More than 4,000 Glossop workers were on the dole 75 years ago as power cuts and a shortage of coal closed most of the town's mills. 

It was the first week of February 1947, when heavy snow was falling and in the days that followed huge queues would be forming outside Glossop Labour Exchange. 

Cash was tight and the future must have looked bleak for the workers who patiently waited to receive unemployment benefit. 

The payments were probably just enough to survive on: 24 shillings (around £1.20) for a single person, £2 for a man and wife, plus an extra five shillings for a first child. 

Glossopdale's workforce at the time was between 7,000 and 8,000 - most working in huge cotton mills which dominated the town. 

But the machines suddenly fell silent, as they did all over the country, electricity still flowed for parts of the day, but in factories and in homes, people were urged 'on their honour' by the Government not to use it. 

The situation was made worse by the wintry weather. 

Coal was in short supply and much of Glossop's Government-imposed rationing allocation struggled to get to factories and homes due to the heavy snow. 

The Chronicle, trying to lift readers' spirits, reported that not all was doom and gloom in Glossop's mills. 

All 450 workers at Wood Brothers factory, which had followed Government advice and switched their power needs from coal to oil, picked up their weekly pay packets. 

While at Sumner's Mill, part of the weaving section kept going due to diesel-operated looms. 

But even at the factories, offices and other businesses that stayed open, work finished early. After all, it was winter and it started to get dark at 4pm.

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