WOMEN OF STEEL: My steelworks scars still remain
Many women had been sent to work at a young age but none had experienced anything like life in the steelworks. As part of The Star's Women of Steel campaign to win recognition for WWII female steelworkers, Kit Sollitt, now aged 90, tells of fun times - but great danger was never far away. Nancy Fielder spoke to her.
"THIS was a place where there was shouting and laughing but accidents happened and it was horrible.
"None of the women had ever been in a foundry before because they didn't employ women. We had never done anything like it."
Kit was among the first batch of women appointed to carry out roles that proved vital to helping our troops in World War II, switching in the blink of an eye from French Polishing to making iron plating for battleships and tanks.
There were times when explosions would shoot sparks out of the huge Bessemer Converter or some burning metal would be spilt - sending everyone in the building running for cover.
"You had to put a sack over your head and run through it. It often caught you or burnt parts of your hair off. But they wouldn't wait - you just had to do it," she said.
Kit still suffers from migraines, known among her family as 'dazzles', which began during her days in the steelworks but they didn't stop her going to work.
The physical scars also remain on her arms - reminders of a time when risks had to be taken to keep production going whatever the risk.
Kit saw many accidents including her own brother who burnt his feet so badly they had to immerse him in a trough of cold water. He was off work for six months and was never able to wear new shoes again.
"I heard language I had never heard in my life, sometimes the men would just pee in the sand and everybody got a nickname - that's where I was first called Kit and I'm still called it today," she said.
"Some of the men were nice but some were horrible and resented women being there.
"We could only wear mucky boiler suits. It was awful at first but you just got used to them.
"It wasn't like working. It was a happy atmosphere and it was never boring. You could stop and have a chat and nobody bothered but we knew what we were doing was important."
Kit was just 14 when she started as a French Polishing apprentice, doing 'hard graft' over 12-hour shifts for five shillings a week.
At Christmas time the workforce was laid off until February so in between the teenager ground razor blades at a firm in Hillsborough.
Kit was 20 when war broke out and she was among the first group of women sent to work at Moore & Wright, assembling ratchets for micrometers.
About a year into the war, Kit took on a job as a sandmiller at Hardy Patent Pick on Little London Road.
"You were rigged up with overalls, wooden clogs and had to put all your hair under a cap. You were given a barrow and you had to fill it with all different sorts of sand from outside.
"You had to climb over a little brick wall, get eight shovels of white sand and four shovels of red sand."
The women then collected white powder for the mix from another area before wheeling it into the foundry.
They threw it all into the mixer until it came out like thick, brown toffee.
Once it had been approved, Kit wheeled it through the factory to the moulder for whatever they were making that day.
The sand mixture was packed tightly around the parts being cast and it set solid.
The casting process filled the factory with black fog so thick by the time a job was finished it was virtually impossible to breathe so everybody had to go outside until it cleared.
Workers who took time off, even for just half a day, would have a knock on their door and an explanation demanded. Anybody who took a week or more would simply be fired.
Even though wages were low, the entire workforce had a percentage of their wages taken for the war effort but they didn't grumble.
And as with many families in Sheffield, there were plenty of relatives with jobs in the steelworks.
Kit's husband worked as a moulder, one of her sisters and a brother were also colleagues, and her father had been a master grinder with his own firm.
Kit and Walter married in 1944 and their first child was born the following year.
She has written two novels based on her family's experiences in the steelworks and, as her children got older, went on to work in three other foundries to get "a man's pay".
The end of the war signalled the end for women in the steelworks - there was no negotiation and no thanks.
"The women all got cleared off when the men came back. In those days women didn't argue," Kit said.
"I had fun in every foundry but I wouldn't have wanted any of my children to do anything like that.
"We knew the work was important but you weren't supposed to talk about it and there were never any photographs taken of everybody working.
"It was a once in a lifetime thing. You wouldn't want to do it forever."
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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