“MY FOREMAN”

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 48, 23 September 1916, Page 7

“MY FOREMAN”

C MAN WOMAN'S SECRET. London, August 15. The advent of compulsory service has brought to light another case of a woman who has fur years successfully passed muster as a man. An employer was appealing before a .North London tribunal for the exemption of “my foreman,’’ whom l.e described as “a splendid workman,” “indispensable,” and “a married man with two children.” The chairman of the tribunal listened to the employer’s warm tribute to the “foreman’s” virtues, and to his eloquent appeal for the “indispensable’s” exemption with an everi broadening smile. When the employer had finished, the chairman asked, with a chuckle, “Do you know this man is a woman?” The employ'd 1 laughed outright, and suggested that the chairman was blundering. “My man,” said ho, Sfis a married man with a wife and two children.” “Nevertheless,” said the chairman, “your foreman is a woman, and here is proof,” handing to the astonished employer a certificate from the Mill Hill Medical Board to the effect that the person named thereon—and the person for whom the exemption was asked—was unfit, for the Army by reason of the fact that “the said person was a woman.”

It transpired that the “man” had | l(oen before the advisory committee, and on a certificate then produced was sent to the medical board. The employer stated that the woman | with whom his employee had been living came to his wife that morning and said that the military authorities had sent “her husband” to Salisbury PI a in. It appears, however, that on the examination at Mill Hill revealing her sex, the woman returned to her friends in another part of the country.

It was stated that the woman went to Mill Hill under the impression that she would not have to undress. Finding this an essential, she asked to be examined privately, explaining that she suffice rd from cardiac trouble. The request was refused. The woman prepared herself for the ordeal, and passed the first stages of the examination successfully, but her deception was, of course, discovered. Behind the masquerade lies, it is believed, the motive that the woman —whose physical appearance enabled her to keep up the deception—wished to hide herself from her husband. The woman with whom she was living, with her two children, was her own sister. So keen was she in concealing her whereabouts from her husband that she welcomed the receipt of the “yellow” form calling her up to the Army. “I looked upon it,” she is reported to have said, “as a God-send. I felt that here was a chance of getting away where my husband would never find me.” /

She was quite willing to go into the Army and take all the risks of military service, but she had overlooked the difficulty of passing the scrutiny of the Army doctors, which put an end to her adventure.