Browsing for an image of factory girls for my previous post, I chose one from the Daily Mail. It wasn’t the only archive photograph there that, ahem, worked for me.

Let me introduce you to this group of young women, working in one of the first typing pools in London in 1909.

typing-pool

See the supervisor on the right-hand side? She’s checking a document that’s just been typed. Any errors will be circled in red ink; the girl will be called forward. The tawse is in the top left-hand drawer of the desk; a stroke on each hand is the going tariff, and then the document will be thrown into the wastebin and the typist sent to produce a fresh copy.

That, too, will be checked. Any errors this time will be punished with two strokes per hand. Should the girl have to re-type it a third time, she’ll know (as she types, hands trembling and sore) that any mistakes will result in a trip to the   manager’s office and the shame of a bare-bottomed caning.