by Jennifer Chiaverini (Author) Rosie the Riveter meets A League of Their Own in New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini's lively and illuminating novel about the "munitionettes" who built bombs in Britain's arsenals during World War I, risking their lives for the war effort and discovering camaraderie and courage on the football pitch. Early in the Great War, men left Britain's factories in droves to enlist. Struggling to keep up production, arsenals hired women to build the weapons the military urgently needed. "Be the Girl Behind the Man Behind the Gun," the recruitment posters beckoned. Thousands of women--cooks, maids, shopgirls, and housewives--answered their nation's call. These "munitionettes" worked grueling shifts often seven days a week, handling TNT and other explosives with little protective gear. Among them is nineteen-year-old former housemaid April Tipton. Impressed by her friend Marjorie's descriptions of higher wages, plentiful meals, and comfortable lodgings, she takes a job at Thornshire Arsenal near London, filling shells in the Danger Building--difficult, dangerous, and absolutely essential work. Joining them is Lucy Dempsey, wife of Daniel Dempsey, Olympic gold medalist and star forward of Tottenham Hotspur. With Daniel away serving in the Footballers' Battalion, Lucy resolves to do her bit to hasten the end of the war. When her coworkers learn she is a footballer's wife, they invite her to join the arsenal ladies' football club, the Thornshire Canaries. The Canaries soon acquire an unexpected fan in the boss's wife, Helen Purcell, who is deeply troubled by reports that Danger Building workers suffer from serious, unexplained illnesses. One common symptom, the lurid yellow hue of their skin, earns them the nickname "canary girls." Suspecting a connection between the canary girls' maladies and the chemicals they handle, Helen joins the arsenal administration as their staunchest, though often unappreciated, advocate. The football pitch is the one place where class distinctions and fears for their men fall away. As the war grinds on and tragedy takes its toll, the Canary Girls persist despite the dangers, proud to serve, determined to outlive the war and rejoice in victory and peace. Number of Pages: 432 Dimensions: 0.97 x 8 x 5.31 IN
Women on the home front munitionettes from the #woolwicharsenal #1stWW.
Q 30028. Men and women workers filling shells in the National Shell Filling Factory Chilwell.
Mrs. Lottie Meade murió en la batalla de Somme. No luchaba en Francia, sino en el llamado «frente doméstico», elaborando explosivos en una fábrica de Londres. Durante 1916, las munitionettes trabajaron sin descanso para suministrar […]
“'Munitionettes' football was massive in WW1. The Jarrow team in 1918.”
Innovations made during the war years include tailored trousers, trench coats and A-line skirts - all of which became popular as shortages began to bite.
Q 108474. Female munitions workers (nicknamed "munitionettes") manufacturing heavy artillery shells at one of the Vickers Limited factories May 1917.
A short overtime sprint won't kill you but, as data from World War One shows, consistently putting in too many hours at work hurts employees and employers.
The title of today’s post is taken from a popular First World War propaganda poster which encouraged women to work in munitions factories. Sepia Saturday this week prompted this theme, and others will no doubt be posting similar stories and images from both World Wars. My maternal grandmother, far right in her ‘Munitionette’ uniform This is a picture of my maternal grandmother (she of Wedding Day Delay and Beautiful Babies fame) with some of her fellow workers from the Munitions Factory where she was employed during the First World War. She was born in 1898 and left school in 1912 to enter the world or work. She was bright and articulate, nevertheless she did not enter any of the professions. She was the eldest girl of ten children and the family would have been keen for her to earn a wage and make a contribution to the household expenses. Instead she was apprenticed to a French chocolatier, and as far as I know, this is where she worked until she went into munitions. When I was a child she would tell me stories about her employer and the handmade chocolates they made to order. I was fascinated and wondered how she could resist ‘sampling’ the goods. She did say they were allowed occasionally to have a treat. This make perfect sense as knowing they would have the odd chocolate (perhaps a ‘mis-shape’ as we call them now?) must have meant they weren’t so tempted. What a kind and canny employer! This is the only picture I have of her in her factory uniform, and as she married in 1918, she never went out to work again. Men returned from the war and took back the jobs which women had filled in their absence. Women who had been carrying out skilled labour, and filling many vital roles, returned to more menial tasks, or became housewives and mothers. The women who went into munitions work, known as Munitionettes, were paid better than some others as the work was highly dangerous and carried a serious risk to their health. However, they were still paid half of the wage of a man carrying out the same task. Here we are nearly a century later and, in some areas at least, women still find it difficult to break through the glass ceiling. It’s possible to read in some first-hand accounts of the women having rolls of banknotes (Lyn Macdonald, 1914-18, Voices and image of The Great War), but I don’t recall any such legend within my own family. Whatever my grandmother earned would have been ploughed back into the family resources. Max Arthur in ‘Forgotten Voices of the Great War’ uses transcripts of original recordings held by the Imperial War Museum. Some of the ‘voices’ are of munitions workers and they probably present a more realistic picture of the dangers and hardships these women faced on a daily basis. I don’t know anything about the other girls in the picture, but I do know that my grandmother played in an all-women football team, possibly with some of her co-workers. My grandfather saw them play and said they were very good (and he was not one to lavish praise where football was concerned). She would still have been living at home with her parents, and by 1916 two of her elder brothers had been killed in the war. This may account for my great-grandfather’s paternal strictness. Having lost two of his sons he was protective towards his future son-in-law, and if my Gran went out with her friends to alleviate some of the tediousness and loneliness, this was frowned upon, whilst “That lad is fighting for King and Country.” She did however, come home with a tattoo at the top of her arm on one occasion, perhaps egged on by the other girls. Nothing changes, and peer pressure was as strong then as it is today. For the rest of her life she was deeply embarrassed by this. My grandfather had no such qualms about his own tattoo, which proudly proclaimed his love for my grandmother; her name surrounded by hearts and flowers if I remember correctly. As a nineteen-year old soldier serving in France it was probably 'de rigueur’. When I was young my Gran would tell me all sorts of tales about her life and we would often say that one day we’d write a book together. Sadly I never even wrote anything down and my Gran died many years ago now so it’s too late to ask her. This is my way of honouring our shared wish. My Gran also appears on my other blog Picking Up The Threads. She was a very talented needlewoman, especially crochet, and you can see some examples of her work in ‘Hand in Glove With Grandma’. You can read more about the work of the Munitionettes by clicking here. the North Watford History Group have an excellent page about the Munitions Factory my Gran would have worked in. If you click on the two links below you will be a treated to short black and white video clips from the British Pathe News archive. Click on the link, then on the still picture. British Pathe News Video Clip 1 British Pathe News Video Clip 2
These incredible vintage photos captured everyday life of British female war workers during World War One. Women war workers, including the distinctively white-capped and aproned VAD nurses, parade outside Buckingham Palace in 1918. Members of the Women's Royal Air Force arrive at Buckingham Palace, London, to attend a party for war workers in 1919. Female ambulance workers, such as this group photographed in November 1915, served both at home and on the front line. While some women became nurses, others worked in hospital workshops, such as this one at the Kensington War Hospital, making prosthetic limbs. 950,000 female workers were employed in British factories, including this worker, pictured making shell cases in a Vickers factory in January 1915 . 400 women died in munitions factories, between 1914 (when this image was taken) and 1918, when the war ended. Exposure to toxic sulphur left many workers with yellowed skin, while others were killed in explosions. One 1917 incident killed 73 and flattened 900 homes Despite being paid less than their male counterparts, many of the female munitionettes undertook dangerous and fiddly work. Members of the Women's Fire Brigade with their Chief Officer photographed in their uniforms beside an extinguished fire in March 1916. Members of the Women's Fire Brigade are put through their paces during a fire drill with hoses and extinguishers at full force in March 1916. A member of the Women Porters At Marylebone Station Group, pictured in 1914 giving a Great Central Railways carriage a thorough clean. Women employed in the transport industry increased by 555 per cent during the war, and included this pair of female porters at Marylebone Station in 1915. As this 1917 photograph shows, female war workers didn't just run trains and buses - they fixed and maintained them too. As part of the war effort, old paper had to be reused. These women are pulling apart old ledgers belonging to the London & South West Railway. The paper, as this photo taken on the 16th April 1917 shows, then had to be sorted into piles and stored. Women even took on tough, physical roles such as moving rubble, as seen in this photograph taken in Coventry during 1917. (via Daily Mail Online)
With nearly 20 million deaths and more than 20 million wounded, in its time, World War I was the most devastating conflict human history had ever seen. It
At lunchtime, the women had to be separated in the cafeteria because everything they touched turned yellow. They were called the "Canary Girls" because of their bright yellow skin and green or ginger-coloured hair. With the nation's men at war and male labour in short supply, Britain's women had bee
With nearly 20 million deaths and more than 20 million wounded, in its time, World War I was the most devastating conflict human history had ever seen. It
Hundreds of thousands of British women played a vital role during the First World War as ‘munitionettes’, manufacturing bombs, shells and ammunition in factories across the country, of which 218 were ‘National Factories’ run by the newly created Ministry of Munitions. The long shifts (often lasting 12 hours) involved labour that was frequently hard, unpleasant and dangerous; 134 workers died in an explosion at a factory in Chilwell, Nottinghamshire, in July 1918, while exposure to toxic
How 'plucky' heroines of 1914-18 conflict seized chance to advance women's freedoms
When the men went off to war, the women left behind began filling the jobs that were once only for men.
The last surviving ‘Canary Babies’ have told their story of how their skin was a tinge of yellow after their mothers worked in explosives factories in the
With nearly 20 million deaths and more than 20 million wounded, in its time, World War I was the most devastating conflict human history had ever seen. It
The women workers of WWI are the definition of empowerment
With nearly 20 million deaths and more than 20 million wounded, in its time, World War I was the most devastating conflict human history had ever seen. It
Munition Recruitment Poster 1914-1918 Munition Workers, Glasgow 1914 Munitions Propaganda Poster of World War One Workers amongst Shells, 1915 During the First World War, women played an active and crucial role in Britain’s war effort. ...
