Slangy Girls

A guide to office etiquette for Edwardian office girls (London Journal, 1909):

SLANGY GIRL NOT WANTED.

No business man wants a secretary whom he cannot trust to see his business callers in his absences. A knowledge of good English and a courteous way of speaking are the things he wants in his representative.
    There are other little details of office manners which every business girl should know. In the first place, when you come to work in the morning. say good morning, individually or collectively, to your fellow workers. There is no need to be effusive about it, but it is a simple courtesy which is well worth while. If you are late, don't come hurrying in with "Gracious! Isn't this awful?"  but say simply and frankly, to the head of the office, "Good morning, Mr. Mr. Blank. I'm sorry to be late, and I will make up the time this evening ." For it is office manners, and the best sort of  office manners, to give your employers honestly all the time which they are paying you for. You owe them the ten minutes which you lost in the morning. You owe them the ten minutes you stayed out over your lunchtime. They will appreciate your honesty it you make it a point to see that their interests are protected.
OPINIONS TO BE GUARDED.
    Don't be familiar either with your superiors or inferiors on the office staff. Familiarity leads to gossip and office gossip is always bad for those taking part to it.
    You are not paid to make friendships or to chat with the rest of the office. Guard your opinions as to office conditions. The girl who sits at the desk next to yours, and who thinks the office manager a mean, partial thing, always giving the easiest work to someone else, may, if you agree with her, and let her know it, be unscrupulous enough to repeat your words to the office manager himself, or to someone else who can injure your prospects.
    You can be pleasant and polite to every one, but keep your own counsel—or you will be sure to wish you had.
    Don't get into the habit of criticising your superiors, even to yourself. Maybe the head of the firm is cranky and inconsiderate of you, but you must remember that you are only a small piece of a big mechanism, and that it is this mechanism which he is working with all his strength to keep mowing,
    He is struggling with problems of the gravest weight and importance, and when you misspell words and get figures wrong you are putting most trying little obstacles in the way of his success, and when he flies out at you and calls you inattentive and incompetent, he is only telling you the truth. Try to concentrate and make your work the big thing during work time.
    All girls should remember, too, that the office is not the place for manicuring, hair-dressing, or general 'prinking'. All that sort of thing should be done at home. How many business girls, during a lull in work, may he seen giving attention to their nails or readjusting their side-combs, and the like. Some girls even have little mirrors into which they may be seen looking anxiously whenever they get a chance.

Librarians, Stewardesses and Paper Bags

There's a great section in Cassells Household Guide on occupations open to women here
in which I particularly like this advice (my italics):

"The next suggestion is also a valuable one; it is the opening of the situation of librarian to educated gentlewomen, either in public institutions or in private families of rank or wealth. From the reports of the recent Conference of Librarians we learn that the Americans have already set us an example here, and in the Public Library at Boston, U.S., seventy ladies are employed, a few men only being kept to lift the heaviest books on the high shelves. The ladies appear to have given the utmost satisfaction in this position, to which they appear thoroughly suited. The work is such that a lady of good attainments and education could undertake and enjoy. It requires no great physical exertion, no exposure to the weather, and no hardship which the most delicate would shrink from. The salaries in this profession are so limited that they are not sufficient for the support of married men with families, nor are they objects of ambition to the single man with any fairer chances in life; but they would nevertheless form a good provision for a single woman, who, upon even this small pittance, might manage, with economy, to keep herself in comfort and as a gentlewoman."

I find this fascinating because librarianship is now perceived broadly as a 'female' occupation, although - as an erstwhile librarian myself - I can vouch for a few gentlemen lurking in the background (I was never much help with those high shelves, mind). Also, the salary information holds true today, broadly speaking.

Anyway, I just came across a companion piece from 1854 in - regular readers will need no prompting - the Leisure Hour. You can read it all here, if you like. It includes one or two surprising details on women's employment, not least

"A few adventurous females are found bold enough to dare the terrors of the deep, as stewardesses and attendants in passenger vessels"

That actually surprises me. It also includes one odd historical detail that I've never noticed before (one of the joys of reading old Victoriana) ...

"Almost every article purchased in shops is now sent home in paper bags ; and often you receive your change neatly done up in one. The straw bonnet - that truly English and becoming article of attire - that has been platted and made up by a woman's hands, is forwarded to you in a green bag, also made by a woman. So great is the convenience afforded to shopkeepers and others by these bags, that the demand for them is enormous. Tons of paper are daily converted into them, with an economy that wastes not a visible strip."

Next down you're down the shops, demand your change in a paper bag ...