WWI WOMEN IN THE POSTAL SERVICE
Ahead of its July reopening, The Postal Museum’s head of collections Chris Taft tells Jon Bauckham about a special First World War volume from the archives
The First World War is often seen as a watershed moment in the battle for female suffrage. As Britain’s men and boys left the country to serve overseas, thousands of women stepped into male job roles for the first time, helping to keep the home fires burning and radically altering perceptions of the so-called ‘ fairer sex’.
To explore the topic further, this month we pay a visit to The Postal Museum, where head of collections Chris Taft tells us about a volume that shines a light on the role of female postal workers between 1915 and 1916. Chris also reveals what visitors can expect from the museum when it reopens this July...
Which document have you chosen?
I’ve chosen a volume entitled Record of Women Employed as Sorters. It forms part of a vast deposit of records on the Army Postal Service (APS) from before the First World War to the 1970s, with particularly rich insight into the APS globally during the Second World War and many personal stories of Royal Engineers Postal Section (REPS) workers. This volume records women employed in REPS as temporary sorters during the First World War. It covers 26 July 1915 to 11 March 1916 with details from date of birth, marital status, address and details of appointment, alongside notes regarding their conduct.
What does it reveal about the lives of our ancestors?
Almost everyone is familiar with the changing attitudes to the employment of women during the First World War and its associations with the struggle for, and eventual granting of, female suffrage. With many working men off fighting on the front line, their jobs were temporarily filled by women working full-time, from armaments factories to policing and the Post Office. The number of women temporarily employed by the General Post Office reached 35,000 by November 1916 and, with more and more young men being sent off to fight, rules were changed so they could continue to work even after marriage.
While still a treasure trove to family historians, many of the pages in the Record of Women Employed as Sorters are unextraordinary, providing little more than basic information with a strikethrough and short note to indicate resignation, termination of service or a transfer to another role, and generally recording satisfactory performance and conduct. But there are a number of records that bring our ancestors to life in vivid detail, covering everything from accidents to absence and misconduct to a crisis of confidence.
Suzanne Caboot’s record, for instance, is interesting as it mixes the seemingly trivial with the more serious impact of war. Employed from 1 March 1916, on 17 November, she “sustained cut on back of right hand whilst putting broken bottle in bin”, resulting in three days’ absence. After returning to work, all was well until 1917 when, under an Army Council Instruction on the “Approval and Control of Aliens engaged in Auxiliary War Services”, the War Office requested Mrs Caboot’s Provisional Certificate of Nationality and Identity Book. She was “duly endorsed with permission to be engaged on Auxiliary War Services”, but the impact of the War had come very close to home.
The volume provides understanding of a pivotal time for women’s rights
Mabel Wright provides yet another interesting, and human, story. Appointed on 1 December 1915, at the end of that month a note on her record states: “Miss Wright failed to pass sorting test. She told me that she did not think she would ever pass as she was so nervous. I have had her ordinary work examined and it was quite evident from number of missorts that it was extremely doubtful whether she would ever become a useful sorter. She appears to have come to the conclusion that her work is not suitable and has consequently resigned.” Mabel reapplied for