Human Canaries: Remembering the Munitionettes

The women who served as munitions workers during the First World War endured dismal conditions and a plethora of dangers: illness, injury, and death. Why are they barely remembered?

During the First World War the pacifist Caroline Playne was horrified to see a passing train packed with:  a couple of hundred de-humanised females, Amazonian beings bereft of reason or feeling, judging by the set of their faces, bereft of all charm of appearance, clothed anyhow, skin stained a yellow-brown even to the roots of their dishevelled hair … Were these really women?

She had spotted a clandestine transport of ‘canaries’, munitions workers – also known as munitionettes – whose skin had turned yellow and hair had been dyed green. As one sufferer explained, ‘you’d wash and wash and it didn’t make no difference. It didn’t come off. Your whole body was yellow’. Several hundred of these women died during the war, but many more suffered from chronic illness for the rest of their lives.