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| Picture No | 10923375 |
| Date | 1915 |
| Description | WW1 - Titled Women Munitions Workers |
| Details |
The first contingent of Titled Society ladies who volunteered to work for Messrs. Vickers, Sons and Maxim as shell makers. In this group are Lady Gertrude Crawford, sister of the Earl of Sefton; Lady Gatacre, Lady Colebrooke, Mrs Pearson, Mrs Greig and other well-known ladies. The caption details that 'delicacy of manipulation is a feminine instinct' and therefore the work is certainly not 'unsuitable'! In August 1915, Eve in The Tatler was also listing some of the new workers at the Vickers’ factory: "Erith is the latest craze. Here, at Messrs. Vickers’, a gallant band of women are really doing it. Not just playing about, you know, but living at a hostel and taking the regular rate of pay – I think it’s not quite enough to pay for two stalls at the newest revue each week. Lady Gertrude Crawford and Lady
Colebrooke are among the toilers, and Lady Gatacre too … Lady Scott, Captain Scott’s widow, is also working at this particular
factory, but hers is skilled electrical work. (*Kathleen Bruce, Lady Scott, spent much of 1917 manufacturing electrical coils at
the factory. She also devoted time establishing an ambulance service in France, working at the Ministry of Pensions and, in 1918, put her talent as a sculptor to use helping to reconstruct the faces of wounded soldiers). Vickers are willing to take a lot more women to train during the week-ends so as to have them ready for work at the
new munition factories, for there won’t be enough men to go round, I’m told."
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| Source | Unattributed photograph in The Illustrated War News, 1915 |
| Credit | © Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans |
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