Hi I am a final year university student at Liverpool and I am trying to find out information about the employment of women during the war-what they did ect especially in the steel factories, but an info would be useful. Anyone any ideas?

Kelham Island museum should have all the info you need, at a guess.
Hope this helps

Well, this is purely anecdotal, but my mother was a 'fire watcher' and spent some time here in Sheffield. During air raids she would be posted on a building somewhere and watch for fires starting and for the parachute bombs dropped by German aircraft. These were typically incendiaries or time delay mines. The latter were designed to go off hours or days later, during resuce work, and so it was important for teh authorities to get a rough idea where they fell.

Don't ask me how they saw the darn things - I assume that they got picked out in searchlights, or the chutes reflected teh light of fires, etc.

Hi erialc123,

During WW2 my mum (sadly no longer with us) worked as a milk lady. She drove a milk float all over Sheffield, Delivering milk to houses and shops.

Hi,

How much work have you done already: I take it you've already got a good handle on the relevant secondary literature?

There are a few bits and pieces of primary material around. What type of thing are you after?

Red

Also, which war?

Also, which war?

With a keen eye and good night vision you can just make out the thread title as it is caught for a moment in the beam of a searchlight ;)

Hugh

Hi erialc123,

During WW2 my mum (sadly no longer with us) worked as a milk lady. She drove a milk float all over Sheffield, Delivering milk to houses and shops.
did she for the b.c bellhouse road istarted there in 1944 i was 14
they was nearly all womenat that time

I don't think my mum worked from the B + C on Bellhouse Road. I seem to recall that she worked from a depot on Broughton Lane, where Sheffield Arena is now situated. I may be wrong though.

With a keen eye and good night vision you can just make out the thread title as it is caught for a moment in the beam of a searchlight ;)

Hugh

Hey, no need for sarcasm! :)

I'm sure the OP must have changed it since........ possibly.........

My mum won WW2 single handed I think. She was in the land army, worked on the buses and trams and was also in the naafi at finningley. She also managed to get married, have triplets then a son. She was either superwoman or it must have been a very long war. They don't build women like that these days.

I worked at Darnall Day Nursery in 1952. There were woman there who still worked in the Steelworks, who had started work there during the war. They were waiting for the nursery to open at 7.30with their children and collected them before 6 pm.
One woman named Wilcox worked one of the cranes used I think for lifting the steel.
I think these nurseries were opened especially for woman to work during the war and think they came under the Public Health Dept of the Town Hall not education. We took in children aged from 9 mths to 5yrs. The fee was 1/6 a week and people in difficulties' children were cared for free.
hazel

thankyou all for your replies they are all great! its second world war sorry, and i have read alot of summerfields work and bedoe ect.

Hi,

I'll PM you when I get a minute, there's some interesting stuff in Sheffield, Warwick, Manchester and elsewhere about the Sheffield example. There is also a fair amount of oral history material out there, and a few current projects will be incorporating former steel workers.

Are you just doing Sheffield? I interviewed someone last week who lives here now but came down from Newcastle to work in Manchester during the war, 'conscripted' in the first few weeks of the war.

Red

yer just sheffield, I have done a couple of oral interviews, but i was having trouble finding women who specifically worked in the steel works. I rang some OAP homes but no one got back to me!

I had an aunt Beatrice who worked in the war but not in the steelworks. She used to walk around in the blackout wearing a tin hat and an ARP armband. She also used to blow a whistle and yell
"Put that bloody light out!" in a voice that sounded like a fog horn.

My mum used to travel in on the train to work in a munitions factory- can't remember which one. Many steelworks were given over to arms manufacturing, and my mum helped make quite a few bombs which helped us win the war!
She would only have been in her teens.

My mom used to say she worked "at welding rods"....All I got was that she helped make them. I don't know how or even where but would be interested to know that myself.

Kelham Island museum should have all the info you need, at a guess.
Hope this helps

Has the museum re-opened yet, after the deluge?
They were still mopping up just four weeks ago.

There was a book published (also available on CD, I believe ) , about a lady's experience a a tram conductress.

I'll try an find out details for you if nobody else replies, first.

It's my understanding that Kelham Island museum will not re-open until next year.

geocol is that book about the experience of a woman from sheffield? as that would be very helpful!

My mum worked as a telegraphist in WW2 at the central post office in Fitzalan Square. She started at 15 and remained lifelong friends with many others there. My mum moved out of Sheffield in the 60s but the rest of the group still meet up once a fortnight even now. They worked split shifts and used to go to the tea dances at City Hall in the afternoons. The worst time of all was "the night of the long knives" when hundreds of pilots were killed and they were taking the details of the young men from the Sheffield area being killed every other minute.

Hi I am a final year university student at Liverpool and I am trying to find out information about the employment of women during the war-what they did ect especially in the steel factories, but an info would be useful. Anyone any ideas?

Whilst it wasn't mandatory there was an expectation during the war for ALL able bodied persons to help the war effort. During this time my mother was employed first on the trams as a conductor and then at Hardy Pick on Little London and on shift work. To provide for absent mums Annes Road School provided not only 'school dinners' but 'school teas' and we were allowed to stay at school until 6.30 - 7.00pm. Incidentally the 'school tea' comprised a fish paste sandwich a Wagon Wheel ( which unlike todays version the wartime one was just a giant Digestive biscuit and a half pint mug of cocoa!

Dont forget Stanley Works on Rutland Road, there must've been a couple of hundred women working there during the war.

My mum joined up at 17 and spent the war on ACAK? guns, she also trained others to use them.

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I believe my Mom worked at Lucas up Crookes making aircraft wiring harnesses

My mother worked for Bachelors , canning vegetables.

I worked in a rolling mill down near Lady's Bridge and there were a lot of women doing the not so heavy work. I was a 15 year old lad, a bit shy and some of them used to give me a wry smile like they could eat me. I often look back to those war days and wonder how the present lot would have coped, I don't think they could or would, too soft.

The Town that I live in - Ajax, Ontario Canada was started in February 1941 A company, Defence Industries Ltd. bought a tract of farmland and built a munitions factory, the factory, apartments and houses were completed by the summer and shells were rolling off the line. Women and girls were recruited from all over Canada. The plant produced anti-tank shells and anti-aircraft shells,. It is claimed that this factory was the largest producer of shells in the British empire.

The town was not named until a few years later and by popular vote it was named Ajax in honour of HMS Ajax which was part of the Allies first major navel victory during the war at the battle of the River Plate when the German battle ship Graffe Spee was sunk.

I think that you could get more info from Durhamregion.com

Hope this helps.

Cynthia.