South Yorkshire Times, September 2nd 1944
They Roll Out The Barrels
Women Rail Workers Unusual War Job
Picture: Mrs. F. Grove and Mrs. T. Grant of Wath, delivering the goods.
War has drawn thousands of women from the hearth into industry, to jobs previously done exclusively by men, so that to hear of a woman taking her soldier husbands place at the works or to see a begrimed and trousered girl returning from a night shift, no longer occasions surprise. One job, however, which still evokes interest and even surprise in the public is the cellaring of hogsheads and barrels of beer now being done regularly at hotels and public houses in Mexborough and the surrounding district by women goods porters employed by the London and North Eastern Railway Company at Mexborough goods yard.
The beer, which arrives by rail, is loaded on to a lorry, usually driven by a man and then cellared by the man and a woman, or two women, if the load is hogsheads. Even in war-time, this was considered a man’s job, said the women in an interview, but during an epidemic of influenza when many men were off work, the task fell to the women and is now regarded as just one of their routine assignments. It is by no means their heaviest work. This little band of nine women, most of them previously housewives, deals always with heavy goods. They load and unload wagons in the yard with 4 cwt. stoves, steel pit props, iron billets and even 500lb. bombs.
Their foreman is Mr. S. Bolton of Arnold Crescent, an employee of the railway company for 41 years.
This is a picture of only one section of British railwaywomen’s work. There are many more employed in practically every capacity except driving and firing engines; one more example of the practical way in which the women of Britain are helping in the war effort.