ABSTRACT
On Christmas Day 1916, a ladies’ football match took place at Dragley Beck, Ulverston, between Ulverston Munition Girls and Ulverston Athletic, resulting in an 11–5 victory for the Munition’s. The Barrow Guardian noted that ‘Owing to bad weather, the girls did not turn out to full strength, but those who did played a very fine game’. 1 This match is particularly significant as it is the first of its kind to be recorded in the region and marks the beginning of a recreational phenomenon that was to spread rapidly through munition factories the length and breadth of the British Isles. Ladies’ football teams were recorded from Renfrew in Scotland to Newport and Swansea in Wales and from Bath to Belfast. 2 The formation of the teams appeared to be the result of a demand for a form of rational recreation that reflected the reordering of gender roles necessary for the war effort and an insistence on the part of the women workers ‘to do something for the soldiers’. 3 The teams were organized by the workers and encouraged by middle-class welfare supervisors, who were employed by the munition factories on the initiative of the government to look after the moral and physical welfare of the women, and also by philanthropic organizations such as the YMCA and YWCA, who had a moral interest in organizing the leisure time of munition girls. 4 Although the teams were primarily inaugurated on the intitiative of progressive welfare supervisors, such as Miss E.B.Jayne of Sir W.G. Armstrong, Whitworth and Co, who received an OBE for her wartime efforts, they were managed by male employees of the factory, who were either factory managers or fellow workers. 5 The objective of this contribution is to explore the events that initiated the development of ladies’ football during the First World War and the reasons why it diminished so rapidly after demobilization.
