New Opportunity for Forgotten Women Friday Everyday

We know that our volunteers look forward to our Forgotten Women Fridays and wish they came round more often. You don't have to wait. We also have opportunities to take part in Forgotten Women Friday Everyday. We are pleased to announce a new record set for you to choose from, when you want a woman to research. These will be taken from the C & J Clark's Employee Signature Books of 1891 and 1916.

These two leather bound books are a fascinating piece of social history.  They were presented to Helen Priestman Bright Clark and her husband William Stephens Clark, Managing Director of C & J Clark at the time of the first book, on the occasions of their Silver and Golden Wedding anniversaries. 

The 1891 Employee Signature Book contains 1041 signatures of Clark's workers along with 78 and 44 names respectively from sister companies Clark, Son & Morland and Avalon Leatherboard.  A significant number of these are women. The 1916 Signature Book contains over 1500 signatures over 500 of which are women, it is also not known how many of those signing with just an initial are women. This later book contains two items of interest, the men who went off to war and were killed have (R.I.P.) written after their names, it is not clear from the transcription whose handwriting this is in but I hope to discover this at a later date. The second item of interest are the signatures of a number of Belgian refugees, part of a group who had come to Street and had been given jobs in the factory in order to support their families, at least one of the refugees stayed in Street afterwards, married a local girl and still has descendants in the area.

All of the women in these books fall into our Women at Work category.  Our team member Wendy says, "As I go through the names, I see the same surnames cropping up and I know from my own family and also local history research that families worked for Clark's for generations. The in-house newspaper, Clark's Courier, has a number of articles about families who have clocked up over 1000 years of service between them. Anyone signing up to research one of the women will have the option to get back in touch with us if, during their research, they uncover other family members who worked for Clark's and the transcriptions can be searched for their names too."

There is further information here.