Railway Readings
excerpts from the railway press from the 1840s to the 1990s
The purpose of this section of the IRS web site is to provide a glimpse of what the British railway press was saying about various issues in the past. Every month there will be a different selection of excerpts from the railway press from the 1990s to as far back as the 1840s, taken from the collections in the National Railway Museum Library here in York. Sometimes we will group the excerpts according to particular themes, but there will also be space for a more random selection of some interesting, entertaining, or just plain bizarre corners of the railway news of the past. We hope that you will find it interesting and illuminating. It's one way of finding out what has changed, and what has not, over the past century and a half of the railway press. As the months go by, the pages will be stored in an archive accessible from this page.
Next update: sorry, feature suspended
September 2002
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Women
on the rails II: railway workers
There have been women railway
workers in Britain for as long as there have been railways, but - with the
exception of the war years - their role has remained largely unacknowledged and
invisible. Early next year, 'Women on the rails III' will examine women railway
workers during the first and second world wars; but this month's 'Railway
Readings' deliberately ignores the war years in favour of the Edwardian period
and the years immediate after the First World War, to provide a sample of some
of the ways in which women workers on the railways featured in the contemporary
railway press.
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Newspaper advertisements appearing during the past few days inviting applications from girls and young women for positions in railway booking offices in London have given rise to statements that the London Underground Railways intend to replace all their present booking clerks by female assistants. As a matter of fact, girl clerks will be experimentally engaged at the Charing Cross Tube Station, and the adoption of the plan on a more extensive scale will be dependent on the results obtained here. The idea is that of Mr. Stanley, the newly-appointed General Manager of the District and its allied Tube railways. .
The decision of the London Underground Railways Company, the organisation controlling the District, Baker Street & Waterloo, Great Northern, Piccadilly & Brompton, and Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railways, for the experimental employment of women booking clerks, was briefly announced in our last issue. There are several objections to this proceeding. Such an innovation has obviously only one raison d'être, that of economy, and as the company is already paying its male clerks very small salaries, ranging, in fact, from 13s. to 18s. a week, it is difficult to see the possibility of much more substantial reductions. Sweated female labour is certainly worse than sweated male labour. On the lines in question, the first shift of duty begins at about 5 a.m., and the second terminates after midnight. As the company has already appreciated the unsuitability of asking women to begin work so early, and proposed to employ an extra (male) staff up to about 7 a.m., the resulting economy is in any case somewhat questionable. Moreover, women do not give such particular satisfaction in this capacity, which demands more knowledge and experience than are necessary for the duties of an ordinary cash-desk assistant, who has merely to receive payments and give change. This is especially the case on the London tube lines, where so many alternative through routes, with through tickets, are now available. It is significant that in Scotland, where the girl booking clerk has been tried in isolated and special instances, the original number of the appointments has practically never undergone an increase. It cannot either be said that the large number of women employed in this work on the Continent makes for greater efficiency, the one real virtue in the eyes of the administrations being their ready acceptance of a lower wage than would satisfy their husbands or brothers. We believe, however, that the Underground Company has reconsidered its decision, and that women clerks are not to be employed, at least for the present.
- 'Employment of women
telegraph operators'
From The Great Western Railway Magazine, July 1909, p. 162
About thirty years ago the General Manager of the Great Western Railway suggested the feasibility of employing women operators in the more important telegraph offices on the system. But the idea was not then carried out. Since that time, however, women have demonstrated their possession of ability to succeed in various fields of labour, although up to the present their employment in railway work, especially in the south, has been comparatively limited. For many years women have been employed in the Post Office Telegraph Department, in the National Telephone Company's telephone exchanges and offices, and in the telegraph offices of several large railway companies, experience proving that they are admirably suited for telegraph and telephone work. The Great Western Company has recently introduced women into the telegraph and telephone operative section, thirteen learners and a supervisor having started at Paddington and six learners and a senior operator at Bristol. At the latter a new office has been provided with adequate accommodation for both male and female staff, whilst at Paddington structural alterations necessitated by the innovation are now in progress, and when completed will result in the provision of an up-to-date and well-equipped operating room.
In order to train the operators, a School of Telegraphy has been temporarily established at Paddington, so that wehn the office is ready the whole of the operators now in training may be competent to carry on the work required of them. Until recently learners had not been scientifically trained, as, after passing the examination, candidates were drafted to a convenient telegraph office to learn the work. In some cases they laboured under difficulties, and, although they were supervised by a competent clerk, the same facilities for learning were not to be obtained so conveniently in an ordinary telegraph office as in a properly equipped school with a qualified teacher. In the new school, sounder and single needle circuits have been erected, representing, for example, Paddington-Birmingham, Paddington-Cardiff, and as soon as the learners have mastered the alphabet they are given actual messages to signal under the rules and regulations obtaining in a telegraph office. At Paddington, a lady supervisor, having considerable experience of railway telegraph work, has been appointed, which augurs well for future success.
It is generally known that the duties of a telegraph operator are arduous and exacting, but there is no reason to suppose that the ladies will be found wanting, and it will then be possible for the male operators to be drafted into positions where there is greater scope for obtaining promotion in the service. The experiment will be watched with interest, and will, it is hoped, meet with success.
The woman keeper of a level-crossing at Limeston Hall, Millom, Cumberland, was killed last Friday night while courageously attending to her duties. A portion of a goods train became detached a few miles out of Millom, and when the first portion reached the crossing the woman, an elderly widow named Raynes, let it through and, thinking it complete, [p.459>] turned the gates across the metals to allow the passage of a horse and cart. Then the uncoupled trucks came rushing along and Mrs. Raynes ran in front and endeavoured to reclose the gates. She was knocked down and killed.
Since their extended introduction as the result of war conditions, women railway clerks have given every satisfaction, as is the case with other grades of women railway employees, and a considerable measure of credit for this result seems due to the way in which the companies concerned have endeavoured to arrange the most pleasant and favourable working conditions. The Daily Mail recently published an account by an official at the London & North Western Railway's Curzon Street (Birmingham) goods depôt, from which it appears that the premier line went out of its way to study the psychology of the girl worker. Flowers were placed on their desks, a few minutes interval for tea was enforced in the middle of the afternoon, and office routine was diversified by the institution of such attractions as horticultural shows with concerts and costume tableaux. Furthermore, the rule was rigidly laid down that no girl should work more than 41 hours a week, and regular intervals were arranged for meals, while the day's work was timed to end promptly at 5 p.m. A holiday programme is also arranged at the beginning of the year, and each girl is allowed a free pass to any part of the British Isles, and is given a choice of date as to when she will take her holiday. The girl workers are given a practical insight into the work of other departments by means of station and goods yard visits, &c., to show how their duties link up with outside work, and with all these facilities one can understand that they have proved themselves to be very intelligent and adaptable employees. The places of very many have now been filled by demobilised men, but there are certain departments of 'railroading' in which the girl clerk, who is by no means an innovation of the war, will no doubt continue to be employed.
Miss E. L. Winterton, a draughtswoman in the Signal Engineer's office of the Great Western Railway at Reading, at a recent meeting of the Council of the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers, was elected the first lady associate member. Miss Winterton, who commenced work in the drawing office in 1915, and was appointed draughtswoman in 1917, has been engaged in making wiring diagrams of electrical signalling appliances in connection with track circuits, signal and point machines, &c. In connection with her studies at University College, Reading, she has passed examinations in machine construction and drawing, electricity and magnetism, applied mechanics, general physics and mathematics. Miss Winterton was awarded the Owen Ridley prize for machine construction in 1919-20, and the Wells prize for science in 1921-22.
Updated 1 September 2002