Women of Steel
When war broke out, a group of plucky young Sheffield women rallied to help win the war for Britain
Exclusive | 3 min read | Author’s take
Staring at the gaping hole where the side of her family’s modest house had stood just minutes earlier, Florence Temperton looked on in disbelief. But beside Florence, her mother was silent. After a few heartbeats, she turned and said, ‘Let’s go to the kitchen and make a meat stew for our friends.’
Moments earlier, large swathes of Florence’s neighbourhood had been reduced to rubble during the Sheffield Blitz of World War II, bombs falling from the sky like rain. But into the kitchen she went, thinking of others who no longer had homes to call their own.
Moments of community spirit like this sum up the sheer resilience that helped Britain ultimately prevail in World War II. A feeling of togetherness that didn’t just come from the front line, but from the streets around Florence’s Sheffield home - known as Britain’s Steel City.
Formidable women like Florence became known as the Women of Steel for their work making munitions in the factories, possessing courage that now, in this moment of worldwide pandemic and fear, is more inspiring than ever.
These unassuming Yorkshire lasses had been young, carefree women, living simplistic, unremarkable lives when, in September 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced Britain was at war with Germany.
With many of the men in Sheffield called to serve king and country, the steel factories which lined the River Don needed a new workforce to produce the munitions for the Allied forces and their fight against Hitler’s troops.
Suddenly, a generation of fresh-faced Yorkshire women found themselves thrown into a brutal, terrifying life - one they could never have envisaged. This formidable female generation, who I’ve had the privilege of writing about in my new book, are the ones who answered the call to ‘do their bit’.
Many had previously worked in offices and shops – a far cry from the deafening, dangerous factories that made their bones vibrate and left some with lifelong damage to internal organs. Factories that would soon become these ladies’ second homes.
Their new jobs saw the women become crane drivers, lathe operators and hands-on in the steel production lines, working within spitting distance of huge Bessemer converters that splashed out red hot sparks of molten steel, leaving anyone in the vicinity at risk of death - or at the very least severe burns.
Many of these women, now in their nineties and hundreds, have told me nothing could have prepared them for what they faced in those war-time factories. Some were de-scalped, others left with lifelong back and lung problems – there were even those who had to witness a friend or relative being decapitated, so lethal were the machines.
Forgotten
But despite working up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, when the war came to an end, most of the women were disregarded like yesterday’s fish and chip paper, without as much as a thank you.
It would take another 70 years before this remarkable generation were recognised for the sacrifices they made. For giving up the tender years of their youth, leaving their new-born babies and young children with relatives, while they worked away day and night to ensure their menfolk were armed with the munitions they needed to fight a blood-thirsty war.
Sheffield’s women finally received their long overdue thanks in 2009 from the Government - and were later recognised by a larger than life bronze statue erected in the heart of the city centre.
But it wasn’t until a few years ago when I read an article about the legacy of these female Sheffield steelworkers that I realised nobody had ever written a book exploring their deeply moving personal stories. And there are many.
So I began my mission to ensure these incredible women gained their rightful place in the history books. The interviews I conducted left me in complete awe of these women, who for many years had simply been forgotten. Their experiences were as humbling as they were inspiring.
Real lives
Take Ivy Markham whose poor husband, Tom, was decapitated on a machine. Not only was she a grieving widow, but she was left with no choice but to take a job in a factory as a crane driver to keep a roof over her young daughter’s head.
Or Alma Bottomley, who made the mouldings for tank tracks. The razor-sharp black grit which poured from a funnel above her head ripped through the ‘protective’ hair net she wore, cutting her scalp, day in, day out. The continual vibrations of the nearby machines left her close to a nervous breakdown. But she continued, for king, for country, for all the soldiers on the front line and the women around her battling through each day, until illness took her out of the factory.
Though Alma and women like her may have endured the hardest of times, the camaraderie they shared was the one thing that pulled them through it all. Friendships were formed, bonds forged - as strong as the very steel the women worked - and a mutual kindness developed that helped them survive in the alien workplace they had entered without complaint, for the sake of their country.
The female crane drivers were nicknamed ‘canaries’ due to their singing or ‘chiming’ to pass the hours and ease their nerves.
When a colleague needed a wedding dress, there would always be someone working in the factories willing to loan their own gown.
As Kathleen Roberts, now 98, who spearheaded the campaign that saw the women finally commemorated in 2009, told me, ‘It was a different time back then, when everyone looked out for one another.’ She recalls snapping a lipstick in half, just so she could share it with a friend who didn’t have one.
Full circle
And then there was Gwen Bryan who pleaded with a crowd as they spat on a dead German pilot, whose spitfire had crashed into the city centre’s C&A.
Even more humbling, just weeks later, when she discovered her brother had been killed on the very same night, Gwen still didn’t bear a grudge to the young German pilot. ‘Like us, his family were grieving. I wasn’t angry. We were all suffering,’ she said.
It’s stories such as these that have left me with the utmost respect and admiration for a generation of women who not only answered their call for duty, but never asked for anything in return. Instead, after the war ended, they carried on with their lives, helping those they loved to find a way of coming to terms with what had happened.
They paved the way for many who walked in their footsteps afterwards, offering a beacon of inspiration, a steely resilience and fortitude that now, more than ever, feels incredibly relevant.
*Michelle Rawlins is an award-winning freelance journalist and journalism lecturer at the University of Sheffield. Her book, Women of Steel, is published by Headline and available to buy now.
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