Young Women in the Workplace

During the first half of the 20th century, Brighton girls and women left school as soon as they could (whether they wanted to or not) to begin earning money to contribute to the household budget. In The Town Beehive, Daisy Noakes describes the sharp change from child to worker:

A dormitory maid was wanted at Ovingdean School, so my sister Lily spoke for me. It was November 1922, and I would be 14 in December, so an appointment was made for the interview. Yesterday in blouse and gymslip, today unrecognisable in a costume my mother bought from a neighbour.

Just before the outbreak of WW2, the government abandoned the idea to raise the school-leaving age to 15. In International Service, Kathleen Wilson describes how this suited her; she hated school. She had ambitions to be a hair dresser but these were thwarted by the financial implications:

To be a hairdresser in the early days, you did not earn money at the beginning because you paid for your apprenticeship. This was out of the question as far as my father was concerned. He needed money from me at the outset, so my first job, just two weeks after leaving the schoolroom, was in a small factory making valves and switches.

Kathleen was unprepared for the world of work. Her job was boring and repetitive. She was prone to daydreaming and making costly mistakes. Why an earth had she left school? But the daily grind and high-expectations weren’t the only new experience;

I began to feel as though I was a working girl at last. The factory was nothing like the other one. It was large, bright and airy. The women around me were very liberal with their conversation, and listening to them I thought they were worldly-wise. I wished I knew what they were on about when they spoke of things they did in the evenings.

A Varied Career

In Jobs for life, Joan Parsons recounts her many and varied jobs she undertook around Brighton, after leaving school, aged 14, months before the outbreak of war in 1939. Like Kathleen, she remembers seeing another side of life, during a a post WW2 stint as a chambermaid at The Metropole Hotel.

Hotel life is fascinating. You are seeing the side of life you know you could never afford. You get all the stars, but some are only stars on the outside, not on the inside. But, we had some good laughs, though we were always having to be straight-faced, and no noise, no talking in the corridors in case anybody was resting.

Although Marjorie Batchelor lived above the family pub in Exeter Street before she began working there in the 1920s, she related in A Life Behind Bars how some aspects of pub life were still a shock to a 14 year old girl:

I didn’t like my job at first, a few teasing remarks from male customers would cause me to blush and run for cover. But in time I learned the art of repartee and tactful conversation and overcame my shyness. I also learned to talk about things that other people wished to hear, which was to become a very useful habit in later years. Looking back I realise it was a great education, sometimes bringing disillusionment, but also a more philosophical approach to life. At times it could be a little boring but there was always the hope of a door opening and a new face appearing.

Decades earlier, during the First World War, Lillie Morgan answered a job advert for a pawnbroker’s assistant in The Evening Argus. Newly arrived in Brighton, her mother too had found work as an auxiliary nurse, tending to the wounded Indian soldiers in the hospital that was housed in The Royal Pavilion. Life was never dull for Lillie, as she recounted in At The Pawnbrokers:

I can remember going out with Mr. Lucas and Mr. Jones to the Pavilion Shades Public House on a fairly regular basis. Entering by the front door we would wait in a private room to meet some police officers who came in through the back entrance, so that no-one guessed that we would be meeting them. Once the door of the room was closed and we had some privacy we would get down to the business of selling them gold sovereigns for£12/6d each (2/6d premium above the official exchange rate premium of paper money). Sovereigns were no longer legal tender and being made of solid gold their value obviously increased greatly.

However, she soon ended up on cleaning duties, which were not part of her job description:

When I first started the shop was extremely dusty and the brass work had not been polished in years, so I set to work when we were quiet to smarten up the place, which surprised the men who were very pleased with the results. I don’t think that they had ever thought of paying a cleaner to do the work.

Whose Money Is It?

At this time, girls were expected to work long hours and much of their pay went straight to their parents. Whilst working for a high-class tailor, in International Service Kathleen Wilson remembers:

I was once asked how much of the seven shillings and sixpence I earned each week was given to me. When I replied, ‘Sixpence,’ Miss McNally’s eyebrows rose a fraction. The next time she paid me, she pressed an extra shilling into my hand, ‘This is for you, so mind you keep it. Remember, it’s not for your father.’

Whilst jobs seemed to be plentiful for girls at this time, they offered little in the way of career prospects. Some girls however, were exposed to working women outside of their family or social circle, who had somehow managed to make most out of their situation. In The Other side of the Counter, Marjorie Gardiner recounts her experiences of working in the millinery business, between the wars.

Sometimes Madam arrives in her large chauffeur-driven car and sits in the cash desk watching every assistant, and woe betide one who allows a customer to slip out without making a purchase. If Madam is in a bad mood, we assistants quake in our shoes for to displease Madam can mean instant dismissal.

Madam had a beautiful house in Hove, with a large staff of servants who rarely stayed long, as they were terrified of her. She owned racehorses and greyhounds and this, luckily for us, took her away a good deal as she went to all race meetings held not too far away. Sometimes she would be gone for a week at a time. Occasionally, when her horses won and she had a really big win, she would buy us cakes for tea, if she was in a good mood which, alas, wasn’t often.

Whose Job Is It?

Employment for girls and young women could be precarious; post WW1, Brighton flourished but changes in fashion and then priorities at the outbreak of WW2, contributed to the decline of the millinery trade. As men returned from the war, women could also find themselves ousted from jobs to make for them – Kathleen Wilson, International Service:

None of the men who did my job in pre-war days wanted to return to it, and since it appeared that I was very efficient, I was allowed to continue in my position. Molly Mitchell was not so lucky. About eighteen months after hostilities ceased, she dropped her bombshell. One Monday morning as we congregated behind the counter, she suddenly said out of the blue, ‘You had all better pull up your socks and smarten up your ideas now. Next week there will be a new manager here in my place. During the week that followed, we watched her moving out of the flat above the shop as she moved all her belongings to her sister’s house in Patcham.

In Moulsecoomb Days, Ruby Dunn’s university education followed by teacher training, secured for her a life-long career in teaching. But it wasn’t easy and once again, she was initially restricted by financial family worries.

The only way Mum managed to send me to college when she was left a widow, was by begging the British Legion to help the daughter of an ex-soldier. They kindly gave me a small grant. Then Brighton Education Committee offered me a substantial loan on the understanding that the money was repaid within the first two years of teaching, by a deduction from the monthly salary cheque. This meant that for financial reasons I was forced to return to Brighton to teach, even though I had been interviewed and accepted by Edmonton Education Committee. I knew that my Mum needed my financial help at home, but part of me felt resentful that I could not become a London teacher with the status, in those days, of the highest salary scale.

However, following WW2, a more modern approach to working women seemed to be developing:

My earnings would not last much longer, as I was pregnant. However, I was glad to learn that, for the first time in their history, women teachers were being encouraged to return to their posts after having a baby. I was the first woman teacher at Moulsecoomb to be offered that option, and I decided to take advantage of it, with my Mum’s support.

How Things Change – or not…

In 1995, QueenSpark published The Lone Rangers – Single Parents’ Writing Project. Here, parents discuss how they manage parenting alone and their relationship with work. Liz describes the challenge of finding work that will provide a good income and fund childcare and of responding the attitudes of a different generation:

My mother (who should be in Parliament) tells me to “Get a job”. She tells me that I ought to be grateful for the welfare state which she spent her working life putting into. Some people, she says, never know the back of poverty, dependence, ill health and illiteracy. I chose to keep the baby, so I’ve got to pull myself up by the boot-straps. Mother, I want to tell you something. I unfailingly provide 24 hour care to the best of my abilities for my little boy. The trap that I live in is silent and unseen until one has fallen in. I can’t get a part-time job because I’d be simply paying for the child-care while I’m working. I’d need a full-time job which pays £300 a week to be able to save anything. I live a gnawing tedium of juggling with so-called options when all I really juggle with is thin air. Yes, I chose to have a baby, but why punish me now that it’s too late?

Shirley worked hard to improve her employability, but still finds herself relying on Income support:

This makes me angry. I could have signed on at one of the temp agencies to do secretarial work or taught in a language school in the holidays. Why not? Because none of this would have paid enough to cover rent, childminding, bills, food and tax. Far from it. And because – even if those jobs did pay enough – they are by nature temporary and coming back on Income Support and getting your rent paid by Housing Benefit again takes months. Meanwhile, you’re out on the streets. Many two-wage-earner families struggle to raise children these days. I shouldn’t be surprised that I can’t afford to earn my own living.

Over the previous century, the girls and women of Brighton have worked hard, enduring long hours and low pay. They were expected to surrender the little they did earn to their families, reducing their opportunities for independence; they would only leave this family unit in exchange for another – their own.

As the millennium approached, the writers of The Lone Rangers faced a different set of problems, but in some ways they were the same – raising children alone, under pressure to work but with no hope of meeting the financial costs that would enable this to happen. The type of work available was also a problem; casual, temporary and low-paid, just as it was for the young women who criss-crossed the streets of Brighton to their jobs in long-gone cafes and shops, decades earlier – and, for many, just as it is now…

Many QueenSpark books feature stories of women in the workplace – you can read them for free on our archive, or browse a selection of free downloadable pdfs in our bookshop.