British women join the war effort - August 29th, 1914

On this day in 1914, the Women’s Defense Relief Corps was established in Britain.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that uncovers a little bit more about history every day.
I'm Gabelusier, and today we're talking about the impact of
the First World War on the lives of British women.

(00:33):
The day was August twenty ninth, nineteen fourteen. The Women's
Defense Relief Corps or WDRC was established in Britain. It
was one of three women's auxiliary units to be formed
in the early months of World War One. The other
two were both nursing organizations, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry

(00:54):
and the Voluntary Aid Detachment, but the Women's Defense Relief
Corps had a much broad It was founded by Missus
Dawson Scott with the goal of inducing women to undertake
industrial and farming jobs so that more able bodied men
would be free to fight on the front lines. It
was a fairly radical concept at the time, as most

(01:16):
British wives and mothers were not expected nor encouraged to
work outside the home, and the women who did work
prior to the war were limited mostly to domestic service
or textile manufacturing, nothing as high stakes as producing live munitions.
Women's rights organizations had initially opposed Britain's involvement in the war,

(01:39):
but once it was clear the country would join the fight,
they quickly lent their support. In fact, just one day
after Britain declared war on Germany, a suffrage journal called
Common Cause reflected that quote, in the midst of this
time of terrible anxiety and grief, it is some little
comfort to think that our large org organization, which has

(02:01):
been completely built up during past years to promote women's suffrage,
can be used to help our country through the period
of strain and sorrow. Common Cause wasn't the only group
to connect the fight for women's suffrage to the fight
against Germany. Many women saw the war as an opportunity
to improve their standing on the home front, and Missus

(02:23):
Dawson Scott was one of them. One of her goals
with the WDRC was to prove that women were just
as loyal, capable, and ready to serve their country as
men were, and that as a consequence, they were just
as deserving of the full rights of citizenship. Missus Scott
started the corps at the end of the first month
of fighting, and with the full support of British war minister,

(02:46):
Lord Kitchener. Thousands of women joined up, many of whom
were the wives, mothers, and sisters of enlisted soldiers. At first,
all of the members acted as substitutes for male employees,
making their places as clerks, field hands, ticket takers, police officers,
postal workers, and bus drivers. The Corps made particular headway

(03:09):
in the agricultural sector, where they helped build a network
of casual female labor for farmers to hire as needed.
The Women's Land Army would later develop from the Corps
to carry on this agricultural work, and by the end
of the war, the group had deployed more than nine
thousand women to work the soil. In nineteen fifteen, the

(03:30):
conflict intensified, and the dire need for artillery shells spurred
many women into munitions factories. A job on the assembly
line paid well, although women still earned less than men,
but the work itself was stressful and dangerous. Many of
the women spent long hours packing shells with TNT, and

(03:51):
their close contact with this toxic chemical wound up staining
their skin and hair a bright shade of yellow, earning
them the nickname the Canary Girls. The die effect thankfully,
was temporary, and while some workers reportedly gave birth to
bright yellow babies, the little one's color was also said
to gradually fade. Far more serious and permanent was the

(04:16):
risk of amputation that the women faced with every shell
they handled. Once a shell was packed with powder, a
worker had to place a detonator in the top and
then tap it down into place, and if they tapped
just a little too hard, it would explode. These incidents
resulted in missing hands, burns, and blindness, and in several factories,

(04:37):
the blasts even proved fatal. Despite the inherent danger, the
Women's Defense Relief Corps continued to do vital work in
the civic sector, but in nineteen sixteen, the organization also
added a second division, a semi military or good Citizen Division.
Its aim was to recruit women for the armed forces,

(05:00):
train them to protect themselves and their loved ones in
the event of an invasion. Members serving in the Semi
Military Division were taught how to handle a weapon and
were trained in marching, scouting, and marksmanship. The WDRC also
inspired the formation of other women's organizations, such as the
Women's Army Auxiliary Corps or WAAC. It was founded in

(05:25):
December of nineteen sixteen as a way for women to
support the war more directly. Members were allowed to officially
enlist in the army and to perform support tasks including cooking,
clerical work, and driving, just like with the WDRC before it.
The goal was to have women step into these roles

(05:45):
so that more male soldiers could be sent to fight
in the trenches, except instead of serving their country on
the home front, these women donned uniforms and served on
the front lines in France and Belgium. In total, more
than a one hundred thousand women joined Britain's armed forces
during the war, and well over a million women joined

(06:05):
the country's workforce. The majority of them left their jobs
when the war ended. The auxiliary units all disbanded and
the munitions factories ceased production. Women and other occupations were
unsurprisingly pushed out to make room for returning male soldiers,
and as life slowly returned to normal, British society began

(06:27):
to compel women back into their traditional roles. Overall, the
war didn't result in the liberation that many British women
had hoped for, but it was hardly a wash. Nine
months before the war ended, the British government passed the
nineteen eighteen Representation of the People Act, giving about eight
and a half million women over the age of thirty

(06:50):
the right to cast a ballot. Then, ten years after that,
suffrage was extended to all women over the age of
twenty one, giving them the same voting rights as men. Nonetheless,
many British women struggled to return to their old lives
after the war and found it hard to give up
the independence they had found from earning their own wage.

(07:12):
They kept that sense of loss in mind when the
next World War rolled around all too soon, and when
the needs of wartime put them on equal footing with
men once again. That time they made sure the changes
were permanent. I'm Gay Blues Yay, and hopefully you now

(07:34):
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
If you'd like to keep up with the show, you
can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at TDI
HC Show, and if you have any comments or suggestions,
feel free to send them my way by writing to
this day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Kasby Bias

(07:55):
for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening.
I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day
in history class.