiful Britons No 70 - August 1961

Wanda Liddell

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Listen, Gorgeous

That was all the man from the gas company could say when he called on WANDA LIDDELL in her Camden Town flat. "Listen, gorgeous." Then he'd lose his voice because of breathing heavy, then he'd start again.

Wanda told him to stop larking about and to look at her cooker, and he thought, great hairpins, who wants to look at cookers anymore? He rang up his office, resigned and sent Wanda flowers. But it didn't make up for her cooker still being kaput.

Beautiful Britons No 240 - July 1975