1942: Eleanor Roosevelt impresses with her stamina

ELEANOR Roosevelt, America’s First Lady, impressed people with her endurance during the Glasgow part of her visit to Britain in 1942. That day – Wednesday, November 11 – had begun with a flight from Ireland and finished with visits to two US servicemen’s clubs in Glasgow and the engineering works of C & J Weir, and, after driving through what she would describe as a “dense black-out”, the Rolls factory. Her diary records that at a Women’s Institute she was presented with some “Scotch shortbread” for her husband. “They had saved scarce ingredients to make it,” she wrote, “and he was deeply touched when I gave it to him.” At 11pm she addressed Rolls war workers who were themselves putting in a 12-hour shift. “Mrs Roosevelt,” said the Glasgow Herald, “astonished accompanying Scottish officials by her apparently inexhaustible energy ... she was as erect, smiling, and untiring as when she had stepped from her ’plane at [Prestwick]”

So great was the rush of workers to see her that priority admission for female workers was introduced, women’s war work being her key concern on her tour. She asked the women workers how they did their shopping and got home in a blackout. Her diary records: “Finally, we reached Lord Weir’s house about twelve, where we met some of the members of his family, were served refreshments, talked a little while and at last went to bed. I wondered if I would ever be able to get up in the morning, for I was weary and my feet didn’t seem to belong to me.”

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