COCKNEY WAR GIRLS

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2976, 13 January 1917, Page 11

COCKNEY WAR GIRLS

HUMOROUS SCENES IN THE BIG MUNITION FACTORIES. Mr. Hall Oaino gives sonio happy human. sketches of the' Cockney girl— "Tommy's on-xi sister"—applying for work in the big munition factories. Here she comes, writes Mr.- Oaine, sailing into the superintendent's offico, Tommy's sister, wearing it hat as big as a fish-basket, and with her pretty face painted red as the sun with rouge. Then follows a scene. "Hello! what do yon want?" "AVork, miss." "You couldn't work!" "Couldn't IP Just you try me, miss," and up goes the chin with u curl of the saucy mouth. There is silence for a moment. Then the superintendent says: "Now that I look at you I <Jon't think you would bo a bad-looking girl if you hadn't such a dirty face." "AVhat! Dirty fic©? lie?" "Go and wash your face, and then perhaps we can do something." A forewoman at a great factory, having received notice of the coming of Zeppelins, removed her girls to the wash-room, where somo of them began to cry. "Stop that," she cried, but the hysterical girls would not or could not stop. fk> she piclccd fchem lip, one hy one, and put them to sit in the wasb-basins that lined two sides of the room, and then called in a number of men to look at them. The lights wore switched on for a moment; the weeping ones were seen leaning their backs against tho walls and dangling their legs above tho floor; there was a general peal of laughter; and then the girls were lifted down and the hysteria was gone. Tommy's sister is often n war-bridp, having been married tho day before her soldier was called up, and sho frequently tells hor chums in the canteen that '"When my 'Arry oomos baek I won't be arf glad, not me." One day lately in a North London factory a girl askpd for a frugal hour off to met married in, and promised faithfully to return as soon as tho ceremony was over. She returned all right, and she had boon married, too, hut as her "Fella had gone back on her" she had had to find another man in tho meantime. "I said f was going (o get miinicd, and T couldn't disappoint the girls, could 1?" she said.