ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the development of a feminine corporate identity within the gas industry, in light of contemporary social and political events related to the Edwardian 'woman question'. Despite the difficulties of the job, Helen Armstrong maintained that the chief service of the lady demon was to 'secure and maintain the goodwill of the housewife' on behalf of the gas company. In this respect, and working through local schools and women's organisations, the lady demons had the potential to become 'a power in any community', given the impact they might have on their customers. Traditionally, charity work ranked among the genteel occupations open to respectable Victorian women. Peter Bailey maintains that, for men of all classes, shop girls and other women in the service sector occupied a 'middle' ground of sexuality. On the 'woman question', however, the gas men were less supportive and dismissed Mrs. Cloudesley Brereton's anticipation of gender equality as being beyond present-day expectations, and even utopian.
