The job I found was with Lankro Chemicals , in Eccles, a good distance from home. Lankro made textile auxiliaries (wetting agents and the like) and had a contract with manufacturers for the ATS ( “Army Territorial Service”,.the women’s branch of the Army) uniforms. Such government contract was sufficient to be declared “essential” and hence to get an exemption from the obligation to serve for their senior staff. They employed twelve graduate chemists, among whom I was the only woman. I was working in the analytical department, where we tested the finished products, mostly with titrations and colorimetric methods. There were a number of lab assistants, teenagers, and I was in charge of them. It was a bit of a zoo.
....
Now let’s get back to my “career”; after a year or so in the analytical lab I got promoted(?) to the organic side, where we were experimenting on improving manufacturing methods. We were working with large quantities (called semi-industrial scale), distillations in five-gallon flasks etc. My boss, Dr. Meade[1], was a huge guy, 6' 4” or so.; we were on opposite sides of a workbench and he was not the most cautious of workers. One day he had a distillation going in an oil bath, an alcohol-ether mix (hence highly volatile) and not only did he not have the thing undercover (can’t think of the word here, there’s a name for it); his connections were not tight and he was working with an open flame. It was lunchtime, we were the only ones in the lab, and his distillation leaked. In a matter of seconds the bench was in flames and his lab coat caught fire! In order to get to him I had to run down the fire escape on my side while yelling for help, and come back up on the other side, having grabbed whatever cloth I could find. As I was trying to beat the fire down, wrapping him in the cloth (which was too small for him), he suddenly jumped up and ran for the fire escape, which made the flames flare up again, and there was no room on the fire escape for two people. Anyway, I don’t remember the details, there is a newspaper article [2] about it somewhere : “Polish girl rescues chemist” (which made me furious; the last thing I wanted to be known as was “Polish girl”[3]!) Dr Meade stayed in the hospital for quite a while and I was supposed to carry on with the same experiments by myself!
That prompted my decision to look for another job. [Continued: Shirley Institute.]
Notes:
Dr. Meade appears to have been "Edwin Marshall Meade," but really no other information.
I haven't come across the newspaper article, yet!
Note that Mom is referred to as the Polish student in the article about her being in Geneva.