LONDON CANTEENS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 May 1941, Page 2

LONDON CANTEENS

TUBE STATIONS FOR SHELTER. The difficult arrangements for feeding the 150,000 Londoners who use the tube shelters at night are in the hands of a small Scotswoman, Miss Edith Gowans. Under her are one thousand girls in green overalls and cherry red turbans. Twelve canteens have now been installed at the larger underground stations and more will follow. Miss Gowans has had a long experience of restaurant ownership and once owned a restaurant at Hollywood. Her domestic arrangements are described by a reporter, who made a tour of the new canteen arrangements with the Lord Mayor, Sir George Wilkinson. “Tea, cocoa and soup were brewing in three electrically heated ten-gallon boilers. Some of the six girl attendants were serving these, others were patrolling the shelter pitches with trays of cakes, buns, apples, chocolate, the prices clearly, marked on a notice pinned to their overalls,” writes the reporter. “For sixpence I bought a bun, piece of cake, packet of biscuits, slab of chocolate.” “Miss Gowans is proud of her longspouted teapots. They were'designed by a London Transport official, and they are the shape of an ordinary twogallon watering can with a long spout. Miss Gowans and her girls see to the babies’ bottles too. They sterilise them before filling them with milk (lid a mug) and water. “The canteen workers get a week's intensive training before they start work at 36s a week. Some of them, however, are experienced waitresses already.

“Food is brought to the station canteens in four-car trains labelled ‘Refreshment Special.’ They stop thirty seconds at each station to unload containers—fibre chest-of-drawers filled with buns and cakes—and collect the previous night's empties.”