Carlisle Women Munitions Workers Football Team, 1917

Carlisle Women Munitions Workers Football Team, 1917

Photograph of eleven women munitions workers in workwear, with a football.

The photograph shows women dressed as munitions workers, posing with a football that has been inscribed with 'EAST CUMB WMW 1917'. Two of the women wear the triangular 'On War Service' badges that were issued to munitions workers.
The implication is that this a football team of munitions workers, perhaps known as the East Cumberland team. However, although there are a number of women's football teams documented in Cumbria, including teams of munitions workers in Carlisle, Workington and Mossband (a munitions depot that was part of the Gretna complex), there are no teams known to have been called 'East Cumberland', so the exact significance of the wording on the football is unclear.

Anonymous photographer

Cumbria Image Bank http://www.cumbriaimagebank.org.uk/

Lancaster University

1917

Reproduced by courtesy of Cumbria Image Bank, who retain all rights over this image. No further reproduction is permitted without written permission of Cumbria Image Bank.

Website on the early history of women's football, including extensive discussion of munitions workers' teams in Cumberland: 
http://www.donmouth.co.uk/womens_football/womens_football.html

Comparative material from Lancashire: the Dick, Kerr's Ladies Football Team (formed of women workers at the engineering firm Dick, Kerr and Co. Ltd) is one of the best known examples of a women's football team in the early twentieth century. See: http://www.mylearning.org/dick-kerrs-ladies-fc/p-4626/

Pathe Archive film of Dick, Kerr's Ladies International Team, from 1921 http://www.britishpathe.com/video/dick-kerrs-ladies-international-team

More information about 'On War Service' badges, from the Imperial War Museum: http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/first-world-war-on-war-service-badges

Twentieth century, World War One.

Photograph