BETWEEN 1915 and the Armistice in 1918, a Keighley National Shell Factory, relying heavily on a workforce of women and girls, produced 714,000 high-explosive shells – “more”, according to Sir Harry Smith, chairman of Keighley and District War Munitions Committee, “than would have won the battle of Waterloo”!

These girls were taking part in a flag-day procession organised by the 6th Battalion of the West Riding Volunteers in 1916.

They have decked their float with slogans like ‘Women Shell Makers Are Doing Their Bit, Working Both Day and Night. Are YOU Doing Your Bit?’ and the darkly humorous ‘An English Gift to the Germans’.

The Great War brought women into many jobs previously regarded as a male preserve. In 1915, Keighley Post Office experimentally employed a postwoman and two girl telegraph messengers, with “satisfactory results”.

By 1916, Keighley Corporation Tramways was employing conductresses, and started training women drivers, whereupon the men threatened strike action.

However, a confidential report from the tramways manager to his committee concluded, in his opinion, that women were “not fitted temperamentally or physically for driving”!

Discussing the shortage of male drivers, he poignantly advised that “only men with both hands, both legs and both feet should be entrusted with the driving of trams as at present designed”.