Reminiscing on her time at the Corporation, the former BBC accompanist-turned- music star, Jean Melville, posed the question,
Do you know the two women to whom I think I was the most deeply grateful during my time at the BBC? They were Mrs Dubarry and the late Mrs Hudson – and their job was a very simple but important one. They have looked after the BBC canteen since Savoy Hill days.”349
The BBC’s restaurants and canteens were significant places for BBC staff. Not only were they a crucial part of the Corporation’s welfare provision but they were an attractive place to meet and share BBC news and gossip. In 1938 the eighty-six day-staff employed in the restaurant worked three different shifts, providing thousands of meals each week.350 When Wilfred Goatman toured the restaurant for his guidebook to Broadcasting House, he proudly depicted the state-of-the-art kitchen with its “four electric ovens, two large grills, pastry oven, steamer, four fryers, a large electric carver and refrigeration plant.351 Following Taylorite principles of efficiency, the design of the kitchen was such that unnecessary movement of staff was reduced to a minimum.
347 Same file, Pym to Nicolls, July 19th 1939
348 This being payable at 1/75 of their salary for each year of service with a minimum of £26 per annum.
349 Radio Pictorial, June 25th 1937, ‘BBC from the Inside’ by Jean Melville
350 Goatman, By-Ways of the B.B.C. p.49
351 Ibid.
At the BBC, kitchen and restaurant staff came within the catering section of the House staff. [Fig. 5.2 p.119] In 1937, under the supervision of A.E. Mason, were three chefs, two second chefs, two assistant chefs, a commis chef, a patissiere and a cook-chargehand. All were women, except for one of the chefs and an
additional night chef. To be a cook or a chef in the inter-war years would have entailed training, either at college or on-the-job. In her careers guide, Ray Strachey mentioned the availability of full-time courses at Domestic Science Colleges and private cookery schools along with day and evening classes at Polytechnics and other further education colleges. Salaries for non-resident cooks, Strachey estimated, averaged £100 to £150 per annum, with kitchen superintendents possibly earning as much as £220.352 It’s not known how the BBC’s chefs and cooks were trained. It is known that in 1939, Mrs Broughton, the fifty-two year old Head Chef at Broadcasting House, earned the highest wage of all the catering staff, an exceptional £5.18s 9d. She was also graded AW, the top grade for a weekly-paid member of the house staff.
Waitresses were the largest single group of BBC catering staff. Wilfrid Goatman was pleased to discover “a little room where the waitresses have their meals in comfort and are themselves waited upon by a girl employed solely for that purpose.”353 This pleasant portrait appears to be unusual. Writing in 1937, Joan Beauchamp described the miserable working conditions of a waitress in one of the largest teashop firms, earning 19s 6d per week plus commission averaging around 5s 6d. The work was tiring, the changing room “an old cellar, damp and horrible and far too small”, if a girl felt ill, there was nowhere else to sit down.354
Beaumont interviewed two kitchen hands, one earning 18s per week the other 17s 6d and described the “cruel work – scrubbing, washing up, scrubbing.”355
Glucksmann, in her investigation of women working for J. Lyons, highlighted the very low pay and the ruthless management style exercised in the Corner Houses which could lead to instant dismissal for flouting one of the many petty rules.356
352 Strachey, Careers and Openings for Women pp.217-218
353 Goatman, op.cit., p.51
354 Beauchamp, op.cit., p.49
355 Ibid., p.50
356 Glucksmann, op.cit., pp.129-130
An Inquiry into the Catering Trade which had been set up by the Ministry of Labour in 1929 confirmed that hours were long and wages low.357
At the BBC, a model letter of appointment c1938 shows the terms of employment for a waitress which included a starting wage of £1.10s per week and free meals during hours of duty.358 Discussions in 1938 on whether the BBC should abide by the 1913 Shops Act (they did) show that waitresses were eligible to three weeks holiday a year, two weeks more than the statutory minimum.359 Questioned as to whether a sufficiently good wage was being paid to attract “a decent class of girl”, Ralph Wade, the Director of Office Administration, was adamant they were; the BBC paid 30s a week as compared to the 27s 6d paid by Lyons.360 In addition, BBC girls had meals of better quality and quantity, were provided with uniforms, including shoes and stockings, and were offered free laundry.361 There was camaraderie too, as Ariel reported in June 1936:
If your tea at Broadcasting House and Maida Vale tasted salty in the afternoon on Monday, May 18 it must have been because all the girls of the kitchen and restaurant staff had had a day out at Margate the day before, in charge of Mrs Cox and Mrs Dubarry. They filled two charabancs arriving there at midday for a blow-out in a big hotel….362
Kitchen staff appear to have had a higher status than waitresses. A memo from 1933 indicates that the former might be considered for the BBC pension scheme whereas waitresses “should not be eligible in any circumstances.”363 Why this was the case is not specified but was probably linked to the high turnover of waitresses whose average length of service at the BBC was three years. Routh placed
waitresses in category 6 of the Census i.e. semi-skilled workers as opposed to un-skilled charwomen. The BBC appears to have viewed waitresses similarly.
357 Strachey, op.cit., p.112
358 Other terms were termination of notice with a week’s notice on either side and no wages payable during absence, unless the Corporation decided otherwise. R49/73/1: Staff Policy:
Catering Staff: Rates of Pay and Conditions of Service 1937-September 1942, Catering Manager, Letter of Appointment. Filed with documents from 1938
359 Same file: Catering Manager’s Statement: March 10th 1938
360 According to Routh the average wage for a waitress in 1924 was £113. No change was assumed for 1935. Routh, op.cit., p.95
361 R49/73/1, op.cit., Wade to Nicolls, January 11th 1934
362 Ariel, June 1936
363 R49/74: Staff Policy: Catering Staff: Wages 1933 - September 1941, Clarke to Wade, September 20th 1933
Under the terms of its marriage bar they were not to be exempt, like charwomen, rather they were to be dealt with as general married women “but with rather more elasticity in view of the difference in the economic conditions.”364
In 1936, the Catering Manager explained how kitchen vacancies were filled from applications from girls who lived in the vicinity. 365 Restaurant supervisors and waitresses were recruited by direct application, by recommendation and from applicants supplied by the Women’s branch of the Great Marlborough Street employment exchange. The Head of the Women’s Branch at the exchange kept in touch, suggesting “any likely candidates she comes across from time to time.” It is not known how these recruitment methods compared with other organisations, but it was probably similar.
The BBC’s catering staff, as with all house staff, were expected to reflect the respectability of the BBC. The charwomen’s smart appearance and the orderliness of the waitress in her laundered uniform were in line with an organisation that wanted to project probity and decorum, the BBC was keen to employ “a decent class of girl”.366 Although the status of house staff was lower than that of the BBC’s office-based employees, those with long service were viewed as part of the BBC family, for example, their photographs and signatures were included in the book commemorating Ten Years Service which would have involved a congratulatory meeting with Reith. Although it has not been possible to make direct comparisons with wages and conditions of service at other
comparable organisations, all the indications are that, at the BBC, these were certainly fair and very probably above average for the times.
364 Married Women Policy File 1, op.cit., Nicolls to Wade, June 16th 1933
365 R49/56/1: Recruitment of Staff: 1929-1941: File 1, Catering Manager to Clarke, November 26th 1936
366 Catering Staff: Wages 1933-1941, op.cit., Wade to Nicolls, January 11th 1934
Conclusion
When Dorothy Singer joined the BBC as a shorthand typist in 1936 she was thrilled to start work on £2.10s a week which she declared was “rather large and a lot more than most people.”367 Clare Lawson Dick was similarly “delighted” to be offered £2.15s when she came to the Corporation in 1935 as a Registry Clark.368 Misses Singer and Lawson Dick were bright, educated young women, keen to earn a decent wage and experience independent living in London. This chapter has argued that for waged women like these, work at the BBC was a largely positive experience. It was an attractive and prestigious place to work, rates of pay and conditions of service were comparatively good, female staff were largely respected and, for those in secretarial/ clerical roles with ambition,
promotion was a possibility.
Nevertheless, the BBC conformed to many of the employment stereotypes of the period and most of the work carried out by waged women was gender specific, with defined grades and rates of pay. The role of the Women’s Staff
Administrator, with the remit to oversee the female secretarial/clerical staff, was echoed in many other inter-war workplaces and confirms that these jobs were seen to necessitate a separate line of control. Miss Banks and Miss Freeman, the two women who held the position of WSA at the BBC, recruited, trained and allocated the weekly-paid women staff; they dealt with the women’s personal problems, they discussed irritations with their line-managers, they ensured conformity in the way letters were addressed and postage stamps used. Their domain, the General Office, was the starting place for new secretarial recruits who, although already trained and often experienced, might still spend up to three-months being inculcated into the workings of the BBC.
Shorthand typists and secretaries were crucial to the BBC with typists performing a fundamental job. The position of personal secretary was also pivotal. In a role that would now be termed a ‘PA’, these women managed their managers;
367 Dorothy Torry interview op.cit.
368 Clare Lawson Dick interview, op.cit.
organising them, caring for them and often advising and commenting on the work.
Clerks and waged assistants also performed a crucial job, whether filing important documents in the Registry or working on the layout of Radio Times. The rapid expansion of the BBC and the constant need for initiative and ideas gave scope for bright and ambitious shorthand typists, secretaries, clerks and waged assistants to extend the scope of their employment; many gained salaried status and a small but significant number rose to senior posts.
As the UK’s foremost media industry, the BBC’s telephonists provided an essential service. Communication was at the heart of the Company/Corporation which depended on dealings not only with the-great-and-the-good but also with members of the public. Telephonists provided the interface between outsiders and those who worked at the BBC. The development of the PBX reflected both the growing importance of the BBC and the Company/Corporation’s desire to project an efficient, modern image. From a single operator in basic conditions in early 1923, it had expanded, by 1939 into a state-of-the-art exchange with two supervisors and two dozen uniformed staff. The good pay and conditions of service indicate the BBC’s desire to recruit and retain the best staff. The Duplicating Section also provided a vital service to the BBC, its ramshackle development from a single machine at Savoy Hill to a modern, well-staffed, disciplined office in Broadcasting House was in keeping with the BBC’s growing bureaucratisation.
Office work in the inter-war years was frequently derided as grim, mundane and dead-end; Ray Strachey, in particular, warned of the perils of this. At the BBC, while the actual job of a BBC copy typist or duplicating operator might be monotonous, the work environment was far from dull. Scripts, announcers’ duty sheets and publicity material had an intrinsic interest and much was confidential.
Page two of the ‘Instructions to Women Clerical Staff’ included a clause about leakage of information and the dangers of passing on office gossip.369 Mary Lewis, for example, described her fascination in the pre-war confidential documents that came before the duplicating office. Production secretaries,
369 ‘Instructions to Women Clerical Staff’, op.cit.
telephonists and waitresses would certainly have been in direct contact with celebrities and prominent public figures; others might be passed in Reception areas or in the lifts.
By the standards of the day, the BBC’s female house staff were well treated.
However, the majority earned lower wages than other women in the Company/
Corporation and promotion and mobility were rare, and then only within the confines of the house staff hierarchy, perhaps to supervisor or forewoman. There is little evidence that the BBC’s manual staff mixed socially with their office-based colleagues. While the BBC Club, for example, had no ruling against manual workers being members, there is little indication that they joined or, indeed, would have been welcomed.
For a significant number of waged women, work at the BBC was a temporary affair. Clare Lawson Dick recalled how she never expected to stay for long; she simply collected her weekly wage and reserved her energy for going out in the evenings.370 For many women, a comfortable few years, earning a good wage in a congenial environment was more than satisfactory; promotion to a more
challenging job was not something they desired. No records were kept of the numbers of female secretarial/clerical staff recruited by the BBC, neither are there any official figures on length of service or resignations, however, marriage
appears to be the main reason why women left the BBC. Initially, weekly-paid women could choose to remain on the staff, but from 1932, they were the main casualties of the BBC marriage bar, as will now be examined.
370 Clare Lawson Dick interview, op.cit.