The idea British women suddenly started working during the First World War is an absolute myth. Most working class women had always been part of the British workforce—mainly in textile manufacturing, farming, education and the service industries. With the commencement of war, an estimated two million women replaced men in the workplace leading to a considerable rise in the proportion of working women—from 24% in 1914 to 37% in 1918. As a result:

...the number of women employed increased from 3,224,600 in July, 1914 to 4,814,600 in January 1918. Nearly 200,000 women were employed in government departments. Half a million became clerical workers in private offices. Women worked as conductors on trams and buses. A quarter of a million worked on the land. The greatest increase of women workers was in engineering. Over 700,000 of these women worked in the highly dangerous munitions industry. Industries that had previously excluded women now welcomed them. There was a particular demand for women to do heavy work such as unloading coal, stoking furnaces and building ships.

The war gave women greater opportunities—a wider range of occupations and an alternative to traditional roles—which led most notably to a decline in domestic service. From the 1700s to 1911, around 12% of the female population in England and Wales worked in domestic service as cooks, maids, nannies, cleaners, etc. This dropped to less than 8% by 1931—mainly due to job opportunities available for women in the workplace. Half of the women who applied to work at London omnibuses in 1916 came from domestic service. An interesting side effect of all this was the increase in labor saving devices—vacuum cleaners, automatic washing machines and domestic refrigerators.

The influx of women into the job market gave rise to trade unions. In 1914, 375,000 women were members of a trade union. This had risen to over one million by 1918. The only problem here was the fact women were still paid far less than their male counterparts for doing the same job….plus ca change…

More women in work meant more childcare services. Around 100 nurseries were established for women working in munition factories during the war. However, the government of the day did not provide similar services for women working in any other industries.

The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU)—the suffragette movement—which had campaigned for women’s suffrage was split by the war. Originally formed in 1903 by Christabel Pankhurst and her mother Emmeline Pankhurst, the WSPU divided between Christabel and Emmeline who supported the war and Sylvia Pankhurst who was against it. The WSPU was not in favor of universal women suffrage but rather suffrage for a small (upper) class section of the female population—”Votes for ladies” rather than “votes for women.”

The war led to changes in suffrage as those males allowed to vote had to be resident in the UK for twelve months prior to any election. As most of the electorate had been overseas fighting in France—this meant there was only a small percentage of men eligible to vote. The Representation of the People Act in 1918 gave votes to men over the age of 21 and all women over the age of 30 who were occupiers of property or married occupiers of property. This was in small part an acknowledgement of the essential work carried out by women during the war—but also in large part due to tireless political campaigning for the right to vote. For if the women’s right to vote had been inspired solely by their actions during the war then surely women under thirty would have also been given the vote. Most women who worked in munition factories or in essential war work were single, in their late teens and early twenties. These young women were actually pointedly denied the right to vote by the Representation of the People Act. Apparently the war effort—as some historians hold—did not really merit a “thank you” to the women who worked on the home front. That would take another ten years before women over the age of 21 had the right to vote, just like men.

As part of the propaganda for the war effort, photographers were sent out to document women at work in factories across Britain. These photographs of women laborers at the Parsons’ Works on Shields Road, Newcastle, were taken between 1914 and 1918, and are held by the Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums:

The factory was founded by engineer Charles Parsons, best known for his invention of the steam turbine. In 1914, with the outbreak of war, Parsons’ daughter Rachel, one of the first three women to study engineering at Cambridge, replaced her brother on the board of directors, and took on a role in the training department of the Ministry of Munitions, supporting the increasing amount of women taking on jobs in industry to support the war effort.

These pictures are not stylized as later photographs were during the Second World War for far more overt propaganda purposes. These women are intensely focussed in getting on with their job. Some seem camera shy—but it must have seemed strange to be photographed at work when it was such an ordinary yet essential thing to be doing.
 

 

 
More factory girls on the home front, after the jump…

 
James Bond would never have made a great spy because too many of his enemies knew his identity. Great spies are anonymous—as any fule kno. They carry out their work covertly. Only their handlers know of their existence and their stealthy actions.

At her trial for espionage in 1917, the dancer and courtesan Mata Hari was described by her accusers as “perhaps the greatest woman spy of the century.”

She was charged by the French of spying for the Germans during First World War. It was alleged her cunning double-dealing had been responsible for the deaths of at least some 50,000 soldiers. Her actions were denounced as unmitigated evil. Her liberated sexuality deemed a cover for her career as a spy and worse—a threat to the moral substance of the honorable French people.

In truth, the French were shitting themselves. Their country had been invaded by Germany. They were dependent on the Allies to defend their homeland and defeat the might of the invading German army. If this weren’t humiliating enough—after the failure of the Nivelle offensive in 1917, there was widespread mutiny among the French troops. It looked as though France was about to capitulate under the strain and surrender to the Germans. The country needed a scapegoat to distract attention. They needed someone who could be blamed for undermining morale and destroying the fantasy of French military superiority.

Step forward Mata Hari. A woman who was not so much a spy but rather the victim of weak duplicitous men determined to sacrifice her life for their government’s failings.
 

 
Mata Hari was the stage name of Margaretha Geertruida Zelle who was born in Leeuwarden, Netherlands on August 7th, 1876. Margaretha’s biography is as much the story of a strong independent woman as it is about a woman dealing with the failure, stupidity and brutality of the men in her life.

Raised in an affluent household, Margaretha moved to the Dutch East Indies and married Captain Rudolf MacLeod when she was eighteen. MacLeod was a brutish drunk who regularly beat Margaretha. He kept a concubine and was riddled with syphilis.

Margaretha had two children with MacLeod. A son Norman-John who died at the age of two from complications relating to treatment for his inherited syphilis. A daughter Louise-Jeanne died at 21—again from complications from her inherited syphilis. To escape her husband’s drunken brutality, Margaretha studied traditional Indonesian dance. She adopted the name Mata Hari—meaning “eye of the day” or “sun.”

The couple separated in 1902. Mata Hari moved to Paris with her daughter where she supported herself as an artist’s model. She also worked in a circus and more importantly started performing as an exotic dancer.

Mata Hari adapted the traditional dance she had learnt in Indonesia to choreograph her own risque routines—a modern Salome discarding her veils. Mata Hari was a pioneer of modern dance—along with that other leading light Isadora Duncan—her exotic dances broke the rigid formality of ballet or even the can-can.

By 1905, Mata Hari was a dance star performing all over Europe. She sent audiences into paroxysms of ecstasy with her “feline, extremely feminine,” “thousand curves and movements,” a graceful wild animal with “blue-black” hair. Her dances almost revealed her naked form—only her breasts remained hidden as she was self-conscious about their size.

Mata Hari was courted by rich eligible men—as well as by many two-timing cads. She became a courtesan—which is a posh word for a high class hooker. It would be this access to upper echelons of politicians, high-ranking soldiers and wealthy industrialists that later led French and British authorities to think Mata Hari was a spy.

By 1915, Mata Hari felt too old to continue with her erotic dance routines and retired from performance. She was in love with a Russian pilot named Captain Vadim Maslov. When Maslov was shot down and blinded in a dogfight over the Western Front, Mata Hari asked for permission to visit him in hospital. As a Dutch national living in neutral Netherlands during the First World War, Mata Hari had to seek permission to travel to and from countries involved in the conflict. As Mata Hari had been continuing her relationships with some of her wealthy admirers in France, she had come under suspicion by British authorities due to the number of trips she made to and from the Netherlands. When she applied to the French authorities for a visa to visit her young beau, Mata Hari was coerced to become a spy for the French.

The deal went something like this—If you want to see your hot young BF then we want you to fuck some information out of a few German colonels. We especially want you to fuck the German Crown Prince Wilhelm and get all his secrets. Mata Hari was also offered a bagful of cash. It may have been the cash incentive that made her say “Okay, sure. When do I start?”

The problem with the devious French plan was that Crown Prince Wilhelm knew nothing. He was an idiot. A wastrel who liked whoring, drinking, playing soldiers and pulling his pork. How the French military intelligence (the Deuxième Bureau) thought they could learn anything useful from Clown Prince Wilhelm is utterly baffling. However, Mata Hari went off to Germany in a bid to get the inside skinny.

Unfortunately the Germans knew Mata Hari was a spy and gave her bogus information. They also exposed her as a double agent—letting the Deuxième Bureau know Mata Hari was actually their agent. Of course, she wasn’t. Mata Hari was just a useful pawn in a terrible game.

The French were suspicious. In December 1916, they gave Mata Hari some information about six agents in the field—five of whom were double agents working for the Germans. The sixth was a double agent working for the French. When the sixth agent was arrested and executed by the Germans—the French firmly beleved that Mata Hari was a spy.

On February 13th, Mata Hari was arrested and charged with espionage. She was quickly put on a show trial. It was a deeply one-sided affair—Mata Hari had literally been found guilty before questioning even began.

Captain Georges Ladoux—the man who coerced Mata Hari into working as a French spy—prepared the case against her. It was a win-win situation for Ladoux. Either Mata Hari seduced the Crown Prince and found out useful information or she took the fall as a double agent and raised the country’s morale. Hoorah! Ladoux himself was later arrested and charged as double agent, but he was eventually acquitted over a lack of evidence.

The trial of Mata Hari was given front page coverage across France. The press worked in cahoots with the French authorities to tell the accepted—or rather authorized—version of events. Maslov could have saved her—but he was embittered by his blindness and refused to testify in her defence.

Though there was never any real evidence against Mata Hari—her final script was now written. Mata Hari the world’s greatest and most evil spy was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to death. Mata Hari was executed on October 15th, 1917. She refused to be blindfolded or tied to the stake. She blew kisses at the firing squad. She was just 41.
 

 

 
More photographs of Mata Hari, after the jump…