Ella Jane Pollard, a firefighter’s daughter, wrote her university degree dissertation on women’s involvement in the British fire service and the Fire Brigades Union between 1939 and 1945. This is an edited extract.
The Fireman’s Blitz is a term some across the service might be familiar with, addressing the shared experiences of British firefighters during WW2, which won them the title of “Heroes with Grimy Faces” – as awarded by Churchill himself.
Sadly, women are often forgotten in the popular memory of war-time firefighting, partially due to the gendered perception of the fire service which still prevails to this day.
One largely unknown fact is that WW2 saw the largest intake of women into the service to date.
The women during the Second World War were joining a profession that had been almost entirely male from its conception. They were entering uncharted and, initially, sometimes hostile territory.
With concerns regarding women firefighters undercutting pay and de-skilling the profession, opposition against their employment circulated in the fire service and the Fire Brigades Union, and was a major concern in the discussions included in 1938 issues of Firefighter magazine.
Conditions for women firefighters during the Second World War were poor for women working in both frontline and clerical roles.
Their call to the service was originally for clerical purposes, but as the war intensified, women were allowed to perform more varied roles with the intention of freeing up more men for active service.
Women were found in life endangering positions such as dispatch riders, mobile canteen workers and staff car drivers. These positions were exposed and were performed under the same aerial bombardment as the men fighting the fires.
Twenty-year-old Joan Ridd, who was killed in an air raid in East London on 1 November 1940, in what was then Ricardo Street school which was being used as a fire sub-station, was recently remembered on a red plaque.
The picture for clerical staff was shocking as well. A copy of Firefighter from April 1940 describes conditions in sub-stations as being “deplorable”, “insanitary” and lacking in “adequate facilities” for cooking and sleeping.
Stations ranging from being “cramped and ill-equipped at best to insanitary and rat infested at worst”.
Due to long shifts spent working in these conditions, women’s physical health soon became a concern, with the often underground, dirty and poorly ventilated control rooms beginning to take their toll.
Sickness rates among women firefighters were “unduly high” and tuberculosis and skin conditions became prevalent.
Despite these bad conditions, women firefighters continued to perform their duties with unwavering tenacity.
The opposition women faced in joining the fire service during the war cannot be understated, but by the end of the conflict, the contribution of women had helped to break down stubborn gender stereotypes.
In the years that followed, the Fire Brigades Union adapted, recruiting women, establishing a women’s conference – and leading campaigns on issues that improved pay and conditions.
