by Siân Evans
A remarkable old lady is Mrs Rachel Garberowitz, who hails from Lithuania. Until the other day she had never been away from her village home, but, at the age of 94, she has at last seen the sea and crossed the Atlantic. At the request of her three married daughters, in Rochester, NY, she came all the way across Europe to Hamburg for Grimsby and stepped on board the Baltic at Liverpool on September 4th bound for New York. She was intensely interested in the embarkation of the twelve hundred passengers which the Baltic carried and was vastly impressed by the accommodation and fittings of the liner. Mrs Garberowitz is going to live with one of her daughters.3
Being a conductress was not a job for the squeamish. The women often secreted money and valuables on their bodies, between their corsets and their underwear, and they resisted changing their clothes during the journey, in case their precious possessions were stolen from them. Everyone hated bad weather; the passengers were unable to get out on deck, away from the omnipresent smell of soup, raw garlic (thought to combat seasickness), unwashed clothes and assorted bodily fluids. Nevertheless, Edith would doggedly eat at least one meal a day in third class, alongside her charges, to ensure the food was palatable.
Conditions in third-class transatlantic ships had continued to improve markedly during the early 1920s, and now bore little resemblance to the horrors of the notorious steerage class before the Great War. On the Zeeland, hot seawater baths were available, with special soap that would lather in brine. The women could clean themselves, and wash their clothes. On one occasion an impatient chief steward tried to speed up the process by making two girls share the same bath. Edith insisted each woman should bathe alone, in privacy, and her argument prevailed. Her tussles on behalf of her charges, who were looked down on by some of the crew as racially inferior, often made her unpopular. When she insisted that the third-class women and children were moved to better quarters in the Zeeland, to minimise the likelihood of them getting seasick, she encountered hostility from some of the crew, though she won her case: ‘Since my women were seeking a new world of hope and freedom, a door to a better life, my thought was that it might just as well start on board ship. The old hands who had dealt with emigrants before 1914 did not exactly approve of my ways: they thought anything would do for “wops” and “bohunks”. I did not.’4
Edith was sympathetic to the reasons why many of the third-class passengers were making this epic journey to an unknown continent:
We had many Jews – all types – travelling as emigrants from Europe. They looked as if a terror was behind them, running away with a real sense of fear … all the tragedies of the world seemed to be in their melancholy eyes. They also seemed to have an awful fear of the sea on this, the first time they had ever seen the ocean, or experienced what it could do when in the mood … How terrible it was for those poor, ground-down peasant types, and the persecuted Jews, to be storm-buffeted on a rolling ship, knowing little of what they might expect, only that it was a land of opportunity that awaited them – a strange land, a better life. Others had gone before, and written home to say so. Difficult to comprehend by those of us who had known nothing but freedom and a comparatively good standard of living.5
Edith had other female colleagues on the Zeeland, including a Belgian-born matron. She was stout and elderly, with a toothy smile, unshockable and with boundless common sense, Matron had been a licensed prostitute in her youth. She had married well, had grown-up children, and was now a respectable widow who had taken to a working life at sea. Matron and Edith would escort the ship’s doctor when he examined the third-class immigrant women. Dr Bayer from Brussels was an urbane character, and the passengers, many of whom had never encountered a doctor before, were reassured to have two female chaperones for their examinations. Health problems abounded in the cramped conditions of third class. Tiny children had often been sewn into their woollen combinations, with just apertures left so they could be held over a chamber pot without being undressed. Edith and Matron would methodically ‘unpick’ these children in order to bathe them, often discovering skin conditions like impetigo or scabies, which needed medical treatment.
Occasionally women gave birth unexpectedly during the voyage. Heavily pregnant women were not usually allowed to embark, but sometimes their voluminous clothing and deliberate subterfuge would conceal an imminent arrival. Edith relied on the doctor to manage the delivery, but often had to assist. On one trip, Edith encountered a language problem with one very young expectant mother: she was Hungarian, while the doctor only spoke French and Flemish. Edith and the stewardess tried to mime ‘push’, but met blank bewilderment. Fortunately, a young Hungarian female passenger with a smattering of rudimentary English was located, and translated at the appropriate moment. With urgent instructions being given simultaneously in four languages, the passenger produced a little boy. Babies born mid-ocean were registered by the captain, and their names added to the passenger manifest. If born on a ship sailing under a British flag, the new arrival was registered as a native of Stepney, in London. The arrival of a baby mid-voyage tended to cheer the passengers in all classes and provoke an outbreak of sentimental generosity: one unexpected addition to the passenger list was given an impromptu collection of £450 by the passengers, worth approximately £13,000 today, while another was awarded an unspecified lump sum and a Ford car (worth approximately £3,000 now).6
On another transatlantic crossing Edith was summoned to the sick bay where a young woman was evidently on the point of giving birth. No one could locate Dr Bayer – it was cocktail hour and he could have been anywhere – and though the dinner-jacketed purser offered to help, he was rapidly despatched by Edith, who struggled to remove the patient’s knee-high boots, revealing a pair of filthy feet. Moments later the baby arrived, and the breathless doctor appeared just in time to cut the cord. The child, a very handsome little boy promptly named Janus, was bathed by Edith. His arrival had taken his mother completely by surprise, so he was wrapped in towels while numerous passengers and crew contributed spare clothing to be cut up and made into a layette for him.
Many of Edith’s adult female charges had been recruited in their home countries to be domestics, and were known as Gelley Girls, after the Commissioner of the Canadian Immigration Department who had invented the assisted places scheme. However, some would try to escape their escorts before their intended destination, having arranged clandestinely to meet a boyfriend or a family member. They didn’t get far; their clothes made them conspicuously alien, they were unable to speak a word of the host country’s language, and they were wearing a ribbon that marked them out as destined for domestic service. The escort system was intended to be protective, so that these young women did not fall into bad company or become illicit ‘brothel fodder’.
Edith Sowerbutts was astute, worldly and practical, and dedicated to the welfare of her charges. She was certainly no prude and had spent enough time in and around ports to have a fair grasp of the realities of the sex industry; indeed, she was on friendly terms with the madam of a large brothel in Belgium, while one of her many friends in Antwerp was a former prostitute, now the respectable chatelaine of the ladies’ powder room at a smart country club. However, she had an eagle eye for any possibility of sexual exploitation if it threatened her most vulnerable passengers.
On one voyage Edith became suspicious of a man travelling to America with a very young girl who he claimed was his bride. Her documents stated that she was thirteen, but Edith was suspicious as she spent the trip playing with her dolls on the top bunk, and never ventured out of their cabin. On arrival in New York Edith shared her misgivings with the examining nurse from Ellis Island; she too doubted the given age of the ‘bride’. Both women suspected that the little girl, very pretty, with long golden hair, had been destined for the sex industry. The nurse reported it to the port authorities, who took action. The man’s application to become an American citizen was revoked, but to her frustration Edith never found out what happened to the girl.
Edith a
lso safeguarded unaccompanied children from possible sexual predators on board ships. She would sometimes encounter very young girls who were being sent alone to a distant relative in the far country, and who had been placed, with the relevant photograph, on the passport of some unrelated male. The man accompanying them was usually from the same home town or village, and of course this arrangement might be entirely innocent. However, Edith would step in if she discovered that any young girl or boy had been booked into the same cabin as an unrelated adult male. She would move the child to another cabin, to be berthed with a couple of women who spoke their language, and who were willing to take care of them on the voyage.
Picture Brides were another intriguing feature of Edith’s shipboard life. These were European-born women who had consented to marry men already living in Canada or the USA, without ever having met them. These women took life-changing decisions after answering a newspaper advert, then exchanging letters and photos, arranging their marriages by post. Edith met one on a voyage to Halifax. Rose was British, pleasant in nature, about thirty-five years old and unmarried; in the euphemistic phrase of the day, she was ‘an unclaimed blessing’. By 1925, Rose saw her chances of matrimony were diminishing, so she replied to a newspaper advertisement placed in a British paper by a widower farmer living in western Canada. She sent her photo in a letter, they corresponded, and agreed to wed. She sailed on the Zeeland with a modest trousseau and high hopes. Edith admired her courage, but didn’t find out if Rose’s future lived up to her dreams.
The Canadian immigration system was well-organised; having interviewed each woman and noted her details, Edith would give her a colour-coded piece of ribbon, which showed her eventual destination: red for Manitoba or Saskatchewan, blue for Ontario, white for the maritime provinces. The women proudly wore these ribbons like badges of honour, or campaign medals, pinned to their clothes. They landed at Pier 21, Halifax, Nova Scotia, to be met by female officers of the immigration department, led by a Mrs Bond, who checked the paperwork provided by Edith and escorted the women and children to trains. They were grouped according to their ribbon colours and then taken to their various destinations all over Canada by so-called ‘train girls’. Edith also handed over any unaccompanied children, who had their tickets and vital documents contained in little calico bags securely pinned to their coats.
After leaving Halifax, the Zeeland sailed on to New York, and Edith often assisted the American immigration officials on arrival at Ellis Island, although technically her role only covered passengers going to Canada. Ellis Island was a liminal place, where every day thousands of people queued to be processed, and were either cleared for entry and released into the city, or held for deportation. Sometimes would-be immigrants were refused entry on medical grounds, if one member of a family had a communicable disease, such as trachoma, an eye complaint. In those cases the whole family might have to return to the country of origin if they would not separate. This was calamitous; they had usually sold what few assets they owned to scrape together the transatlantic fares, only to be sent back to certain poverty and destitution.
The Zeeland expanded its service to take over part of the Irish migrant trade and now the ship ran from Antwerp, calling at Southampton, then Cherbourg, and Queenstown (present-day Cobh) before setting out into the Atlantic. Consequently, Edith had more British and Irish women among her third-class passengers, and she found them more trouble than all the others. Unlike her continental charges, who were examined, bathed, deloused and fumigated before they embarked, the British and Irish women often harboured lice or nits. Edith and Matron would have to treat the lousy promptly, to avoid their ‘stowaways’ infesting the whole ship.
Health risks were part of the conductress’s role, but for most female staff on board, after a cursory medical on joining the line, they could consult the ship’s doctor if they were ill. Edith noticed that on every journey, after a certain number of days at sea, all the male crew were summoned in turn to the doctor’s cabin for a brief but mysterious medical, and would emerge rebuttoning their trousers. It dawned on her that they were undergoing what was euphemistically known as ‘short arms inspection’, making sure that they hadn’t contracted any sexually transmitted diseases during their last shore leave. She noted the favourite toast of the crew was: ‘To our wives and sweethearts … and may they never meet!’
There was a general wariness about the possibility of sex between women seafarers and their male counterparts, and they were physically segregated within the ship as much as possible. Between the wars the large international ocean-going ships increased the roles undertaken by female staff, although they were still greatly outnumbered by male crew and officers. Female seafarers were expected to be beyond reproach, but, like Caesar’s wife, they also had to be seen to be blameless. They were not allowed to wear make-up, they must wear a hat or cap while on duty, and they were not allowed to go out with crew members. The women’s sleeping quarters, a dead-end corridor lined with twin cabins, were strictly off limits to all men.
Stewardesses generally avoided getting entangled with any male colleague, and if they did have romantic ambitions they would prefer a more advantageous marriage to an officer, or even a passenger. Some women seafarers did find partners afloat, but often the relationship foundered because of the time spent apart, and they separated and returned to sea.
No stewardess would normally risk entering a man’s cabin, so male travellers were attended by stewards. Female passengers travelling alone or in pairs were always the primary responsibility of the stewardess; to avoid embarrassment, passengers were advised to ring the bell once if they needed a male steward, and twice for the stewardess. Stewards and stewardesses worked closely together, and often became friends. In married couples’ cabins, they would usually share the responsibilities: she would deal with the wife’s bed, toiletries, clothes and personal effects, while he cleaned the bathroom and dealt with the husband’s belongings. For heterosexual or lesbian stewardesses working on the ships, having a gay male colleague was often an advantage for both parties: they could be friends or allies without any romantic or sexual expectations on either side.
Sexual harassment from men could be a real hazard for some women. There were those within the ship’s company who tried to coerce female staff into having sex, either by offering promotion, or by threatening to sully their all-important reputation if they didn’t comply. A number of stewardesses recalled unwanted encounters with questing men. Violet Jessop had to evade the attentions of both an amorous purser and an embittered captain. Edith Sowerbutts was woken one night by a drunken young man who had managed to get into her cabin; ‘You’re a sailor – I’m a sailor,’ he declaimed, as justification. Fortunately, he ambled off, while Edith threw on a dressing gown and went for help. Her ‘beau’ was promptly detained on deck by two burly crew members, and incarcerated for the night, and Edith moved into a superior cabin, one with a better lock.
There was a general sense of camaraderie among sea-going women in all roles on the passenger ships on the North Atlantic, because they were few in number, and shared common living quarters. Edith had friends of different nationalities throughout her ocean-going career. There was Mrs Nielsen, a tiny, wizened stewardess with flaxen hair, of advanced years, who spoke a variety of Scandinavian languages as well as German. Mrs Nielsen was often to be found at the end of a busy day in her cabin, soaking her aching feet in a bucket of hot water. Another friend was an Irish conductress on White Star Lines, Miss O’Kane, known inevitably as Miss O.’K. One snowy Sunday morning her ship was due to depart from Saint John, New Brunswick. A devout churchgoer, Miss O’K calculated she could attend a service on land before the ship sailed, so she hurriedly threw on some clothes over her pyjamas and set off ashore with just ten Canadian cents for the collection in her purse. Timing was never her strong point; she returned to the dockside to see her ship steaming away, taking all her belongings and documents with it. Forced to borrow money and clothes from the company’s age
nt and his wife, she waited two long weeks until another White Star Line ship put in and she was able to return to Europe.
Edith also had a British-born friend, Emma May Mathieu, a highly competent nurse. She had married a Belgian army officer, but he died in 1925 and she struggled to provide for their two small boys. The children went to boarding school in Brussels while Emma May worked on the ships as a stewardess, though she was impressively over-qualified. She had passed her midwifery final exams, in French, the day after her husband’s funeral. Shipping lines often signed up qualified nurses as stewardesses, but denied them ‘nursing rank’ to save money. Emma May was highly regarded by ships’ doctors, so often helped with medical emergencies at sea. It was Edith who persuaded Red Star Line to employ Emma May as a stewardess, a role that brought her ample tips from wealthy passengers, which enabled her to buy an apartment in Antwerp, near the docks.
Emma May had a lively sense of humour; she dealt with one pushy Lothario by coyly inviting him to the wrong cabin, where he burst in on a formidably indignant male passenger, who berated him loudly. On another occasion Emma May and her Liverpool-born sidekick Vera were sitting in a bar in Lisbon, next to a bullring. They were chatted up by a handsome young Portuguese matador in full rig, who was smitten by blonde-haired, blue-eyed Vera. He spoke no English, and Vera’s only language was fluent Scouse, but Emma May acted as their interpreter by speaking French. At Vera’s prompting, she taught their new friend a couple of English phrases. After a few drinks, Vera and Emma May realised that their ship was about to leave port. Accompanied by their flamboyantly dressed young admirer, they sprinted to the docks, and the two women ran up the gangway with seconds to spare, to the amusement of passengers, crew and onlookers. As the ropes were cast off and the great ship inched away from its mooring, the matador struck a dramatic pose on the sunlit quayside, with his arms outspread, his cape aflutter, and took a deep breath. ‘I STICK THE BULL RIGHT UP THE ARSE!’ he proclaimed, with a magnificent flourish. This was greeted with a roar of approval and applause from the assembled throng, which the bullfighter acknowledged with an elegant bow, and a proud smile. The chief steward, however, took a dim view, and Vera and Emma May were separated because they were too mischievous to be employed together on the same ship.
