Incredible photos from WW1 reveal the backbreaking and often dangerous work taken on by British women during the Great War

More than 1.6 million women took on traditionally male jobs during World War One

950,000 worked in dangerous munitions factories, producing 80% of the UK's armaments

Another 100,000 worked in transport - a staggering 555% increase on pre-war numbers

Others worked close to the front line as part of the VAD and FANY nursing corps

One, Edith Cavell, was executed by the Germans in 1915 for saving hundreds of lives


Whether manufacturing shells or keeping the UK's railways running, the role played by women during the Great War was just as crucial as that of their successors in World War II.

As these dramatic images reveal, British women took on jobs in munitions factories, drove ambulances, helped to keep the fledgling Royal Air Force in the sky and gave succour to wounded soldiers, both at home and on the battlefield.

Perhaps the most famous of the VAD [Voluntary Aid Detachment] nurses was Katherine Furse, who later became commander-in-chief of the organisation, and came under fire during the Battle of the Marne in 1914.

Impressive: Women war workers, including the distinctively white-capped and aproned VAD nurses, parade outside Buckingham Palace in 1918

Pioneering: Members of the Women's Royal Air Force arrive at Buckingham Palace, London, to attend a party for war workers in 1919

Dangerous work: Female ambulance workers, such as this group photographed in November 1915, served both at home and on the front line

Important: While some women became nurses, others worked in hospital workshops, such as this one at the Kensington War Hospital, making prosthetic limbs

Others included the authors Agatha Christie and Vera Brittain, the actress Hattie Jacques and Violet Jessop, an ocean-liner stewardess who had survived the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

Tragically, not all of the VAD and First Aid Nursing Yeomanry [FANY] nurses survived their service, including British Red Cross nurse Edith Cavell who was executed by the Germans in 1915 for helping hundreds of soldiers survive their wounds in occupied Belgium.

World War I also saw the female members of the army, navy and air force don their uniforms for the first time, beginning with the Royal Navy who set up the Women's Royal Navy Service in 1916.

The WRNS were followed by the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) in 1917 and finally, the Women's Royal Airforce (WRA) in 1918. While most never came too close to the front line, there was one female soldier - 20-year-old Dorothy Lawrence, a journalist who joined the British Expeditionary Force in 1915 by passing herself off as a man.

For the majority of British women, a role in the workplace beckoned as male workers flooded into recruiting offices and were shipped to the front line in France.

Munitionettes: 950,000 female workers were employed in British factories, including this worker, pictured making shell cases in a Vickers factory in January 1915



Dangerous work: 400 women died in munitions factories, between 1914 (when this image was taken) and 1918, when the war ended

Canaries: Exposure to toxic sulphur left many workers with yellowed skin, while others were killed in explosions. One 1917 incident killed 73 and flattened 900 homes

Skilled: Despite being paid less than their male counterparts, many of the female munitionettes undertook dangerous and fiddly work

According to records held in the National Archives, more than 1.6 million women had joined the workforce by the time the war ended in 1918. Among them were the 247,000 who worked in government dockyards, factories, arsenals and as firefighters, while a staggering 950,000 were employed making munitions.

Known as 'Munitionettes' or canaries, thanks to the yellowing effect exposure to sulphur has on the skin, the women worked long, arduous hours in extremely dangerous conditions.

Despite producing more than 80 per cent of the UK's shell and bullet supply by the end of the war, poor working conditions and inadequate safety equipment resulted in approximately 400 deaths by the end of the war, as a result of explosions and from exposure to dangerous chemicals such as nitric and sulphuric acid.

One particularly appalling incident came in January 1917, when 73 people were killed by an explosion in a London munitions factory that also flattened 900 surrounding homes.

But not all of the UK's female workers had such risky jobs. Others were employed in agriculture, the civil service and even banking, as well as in traditional service roles.

Man's work? Members of the Women's Fire Brigade with their Chief Officer photographed in their uniforms beside an extinguished fire in March 1916

Essential: Members of the Women's Fire Brigade are put through their paces during a fire drill with hoses and extinguishers at full force in March 1916

Hard work: A member of the Women Porters At Marylebone Station Group, pictured in 1914 giving a Great Central Railways carriage a thorough clean

Porters: Women employed in the transport industry increased by 555 per cent during the war, and included this pair of female porters at Marylebone Station in 1915

Engineers: As this 1917 photograph shows, female war workers didn't just run trains and buses - they fixed and maintained them too



The Women's Land Army, a government-led organisation that matched female labourers with farmers, was responsible for keeping the UK in food, and by the end of the war, more than 260,000 volunteers had signed up, according to online archive, FirstWorldWar.com.

One industry that saw a particularly large increase in female workers was transport, which according to the National Archive, increased its number of women workers by 555 per cent to approximately 100,000.

But despite the contribution made by women, pay remained unequal and many were laid off as soon as male workers began trickling home from the Front after hostilities ceased in November 1918.



Nevertheless, their enormous contribution made by women to the war effort helped make an unanswerable case for equal treatment, and just three years later, the female population of the UK finally got the vote.



Recycling: As part of the war effort, old paper had to be reused. These women are pulling apart old ledgers belonging to the London & South West Railway Waste paper: The paper, as this photo taken on the 16th April 1917 shows, then had to be sorted into piles and stored

