LADY CLERKS IN LONDON.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 549, 22 March 1876, Page 3

LADY CLERKS IN LONDON.

(JFraser's Magazine.*)

The chief establishment in which we find ladies working as clerks is in the Prudential Life Assurance Company, Ludgate Hill. Here there are between sixty and seventy female clerks employed upon work of a purely clerical nature. The staff is attached to what is ksown as the industrial branch of the office, and is engaged to a certain extent in copying out letters and other documents, and in writing out dockets connected with the life policies issued to the poor classes, at the rate of a penny a week and upwards, with which the industrial department hrs chiefly to deal. These dockets average 20,000 a week, we are told, so that there is no small amount of work to be performed by the lady clerks in the Prudential Life Assurance office. Besides this, some of the more experienced of the female clerks are engaged in correspondence, the gist of the letter to which there may be a reply, and these clerks have to enlarge upon it in proper terms, and write out the fair copy for signature. There is but one uniform scale of salary, which commences with £32 a year and rises to £62. This is very low, but it is, of course, the object of a company of this kind to keep the salaries as low possible, an object which, in a government department, is not so fully recognised. There may be an idea that some of the female clerks employed in an office of this kind are not very select, but in the present instance the very reverse is the case. The very mode by which an appointment of that kind is obtained secures this end ; for, besides a fair education, it is required that all candidates' fathers are to be professional men, or holding good positions in life. There is a hard and fast barrier made to the tradesmen's daughters, for they are in no case admitted to situations in the Prudential Life Office ; by this means the class of female clerks working there is kept most select, and that ii is so may be gathered from the fact that at the present time there are employed among the other clerks the daughter of a Judge, and several clergymen's daughters. As regards the result of the experiment in this office, they have been most fruitful, Mr Lancaster, the secretary, to whom we are much indebted for the information on the subject as regards his office he very kindly placed at our disposal, states that female clerks are eminently successful in the capacity in which they are made use of by the Prudential, which is principally to supply the place of junior clerks, of whom it appears there is at present a great dearth, at least of those whose services are of any value. Female clerks are being pretty extensively employed in law copying and as law stationers' officers; at Miss Lemins', No 12, Portngal street, Lincoln's Inn, a good number are engaged, chiefly we believe in copying work, and they have the opportunity of earning from £1 10s to £2 a week. Lawyers tnemselves are beginning to make use of their services in copying, and remunerate them with salaries ranging from £SO to £BO a year. We also learn that in some country railway offices ladies are being employed as clerks, and are paid on an average from £3O to £SO a year.