Armistice Day, Manchester |
Then went back listened to episode one on life during the war.
It is a fascinating account of growing up in the early decades of the last century.
Sadly, the book appears out of print, leaving me just to treasure the five episodes.
“Diana Quick reads the autobiography of Lucy Malleson, a detective writer of the 1930s and 40s who wrote under the name Anthony Gilbert.
First published in 1940, it’s a book which is valuable now for its sharp social history of working life in the early decades of the 20th century, and particularly for its focus on what it was like for women at work in offices.
At the end of the First World War, Lucy becomes a secretary in the newly created Health Ministry, desperately trying to draft in enough doctors to cope with the flu epidemic.
“The influenza scourge was ravishing the country, and we had to get as many doctors as possible back from France in record time. Conditions in the country were unspeakable; corpses lay for days unburied because there was no doctor to sign the necessary certificates. Doctors themselves contracted the disease and died on their feet.”
A clippie, circa 1918 |
“The War had brought women all those privileges that the Suffragettes had fought for so fiercely. The army of women who had flooded into offices during the War could not be shooed back to their homes, like a flock of hens…”
Lucy gets a job, and a good one – earning four pounds a week. But in her new role, she sees, and has to turn away, all the men who come to her office desperately hoping for work.
Astonishingly modern, though a hundred years old, Lucy Malleson’s sharp and humorous account of working life is vividly brought to life by Diana Quick.
Reader: Diana Quick
Producer: Elizabeth Burke
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4”
Pictures, Armistice Day in Manchester November 11, 1918, and “the Clippie”, date unknown, from the collection of David Harrop
* The Disillusion of Peace, Lucy Malleson, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c4tt
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