Wedding & Leading Lady

The wedding photo is of my cousin Frederick G B C Whiter marrying Annie Allen in 1900 in Islington.
Freddie was an electrical engineer by trade he was born in Bethnal Green in 1876.
The young married couple emigrated to Canada in around 1904 with their daughter Irene.

Freddie and Annie went on to have another two children also girls, their names were Dorothy and Florence they were born in Canada.
Annie, Freddie’s wife died young at the age of 29 in 1910. I know that Florence the youngest daughter would have only been three when her mother died she was adopted, maybe her father couldn’t cope after losing his wife. Florence was now called Florence Williams (her adoptive name) she later married a man named Edward Waller in Toronto, Canada 1934; they had three children together. She went on to be a huge success and was the leading lady in the ‘Best Years’ theatre production in New York. I have attached a newspaper clipping of her. Her stage name was Billie, she passed away in 1980.

#MyFamilyHistory #wedding
#leadinglady 🖤

PC Alfred Smith

Alfred Smith born in Wokingham near Reading in 1880 , he moved to London in 1902 and joined the Metropolitan Police on 10th October that same year, his admission papers describe him as 5 ft 11inches in height and 13st 2Ibs in weight with auburn hair, blue eyes  and a fair complexion. PC Smith was assigned to G Division and covered the Finsbury area (known today as the old borough of Finsbury Islington) along with other constables initially living at the police station at that time. 

Around mid-morning on Wednesday June 13th 1917, PC Smith was on duty close to a clothing factory which manufactured clothes for the Debenhams Department Store close to Central Street,Finsbury, high over London, fourteen German Gotha planes began unleashing their deadly cargoes of bombs onto the streets below. 

A mixture of panic and curiosity appears to have gripped the citizens of the Metropolis as the bombs began to explode around them.

PC Smith heard the German Gotha G.V aircraft approaching and warned panicking factory workers in Central Street, Finsbury, to stay inside. The factory consisted of 150 Women and girls who were machinists and supervised by three men. Two of these men ran out in the street to see what was happening after hearing the first bombs. One of the men was killed and the other one badly injured. With little experience of daytime air raids and petrified by the explosions the women and girls from the factory started to in panic leave the building and run down the street.

The remaining supervisor was trying to gather the factory workers together, to bring them back inside but in all the chaos was struggling to do so.

PC Smith heard the German Gotha G.V aircraft approaching and warned panicking factory workers in Central Street, Finsbury, to stay inside. He eventually got them back in inside and assisted the supervisor. He then stood on the porch at the factory doors to prevent them returning back out into the street.

In doing his duty he sacrificed his own life. He died when a bomb exploded a few feet away from him. The 37-year-old had a wife and a three-year-old son.

The raid on June 13th  killed a total of 162 people.

There is a memorial in Postman’s park London EC1, remembering the heroic self sacrifice that was made by PC Smith.

In 2017 an Islington People’s plaque was erected to mark 100 years of PC Smiths death and bravery at 43-45 Central street Islington. “The plaque is well deserved and marks an extreme act of bravery,” said Robert Jeffries, 63, PC Smith’s great-nephew and a retired police officer.

“He did what’s in the news now, policemen running towards danger, and he wouldn’t have had time to know what hit him.”

Memorial in Postman’s Park

Islington Peoples Plaque

Canary Girls

The Canary Girls were British women who worked in munitions manufacturing TNT shells during the First World War.
The nickname arose because exposure to TNT is toxic, and repeated exposure can turn the skin an orange-yellow colour reminiscent of the plumage of a canary (this bird which itself was used by miners to detect toxic carbon monoxide in coal mines).

The women also carried the risk of them contracting potentially fatal diseases handling the explosive chemicals. Some reported bone disintegration, while others developed throat problems and dermatitis from TNT staining.
One of the most serious being a liver disease called toxic jaundice. There were 400 cases of the disease during World War One - a quarter of which were fatal, said historian Anne Spurgeon.
"There was the yellow that was the staining of the skin, which while unpleasant, wasn't fatal or a serious disease.
"But there was this liver disease that was a different yellow.
"When they had repeated exposure to TNT, it attacked the liver. It was a poison and caused anaemia and jaundice."

They also risked losing fingers and hands, burns and blindness.
"In these factories, they would take the casing, fill it with powder, then put a detonator in the top and that had to be tapped down. If they tapped too hard, it would detonate,"
"It happened to one lady, who was pregnant at the time, and it blinded her and she lost both her hands.
"She saw the pregnancy through, but the only way she could identify the baby was with her lips, which still had feeling."

Explosions were a common occurrence, Women were banned from wearing nylon and silk.
Nellie Bagley, whose first shift at Rotherwas in 1940 was on her 18th birthday, remembers having to strip down to her underwear to be inspected.
"You took everything off and you had just your bra and if it had a metal clip on the back you couldn't wear it... and no hair grips of course, because they would caused friction... explosions."

Going back to their skin changing colour, the women were targeted by media campaign advertisements encouraging them to use oatine face cream which was aimed at the munition workers to keep their complexion clean and fresh.  This was available for purchase from chemists. I have attached an advert with this post for Oatine.

It was not only the UK's female munitions workers that were affected by the TNT, but also the babies that were born to them. Hundreds of "Canary Babies" were born with a slightly yellow skin colour because of their mothers' exposure to dangerous chemicals in the munitions factories during World War One. Nothing could be done for the babies at the time, but the discolouration slowly faded with time.

Health and safety measures in factories were stepped up to limit exposure, such as providing protective clothing, but only so much could be done to eradicate the risks.

These women accepted all sorts of terrible working conditions, they knew they were putting themselves in danger - TNT was yellow, they saw what was happening.
But it was seen as a patriotic act… as the women were doing their bit for the war effort.
I believe they were definitely doing more then their bit. It amazes me that women weren't allowed anywhere near a gun, yet they were filling shells in factories.
Over a million women during both World Wars worked at thousands of Ministry munitions factories, however there are no official records to indicate how many of these woman died or were seriously injured in their line of duty.

God Bless you all, each and every one of you deserves recognition.