Prostitutes at the Ministry!

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Jan Broderick of the County Heritage Team on behalf of Muriel Gardner and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Both husband and I were in the Ministry of Labour. And in December 1943 transferred to London. He was in HQ (which he hated) and I was in the Ministry in Edgeware Road. It was a most interesting assignment. I was at the Hyde Park end of Edgeware Road. At that end there is the homes of all the rich in Bayswater and Park Lane and so on. The Posh end with the celebrates. A quarter of a mile to the right you have the sleazy Demi-monde end of Paddington. So you have on your doorstep both extremes of society.

During the war everyone was expected to register for employment. You were on the register then for either war work or transferred into the services. So we were dealing with both ends of society. From the very first week I was down there I was introduced to the wicked ways of the city. And me so innocent from the North.

I had a grimy soul who came before me and I had to take her record of employment. So I asked “Where were you last employed?” She responded “Three and One.” So I wrote down ‘Three and One’, thinking it was some sort of dry-cleaners or something. So I said “and what’s their address?” She looked at me like she’d never had such a low IQ to deal with before. She said “Three and One”. So I said “Yes, and what is their address?” She said “Three and One! Three months and one off for good conduct!” “Ah, prison” I replied “Which prison were you in?” She looked with some scorn and said “What do you mean ‘what prison?’ There’s only one for laydies and that’s ‘Olloway!”

I got quite fond of her in the end. She would always get back to Holloway for Christmas. She wouldn’t want to miss it. So come December she would throw a brick through a window or hit a policeman — anything to get back to prison for Christmas.

As I said, everyone had to register. And this included the prostitutes of Paddington. Well the ministry had no category for prostitute, so we didn’t know what to put them under. Temporarily, until the powers that be decided, we put them under 174. Which is ‘Light Entertainment’!

They were hopeless as you couldn’t do anything with them. The services wouldn’t take them and so you had to put them into war work. Well as soon as you sent a prostitute to a factory, none of the girls would eat with them or use the same facilities. Within these factories you had girls from upper-class and even aristocratic families. So the mothers were all writing in to complain that their daughters were forced to consort with prostitutes.

It soon became known in Paddington, that if you registered as a prostitute, the ministry of labour couldn’t do anything with you. It became the most desirable business to be in. Later on we had to clamp down. It was decided that unless you could produce a receipt from the police, you can’t be registered as a prostitute. The receipt would be for the fines for being a prostitute. They didn’t mind this and regarded it as paying their income tax.

Towards the end of my period in London I was given an interesting job as clerk to an appeals panel for the ministry. If an employer wanted to keep an employee who was scheduled for other war work or the services, he had right of appeal to this panel. Dealing with the aristocracy (the other end of the social scale) was very difficult. You never knew who was who, or who was related to whom. We had one Lady who wanted to keep her maid and appealed. She was called to this panel. And I received a letter from the Isle of Man from a Countess who said she was this Lady’s mother. She and her husband were going to be in London and could she attend the panel in place of her daughter. I replied that, yes it would be in order. She appeared, was very nice, and seemed very eager to help the panel. During the course of the panel it came out that her daughter was also under 24 and eligible for war work. So why wasn’t she in the services? The Countess said she was probably covered by medical notes, but she would get her to call in and sort it out. When she went out, one of the panel said they thought she might be related to royalty. We looked it up, and it turned out she was the Queen’s elder sister. But I thought it was great that she expected no special treatment, nor did she use her connection in any way.

We had all sorts of people in from of us - including Ben Lyon and Baby Daniels, who were great stage and screen personalities. We wanted to take the Baby Daniels’ maid, and she appealed against it. Lyon came, and he was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the American Army. He turned up looking very handsome in his uniform. While he was sitting in the corridor waiting to go in, I expect every clerk in the building found cause to come down that corridor. He must have thought it a very busy place. When he came in and they were asking him about this maid, one of the panel asked “What’s the matter with your wife? Can’t she cook?” He drew himself up and replied “You should see Baby cook. She cooks chicken like she came from the south!”

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