Have you heard of the 'canary girls'?

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Because of a comment by cmoneyspinner (@cmoneyspinner) on my post about the Mt Barker mural (https://www.mylot.com/post/3433882/more-about-the-mural-in-mt-barker) I went searching for more images of Jerome Davenport’s work. This led to me googling ‘canary girls’. What a lot of things I don’t know about the war years. ‘Canary girls’ was the name given to British women who worked in munitions factories manufacturing TNT shells during World War I. By the end of the war, nearly 3 million women were working in factories and almost a million engaged in mixing explosives, and filling shells and bullets. Exposure to TNT is toxic and, over time, repeated exposure resulted in the women’s skin turning an orange- yellow colour, hence the name ‘canary girls’. ‘Canary babies’ were born to these women but in both babies and adults, the yellow faded over time. Other, more lethal, conditions were contracted in the munitions factories. And here’s a link to more information and more photos of Jerome Davenport’s work. He has red/green colour blindness. Who’d a thought? The photo shows two brooches brought back from overseas during WWI and given to my mother.