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On my Great-Uncle's Naval Entry Form, it says:

Occupation upon entry: Slitterman (paper)

I found this article, which says a slitterman is:

A representative for the Travellers Aid Society

  • Can anyone explain this in more detail?
  • Specifically, what does the "paper" part mean?

Note: He joined in 1943, he would have been about 15/16.

2 Answers 2

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A slitterman is someone who operates slitting machines. A slitting machine is used to cut sheets of material. The material could be anything, paper, leather, cloth, acetate, steel, you name it. Anything that is produced in sheets usually needs to be slitted.

Slitting machines generally have a series of rollers which feed the material to a series of slitting saws or disks which are arranged in parallel.

slitting machine

Modern slitting machine slitting sheet steel.

Once I heard of this accident where a slitterman tried to correct something while a machine was running and got caught on the wheels and was dragged into the machine. Gruesome.

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  • The government's job description for slitterman directs here, but from my experience in industry and listening to members of older generations, at 16 even in the forties, he would more likely be a helper than the operator. Self promotion or accurate description of what a company trusted him to do? Who knows?
    – Mike
    May 26, 2015 at 1:46
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An advertisment in the The Milwaukee Journal (Jan 15, 1949) suggests that a slitter man is a person that works with setting the knives on a paper corrugating machine.

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