ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of women who were temporarily employed in the UK Army Pay Department (APD) establishments during the First World War. The majority of the women recruited were employed as clerks within the army and command pay offices situated throughout the UK and Ireland. The first incumbents were, however, unpaid volunteers who, without official permission, assisted with the administration of reservist documentation, particularly in the area of separation allowances at the Army Pay Office, Woolwich from August to October 1914.2 The first women clerks were officially recruited in November 1914 for employment at the War Office Finance Branch as its parameters expanded from two departments in 1914 to six by October 1918.3 Women clerks were recruited as temporary civil servants and a number of seconded personnel (both male and female) from various branches of the General Post Office (GPO) filled the expansion. Temporary women clerks were first recruited to the various army pay offices within the UK from January 1915, and lady superintendents (supervisors of women clerks) one year later in January 1916. The term ‘lady superintendent’ was the official contemporary term used by the home civil service to describe a woman supervisor or manager. Although the lady superintendents of the APD were temporary, their status and authority equalled that of a male civilian acting paymaster (also a temporary wartime position) as well as a commissioned APD assistant paymaster to the rank of captain.
