Not only soldiers died in Great War
LOOKED at the display in Uxbridge Library about the First World War centenary. One item was headed ‘Munitionettes’, and was about the thousands of munitions workers – mostly young women – who were killed and injured by their work of producing ammunition.
The display reported that many of them worked at the ‘National Filling Factory’ in Hayes. These largely forgotten casualties of war were exposed to toxic chemicals in munitions factories in different parts of the country.
Many of them died from conditions such as aplastic anaemia (bone marrow destruction).
The Uxbridge Library display stated that the chemicals made their skin turn yellow and they became known as ‘canaries’, and many of them died from toxic jaundice.
There are lists of names of some of these casualties on the internet.
The legacy of exposure to toxic chemicals, such as TNT, can be passed on in the form of cell mutations to future generations, and most of their descendants living today will never know that the cause of their medical conditions – such as thyroid damage – was the result of a past family member working in a munitions factory.
I’m glad that Uxbridge Library is remembering the war workers.
IThe worse rail franchise we have found, for seats that do not line up with windows and general rundown scruffiness, are the trains run by Abellio Greater Anglia.
However, I feel that you were lucky, in that your train from Euston station had a ‘quiet section’. How many stops were there between London and your destination, wonder? Consider the passenger (sorry, customer) using London’s rail network. Stations are generally close together, with journey times between of, say, about three or four minutes.
Yet there are at least three, and sometimes as many as five, on-train announcements per station. Surely an excessive number?
A suggestion [to London Transport (LT)] that these trains have a ‘quiet’ section, for those of us who know our destination and do not wish to hear these announcements, was turned down – the reason being: ‘We could not possibly consider having a “quiet” section on our trains. Customers would not be able to hear the announcements.’
I kid you not. I have kept these emails of correspondence between LT and myself and will forward them to you if you wish to read them.
I