Skip to main content
Tag

Women’s History Month

School children wearing dressing up clothes.

Women’s History Month: #TheFutureIsFemale

By News

To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re taking part in a month-long celebration of women using items from our collections alongside other heritage sites/organisations across Scotland! If you want to join in visit Go Industrial  for more info. This week we’re sharing a photo that shows the girls and women of today engaging with the past through our collections!

 

Over the last year we’ve missed many things–none more so then welcoming children and young people to our museums. Luckily, using the power of the internet we’ve still managed to share interesting items from our collections, but we can’t wait till we can host school visits again! Here’s a throwback photo of school children who visited the museum after studying World War Two.

The Powerhouse Switchboard at HM Factory Gretna.

Women’s History Month: #ThisGirlCan

By News

To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re taking part in a month-long celebration of women using items from our collections alongside other heritage sites/organisations across Scotland! If you want to join in visit Go Industrial  for more info. This week, to demonstrate that #ThisGirlCan, we’re sharing a photo from our collection that shows a woman who was a pioneer in taking on a new challenge.

The above image shows one of the munition workers at H. M. Factory Gretna operating the powerhouse switchboard. During WW1, women took on a wider variety of work roles as more and more men were being called up to fight. Women worked with complex machinery, acids and chemicals, and performed arduously heavy labour. Many of these works had previously been considered unsuitable for women.

A page from an autograph book at H.M. Factory Gretna. This reads: "Women they have many faults. Men have only two. Everything they say. and everything they do. J Stephenson. Boadicea House."

Women’s History Month: #ChooseToChallenge

By News

To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re taking part in a month-long celebration of women using items from our collections alongside other heritage sites/organisations across Scotland! If you want to join in, visit Go Industrial  for more info. This week, in honour of this year’s International Women’s Day, theme, we’re sharing an item from your collection where a woman challenges the status quo.

The attached photo is from one of the autograph books we hold in our collection. Autograph books were a popular way for friends and acquaintances to write verses, draw sketches, and comments. These books were often kept as a memory keepsake, and we’re lucky enough to have some from H.M. Factory Gretna. It says:

Women they have many faults,

Men have only two.

Everything they say,

and everything they do.

It was written by a J. Stephenson of Boudica House (one of the hostels that women munition workers lived in), and I’m sharing it as part the #ChooseToChallenge prompt for Women’s History Month. I think it’s a really witty poem that pokes fun in a gentle but astute way, and takes gender as a point of analysis. It also shows that some munition workers choose to challenge the status quo, even if they did that through poems like this.

Happy International Women’s Day!

 

If you’d like to know more about the 12.000 women who worked at HM Factory Gretna, you might enjoy this booklet (available from the Museum’s online shop):

Lives of Ten Gretna Girls booklet

A typed document written by A.M. Anderson on 28th November 1916.

Women’s History Month: #WeShouldAllBeFeminists

By Collections blog

To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re taking part in a month-long celebration of women using items from our collections alongside other heritage sites/organisations across Scotland! If you want to join in, visit Go Industrial  for more info. This week we’ll be sharing items that show why #weshouldallbefeminists, inspired by the wonderful Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche.

The photo above is an extract from a report titled ‘CARLISLE PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL WELFARE in connection with MUNITIONS WORKERS AND GRETNA’ which we have in our collection. It was written by an A. M. Anderson, and details concerns about the welfare and behaviour of women munition workers at H. M. Factory Gretna.

It demonstrates just how concerned the mainly male Factory management were with regulating the morals of their predominantly female workforce. The phrase ‘the most horrible creatures’ to describe some of the women staying at hostels shows just how much judgement was placed upon women wartime workers. The last line of the report states:

‘This makes it the more imperative to provide them access to the right kind of health giving recreation including exercise.”

This is an interesting conclusion. The emphasise on the ‘right kind’ suggests that the writer of this report thought there was some kinds of recreation that was ‘wrong’ for women. It demonstrates a tension between the control Factory management wanted to hold over the workers, and the wishes of the workers themselves.

This item from our collections shows why #WeShouldAllBeFeminists because women should have the freedom to choose their own recreational activities and not be judged negatively for them. The thought of an official report describing workers as ‘creatures’ is alien to us today, and rightly so! To use a very modern term, it reeks of mansplaining!

 

 

Group of Gretna Girls.

Munition Workers Poems Part 2

By News

This is another of the poems from the book which we have in the Museum’s shop. We are posting poems from this book written by women for Women’s History Month this month. This one was written by Elizabeth Easthaugh about the munitions factory in Gretna and is called “Farewell, Cordite!”.

 

You can see the poem below:

 

If you would like to purchase the full book you can see it here:

Munition Workers’ Poems

Munition Workers Poems Part 1

By Collections blog

Lots of people are familiar with famous World War One poets and their poetry. Some wonderful, less know poems were written by women about their experiences at HM Factory Gretna (the greatest factory on earth during World War One, The Devils Porridge Museum tells its story).

We have a book on sale in our shop called, ‘Munitions Workers Poems’. For Women’s History Month, we thought we would share a few photographs and poems of women workers from World War One.

This poem is called “Bravo! Dornock” and was written by a woman called Susan M Ferguson.

The complete booklet can be found here:

 

Munition Workers’ Poems

Women’s work in World War One

By Collections blog

“Surely, never before in modern history can women have lived a life so completely parallel to that of the regular army.  The girls who take up this work sacrifice almost as much as the men who enlist…it is a barrack life.” 

From ‘The Cordite Makers’ by Rebecca West, an article written in 1916 after her visit to HM Factory Gretna.

Today is International Women’s Day and to commemorate that, we thought we would share some photographs of women working during World War One.  12,000 women worked at HM Factory Gretna (The Devil’s Porridge Museum has this Factory as its main focus) and they did various tasks to make this Factory operational.

If you would like to know more about women’s experiences of life and work at HM Factory Gretna, you might be interested in this booklet (available from the Museum’s online shop):

Lives of Ten Gretna Girls booklet

 

Working in the bakery, thousands of loaves of bread were baked every day.

 

Working in one of the Factory canteens.

 

Issuing items in the Central Stores.

 

Working on electric trains to transport explosive material throughout the Factory site (which was nine miles long and two miles wide).

Working with chemicals within the Factory to produce cordite (for munitions).

Transporting gun cotton within the Factory.

 

Laundry workers. Women also worked in the Factory hostels as domestic servants and matrons.

The largest Women’s Police Force in Britain at that time existed at the Factory.

Machine working.

Working in the Factory Power Station.

Woodworking – making boxes to store and transport the cordite (to shell filling factories).

Above: sorting and drying cordite.

Above: mixing acids within the Factory.

Nurses. The Factory had several different medical facilities for its workers. There was at least one female doctor.

Translate »
BOOK NOW