The Post Office's home front
The Post Office helped to support soldiers and their families affected by the war. The Post Office also helped to change the role of women in society.
The Post Office set up a Relief Fund on 10 August 1914, providing money and employment for widows and or
phans of Post Office staff. It sent 128,500 parcels to British Prisoners of War. The Relief Fund also paid for a hospital and a convalescent home for wounded Post Office staff in the armed forces.
The Post Office also issued the government’s new ‘Separation Allowances’. These were for the wives of men at the front who had no income once their husbands went away. Women could only claim the allowance if they were faithful to their husbands.
Women working as permanent staff in the Post Office before the war were made to leave on getting married. This rule was reversed during the war allowing married women to carry on in their roles. Women and girls took on many of the roles traditionally reserved for male employees: by November 1916 over 35,000 women were employed in temporary positions within the Post Office, an increase of 33,000 since March 1915.
The appearance of female postal workers made many uncomfortable but without them the postal service could not have continued. When the men returned after the war most of these women and girls lost their jobs, but their work had added strength to the growing campaign for equal rights for women (with the vote finally achieved for all in 1928).
