Exploring your canal ancestry: the ‘idle women’

In the latest in her family history series, Nicola Lisle delves into the story of the ‘idle women’ and looks at where to find records.

WAS your ancestor one of the ‘idle women’? This extraordinary group of women, most of whom had little or no boating experience, helped to keep vital supplies moving along Britain’s canals and rivers during the Second World War, bravely stepping into the shoes of the menfolk who were away fighting.

They came from a variety of backgrounds – one of the best-known of the ‘idle women’, Eily Gayford (1903-91), was a dance teacher and later a lecturer for the Dental Board before the war, while others were mostly students, teachers, actors and factory workers. Initially, they were resented by the traditional boating community, who quickly coined the nickname ‘idle women’, taken from the initials ‘IW’, for Inland Waterways, on the women’s badges. Over the course of the war, though, these women were far from idle.

It was Molly Traill who pioneered the idea of recruiting women to cover the shortage of manpower on the water ways. Early in 1941, she and a friend, Daphne March, converted their pleasure craft, Heather Bell, into a working boat, carrying cargoes of mainly flour and coal on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal and the River Severn. Needing a third hand, they invited Eily Gayford to join them.

Soon after, Molly approached the Ministry of Transport with an idea for setting up a scheme to recruit and train women to work the canal boats. The idea was approved, and the Women’s Training Scheme was officially launched in February 1942 by the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company, with Molly Traill and Eily Gayford as trainers.

The scheme later extended to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.

The initial response was encouraging; around a hundred women signed up for the three-month training, which included learning to operate a pair of cargo-carrying boats – one 72ft motor and a butty – as well as basic boat maintenance and loading/ unloading cargoes. The demands of the work proved too much for some of the women, and around half dropped out before the end of their training.

But if the training was tough, life on the boats was even more so. Threeweek trips, working 20-hour days and handling 50-ton cargoes while living in cramped conditions with little in the way of creature comforts was a real test of both physical and mental fortitude. Small wonder that the official letter to recruits from the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company emphasised that ‘only women of robust constitution and good health should enter this employment’.

Not surprisingly, only a handful of women managed to tough it out to the end of the war. At its peak, the scheme had around 30 pairs of boats, each crewed by three women, but by the end of the war, this had dwindled to just six women. This included Eily Gayford and Sonia South, who was later to marry IWA pioneer Tom Rolt.

Finding out more

For anyone with ‘idle women’ ancestry, a good starting point is the London Metropolitan University’s TUC Library, which holds records of the Boatwomen Training Scheme from 1942-45, together with copies of correspondence.

The archive of the Canal and River Trust (www.canalrivertrust.org.uk) has photographs, cuttings, correspondence and other documents, including letters from Buckingham Palace to Eily Gayford about her MBE, which she was awarded in 1945 for her services to the war effort.

For more on the history of the ‘idle women’, there are a number of films available to view online free of charge, including:

• Ministry of Information film looking at the use of canals during the war, screened in factories to inspire workers.

• British Pathé film, Beauty and the Barge, following the journey of three women along the Grand Union Canal during wartime.

• British Movietone film, Another Job for Women, about women who were taking over men’s jobs on the canals.

• Margaret Cornish talking about her life, including her experiences as one of the idle women during the war.

• Interview with Sonia Rolt in 2011, talking about her wartime experiences as a boatwoman.

Several of the ‘idle women’ wrote about their experiences after the war, and these are available at the Canal Book Shop (www.canalbookshop.co.uk): • Margaret Cornish – Memoirs of a Canal Boatwoman

• Eily Gayford –The Amateur Boatwomen

• Nancy Ridgway – Memories of a Wartime Canal Boatwoman

• Emma Smith – Maidens’ Trip

• Susan Woolfitt – Idle Women

PHOTO: CC-IWM. Daphne March at the tiller of Heather Bell, heading along the canals of the industrial Midlands.

PHOTO: NICOLA LISLE. Below: Possessions of Eily Gayford on display at the National Waterways Museum, Gloucester:

PHOTO: CC-IWM. Two canal boats travel the Grand Union Canal with a cargo of coal, bound for London. The second of the two (the ‘butty’) is towed behind and being steered by Valerie Gribbis, the boatman’s daughter.

PHOTO: NICOLA LISLE. Plaque in Birmingham commemorating all those who worked on the canals during both world wars.

PHOTO: CC-IWM. Eily Gayford (left) teaches Miranda Pigott how to splice a rope.

PHOTO: NICOLA LISLE. The Amateur Boatwomen by Eily Gayford.