ABSTRACT
The Civil Service Commission had its own administrative culture. Its most tangible elements were procedures, patterns and guidelines for behaviour that were, in some respects, distinctive from, but which in many aspects reflected the more general culture of the British civil service. The Commission’s key words were: selection on merit, fair and open competition, and equal opportunity. The Playfair Commission, 1874–75, recognised that women were already successfully employed for clerical work in the Post Office and felt that their employment could be extended to other departments if they could ‘be placed in separate rooms, under proper female supervision’. The Ridley Commission, 1886–90, repeated the recommendation of the Playfair Commission, again stressing the need to keep women separate from men and under proper female supervision. The employment of women was later extended to the offices of the Registrar General, the Public Trustee, Labour Exchange offices and the Board of Education.
