The Women Who Collected Britain’s Rubbish While the Men Were Away at War
One wartime job I had never really thought about was rubbish collection. Women’s wartime work is usually associated with factories, farms and the railways, so I was surprised to find women emptying dustbins and sweeping streets too.
Women of the St Pancras Women’s Street Cleaning Brigade with their dust carts, London, 1942. Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer. Imperial War Museums, D 8942. Public Domain – expired Crown Copyright. Via Wikimedia Commons.
As men were called into the armed forces or moved into other wartime work, councils began losing some of the people who had carried out these everyday jobs before the war. The rubbish still had to be collected. In January 1943, the subject even reached Parliament. Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour, confirmed that dustmen were not generally in a reserved occupation and said that the work could be carried out by men over military age or by women.
By then, women were already doing it. In London, women worked as street cleaners and refuse collectors, pushing handcarts, sweeping gutters and clearing rubbish from the roads. The St Pancras Women’s Street Cleaning Brigade was working in the capital in 1942, doing a job that before the war would overwhelmingly have been regarded as men’s work.
Mrs G. Warren of the St Pancras Women’s Street Cleaning Brigade sweeping a London street, 1942. Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer. Imperial War Museums, D 8944. Public Domain – expired Crown Copyright. Via Wikimedia Commons.
It was hard physical labour. Many household dustbins were made from galvanised metal and had to be lifted by hand, and they could be made considerably heavier by ash and cinders from coal fires. A full bin could be extremely heavy. It certainly makes putting a wheelie bin out at the kerb seem rather easy by comparison.
The contents of those bins were changing too. The government wanted households to waste as little useful material as possible, and salvage campaigns asked people to separate paper, metal, bones, rags and other items. One official campaign instructed householders that paper, metal and bones should not go into the dustbin at all, but should be put out separately for collection.
Bones might sound like an especially strange thing to save now, but they had uses in wartime industry. Waste paper was collected for salvage and scrap metal was reused. Kitchen waste was useful as well, particularly for feeding pigs and hens. Even some of the things people would normally have thrown away were now being saved and collected.
That meant more sorting and more collecting for the people doing the rounds. Street cleaners also had the dirt and debris of wartime towns to contend with, and in places affected by air raids they could find themselves working among damaged buildings and piles of rubble.
There was little glamour in carrying bins, shovelling rubbish or spending hours with a broom and handcart, particularly in bad weather. It was simply one of those jobs that could not be left undone for very long.
These are the Home Front stories I particularly enjoy finding. They remind me that, despite everything going on, somebody still had to deal with all the ordinary jobs of everyday life. Rubbish did not disappear because there was a war on, and neither did dirty streets.
Women were among the people helping to keep those everyday services going.
I think I might complain a little less next time I have to drag my own bin outside.
Had you ever heard about women working as refuse collectors and street cleaners during the war?