LEISURE SACRIFICED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20128, 23 December 1939, Page 12

LEISURE SACRIFICED

MINISTRY GIRL TYPISTS DO NOT GO HOME ON DUTY ALL NIGHT LONDON, Dec. 1. One thing that is done efficiently at the Ministry of Information is typing those communiques. They may be obscure, b.ut at least they are typed without a mistake. The Ministry took from Whitehall an efficient group of trained young women, as discreet as they are accurate, to pass out what bit of news is allowed to reach the outer world. When they joined the staff of the Ministry of Information, these girls sacrificed their leisure and their private lives. Many of them finish work at midnight, and owing to the black-out cannot get home to the suburbs. Night after night they sleep in a small corrugated iron hut in the grounds of the Ministry buildings. They take their meals in the Ministry canteen. The hut is heavily soieened, and has camp beds with spring mattresses, and blue and pink blankets;, Mrs. G. A. Aynsley, as matron In charge, sees that the girls sleep well. When a reporter went there in the middle of yesterday afternoon two girls were still sleeping. They had been up all night typing out the lists. Parted From Families Oiher girls were having their tea, which costs them 3d to 4d., and waiting for the next job. They would stay on duty all night, until' they were sent into the hut for a lew hours’ sleep. One of the girls said: “Some of us have not seen our families since the beginning of the war. “We are ready to be called out if there is anything essential to be typed in the middle of the night.” These girls do not get breakfast in , bed. They are out in the canteen getting coffee, eggs and bacon, first thing in the morning. They write letters from the Ministry of Information to their homes in the subhrbs -is if they were 200 miles apart: they telephone their families to say they are very well, but very busy. Some of the male clerks, who have evacuated their families to the country, do not even want to go home. “What is the point.” one of them said, “to go home to a cold, dark house? We are much better here.”