‘New and Important Careers’: Salaried Women at the BBC

Murphy, Kate

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-49173-2_5

Kate Murphy²

247 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter turns to the BBC’s salaried women, predominantly middle class, highly educated and career-motivated. These were women who worked alongside their male colleagues as ‘equals’ in jobs as diverse as adult education officer, Empire Talks organiser, night hostess, BBC cashier and Radio Times assistant. Many held significant posts and the chapter focuses on a number of influential women such as the BBC Librarian, Florence Milnes; the drama producer Mary Hope Allen; the Assistant Editor of The Listener Janet Adam Smith, and the social documentary maker, Olive Shapley. Although salaried women were ostensibly employed on equal terms with men, hidden sexual discrimination was commonplace and many were recruited to lower starting positions, earned less pay and were offered fewer promotional opportunities.

Evening News, 30 June 1936, ‘The Women of the BBC’ by Elise Sprott.

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Notes

1.
Woman’s Own, 21 January 1933.
2.
For example, ‘Important Women of the BBC’s Big House’, The Evening News, 30 November 1934, ‘The Women at Broadcasting House’, Good Housekeeping, August 1935, ‘The Women Who Rule the Air Waves’, Radio Times, 12 November 1937.
3.
Richard Lambert (1940) Ariel and All his Quality (London: Gollanz) pp. 136–7.
4.
BBC/WAC:R62/100/1-3: Salary Information (staff) 1923–39.
5.
Guy Routh (1965) Occupation and Pay in Great Britain, 1906–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p. 24.
6.
Evening News, 30 June 1936.
7.
Adrian Bingham (2004) Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press in Inter-War Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press) pp. 64–8.
8.
Ray Strachey (1935) Careers and Openings for Women: A Survey of Women’s Employment and a Guide for Those Seeking Work (London: Faber and Faber) p. 45.
9.
Martha Vicinus (1985) Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women (London: Virago) pp. 171–7.
10.
Vera Brittain (1928) Women’s Work in Modern England (London: Noel Douglas); Margaret Cole, ed. (1936) The Road to Success: 20 Essays on the Choice of Career for Women (London: Methuen); Ray Strachey, Careers and Openings.
11.
Winifred Holtby (1934) Women and a Changing Civilisation (London: Lane and Bodley Head) p. 83. Holtby erroneously referred to Mary Agnes Hamilton as a Director of the BBC, she was in fact a BBC Governor.
12.
J.A.R. Cairns (1928) Careers for Girls (London: Hutchinson) p. 54. See also Angela V. John (2013) Turning the Tide: The Life of Lady Rhondda (Cardigan: Parthian) pp. 276–8.
13.
See Helen Glew (2009) ‘Women’s Employment in the General Post Office, 1914–1939’ (Unpublished doctoral dissertation: University of London); Alison Oram (1996) Women Teachers and Feminist Politics 1900–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press).
14.
BBC/WAC:R3/3/2: Control Board Minutes, 1926, 16 November 1926. This was reiterated by Goldsmith in 1928, ‘The principle of women working with equal status is accepted’, 27 November 1928.
15.
Women’s Leader and Common Cause, 2 January 1931.
16.
At John Lewis these female employees still faced indirect discrimination. Judy Faraday (2009) ‘A Kind of Superior Hobby: Women Managers in the John Lewis Partnership 1918–1950’ (Unpublished MPhil dissertation: University of Wolverhampton) p. 38.
17.
Radio Times, 16 November 1934, ‘Women’s Broadcasting Number’.
18.
BBC/WAC:R49/231/1: Grades and Salaries, Monthly (Except Grade ‘D’), 20 January 1937.
19.
Ross McKibbin (1998) Classes and Cultures: England 1918–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press) p. 44.
20.
Virginia Woolf (1938/2000) Three Guineas (Oxford: Oxford University Press) p. 217.
21.
The Corporation did not pay excessive salaries. Reith expected staff to be motivated by public service, not high pay. In comparison with barristers, doctors, dentists and civil servants, most senior BBC male employees earned modestly.
22.
Ray Strachey, Careers and Openings, p. 216; Dorothy Evans (1934) Women and the Civil Service (London: Pitman) p. 133. In 1934, 744 women were employed in the Civil Service Executive Grades.
23.
Routh, Occupation and Pay, p. 69. Brian Abel-Smith (1960) A History of the Nursing Profession (London: Heinemann) p. 276.
24.
Cole, The Road to Success, p. 241; Vyrnwy Biscoe (1932) 300 Careers for Women (London: Lovat Dickson) p. 18.
25.
Cole, The Road to Success, pp. 115, 201.
26.
Faraday, ‘A Kind of Superior Hobby’, pp. 31–3, 51–2.
27.
BBC/WAC:L1/784/1: Janet Quigley Staff File, Anderson to Carpendale, 18 December 1929; BBC/WAC: L1/2142/1: Ursula Eason Staff File, Brewer to Clarke, 13 November 1933.
28.
Reith Diaries, 2 January 1923.
29.
Reith Diaries, 19 January 1933.
30.
BBC/WAC:R49/31/1: Report on Recruitment of Staff 1934 by D.B. Mair and Ernest Barker.
31.
Olive Shapley (1996) Broadcasting: A Life (London: Scarlet Press) p. 33.
32.
See BBC/WAC:R49/27/1-3: Appointment Boards: Minutes.
33.
BBC/WAC:R49/709/1: Internal Instruction 415, Staff Training Department, 24 November 1937.
34.
BBC/WAC:R1/69/3: Board of Governors, DG’s Reports and Papers, Notes on Procedure in Regard to Staff Appointments for Submission to Barker and Mair, 8 November 1933.
35.
Radio Pictorial, 12 March 1937.
36.
Women’s Library/Women’s Employment Federation: 6/WEF/487, Executive Minutes 1933–37, 9 May 1935. WEF was founded in 1933 under the Secretaryship of Ray Strachey.
37.
For example, WEF: Exec Minutes, 13 June 1935, 8 October 1936.
38.
BBC/WAC:L1/705/1: Florence Milnes Staff File, Ian Jacob speech, 24 July 1958.
39.
Strachey, Careers and Openings, p. 228.
40.
The Library World, 1959, pp. 171–5.
41.
BBC/WAC:R13/301: Secretariat: Library.
42.
Radio Times, 14 September 1934.
43.
Radio Pictorial, 13 March 1936.
44.
The creation of a separate News Information Library in 1934 under Horatio Batchelor, who had held a similar post at The Times, was a source of great disappointment to Milnes. The Oral History of the BBC: Elizabeth Barker interview, 9 May 1983. Barker was recruited to assist Batchelor.
45.
Reith Diaries, 15 March, 1924.
46.
Evening News, 30 November 1934; Woman’s Own, 21 January 1933; Daily Dispatch, 2 March 1933.
47.
Radio Pictorial, 21 December 1934.
48.
Lambert, Ariel and All his Quality, p. 137. In 1937, the staff of 16 included five salaried Assistants, five shorthand typists, five clerks and a ‘boy’: just two of the clerks were men. BBC Staff List, 1937.
49.
BBC/WAC:L1/2,160/1, Anna Instone Staff File; Marie Slocombe: Sound Archives Librarian, available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/archive_pioneers/6501.shtml (accessed 10 March 2015).
50.
Asa Briggs (1965) The Golden Age of Wireless: The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press) p. 36.
51.
Morning Post, 18 May 1936.
52.
Briggs, Golden Age of Wireless, p. 35.
53.
Radio Times, 14 December 1934.
54.
Radio Pictorial, 25 June 1937 to 16 July 1937.
55.
Radio Pictorial, 25 June 1937. Melville’s assertion was that, because she was too busy to work on the orchestral arrangements for the BBC Wireless Chorus and Orchestra, Arnold had taken her place.
56.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Doris Arnold, entry 105932 by Kate Murphy.
57.
BBC/WAC:L1/15/1 Doris Arnold Staff File (forthwith DAF), Ad.Ex. to Graves, 2 April 1928; Prod.Ex. to Ad. Ex., 16 April 1928.
58.
DAF, Variety Ex. to Beadle, 13 January 1936.
59.
DAF, Arnold to Clarke, 12 September 1933; Clarke to Ed.Ex., 30 September 1933.
60.
DAF, Arnold to Freeman, 19 July 1935.
61.
BBC/WAC:R34/600/02: Programme Board Minutes, File 2, 19 January 1925. Salary Information.
62.
The history of Children’s Hour is told in Wallace Grevatt (1988) BBC Children’s Hour: A Celebration of Those Magical Years (Lewes: The Book Guild). See also Asa Briggs (1961) The Birth of Broadcasting, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom Vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press) pp. 253–4, 258–62.
63.
BBC/WAC:CO9:BBCo: Station Directors Meetings: Minutes, 11 December 1923.
64.
See, for example, Jane Lewis (1990) The Politics of Motherhood: Child and Maternal Welfare in England 1900–1939 (London: Croom Helm) pp. 89–102; Oram, Women Teachers, pp. 17–21.
65.
Shapley, Broadcasting: A Life, pp. 40–5.
66.
Shapley, Broadcasting: A Life, p. 37.
67.
Radio Pictorial, 21 June 1935.
68.
BBC/WAC:L1/328/1: Christine Orr Staff File, Letter of Application, 7 October 1936.
69.
For a discussion on women advertisers in the interwar years see Fiona Hackney (2011) ‘“They Opened Up a Whole New World”: Feminism, Modernity and the Feminine Imagination in Women’s Magazines, 1919–1939’ (Unpublished doctoral dissertation: University of London) pp. 72–80.
70.
Kate Murphy (2001) Firsts: The Livewire Book of British Women Achievers (London: The Women’s Press) pp. 38–9.
71.
Greenhow, Relph and Scott were appointed on salaries of £312, £400 and £400 respectively. Prance on a salary of £300. At her death she earned £475.
72.
BBC/WAC:R13/321: Advertising Department, Goldsmith to Carpendale, 6 September 1933.
73.
J.A.R. Cairns (1928) Careers for Girls (London: Hutchinson) p. 170.
74.
BBC/WAC:R49/10/1: Advertising Department: Grades and Bonus System.
75.
Ariel, June 1936.
76.
Carvell was designated Advertising Representative.
77.
R49/27/1-3: Appointment Boards, 21 March 1938.
78.
This was not uncommon in the interwar years. See Alison Oram (2007) ‘Her Husband Was a Woman!’ Women’s Gender-Crossing in Modern British Popular Culture (London: Routledge).
79.
Briggs, Birth of Broadcasting, pp. 280–1; BBC Handbook, 1928, pp. 115–16.
80.
Briggs, Golden Age of Wireless, pp. 160–9.
81.
BBC/WAC:L1/659/1:Mary Hope Allen Staff File 1 (hereafter MHAF:1), Allen to Nicolls, 17 October 1933.
82.
MHAF:1, Jeffrey to Eckersley, 4 January 1928.
83.
The Times, 9 April 2001.
84.
Mary Hope Allen Staff File 2, (hereafter MHAF:2), Eckersley to Reith, 14 June 1929. The brief of the Section was to find experimental new ways of making radio features and drama. See Paddy Scannell and David Cardiff (1991) A Social History of British Broadcasting, 1922–1939 (London: Basil Blackwood) pp. 135–40. See also David Hendy (2012) ‘Biography and the Emotions as a Missing “Narrative” in Media History: A Case Study of Lance Sieveking and the Early BBC’, Media History, 18 (3–4), 361–78.
85.
MHAF:2, Gielgud to Reith, 4 February 1930.
86.
News Chronicle, 15 August 1939.
87.
Maurice Gorham (1948) Sound and Fury (London: Percival Marshall) p. 35; Radio Times, 26 February 1932.
88.
MHAF:2, Gielgud to Eckersley, 17 September 1929, 4 February 1930; Confidential Report February 1931, 6 September 1932, Gielgud to Carpendale.
89.
Radio Times, 8 September 1936.
90.
The Listener, 22 April 1936.
91.
Mary Hope Allen Staff File 2, Confidential Report, 1937.
92.
Radio Pictorial, 8 March 1935.
93.
Radio Times, 25 April 1937.
94.
Radio Pictorial, 17 July 1936.
95.
For example, Boys and Girls of History; Twenty Centuries of Travel: A Simple Survey of British History and Cities and their Stories: An Introduction to the Study of European History were all published between 1926 and 1927.
96.
This had severe repercussions later for her pension.
97.
Radio Times, 16 January 1928.
98.
BBC Year Book, 1950.
99.
‘Faith, Hope and Clarity’, broadcast on 4 April 1934.
100.
Radio Times, 28 September 1931.
101.
Radio Times, 6 February 1935.
102.
BBC/WAC:R94/2,962: Rhoda Power Talks File 1 (hereafter RPF:1), Power to Somerville, 30 May 1936.
103.
RPF:1, Cruttwell to Somerville, 16 July 1937.
104.
Rhoda Power Talks File 2, Somerville to Mallon, 16 March 1943.
105.
National Library of Scotland: Janet Adam Smith papers, ACC12342 (hereafter JAS papers), 122, Letter to Lambert, 7 November 1930.
106.
Oral History of the BBC: Janet Adam Smith interview, 1 August 1979.
107.
JAS papers, 122, letter to Lambert, 7 November 1930.
108.
See Asa Briggs (1965) The Golden Age of Wireless: The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press) pp. 280–92; Lambert, Ariel and All his Quality, pp. 91–108.
109.
The Listener, 21 January 1965, Janet Adam Smith, ‘T S Eliot and The Listener’.
110.
JAS papers, 183, Gladstone Murray to Janet Adam Smith, 17 January 1935.
111.
JAS papers, 122, letter to Lambert, 7 November 1930.
112.
Scannell and Cardiff, A Social History of British Broadcasting, pp. 334–5.
113.
Scannell and Cardiff, pp. 344–9.
114.
Shapley, Broadcasting: A Life, p. 52.
115.
Radio Times. 6 February 1938. Along with Wilfred Pickles, Littlewood and Miller regularly presented Shapley’s programmes.
116.
Radio Times, 2 September 1938.
117.
Shapley, Broadcasting: A Life, p. 52.
118.
Shapley, pp. 53–4.
119.
Radio Times, 23 June 1939. Also in 1939, Shapley made They Speak for Themselves about the work of Mass Observation.
120.
Shapley, Broadcasting: A Life, p. 54.
121.
During the Second World War, Shapley went to the US with her husband and developed the programme Fortnightly Newsletter.
122.
Mary Agnes Hamilton, ‘Changes in Social Life’ in Ray Strachey, ed. (1936) Our Freedom and its Results by Five Women (London: Hogarth Press) p. 264.
123.
This necessity to constantly prove oneself was true of many professional women at this time. See, for example, Oram, Women Teachers, p. 84. Alix Meynell (1984) Public Servant, Private Women: An Autobiography (London: Victor Gollanz) p. 86.
124.
Hilda Matheson Letters, 1 May 1929. Matheson described Fielden as being ‘very naughty about poetry readings because he is bored with them and forgets to see about copyright and things’, 15 January 1929.
125.
See, for example, L1/1698/1: Beatrice Hart Staff File, Broadbent to Wade, 9 September 1933. In Miss Hart’s case, overwork led to illness.
126.
Val Gielgud, History of the BBC: BBC Memories, available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/bbc-memories/val-gielgud (accessed 6 May 2015).
127.
D.L. LeMahieu (1988) A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communications and the Cultivated Mind in Britain between the Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press) pp. 10–11.
128.
Noel Annan (1985) Our Age: The Generation that Made Post-War Britain (London: Harper Collins) p. 12.
129.
Winifred Holtby (1934) Women and a Changing Civilisation (London: Lane and Bodley Head) pp. 97–105. Vera Brittain also eloquently described this in her article ‘The Whole Duty of Women, Time and Tide, 23 February 1928, in Paul Berry and Alan Bishop, eds. (1985) Testament of a Generation: The Journalism of Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby (London: Virago) pp. 120–3.
130.
Salary Information Files. Of the 702 men, only 60 had joined as weekly paid staff.
131.
Val Gielgud (1947) Years of the Locust (London: Nicholson and Watson); Eric Maschwitz (1957) No Chip on my Shoulder (London: Herbert Jenkins); BBC/WAC:S61: Special Collections: Autobiographical Sketches of Lance Sieveking.
132.
Gielgud on £450, Maschwitz on £325, Sieveking on £600. Sieveking and Maschwitz joined the BBC in 1926, Gielgud in 1928.
133.
LeMahieu, A Culture for Democracy, p. 183. For a discussion on the ‘old boys’ network see, for example, Krista Cowman and Louise Jackson eds. (2005) Women and Work Culture in Britain c. 1850–1950 (Aldershot: Ashgate) p. 15. This is much of the premise of Noel Annan, Our Age, pp. 26–68.
134.
Virginia Woolf noted men’s propensity to appoint men. Woolf, Three Guineas, pp. 217–31.
135.
Strachey, ed., Our Freedom, p. 257.
136.
BBC/WAC:R13/216/1: Schools Broadcasting Department, Reith to Carpendale, 25 May 1935.
137.
Val Gielgud, Years of the Locust, p. 46. ‘Lance Sieveking urged my intelligence upon Roger Eckersley, at that time Director of Programmes. Eric Maschwitz murmured of my merits into the ear of Gladstone Murray, Director of Public Relations’.
138.
Sieveking, Autobiographical Sketches, p. 50.
139.
BBC/WAC:R49/27/1-3: Appointment Boards.
140.
This list was of all vacancies between 6 February and 12 April for which women had not been asked to apply. BBC/WAC:R49/739: Staff Vacancies, Pym to Clarke, 21 April 1939.
141.
Pym to Nicolls, 28 April 1939.
142.
BBC/WAC:R49/940: Women Assistants, 1926, Reith to All Station Directors, 30 April 1926.
143.
For example, Nicolls and Clarke had been Station Directors.
144.
BBC/WAC:R3/3/5: Control Board Minutes, 26 March 1929.
145.
Control Board Minutes, 15 November 1932.
146.
Mary Agnes Hamilton (1944) Remembering my Good Friends (London: Jonathan Cape) p. 283.
147.
Of the 128 women included in Salary Information only 19 had worked in more than one area of work during the interwar years and only a handful in more than two.
148.
See, for example, Winifred Holtby, ‘Fear and the Woman who Earns’, News Chronicle, 9 March 1934; Vera Brittain, ‘Women still wait for Equality’, Daily Herald, 26 March 1938. Both quoted in Berry and Bishop, Testament of a Generation, pp. 81–3; 144–6. Strachey, Careers and Openings, pp. 69–76. In the Clerical/ Executive grades of the Civil Service although starting salaries were the same, the rate of increase for women was less and they were ultimately paid three-quarters or four-fifths the salary of their male colleagues. The Burnham Salary Scales for teachers specified that women should earn 80 per cent that of men. Glew, ‘Women in the GPO’, p. 89, Oram, Women Teachers, p. 25.
149.
For those in Grade C, the proportion was more equal, 35.5 per cent of men compared to 32 per cent women. These figures are derived from two sources: Salary Information Files and BBC/WAC:R49/231/1.
150.
Shapley, Broadcasting: A Life, p. 34.
151.
Strachey, Our Freedom, p. 164.
152.
BBC/WAC:R49/605: Standardisation of Salaries, Pym to Nicolls, 11 November 1938.
153.
Janet Adam Smith interview.
154.
BBC/WAC:L1/328/1: Christine Orr Staff File, Orr to Dinwiddie, 7 October 1936; Orr to Pym, 13 November 1936.
155.
Salary Information Files.
156.
DAF, Beadle to Clarke, 11 October 1933.
157.
MHAF: 2, Undated letter from Allen to Reith, c. March 1931.
158.
BBC/WAC:L1/1821/1: Geoffrey Bridson Staff File, Confidential Report 1938.
159.
BBC/WAC:L1/1,783/1: Olive Shapley Staff File, Pym to Nicolls, 8 June 1939.
160.
BBC/WAC:R49/177: Staff Policy: Equal Pay for Men and Women, 1943–46, Pym to Haley, 16 May 1944.
161.
BBC/WAC:L1/799/1, Mary Candler Staff File 1 (hereafter MCF), Confidential Report 1931.
162.
MCF, Confidential Report 1931.
163.
MCF, Clarke to Nicolls, 1 August 1933.
164.
MCF, Candler to Howgill, 21 March 1934.
165.
MCF, Howgill to Nicolls, 6 April 1934.
166.
MCF, Confidential Reports, 1936, 1937. In April 1939, Candler earned £450, Marr £580.
167.
Strachey, Our Freedom, p. 141.
168.
Margaret Cole (1938) Marriage: Past and Present (London: Dent and Son) p. 153.

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Murphy, K. (2016). ‘New and Important Careers’: Salaried Women at the BBC. In: Behind the Wireless. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49173-2_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49173-2_5
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