News For Women Footwear Tester Has Walked 75,000 Miles

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28257, 20 April 1957, Page 2

News For Women Footwear Tester Has Walked 75,000 Miles

LONDON. Every working morning, rain or shine, a woman in Liverpool puts on a pair of boots or shoes, and, with a pedometer strapped to her right knee, sets off for a 12-mile walk. She may keep to the pavements or saunter through the shops, or go for a cross-coun-try ramble, taking in plenty of rough and stony ground.

She is Miss Peggy Robertshaw, and her occupation is to test, on all kinds of roads and in all weathers, boots and shoes made by a firm in Liverpool, so that the laboratory research workers — who decide what footwear she is to wear each day—can tell how the products stand up to hard wear.

Thirty years ago Miss Robertshaw was studying to be a dispensing chemist, but ill heajth forced her to give up the idea. So she applied for this unusual job and pinned her faith to life in the open air. She was selected from hundreds of competitors, and today she says that she has rarely been ill, or even had a cold, since she started. But she can boast that she has walked 75.000 miles during her working hours. Miss Robertshaw is now testing a new type of footwear. In two new factories the firm is making leather shoes with rubber soles and heels attached by direct vulcanisation, which eliminates 12 operations involved in ordinary footwear manufacture. Miss Robertshaw tells many stories connected with her job. One day, for instance, a group of children trailed behind her, refusing to leave, and presently she realised why. She was wearing a

pair of bright purple Wellington boots, and the children were convinced that she had come from a nearby circus. On another . occasion Miss Robertshaw was stopped by a policeman and questioned about the sinister ticking which could be heard as she moved. She was glad to be able to explain that it was not a bomb and that the ticking came from the pedometer strapped to her knee. More than once, while walking round a shop, she has been followed and questioned by the store detectives. For why, they argued, should anyone want to walk for hours through a store without making a purchase? But her favourite story is of going to her doctor because she was not feeling well. “All you need,’’ he said, “is to get out in the fresh air for a bit.” Miss Robertshaw is a lucky woman, for she can boast that she has no foot troubles of any kind, although she gives her feet no special treatment —just ordinary care. But she is very particular about her stockings. They must, she says, be good, wellfitting, and just the right length. Her feet—well-shaped, normal, and average size—are another reason why she is well suited for her job; if a new line of footwear does not fit her, the makers realise that there are thousands of other people it will not fit either. So, production is stopped while the research department takes the shoe apart.

Her favourite recreation? Dancing! She can never have enough of jt. Here, at least, is one woman who never wails: ‘‘My feet are killing me.”