I, like many thousands that worked for years in Lancashire's productive cotton/nylon mills, like Welch Hill Mill, Leigh; Eckersley's Mill, Wigan and The Bradley Lane, Standish Carrington Dewhurst's Mill, am puzzled that a former lady detective, Mrs Dyer, received £175,000 compensation for wearing an earpiece during undercover work. People have died through pit dust with little or no compensation, and millions of Lancashire folk have experienced some kind of hearing loss. But nobody wants to compensate mill workers for unprovable mill hearing loss, though it is recognised that no yesteryear mill hands, not even mill managers, wore hearing protectors in the 50s/60s etc. (We toiled amid the noise).

The Government should investigate hearing difficulties experienced by those that worked in departments such as the weaving sheds. Our partial deafness can be attributed to the industrial explosion which made huge fortunes for mill owners generally.

Kenneth Lucas,

Park Road, Hindley, Wigan.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.