During the heyday of the jet industry, workshops were setting up wherever there was a bit of spare space, often in the attics of tenement houses where roof windows would let in an optimum amount of light and behind the many tiny fishing cottages on Church Street, Whitby, where small sheds were built out from the cliffs on wooden stilts and props.
Some of the smaller Whitby jet workshops would take just one or two jet workers in a basic yet practical set-up, whereas others could house over 100 workers with separate rooms where the different jet working processes could be carried out.
As time moved on, so did Whitby’s bustling streets and the ever-growing fame of the jet industry and in those buoyant days of the trade the only limit to what a man could earn was how much jet jewellery he could produce.
Even the smallest of Whitby jet shops weren’t short of a good income, if they weren’t producing for their own boutiques and local businesses, then they were supplying wholesale merchants from Birmingham and London as well as countless other independent jewellers the length and breadth of Britain. Some enterprising Whitby manufacturers were even opening Whitby jet boutiques in popular watering places such as Brighton, and fashionable towns like Harrogate.
