Women Workers in Seven Professions: A Survey of Their Economic Conditions and Prospects
General
Women Workers in Seven Professions: A Survey of Their Economic Conditions and Prospects
Vocational guidance; Women -- Employment -- Great Britain
"We were seven in a room which just held seven small toilet tables on
a shelf running round the wall, and a narrow walking space from the
door to the window in between. This dressing-room was two floors
below the level of the street, and the one window opened on a passage
covered with thick glass, so that there was no direct air channel.
Next door was a man's urinal used by about forty men--actors, stage
hands, and scene shifters. A pipe from this place came through
the dressing-room; the smell sometimes, even in the winter, was
overpowering; and we ourselves bought Sanitas and kept sprinkling it
on the floor of the room and the passage. Added to this was the fact
that the stairs from the stage led straight down facing the entrance
of this men's urinal, and not infrequently the door would be open and
shut as we came down, and it was altogether very objectionable."
The report of a young artist who toured for some time with a comedy
sketch in the music halls shows equally bad conditions. This sketch
was sent out by a first rate London management, and the halls visited
were on the first-class tours. She told me that in one of the largest
towns in England the Music Hall had only one ladies' lavatory, which
was on the stage exactly behind the back-drop. A horse was necessary
for an Indian sketch on the same bill in which the comedy sketch was
played, and the recess by the lavatory was found to be the only
safe place to stable the horse. The door of the ladies' lavatory was
therefore nailed up for the week. Should anyone wish, she could, on
explaining to the ushers in the front of the house, receive a pass
of admission to the ladies' cloakroom, but to reach the front of the
house meant a walk of four minutes round a complete block, and,
even if it had not been winter time, it is almost impossible for any
actress, when once dressed for her part, to go into the street without
attracting a great deal of notice, and also very likely entirely
spoiling her appearance, as theatrical "make-up" is only meant for the
dry atmosphere of the theatre.
On this same tour, in a famous south coast resort, this lady had to
dress in an underground dressing-room with twelve others, and the only
lavatory for women's use was opposite the stage-door box, where all
letters were called for, and the stage hands lounged about the whole
evening. In the most important town on this tour the dressing-room
in which she was directed to dress had, for its sole ventilation, the
door by which one entered, exactly facing the one general lavatory.
The aperture, high up in the wall, opened into another room where,
during this week, fifty cocks and hens, used in an animal turn, were
kept. It would be quite impossible to describe the sickening smell
which all this meant. The only thoroughly clean, sanitary hall which
she visited, was in Scotland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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