While the men were off fighting in the Second World War, hundreds of women took to Sheffield’s steel factories, making parts for Spitfires, tanks and munitions.
Just like the famous Land Girls, these brave women were determined to “do their bit” for the war effort.
For six years they risked life and limb in the perilous works, taking on roles that were usually performed by men.
Among them was Kathleen Roberts, now 98. She recalls: “We were working on enormous, dangerous machines.”
And accidents happened – as she herself found. “I fell over and my back jarred,” she says. “I was in absolute agony, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get up. In the end, a group of men came to my rescue.
“They filled a wooden truck with coats belonging to the staff to make it as comfortable as possible, and carefully lifted me into it to take me to the medical room. Although they meant well, the truck had wooden wheels and wasn’t designed to carry an injured patient across uneven and bumpy ground.
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget that journey through the factory, across a railway line and main road, for as long as I live. I was bumped and jolted all over the place, and I ended up with far more bruises than I’d suffered during the fall!
“I ended up in a cast and was off work for weeks while I tried to recover.”
Decades on, Kathleen believed thanks for the working women was long overdue, and fought tirelessly for recognition. Finally in 2016 a statue was unveiled in the city to celebrate their sacrifice.
Kathleen is among those who now feature in a new book, Women of Steel: The Feisty Factory Sisters Who Helped Win the War, about their achievements.
Here, in exclusive extracts from the book, some of Kathleen’s fellow workers recall what it meant to be Britain’s wartime women of steel...
Dorothy Slingsby (nee Turner)
Stepping through the factory doors of the English Steel Corporation, the first thing that hit Dorothy Slingsby was the endless cacophony of noise.
It seemed to reverberate off every wall of the cavernous building. The continual heavy thudding, the ear-piercing screech of metal on metal and the sharp whirring of machines temporarily stopped Dorothy in her tracks.
It was like nothing she’d ever heard before. It was certainly worlds apart from the comfortable job she’d left just days earlier as a nanny for a well-to-do family.
But Dorothy refused to be deterred by the deafening racket of the steelworks. She had made a decision to ‘do her bit’, so that is what she would do.
A supervisor handed her an oversized, masculine boiler suit to change into, which she tucked under one arm as she obediently followed the burly foreman into the heart of the works.
He guided her onto the factory floor, through the maze of strange and menacing-looking machines, towards the huge metal cranes that seemed to be as high as the sky itself.
The foreman came to an abrupt stop in front of one of the colossal monstrosities. Dorothy looked up. It was an alien, daunting sight.
“Are you up for doing a man’s job?” the foreman quizzed Dorothy, throwing her an unconvinced smile.
She wasn’t sure if he was genuinely asking what kind of job he could offer her – a young slip of a girl – or if it was some kind of initiation test.
Well, if it was the latter, she’d show him what she was made of.
In the blink of an eye, Dorothy turned on her heels and shot up the adjacent ladder at breakneck speed, only stopping when she reached the top.
As she took in the vast view before her, Dorothy found herself staring down at a sea of surprised workers and a rather flabbergasted foreman. His attempt to call Dorothy’s bluff had given him the shock of his life.
“You asked me if I was up for the job?” she said, calling down to him.
“I know,” came the bewildered reply. “I just didn’t expect you to run up!”
Now that he knew about Dorothy’s fearless attitude, the foreman immediately set her the job she had been secretly hoping for: she would be one of the factory’s first female crane drivers.
Whilst some girls would have shuddered with terror, Dorothy relished the challenge.
The foreman was also relieved: after losing so many of his men to the war effort, he was in desperate need of some sturdy workers to fill this nerve-wracking role.
Despite still being a teenager, Dorothy had an inner belief that she could do anything she set her mind to.
Dot Reardon
Carefully applying her pillar-box-red lipstick, Dot Reardon felt a tinge of excitement as she took one final glance in the mirror.
She and her elder sister Elizabeth had planned a rare night out. Working long hours in the steelworks didn’t allow for much free time, but tonight they were going to see the marvellous Henry Hall and his band at the Empire in Sheffield city centre.
They were looking forward to the chance to put their worries aside. For a few hours at least, Dot could forget about the constant anxiety she felt for her sweetheart, who was fighting for king and country in Africa, or how increasingly difficult it was to make their rations stretch a little further.
Finally, she thought, an evening where there was something to feel excited about.
She neatened out her skirt and looked towards the stage as the band burst into life.
But within minutes, the music came to an abrupt stop. Murmurs and whispers filled the theatre as Henry Hall himself walked forward to address the bewildered audience.
“The air raids sirens have started, and the red alert is ringing,” he said calmly, trying to suppress any panic that the message was bound to trigger.
In true British spirit, he continued: “You can go if you want to, or you can stay. We will continue to play.”
At that very moment, a massive explosion echoed through the concert hall.
Undeterred, the band sparked back into life. Dot hesitated.
She would never be able to enjoy the band now, thinking about all the commotion going on outside. She felt a rush of naive excitement as she ushered her sister outside.
The scene as they stepped into the street was incomprehensible. The dark winter sky was lit up by a mass of crimson-red fires, while firework-like explosions echoed all around them.
“It’s like something out of a movie,” Dot exclaimed, the reality of what was happening still not sinking in.
The constant drone of planes could be heard above as they dropped one incendiary bomb after another, creating mayhem and destruction.
The once-stylish shops that lined the popular street were ablaze, and burning buildings were beginning to collapse like a deck of cards to the floor, unable to stand up to the relentless air strike.
The air grew thick with dust and the intoxicating and pungent smell of fire. Terrified men and women were frantically running in all directions.
As the enormity of what was happening hit Dot and Elizabeth, their naive burst of excitement extinguished as quickly as it had ignited.
Air-raid wardens were desperately trying to direct people to safety. The frightened and anxious mass of people were directed into the vaults of the Yorkshire Bank.
Clumped together in complete darkness in the cavernous bowels of the huge building, Dot had never felt so scared in her entire life.
There was a continual whoosh of bombs dropping outside, crashes echoing through the chamber.
Terrified, she reached for Elizabeth’s hand. The Luftwaffe’s bombs were deafeningly loud, and all Dot and Elizabeth could do was pray the next one wouldn’t cause the huge building to come tumbling down on top of them.
Many hours passed before the all-clear siren finally broke the anxious silence.
As the bewildered group made their way up the heavily dust-covered stairs, their eyes adjusted to the dawn.
Although it took a few seconds for them to regain their vision, nothing could have prepared them for the devastation and carnage that they now faced.
All the shops had gone, replaced by mountains of rubble and broken shards of glass. Tram carriages had been flattened, cars and buses destroyed, and it was impossible to make out the pavements from the roads.
Neither of them able to utter a single word, Dot and Elizabeth slowly put one foot in front of another, tentatively stepping through the piles of bricks, metal and glass, in a silent bid to get home to the safety and comfort of their own four walls.
Then something stopped them. An unmistakable shape: the remains of a charred, blackened body.
Next to it was another, then another. Each acutely aware the other was shaking uncontrollably, the sisters struggled to process the horror of what they were seeing.
Neither of them spoke for a long time – there were no words left to say.
Morning had arrived, but despite how physically and mentally exhausted she was after what she’d endured in the last twelve hours, in what was probably the most terrifying night of her entire life, Dot didn’t think twice about pulling on her uniform and going to work at the engraving factory.
Surviving on nothing more than adrenalin, with no buses running and without a wink of sleep, Dot somehow walked the three or four arduous miles to work, determined not to let her colleagues or boss down, knowing the pressure they were under to turn out the stamped sheets of steel needed for munitions.
WOMEN OF STEEL: THE FEISTY FACTORY SISTERS WHO HELPED WIN THE WAR by Michelle Rawlins, is published by Headline, 11th June at £16.99. © 2020 Michelle Rawlins Ltd.
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