On This Day, 11 May 1916

Birmingham Daily Post

Thursday 11 May 1916

BIRMINGHAM’S SHARE IN THE WAR.

LORD MAYOR AND THE WOMEN’S CONTRIBUTION.

The Lord Mayor of Birmingham (Alderman Neville Chamberlain) yesterday addressed a gathering of friendly society delegates at the Central Hall. Public enjoyments and public rejoicings, he said, would be out of harmony with the sterner spirit of these days. If, however, the delegates had leisure to spare from their business they might go round and view the ruins of the factories destroyed in the last Zeppelin raid, as described in the German communiqué. (Laughter.) They might also spend an hour or two wandering round the city’s “fortifications,” and so long as they did not photograph the big guns and the cupolas, he thought he could promise them they would not be arrested. (Laughter.) If they were more seriously minded he thought they would be struck by the fact that after twenty months of war factories were still springing up for the supply of munitions, not merely for our own army, but for the forces of our Allies who were taking such a glorious part in the destruction of the wild beast of Europe. Although a hundred thousand men had left the city to join his Majesty’s forces, there were to-day more persons employed in Birmingham factories than ever before, and if the delegates chanced to be in the neighbourhood of one of the great works of the city at the dinner hour they would be astonished to see the vast army that poured out of it, and would not fail to note that the women of Birmingham were doing their share – (hear, hear) – helping their brothers, their sons, and husbands at the front by turning out munitions upon which their existence depended. (Applause).