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Woman in Industry in the late-Nineteenth/early Twentieth Centuries

 

This has been triggered by a comment made about this picture of the wireless school at Frinton on the Premises page, namely as the supervisor is female the students are most likely to be young ladies. As it is usually considered that in terms of the social structure in that period - the late 1890s early 1900s - neither tutors nor trainee operators would be other than male, then the picture is incorrectly used.

 

So further research is in progress and has revealed some interesting results, as there is undoubtedly plenty of evidence that women were fully engaged in the operational aspects with regard to all telegraphy systems, albeit with certain restrictions. The investigation so far has resulted in discovery of the following sources:

 

Women in Early Radio 

 

Women in Telegraphy

 

Isa Craig - includes a picture of the Telegraph School for Women in London. In the 1850s, she worked for the International and Electric Telegraph Company as matron supervising women telegraph operators. In 1860, she and Maria Rye, an English social reformer, established The Telegraph School, with hopes of promoting women’s employment.

 

Women in Telegraphy - mainly about the American scene

 

A paper presented by Dr.Elizabeth Bruton at a conference on the GPO in the Telecoms Age which included wireless operators.

 

Some notes by Tim Wander our historian:

Women in Telegraphy and the early days of Wireless

   

October 2017

 

Telegraphy is often viewed as a male only occupation, women were employed as telegraph operators from its earliest days.

 

In fact Telegraphy was one of the first communications technology occupations open to women.

 

Women began to work for a number of private telegraph companies in England in the 1850s, including the Electric Telegraph Company. The Telegraph School for Women was established in London in 1860. The Queen's Institute for the Training and Employment of Educated Women began classes in telegraphy in Dublin in 1862; its graduates were employed by the Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company.

 

The number of women employed as telegraphists increased after the telegraph service was taken over by the British Post Office in 1870; in that year, 1535 out of 4913, or 31 percent of all operators, were women. In most of Europe, the telegraph service came under the control of the government posts and telegraph administration. The telegraph administrations of Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries first began to employ women as telegraph operators in the 1850s; France, Germany, and Russia first admitted women to the telegraph service in the 1860s.

 

In a November 1849 letter, a New York telegraph operator Phoebe Wood wrote to her brother about the sector's economic prospects for women: "It would not take nine hours in a day to earn in a telegraph office what she would have to work 10 hours with her needle, and in the former employment she would have time to improve her mind and keep her wardrobe in order."

 

Some amazing stories of women telegraphers during the American civil war here:-

http://www.civilwarsignals.org/pages/tele/pages/women.html

 

Becoming a telegraph operator was also cited in the handy 1870 publication "How Women Can Make Money."

 

A French telegrapher, Juliette Dodu (1848-1909), became a heroine of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 when she reputedly tapped the telegraph lines being used by the Prussian military and passed the information to French military forces. By 1880, 230 of the 624 telegraphers at the Paris Central Telegraphique, or 37 percent, were women.

 

Few today are aware of the role that telegraphers played in providing global communications and operating the railroad system in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These "wizards of the wire" enabled ordinary small-town people to receive news and personal messages from afar; they prevented railroad collisions and enabled trains to run on time. In 1897, B. B. Adams, editor of Railroad Gazette, could state that at railroad stations across America "where the business has increased enough to warrant the employment of an assistant, a young woman to do the telegraphing is frequently the first helper employed."

 

As women had worked as telegraph operators since the late 1840s, and it was not long before women telegraphers began to work as wireless operators as well. In early 1901, the announcement of the inauguration of a Hawaiian inter-island Marconi wireless communications system noted that four of the fourteen operators were women.

 

One of the earliest applications of wireless telegraphy was enabling communication between ships at sea and land stations. While early ships' operators were male, women started to train to operate shore stations which were required to keep 24 hour watch. The primary requirement was a knowledge of Morse code and equipment operation, which many female telegraph operators already possessed. One of the earliest adopters of wireless was Trinity House. Lighthouse keeping is also generally regarded as a male profession. But it was not uncommon for a lighthouse keeper to be assisted by his family, and no doubt many seafarers owe their lives to the wives and daughters who kept the light burning when the keeper was ill or asleep. Lighthouses often doubled as telegraph stations and then became some of the first shore stations for wireless communication. Most of the pre-1939 records of the Corporation of Trinity House, the general lighthouse authority for England and Wales, were destroyed in the bombing of its headquarters at Tower Hill during World War II but recent census research has shown a number of female lighthouse keepers who must have also been telegraphists.

 

One of the earliest woman to operate on shipboard was Medora Olive Newell, an experienced telegrapher on the Cunard liner Slavonia in 1904. In 1906, Anna Nevins, who had worked as a telegrapher for Western Union, began work as a wireless operator for Lee de Forest's station "NY", located at 42 Broadway in New York City.

 

Radio safeguarded ship property and passengers by enabling the crew to remain in constant contact with surrounding vessels and land stations. But despite its clear advantages, radio was also a largely unregulated, raucous pioneer field in which hobbyists and professional operators jostled over the airwaves, wireless union strikes shut down coastal communication, and wireless companies launched ruthless corporate takeovers. Given the new technology’s disorderly reputation, it was not until RMS Republic Marconi wireless operator Jack Binns demonstrated the radio’s life-saving potential that the public fully embraced the profession. When the Florida collided with the luxury liner Republic in January 1909, the intrepid Binns saved passengers by tirelessly signalling nearby ship and shore wireless stations for help. His heroism ignited the American's fascination with radio exploits. To satisfy the craving for more thrilling tales of wireless heroism, the press also printed stories of women operators’ high-seas adventures and “wireless romances.” Yet the public’s ardour for female operators dampened when critics claimed women were biologically incapable of operating complicated radio equipment and would abandon their post at the first whiff of danger. Between November 1910 and April 1911, tales of radio operator Graynella Packer’s exploits captured the imaginations of countless young women and inflamed the tempers of scores of male contemporaries.

 

After 1912 and the Titanic disaster the new SOLAS regulations required two operators on every vessel and 24 hour watches at all shore stations. Many women joined and were trained as wireless operators - but British women were not allowed to go to sea. In America it was slightly different although only twenty documented women filled commercial radio positions before World War I and between 1905 and 1913, women wireless operators battled virulent gender discrimination.

 

In Britain Willie Williamson, the archivist for the Radio Officers’ Association has discovered that at least 38 women marine radio operators qualified in 1916-1917. One of the first to break through was Jessie Kenney who went to the new North Wales Wireless College. She took her course, and in April 1923 passed her First Class Certificate in Wireless Telegraphy and her Valve Certificate. A woman candidate was so unusual that no blank certificate forms existed for women. Someone took a fountain pen and crossed out words such as ‘he’ and replaced them with ‘she’ on her Post Master General’s First Class Certificate of Proficiency.

 

But in Britain they didn’t sail, it seems, not even on coastal minesweepers (which were usually converted fishing boats and may well have been manned by their fathers and brothers).

 

After WW1 the problem was partly ‘that it was thought impracticable for a woman to hold this position at sea’. Partly it was that and men, including ex-servicemen, were being prioritised in the jobs market in this very depressed period. Sir Godfrey Isaacs, Managing Director of Marconi’s Wireless Telegraphy Company, was determined that ‘he had made up his mind he was having no women wireless operators’.

 

Obstacles were cultural but masked by practical justifications based on stereotypes: women crew couldn’t be berthed in areas where there were no women’s cabins and toilets; a radio hut wasn’t comfortable enough for a lady; and the job was too hard, dirty (and responsible) for a female. Also the Radio Operator was an officer-level job. Shipping companies found it unthinkable that women, other than nurses, should become officers on ships. Victoria Drummond, who was to become the first female ship’s engineer, was fighting a similar battle at that time. By the 1950s British women such as Angela Firman were passing similar exam as Jessie’s. But these new women Radio Officers were only accepted on Scandinavian ships. Women did not sail as radio operators on British ships until the 1960s, and then only rarely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Editors comment

At the moment the jury is still out with regard to the picture. If the above attributed statement of Sir Godfrey Isaacs is correct, this would mean it was unlikely that Frinton would have been the location for their training if the MD was so against the idea. So the picture might be of normal telegraphy trainees at some other school rather than radio ones. However, possibly the words meant just “none at sea” rather than "none at all" so the arguments about the content of the image being of young ladies are plausible. On the other hand would there be such a picture in the Marconi collection if this was not Frinton - if so the notes justify the fact of an older competent lady able to act as a supervisor, that they are young ladies and that it was at Frinton. So maybe the implication of ‘no women wireless operators’ should really read just ‘at sea’.

 

We look forward to further work clarifying the situation.

 

Editors note - by chance, at the time of this discussion arising there is due to be a conference in London on "The History of Women in Engineering in the UK".

 

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