Recently because of the centenary of the Great War there have been many articles on the role, identity and fates of soldiers and others who fought.
Many of the men who joined up had worked in industry and production needed to continue, despite the War and jobs suddenly vacant. One industry which it was thought important to keep in full production for the war effort was coal gas used for heating and lighting. Locally in Greenwich and Woolwich, as indeed it South London generally, gas works were owned by the South Metropolitan Gas Company based at the Old Kent Road works but with several other works in the area. Their largest site was the great East Greenwich Works on the Greenwich Peninsula. In the first days of the Great War in 1914 nearly 1000 men left their jobs in the South Metropolitan Company's works to join the forces and this was eventually to number 3000. Even before war was declared ambulance men from the Company’s works were mobilised and sent abroad. The Company was able to call back some men who had joined but they were those with special skills – for example an expert in tar distillation who having left military service toured the country training chemists in other gas works.
It was clearly difficult for the gas company to lose so many of its staff so quickly and replacements needed to be found. In time offering jobs to women was considered. We have heard about the role of women in the Royal Arsenal in the Great War, but they were not alone. In all probability women worked in many industries and their roles can only be guessed at. We are lucky that South Metropolitan not only continued to produce their house magazine throughout the war but also eventually published a commemorative supplement. In it we find the women and their roles described but as they say to start with the employment of women in the gas works meant ”not only prejudice … but lack of belief in the results which could be obtained”.
The first women were recruited in June 1915 as index readers – a job where they would meet the public, visit homes and shops, thus performing a public relations role for the Company. Other was given jobs in gas showrooms, and soon these shops were entirely run by women workers. It was said that this was often a job requiring great tact and patience in wartime as shortages grew, repairs were done late and customers became angry. Women were then recruited to work as clerks in company offices - cashiers’ offices, engineering departments and as ‘personal’ clerks to officials – which sounds very much the sort of office work which became standard ‘women’s work’ later in the century. They also began to work for the maintenance department doing repairs, including to equipment in customer’s homes. One of the most successful roles for women was collecting money from slot meters. This they did much more successfully than male collectors and it was strongly considered that they should be kept on in this role of the end of the war. Women described as ‘girl graduates’ worked in the greatly expanded Chemical Laboratories, and as the war progressed chemical production and chemical invention became an important part of the war effort. They also undertook on precision assembly work in meter making departments
These first jobs given to women by the gas industry were all ones in which women could appear respectable and ladylike, wear ordinary street clothes and behave with what would be considered then as decorum. A ‘Lady Superintendent’ was recruted to generally oversee their work and liaise with management.
This was all to change. Women were soon to enter the manufacturing areas of the Gas Works initially in the chemical departments and stores. In 1917 three women were recruited to work as fire rakers in a coke hole. They learnt the work so quickly and were so proficient but that they were soon taken for work in the retort houses. Work here was at the very heart of the Gas Works where the gas was made. Coal was put into ovens – called retorts – and heated so that the gas was expelled and removed to be processed and cleaned. This was extremely hot, dirty and heavy work generally done by men of ‘Herculean’ build. But so successful were these ‘coal be-grimed jersey-clad women stokers’ that by early 1918 two of them had been appointed as ‘forewomen’ responsible for the working of the entire retort house - and it would be interesting to know if they supervised men as well as women and how and men reacted to that.
Women also did much of the general labouring in the gas works and there is a description of them cleaning a barge in heavy mud at East Greenwich. They also shifted the heavy sacks of coke. Publicity pictures show them wheeling loads of chemicals, working with blacksmiths and working on top of gasholders.
Outside of the works women learnt to shoot at the company’s rifle range – to ‘protect themselves against the Hun’.
In contemporary reports and publications there are many expressions of surprise at how quickly and efficiently the women undertook this work. There were however reassurances to men returning from military duty that their jobs would still be available with the assumption that the women would go and this proved to be the case.
Who were these women who undertook this heavy and often dangerous work. Initially the gas company had looked to the families of gas works staff. It was an industry which tended to recruit from known ‘gas families’ even in peacetime. It is probable that many of them were the wives and sisters of male gas workers recruited into the army. It is also very probable that there was a class difference between those women who worked as clerks and those who worked in the retort houses. A woman stoker is described as ‘an old friend of laundry or bottling days’ whose speech is ‘ungrammatical’. A reflection perhaps that normal peacetime lives for some working class women would have included a lot of very heavy labour.
In 1920 the gas company printed a list of those among its staff who had received war time awards. Under ‘Order of the British Empire – medallists’ are seven names. One – the only man listed – is Frederick Innis, the valvesman who saved the gas supply after the Silvertown explosion. The other six medallists are all women about whom I know nothing. It would be very interesting to know what their contribution was and if it equalled Innis’s heroic act in face of great danger and why we know nothing about them and what they did. With no first names given they are: Mrs E.Birch, Miss M. Joyce, Miss M Knight, Miss A.Rate, Miss C.Smith and Miss M Wheeler – and they probably came from the Kennington Area. Perhaps we should note a brief mention of Miss Wheeler co-opted onto a works committee in 1919, but that is all.
There is a great deal of information about the contribution made by women gas workers during the Great War in Company records and in the Company workplace magazine during the period of the war. Later they seem to have been forgotten. A longer and more recent article appears in The Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society's, London’s Industrial Archaeology, No6. By Grace Pond “The Forgotten workforce’,
GW June 2023
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