¹ P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice], T172/1098, A. Chamberlain to Sir S. Coates, M.P., 7 May 1920.

² See, for example, Humphries, B. V., Clerical unions in the civil service (Oxford, 1958)Google Scholar and Parris, H., Staff relations in the civil service: fifty years of Whitleyism (London, 1973)Google Scholar. See also Sutherland, G., ‘Administrators in education after 1870: patronage, professionalism, and expertise’ in Sutherland, G. (ed.), Studies in the growth of nineteenth century government (London and New York, 1972), pp. 263–85Google Scholar, for a description of the struggle between teachers and university men, representing various strata within the middle class, for control of the education inspectorate.

³ See Johnson, P. B., Land fit for heroes: the planning of British reconstruction, 1916–1919 (Chicago, 1968)Google Scholar and Abrams, P., ‘The failure of social reform’, Past and Present, XXIV (1963), 43–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ For a detailed account of this process in trade and industry, see Drake, B., Women in trade unions (London, 1920)Google Scholar; Kozak, M., ‘Women munition workers during the first world war with special reference to engineering’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Hull, 1976)Google Scholar; Lewenhak, S., Women and trade unions (London, 1977Google Scholar and Braybon, G., Women workers in the first world war (London and Totowa, N.J., 1981)Google Scholar.

⁵ P.R.O. T162/15/E988/1, correspondence between T.J. Macnamara, minister of labour, and Chamberlain, A., chancellor of the exchequer, 05–09 1920Google Scholar.

⁶ For the general history of women civil servants see Evans, D., Women and the civil service: a history of the development of the employment of women in the civil service, and a guide to present-day opportunitíes (London, 1934)Google Scholar; Martindale, H., Women servants of the state, 1870–1938: a history of women in the civil service (London, 1938)Google Scholar and Brimelow, E., ‘Women in the civil service’, Public Administration, LIX (1981), 313–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ For a discussion of the trends in the clerical sector from the end of the nineteenth century, albeit with emphasis on the losses experienced by men rather than the gains made by women, see Klingender, F. D., The condition of clerical labour in Britain (London, 1935)Google Scholar; Lockwood, D., The blackcoated worker: a study in class consciousness (London, 1969[1958])Google Scholar, and Anderson, G., Victorian clerks (Manchester, 1979)Google Scholar.

⁸ P.R.O. T1/11334/19291/11, memo by R. F. W[ilkins], 19 December 1910.

⁹ Spatial segregation was often taken to absurd lengths. The Treasury's women typists (‘lady typewriters’) were consigned to the attic and not allowed out even for lunch, and they were escorted to and fro in crocodile like schoolgirls by the head of the Registry. In the savings bank department of the post office, men and women worked in different rooms or if in the same room in different parts. ‘On one occasion allowance had not been made for an extremely tall youth who found himself looking over the partition every time he stood up to pull out a ledger. He was immediately christened “Giraffe” and either removed out of the danger zone or the partition was raised.’ (P.R.O., LAB2/1800/CEB600, memo by M. Law, 11 November 1918.)

¹⁰ T1/8645B/7507/92, Kempe, J. A., Treasury, to Hill, L., post office, 11 05 1892Google Scholar.

¹¹ T1/11180/705/10, memo, ‘Women and the pension system’, n.d. [1909].

¹² T1/8905A/19220/94, memo, J. A. Kempe, [October] 1894.

¹³ These women have been designated ‘quasi-administrative’ women for the sake of convenience; strictly speaking, no woman entered the first division as a recruit until 1923. These women were employed as supervisors of women staff (from 1872), inspectors (local government board from 1873, board of trade and home office from 1893, board of education from 1896), medical officers and the like.

¹⁴ T1/12265/50322 Pt. 1/18, committee on recruitment to the civil service after the war (Gladstone committee), minutes, 31st meeting, 13 November 1918.

¹⁵ Harrison, Brian has examined the interlocking segments of top male society – professional, political, administrative – which were cemented through a shared club life, where ‘localized misogyny’ was the prevaling attitude, in Separate spheres: the opposition to women's suffrage in Britain (London, 1978), pp. 98Google Scholar, 101 et passim. During the drafting of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Bill in 1919 (see below) one civil servant observed quite seriously that unless the wording of the moment were amended, ‘we shall be compelled to admit women to – say – the Athenaeum’. (P.R.O. LCO2/439, H. Godley, office of the parliamentary counsel, to SirSchuster, C., lord chancellor's office, 25 07 1919Google Scholar.)

¹⁶ The author discussed this curious reluctance of males to expose their rituals to beady female eyes with a senior woman civil servant, now retired. She told the story, possibly apocryphal, which she was told as a new recruit in the 1920s, about how two men in the old local government board, engaged for years in a bitter feud, shared, without speaking, a room so small that their desks touched. They communicated via memoranda to each other delivered by messengers. These proceedings would have quickly stopped, she said, had a woman been present: ‘She would have laughed them out of it!’ (Interview with Dame Enid Russell-Smith, Durham, 12 May 1982.)

¹⁷ T1/12194/34896/18, DrGordon, M. to SirRuggles-Brise, E., prison commission, 9 08 1918Google Scholar, and various memoranda by Treasury officers, including C. L. S[tocks], [January] 1919.

¹⁸ Data from Drake, table III; calculations by the author.

¹⁹ British Library, Gladstone papers, Add. MS 46, 103, fos. 271–2, E. Penrose, federation of university women, to H. Gladstone, 29 January 1919.

²⁰ T1/12265/50322 pt. 1/18, Gladstone committee, minutes, 34th meeting, 10 December 1918, evidence of O. King, civil service alliance.

²¹ T1/12147/13612/18, Gladstone committee, first interim report (28 02 1918), terms of reference.

²² T1/12265/50322 pt. 1/18, Gladstone committee, minutes, 31st meeting, 13 11 1918, evidence of J. A. Flynn, ministry of pensions.

²³ T1/12315/17863/19, Gladstone committee, final report (22 04 1919), para. 25.

²⁴ T1/12265/50322 pt. 1/18, Gladstone committee, see the evidence of Mrs I. Tennyson and the general discussion at the 32nd meeting, 20 11 1918.

²⁵ T1/12147/13612/18, Gladstone committee, second interim report (17 May 1918), para. 18.

²⁶ The exclusion of the capable who had not entered at an early age and risen through channels also affected men – businessmen and academics. Most departments would have liked to retain the dynamic outsiders who loaned their services to the state during wartime, but they were foiled, despite howls of protest, by the Treasury, which took the position that a bird in the bush was worth two in the hand. In this way, luminaries such as L. B. Namier and E. H. Carr did not become established civil servants.

²⁷ See LCO2/439 for the Treasury's activities at cabinet level.

²⁸ T162/53/E4114, opinion of H. Godley, office of the parliamentary counsel, [19 March] 1919.

²⁹ LCO2/439, statement by A. Bonar Law, chancellor of the exchequer, and Lord Birkenhead, lord chancellor, to a deputation of women's societies, 19 August 1919. The Treasury was embarrassed by the claim for retention after marriage made by Mrs S. Druitt of the national health insurance commission (Ireland). She had married after the passage of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 but before the enabling order in council and thus she claimed that she could stay on legally. The Treasury huffily stated that since civil servants were employed ‘at pleasure’ she had no such right (T162/53/E4114).

³⁰ T162/822/E3754/O3/1, Sir R. Newman, M.P., in the debate on the Women (Employment) Bill 1927, 29 April 1927.

³¹ T1/12265/50322 pt. 1/18, Gladstone committee, minutes, 32nd meeting, 20 November 1918, statement by G. E. P. Murray, post office.

³² For a summary of this position and criticisms of its weaknesses, see P.R.O. RECO1/883, The business of government (‘reconstruction problems’, no. 38; 3 vols. London, 1919), 1, 4 and 9; II, 5 et passim, and PP 1918 Cd. 9230 xii, ministry of reconstruction, committee on the machinery of government (Haldane committee), report.

³³ T1/12265/50322 pt. 1/18, Gladstone committee, minutes, 31st meeting, 13 November 1918, see the evidence of N. F. Warren Fisher.

³⁴ Ibid., 32nd meeting, 20 November 1918, evidence of Sir S. Leathes, civil service commission.

³⁵ T162/812/E828/3, G. E. Bastable, Cove (Hants) Branch, British Legion, to the Treasury, 9 April 1923. They refused to recognize the legitimacy of exemptions from military service – reservation for work of national importance, medical unfitness, imprisonment in enemy countries.

³⁶ T162/812/E828/1, Pte B. Smith to the Treasury, n.d. [September/October 1920]. He added blithely that unemployment would not matter to women: ‘The hardship thus caused to the majority of the women displaced would be small compared with that caused to ex-soldiers if discharged. The women in most instances would be able to live with parents or relatives and would have the Unemployment benefit to help them until better times came. The ex-servicemen,… have wives, children, or others dependent on them, and their dismissal would mean grave hardship to a number of people.’

³⁷ T172/1667, deputation of the A.E.C.S. to F. W. Pethick-Lawrence, financial secretary to the Treasury, 22 October 1929, statement by Maj. Maclean.

³⁸ T1/12265/50322 pt 1/18, Gladstone committee, minutes, 38th meeting, 29 January 1919.

³⁹ That is, the interdepartmental committee on the employment of disabled men in government departments. Its report is in P.R.O. CSC5/114. I am indebted to Dr N. G. Cox for this reference.

⁴⁰ One example indicates the sort of carelessness that went on. An ex-sergeant in the Loyal North Lanes, regiment was turned down because he was too old and ‘not quite up to standard’ and furthermore because he used abusive language to his interviewers. A week later the officer in charge of vetting was called before T. J. Macnamara, the minister of labour, and asked to reconsider (‘I know I can't force you to and I don't want to influence you in any way…’) because Macnamara had personal ties with the regiment (his father had commanded it), and ‘I have yet to learn that any N.C.O. who served in the Regiment was ever incompetent or dirty’. Under protest the officer gave way and this son of the regiment entered the ranks of the civil service. (Ibid., Col. A. Hay to the civil service commission, 21 May 1920.)

⁴¹ In T162/252/7060/1 Mr Joy of the post office reported in November 1921 that only 20 per cent of men passed for temporary clerical posts approached the genuine standard, and they were much less efficient than the women they replaced: in writing assistant posts ‘in capacity and efficiency two temporary women are…equivalent to three average ex-service men…’.

⁴² The introduction of a distinction between ‘competitive’ (for immediate appointment) and ‘qualifying’ (for subsequent appointment) standard was a novelty in so far as in previous examinations the number of appointments was determined by the number of places to be filled and not by the number of candidates thought suitable to fill them. In addition, candidacy lapsed after a short period – at the maximum, a year.

⁴³ That is, the committee on the appointment of ex-servicemen to posts in the civil service. Its first, second and third [interim] reports are in T162/25/E1634/04, Annexe.

⁴⁴ That is, the chancellor of the exchequer's committee on the initial salary of ‘Lytton’ entrants and the appointment of ex-servicemen to posts in the civil service. Its first and second [interim] and final reports are in T162/25/E1634/04, Annexe.

⁴⁵ That is, the royal commission on the civil service. The issue of the temporary pool is dealt with in ch. xiv of its report (London, 1931).

⁴⁶ Interview with Mrs Elizabeth Parsons, London, 25 May 1982.

⁴⁷ Tomlin commission, ch. xiv, para. 557.

⁴⁸ Data from the following sources (computations by the author): PP 1919 Cmd. 316, xxxiv, 1255–7 and 1926 Cmd. 2734, xxi, 839–41.

⁴⁹ T162/25/EI634/O4, Annexe, ‘Statement submitted on behalf of the candidates at the open competition…’.

⁵⁰ London School of Economics, Violet Markham papers, 5/4, Constance Smith [factory inspector, home office] to V. Markham, 27 November 1922, and V. Markham to R. Wildy, 30 December 1922.

⁵¹ Kelsall, R. K., Higher civil servants in Britain: from 1870 to the present day (London, 1955), p. 171Google Scholar.

⁵² Data from the following sources (computations by the author): Drake, table III; PP 1928–9 Cmd. 3189, xiv, 771–3; 1937–8 Cmd. 5816, xx, 805.

⁵³ T162/308/E28065/1, temporary staffs committee, national Whitley council, memo [c. February 1932] (calculations by the author).

⁵⁴ T162/47/E3506/1, civil service national Whitley council, joint committee on the organisation of the civil service, report, paras. 8, 16, II et passim.

⁵⁵ T162/80/E8242, P. Strachey, joint committee on women in the civil service, to Hilton Young, Treasury, 11 March 1922.

⁵⁶ T162/47/E3506/1, memo, W. R. Fraser, 20 August 1920.

⁵⁷ Ibid., reorganisation committee report, para. 67, and civil service arbitration board, Memorandum of settlement by agreement, para. 4(1).

⁵⁸ Ibid., M. G. Ramsay, Treasury, to the civil service arbitration board, 23 March 1921.

⁵⁹ Ibid. About which the Federation of Women Civil Servants was very bitter: ‘I am directed by my Committee to state that they have a strong objection to permanent women being asked to undergo a further educational test which is not being applied to permanent men’. D. Smyth to M. G. Ramsay, Treasury, 25 September 1920.

⁶⁰ Evans, p. 65.

⁶¹ T1/12557/20003/20, memo, R. R. S[cott], 19 February 1920, and memo, B. W. G[ilbert], 14 April 1920.

⁶² T1/12601/23971/20, L. E. Sledmere, board of trade, to the Treasury, 29 May 1920.

⁶³ T162/757/E1643/4–6. The case ran from 1922 until 1945.

⁶⁴ T162/289/E27987, memo, ‘Posts reserved to women’, [c. August 1932].

⁶⁵ Tomlin commission, report, ch. xiv, para. 398.

⁶⁶ T162/284/E26475/05, committee III (position of women), report, [April?] 1932.

⁶⁷ T162/494/E3754/012/02, women's questions (review) committee, minutes, 1st meeting, 27 July 1938; minutes, 2nd meeting, 28 March 1938, statement of T. H. Boyd.

⁶⁸ T162/266/E26089, memo, H. Parker, 11 August 1931.

⁶⁹ It must be stressed that this restrictiveness was structural and only very rarely personal. Most women interviewed said that they were treated politely and that the danger was that they would be ‘spoiled’ by male indulgence. Dame Enid Russell-Smith, who entered via the first joint open competitive examination for the administrative grade in 1925, was taken out to lunch by her male colleagues at the ministry of health in succession (and presumably in order of seniority). She noted that she ‘was particularly careful to make sure that [she] undertook a full share of exacting or unpleasant jobs, that [she] was never demanding or difficult, and that [she] was generally helpful and easy to work with’. Dame Enid Russell-Smith to the author, 21 April 1982.

⁷⁰ P.R.O. T199/56, J. Rae, Treasury, to heads of departments, 18 January 1933.

⁷¹ Kelsall, p. 175.

⁷² Martindale, p. 107.

⁷³ LCO2/439, deputation from women's societies to A. Bonar Law, chancellor of the exchequer, and Lord Birkenhead, lord chancellor, 19 August 1919.

⁷⁴ LCO2/388. A new argument, that of pious eugenicism, was added to the Treasury's armoury in this period: ‘Women civil servants, if married, must deliberately endeavour to remain childless or will be forced to neglect either their children or their duties to the Service or both. Either neglect, it is submitted, is contrary to public policy. The social effects will obviously be undesirable.’ ‘Memorandum by the civil service commissioners and the Treasury on the bill to remove certain restraints and disabilities imposed upon women’ [c. 1919].

⁷⁵ T164/70/14. In his memo of 26 June 1927, E. E. Bridges suggested that the Treasury should not furnish data to women's societies, etc., as it ‘rather invites the questioner to come back and ask to have the information brought up to date’.

⁷⁶ Ibid.Data enclosed in F. W. Pethick-Lawrence to J. W. Bowen, M.P., 3 July 1930 (computations by the author).

⁷⁷ Tomlin commission, report, paras. 438 and 440.

⁷⁸ T162/980/E35805, statement by Sir J. Rae at an interdepartmental conference on the Jennings case, 22 December 1937. I am indebted to N. G. Cox for this reference.

⁷⁹ See Parris.

⁸⁰ Brimelow, p. 313 et passim. In 1980 women accounted for 45.9 per cent of the non-industrial civil service – 3.8 per cent of the open structure at under-secretary level and above; 7.3 per cent of principals/senior principals/assistant secretaries (roughly equivalent to the interwar administrative grade); 39 per cent of executive officer grades; 65.9 per cent of the clerical officer grade; 80.0 per cent of the clerical assistant grade (equivalent to the interwar writing assistant grade); 99.0 per cent of the typing grades.

⁸¹ Markham papers, 5/4, M. Curtis to V. Markham, 7 February 1923.