Women played an important role in Dorset during the First World War.
Dorset History Centre holds an information booklet issued by the War Office to local officials in September 1916. It aimed to demonstrate that women had successfully taken on jobs formerly occupied by men, and thus encourage the release of additional male workers into the armed forces.
As well as a detailed listing of the types of work women were now undertaking, the booklet is also illustrated with a number of photographs, some of which are shown here, including:
- women making false teeth (which modelled in wax)
- female workers in the barley room of a brewery
- female workers gauging shells in a munitions factory
- women cleaning a train
- women barrowing coke at a gas works
- a woman working on a propeller in a shipyard
- a woman instructing (male) army recruits on the use of a ‘Travelling Field Kitchen’
- women preparing soldiers’ dinners
This particular booklet was issued to Blandford Forum Borough Council (reference: DC/BFB box 6A/102)