On This Day, 27 March 1917

Birmingham Daily Post

Tuesday 27 March 1917

HOW WOMEN ARE HELPING THE ALLIES.

REMARKABLE INCREASE IN THE OUTPUT OF MUNITIONS.

The wonderful success of women in engineering work is clearly demonstrated at an exhibition of official Munitions photographs and samples of work which was opened yesterday under the auspices of the Ministry of Munitions at the Royal Colonial Institute. Efforts are being made to increase the employment of women in engineering work, and the exhibition, which illustrates the accurate and responsible character of work undertaken by them, should have a stimulating effect on the process of dilution.

“Nothing comes amiss to them that come within their physical capacity,” remarked an expert engineer of the department to a press representative. “We have women of all classes and standards of education who are doing work which no-one in the pre-war days would have dreamt they would have been capable. Many of them are working from plans on the most accurate class of engineering and upon work which is difficult from the fact that it is not what is known as repetition work. In general engineering the girls are capable of tackling anything the machines can tackle. They set their own tools and machines and work to dimensions given on drawings.”

Referring to voluntary workers, the official said that many women of social position were performing excellent work in munition factories. In one place a lady of title worked a full fifty-four hours week on bombs, beginning each day at 7 a.m. She accepted all the conditions of the ordinary employee. Her coachman was employed in the same factory.

In the aircraft section a remarkable exhibit showing the success of women in producing cylinders for rotary aeroplane engines. The cylinder is produced from block steel originally weighing 90lb., and after twenty or thirty operations the finished article is turned out at one-tenth of that weight. Women are now employed to an increasing extent on wings or other parts of the aeroplane. Another interesting section contains the component parts of engines used in the Tanks, and in the general engineering section may be seen the most recent inventions in shell fuses, hand grenades, bullet-proof helmets, body armour, and aerial torpedoes.