2 The argument that women’s war effort earned them the vote was popularised by Arthur Marwick in his widely read The Deluge: British Society and the First World War, London: Bodley Head, 1965. Different viewpoints are put forward in Braybon, G., Women Workers in the First World War: The British Experience, London: Croom Helm 1981, and more recently Noakes, L., Women in the British Army: War and the Gentle Sex, 1907–1948, London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
3 Smith, Harold L., The British Women’s Suffrage Campaign, 1866–1928, London and New York: Longmans, 1998, esp. pp. 70–1.
4 Melman, B., Women and the Popular Imagination in the 1920s, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988.
5 Mrs Alec Tweedie, Women and Soldiers, London: John Lane, Bodley Head, 1918, Chapter VIII, ‘War Hysteria’.
6 Woollacott, A., ‘“Khaki Fever” and Its Control: Gender, Class, Age and Sexual Morality on the British Home Front in the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 29, 1994, pp. 325–47.
7 Tweedie, Women and Soldiers, p. 93.
8 Voeltz, Richard A., ‘The Antidote to “Khaki Fever”? The Expansion of the British Girl Guides during the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 27, 1992, pp. 627–38; see p. 632.
9 Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England, pp. 110–14.
10 See Reports on Guiding by Agnes Baden-Powell published in the women’s magazine, Home Notes, 1910–1911; also Agnes Baden-Powell’s The Handbook for Girl Guides; Or, How Girls Can Help Build the Empire, London: Thos Nelson and Sons, 1912.
11 Kerr, Rose, The Story of the Girl Guides 1908–1938, London: Girl Guides Association, 1976; Baden-Powell, O., Window on My Heart: The Autobiography of Olave, Lady Baden-Powell, as told to Mary Drewery, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973.
12 Lady Baden-Powell, Training Girls as Guides: Hints to Commissioners and All Who Are Interested in the Welfare and Training of Girls, London: Pearson, 1917, pp. 13–14.
13 Ibid., pp. 13–21.
14 See, among others, Bingham, A., Gender, Modernity and the Popular Press in Inter-War Britain, Oxford University Press, 2004.
15 Shingled, Bingled and Bobbed was the title of a play written for the Girls’ Friendly Society by J. A. S. Edwards in 1929. www.londonmet.ac.uk/thewomenslibrary/gfs/branches/branches-3.html.
16 Gillies, M., Amy Johnson: Queen of the Air, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003; London: Orion Books, 2004, p. 23.
17 Hale, A Slender Reputation, p. 7.
18 Dyhouse, C., Glamour: Women, History, Feminism, London: Zed Books, 2010, esp. Chapters 2 and 3.
19 Cited in Voeltz, ‘The Antidote to “Khaki Fever” …’, p. 632.
20 ‘The 1920 Girl: Competition for “The Elusive Male”, Britain’s Surplus of Women’, The Times, 5 February 1920, p. 9.
21 Levine, P., ‘Battle Colors: Race, Sex, and Colonial Soldiery in World War I’, Journal of Women’s History, 9:4, 1998, pp. 104–30; Bland, L., ‘White Women and Men of Colour: Miscegenation Fears in Britain after the Great War’, Gender and History, 17:1, 2005, pp. 29–61.
22 Report in British Medical Journal, 3 April 1915, pp. 613–14.
23 Levine, ‘Battle Colors’, p. 116.
24 Tabili, L., ‘Women “of a Very Low Type”: Crossing Racial Boundaries in Imperial Britain’, in Frader, Laura F., and Rose, S. (eds), Gender and Class in Modern Europe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996, pp. 165–90.
25 Kohn, M., Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1992.
26 The first of Sax Rohmer’s series of novels about Fu Manchu, epitome of ‘the Yellow Peril’ was The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu, published in Britain in 1913.
27 For stories of Billie Carleton and Freda Kempton see Kohn, Dope Girls, pp. 96–141.
28 ‘Clemence Dane’ (Winifred Ashton), Regiment of Women, London: Heinemann, 1917.
29 ‘Clemence Dane’, The Women’s Side, London: H. Jenkins, 1926, See the chapter ‘A Problem in Education’ and p. 64.
30 See Love, H., ‘Radclyffe Hall’, in Kastan, David Scott, (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopaedia of British Literature, vol. I, p. 499.
31 Faderman, L., Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present, London: Women’s Press, 1985. See esp. Chapters 3 and 4.
32 Waites, M., ‘Inventing a “Lesbian Age of Consent”? The History of the Minimum Age for Sex Between Women in the UK’, Social and Legal Studies, 11:3, 2002, pp. 323–42; Cohler, D., Citizen, Invert, Queer: Lesbianism and War in Early Twentieth Century England, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, p. 143.
33 Littlewood, M., ‘Makers of Men: The Anti-Feminist Backlash of the National Association of Schoolmasters in the 1920s and 1930s’, Trouble and Strife, 5, 1985, pp. 23–9.
34 Quoted by Nicholson, V., Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived without Men after the First World War, London: Viking, 2007, p. 20.
35 Kenealy, A., Feminism and Sex Extinction, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1920.
36 Ibid., pp. 85, 128 and passim.
37 Ibid., p. 230.
38 Board of Education, Report of the Consultative Committee on Differentiation of the Curriculum for Boys and Girls Respectively in Secondary Schools, London: HMSO, 1923. See Preface for terms of reference.
39 Ibid., p. 126.
40 Ibid., p. 132.
41 Dyhouse, C., ‘Women Students and the London Medical Schools, 1914–39: The Anatomy of a Masculine Culture’, Gender and History, 10:1, 1998, pp. 110–32. A version of this article appeared as Chapter 7 in the same author’s Students: A Gendered History.
42 See for instance Hutchinson, A. S. M., This Freedom, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1922.
43 Dyhouse, Students, Chapter 2, reference to sardine factory p. 49.
44 Dyhouse, C., ‘“Signing the Pledge?” Women’s Investment in University Education and Teacher Training before 1939’, History of Education, 26:2, 1997, pp. 207–23.
45 Butler, C. V., Domestic Service; An Inquiry, by the Women’s Industrial Council, London: G. Bell and Sons, 1916. See pp. 16–17, 22, 34, 46–9.
46 Foley, W., A Child in the Forest, London: Hutchinson, 1978, p. 184.
47 Ibid., p. 229.
48 Jephcott, A. P., Girls Growing Up, London: Faber and Faber, 1942. Mary Smith’s story, pp. 11–34.
49 Glucksman, M., Women Assemble: Women and New Industries in Inter-War Britain, London: Routledge, 1990; Todd, S., Young Women, Work and Family in England, 1918–1950, Oxford University Press, 2005.
50 Hutchinson’s Women’s Who’s Who, London: Hutchinson, 1934.
51 Strachey, R., Careers and Openings for Women, London: Faber and Faber, 1935; papers of Women’s Employment Federation in the Women’s Library; see press cuttings albums. Volume 3 has the cutting from the Daily Mail (5 March 1936) quoted in the text.
52 Holtby, W., Poor Caroline, London: Cape, 1931.
53 For the ‘pledge’ taken by intending schoolteachers in order to secure funding for a university education, see Dyhouse, ‘“Signing the Pledge”’.
54 All information on Amy Johnson from Gillies, Amy Johnson.
55 Phillips, T., We Are the People: Postcards from the Collection of Tom Phillips, London: National Portrait Gallery, 2004, p. 230.
56 Brader, C., ‘“A World on Wings”: Young Female Workers and Cinema in World War I’, Women’s History Review, 14:1, 2005, pp. 99–117; Singer, B., ‘Female Power in the Serial-Queen Melodrama: The Etiology of an Anomaly’, in Abel, R. (ed.), Silent Film, London: Athlone, 1996.
57 Hammerton, J., For Ladies Only? Eve’s Film Review, Pathé Cinemagazine, 1921–1933, Hastings: Projection Box, 2001.
58 Dyhouse, Glamour, esp. Chapters 2 and 3.
59 Matthews, J., ‘They Had Such a Lot of Fun: The Women’s League of Health and Beauty’, History Workshop Journal, vol. 30, 1990, pp. 22–54.
60 Horwood, C., ‘“Girls Who Arouse Dangerous Passions”: Women and Bathing, 1900–1939
’, Women’s History Review, 9:4, pp. 653–73.
61 Dyhouse, C., ‘Boat Racing, Women and Sport’, in the same author’s No Distinction of Sex?, pp. 202–6.
62 Allen, M., The Pioneer Policewoman, London: Heinemann, 1925, pp. 36, 257–61, cited in Brader, ‘A World on Wings’, p. 111.
63 The Cinema: Its Present Position and Future Possibilities; Being the Report of, and Chief Evidence Taken by the Cinema Commission of Inquiry instituted by the National Council of Public Morals, London: Williams and Norgate, 1917.
64 Hammerton, For Ladies Only, p. 47.
65 Priestley, J. B., English Journey, London: Heinemann, 1934, p. 401; Orwell, G., The Road to Wigan Pier, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972 (1937), p. 79.
66 Burt, C., ‘The Causes of Sex Delinquency in Girls’, in British Social Hygiene Council, Health and Empire, London: Constable, 1926, pp. 251–71. Quotation from p. 265.
67 The story is told in full in Weis, R., Criminal Justice: The True Story of Edith Thompson, London: Penguin, 1990.
68 See Bland, L., ‘The Trials and Tribulations of Edith Thompson: The Capital Crime of Sexual Incitement in 1920’s England’, Journal of British Studies, 47, July 2008, pp. 624–48.
69 Ibid., p. 631.
70 Daily News, 13 December 1922, quoted in Bloom, C., Bestsellers, Popular Fiction since 1900, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, pp. 38–9.
71 For Edith Roberts see Leicester Mercury, 7 and 8 June, 19 July 1921; file in National Archives, PCOM 8/298. See also Grey, D. J., ‘Discourses of Infanticide in England, 1880–1922’. D.Phil. dissertation, Department of History, University of Roehampton, 2008.
72 National Archives, PCOM 8/298.
73 East Sussex Coroners’ Records, 1931, East Sussex Records Office.
74 The Wellcome Library in London houses some 4,000 case cards compiled by Sir Bernard Spilsbury between 1905 and 1933. These contain reports on numerous cases of illegal abortion and cases of suspicious infant death.
75 Gissing, G., The Odd Women, London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1907; the Penguin reprint, 1994, has a useful introduction by Elaine Showalter. See also Orwell, G., The Clergyman’s Daughter, London: Gollancz, 1935.
76 Bennett, A., Our Women, London: Cassell, 1923, pp. 30–6; 58–71.
77 The story of Hayley Morris and Pippingford Park comes from press reports in The Times and Daily Mirror, April to October 1925, and the National Archives, MEPO 3/400. This file also contains numerous press cuttings from the Sussex Daily News.
78 MEPO 3/400, National Archives.
79 Stopes, M., Married Love, London: A. C. Fifield, 1918; Wise Parenthood, London, A. C. Fifield, 1918. Rose, J., Marie Stopes and the Sexual Revolution, London: Faber and Faber, 1992. See also Geppert, A. C. T., ‘Divine Sex, Happy Marriage, Regenerated Nation: Marie Stopes’s Marital Manual, Married Love and the Making of a Best-Seller, 1918–1955’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 8:3, 1998, pp. 389–433; Chow, K., ‘Popular Sexual Knowledges and Women’s Agency in 1920s England’, Feminist Review, no. 63, 1999, pp. 64–87.
80 Huxley, E., Love among the Daughters, London: Chatto and Windus, 1968, pp. 64–5.
81 Ibid.
82 Houghton, S., Hindle Wakes, London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1912.
83 See for instance, Taylor, D. J., Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation, 1918–1940, London: Chatto and Windus, 2007.
84 Shute, N., We Mixed Our Drinks: The Story of a Generation, London: Jarrolds, n.d. (c. 1945)
85 Ibid., p. 14
86 Ibid., p. 87.
87 Miss Modern, January 1931, p. 76.
88 Miss Modern, January 1938.
89 Ibid., p. 8.
4 Good-time girls
1 See file in National Archives, ‘Juvenile Courts, Children, Immorality Amongst Young Girls, 1934–1937’, HO 45/21072, which includes the newspaper cuttings referred to.
2 Letter from Travers Humphreys to Home Secretary dated 5 October 1934, in HO 45/20172.
3 See correspondence in HO 45/20172.
4 Reply to Travers Humphreys from Home Office dated 21 November 1934, in HO 45/20172. The term ‘Approved School’ came into use in the 1930s. Approved schools were residential institutions to which young people could be committed for criminal offences or because they were considered to be beyond parental control. They effectively replaced the earlier reformatory or industrial schools.
5 Letter from Home Office to Archbishop of Canterbury, 15 March 1935, HO 45/21072.
6 See notes of meeting on ‘Lax Conduct Amongst Girls: Increasing Amount of’, in HO 45/20172.
7 Hall, G. M., Prostitution: A Survey and a Challenge, London: Williams and Norgate, 1933, see Introduction by Charles E. Raven.
8 Ibid., p. 30.
9 Ibid., p. 32.
10 Ibid., p. 26. Burt, ‘The Causes of Sex Delinquency in Girls’. Quotation from p. 265.
11 Hall, Prostitution, p. 32.
12 Rose, S. O., ‘Sex, Citizenship and the Nation in World War II Britain’, American Historical Review, 103:4, 1998, pp. 1147–76.
13 Ibid., p. 1157.
14 Brighton Probation Committee, Correspondence about young girls associating with soldiers, in National Archives, MH 102/1146.
15 Raymond, R. Alwyn, The Cleft Chin Murder, London: Claud Morris, 1945. National Archives, MEPO 3/2280; DPP 2/1325. See also Bechofer Roberts, C. E., The Trial of Jones and Hulten, London: Jarrolds, 1945. Press reports generally, esp. ‘U.S. Soldier and Girl For Trial’, The Times, 28 November 1944, p. 2; ‘The “Cleft Chin” Murder’, The Times, 17 January 1945, p. 2; and regular reports in The Times through January 1945. The account in the text is based primarily on these sources.
16 Orwell, G., ‘Decline of the English Murder’, first published in Tribune, 15 February 1946.
17 Hulten’s appeal file in the National Archives, DPP 2/1325.
18 Orwell, ‘Decline of the English Murder’.
19 Alwyn Raymond, The Cleft Chin Murder, p. 6.
20 La Bern, A. J., Night Darkens the Streets, first published 1947, this edition London: Transworld Publishers, 1958.
21 Ibid., pp. 37, 47, 97.
22 ‘Fight in a Reformatory’, Picture Post, 3 May 1947.
23 National Archives, MH 102/1137–1141; see also Robertson, James C., ‘Good Time Girl, the BBFC and the Home Office: A Mystery Resolved’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 3:1, 2006, pp. 159–63.
24 Correspondence in MH 102/1137, National Archives.
25 Correspondence in MH 102/1139, National Archives.
26 Letter from Chuter Ede to Rank, 15 July 1947, MH 102/1139.
27 Comments in MH 102/1141.
28 See collection of press cuttings and reviews in MH 102/1140.
29 Ibid., Newcastle Journal, 14 June 1948.
30 Evening Standard, 30 April, 1948; Daily Graphic, 30 April 1948, both in MH 102/1140.
31 Sunday Times, 2 May 1948.
32 Anyone who doubts this should try Googling ‘Reform School Girls’.
33 See, among others, Richardson, H. J., Adolescent Girls in Approved Schools, London, Routledge, 1969; Slater, E., Cowie, J., and Cowie, V., Delinquency in Girls, London: Heinemann, 1968; Cox, P., Gender, Justice and Welfare: Bad Girls in Britain, 1900–1950, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
34 See file ‘Borstal Training for Young Female Offenders’, HO 144/21905, in National Archives, esp. newspaper cutting of article on ‘The Borstal Girl’ from the Magistrate, April 1929, by Lilian Barker.
35 National Archives, Kenilworth Training School Revolt, HO 45/14545; also MH 102422–434, 1939–1948. See also archives relating to Knowle Hill Community Home in Warwickshire County Record Office: CR 2366, including Log Book 1910–1942, Girls’ Minute Book Joint Committee, Minutes of Ladies’ Committee, Punishment Book 1916–1943.
36 See notes of Dr Norris visit to Knowle Hill and marginal annotations in HO 45/14545.
37 May 1923, note in HO 45/14545.
38 Knowle Hill Community Home, Punishment Book 1916–1943,
in Warwickshire County Record Office. See four-page ‘Report of Inquiry into Allegations of Irregular Punishment at Knowle Hill School’, dated 29 September 1959, folded into the punishment book.
39 www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1974349, retrieved 6 July 2011.
40 ‘The Unstable Adolescent Girl’, British Medical Journal, 19 December 1946, pp. 909–12.
41 Ibid., p. 910.
42 Burt, ‘The Causes of Sex Delinquency in Girls’. Quotation from p. 265.
43 ‘The Unstable Adolescent Girl’, p. 909.
44 Willcock, H. D., Report on Juvenile Delinquency, London: Falcon Press, 1949, p. 54.
45 The Knowle Hill affair features on www.corpun.com/index.htm, which has various links.
46 On Ruth Ellis and her appearances in court see Marks, L., and Van Den Bergh, T., Ruth Ellis: A Case of Diminished Responsibility? Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990, esp. p. 134.
47 Fabian, R., London After Dark: An Intimate Record of Night Life in London, and a Selection of Crime Stories from the Case Book of Ex-Superintendent R. Fabian, London: Naldrett Press, 1954, p. 52.
48 Ibid., p. 54.
49 The journalist Duncan Webb published a report on prostitution in the West End pointing a finger at the Messina brothers in a well-known article in the People, 3 September 1950; see also his article ‘Messina Gang Women Flout the Police’ in the same newspaper, 1 October 1950. Material on the Messina brothers and their various activities (and feud with Duncan Webb) is available in the National Archives, esp. HO 45/25638, MEPO 2/9004, MEPO 2/9845, MEPO 2/9633, MEPO 3/2582.
50 HO 45/25638, esp. MEPO 3/2582.
51 www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1071678/index.html.
52 See note 49.
53 ‘Confidential Report of Investigation into Conditions of the Coloured Population in a Stepney Area’, produced by a local committee chaired by the Revd St John Groser, Rector of St George’s, Stepney, 1944. Phyllis Young was the main investigator. In Tower Hamlets Local History Library, P/RAM/2/1/2.
54 Ibid., pp. 20–1.
55 Edith Ramsay collection, Tower Hamlets Local History Library, Notes on prostitution in the Commercial Road/Cable Street Area, P/RAM/2/1/7.
56 See Fabian’s spoken introduction to Passport to Shame, and note 51, also Fabian, ‘The Street Girls of Soho’ in London After Dark.
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