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From Suffragettes to Munitionettes
Some Women of the Great War
Before 1914 British men went off to fight the wars of
Victoria’s Empire in far flung places that were coloured
pink on the maps on the schoolroom walls and the
women stayed at home. But one hundred years ago
this year, the war came to the Home Front and wives,
daughters, mothers, citizens without the vote, left
behind the Edwardian era as, in the face of long
entrenched prejudices, they slowly became essential
to the efforts to win this world war. For the women
of Britain nothing would ever be quite the same again.
In the years leading to 1914 demands for votes for
women gained momentum. How ironic that campaigners
for equality and civil rights be dubbed with the sort of
nickname that would soon also be applied to almost
every role that women performed during the Great War -
for the terms munition
ettes
, copper
ettes
and sailor
ettes
all followed from the first use of the demeaning suffix
applied first in the word suffragette. When war came,
almost overnight, the demand for the vote was dropped
by the majority of the campaigners who instead switched
their attention to the war effort. On 5 September 1914,
less than a month after Britain declared war on Germany
the
Chatham Times
reported on an
amusing, novel and
forceful method of obtaining recruits
for the war when
white feathers were handed out for the first time in
England on the streets of Deal and Walmer.
The Order of
the White Feather
was the brainchild of a retired Admiral
Charles Penrose Fitzgerald and his great advocate was
Scarlet Pimpernel author the Baroness Orczy then living in
rural Kent. In September 1914 the Baroness wrote to the
women of England through the pages of the Daily Mail:
Your hour has come! The great hour when to the question
which you yourselves have asked incessantly these few
weeks past: “I want to do something – what can I do?”
Your country has at last given answer. Women and girls
of England, you cannot shoulder a rifle, but you can
actively serve your country all the same. You can serve her
in the way she needs it most. Give her the men she wants!
Give her your sweetheart, she wants him: your son, your
brother, she wants them! Your friends, she wants them all!
Baroness Orczy set up the
Women of England’s Active
Service League
with 20,000 members who pledged not to be
seen in the company of any man
who had not answered his
country’s call.
She was not alone is such activity. Upper
class women positively hurled themselves onto committees
and into societies and leagues. In 1916 Lady Denman
became the first Chairman of the Women’s Institute, itself
a Great War initiative set up here in 1915, after the model
of the original Canadian organisation, to encourage
countrywomen to get involved in growing and preserving
