It being wartime I would have to come up with a good reason for the change: It had to be a”reserved occupation” and I had to demonstrate special skills required for the particular job. That’s where my knowledge of languages came in handy;
I landed a job[1], with the British Cotton Industry Research Association (Shirley Institute) as an Information Officer, doing mainly abstracts from the current literature for our own publication and they were also reprinted in The Journal of the Textile Institute. I had a desk in the library, with a lovely view over the gardens.
The Institute was housed in an old mansion, i.e. the offices and library were in the original mansion, labs were added on in new buildings. It was situated in the suburbs, not very far from home, I could ride my bicycle to work. So instead of an hour’s commute. entailing changing buses downtown, I could go to work very leisurely! We did not start until 9 o’clock (worked until six, hour for lunch), Main meal in England used to be at night (not midday like in Germany), in fact most people ate quite late, so everyone stayed up very late. There was a bus I could take, but I did not do that very often. In the rain (frequent occurrence in those parts of the world) we had great big yellow bicycle capes that went over the handle bars, and if you got wet it was mostly from perspiration not rain!
It was a job I really liked; my boss was Dr. Withers[2], an elderly man, a real teddy bear, his glasses halfway down his nose. I was working there already when I met Dad and I stayed there until I left to get married. We were what was known as “Scientific Civil Service”, i.e., we had the best of two worlds: the privileges of the Civil Service (good pension plan etc.) and of Academia (very generous leave time!). No clocking in, you were considered a responsible professional, and were expected to regulate your own hours as the work load demanded. The Institute also encouraged further education: if you took courses that were approved, you could leave two hours before school started (all evening courses). At first I took just statistics and economics, but then they approved my finishing the degree course, that’s how I ended up with a BA in Public Administration (University of Manchester).
In my reference the Director (Dr. Toy[3]) wrote that I “contributed greatly to the textile information of this country”. (sic!) The pay was very good by English standards, but abysmal by American ones as I found out later! Translated into dollars I was making not much more than a typist in the States, although I was the second best paid woman on the staff (no equal pay for the genders yet!). Of course cost of living expenses were not at all comparable either.
...
At the Shirley Institute I had two good friends, one I lost sight of completely, but I still hear at Xmas from Marjorie nee Brown, now Jessop. She worked in the Administration (I was one of only two female scientists) She fell in love with a Jewish Colleague, however she was a Catholic and he did not want to convert, even though he did not mind that she remained Catholic; I don’t remember the exact story. It didn’t end well for either of them, She married eventually, but they could not get pregnant and they adopted a little boy who was somewhat retarded; a sweet and loving kid, but he could not be educated enough to hold down a somewhat decent job; her husband died very early on and she had some visual problems that eventually left her legally blind; the boy could read well enough to help her out that way, so last I heard from her he was staying with her as her seeing-eye dog and they were managing quite well . What will become of him when she dies I have no idea, she has no family that I know of. The boyfriend later married a Jewish girl who turned out to be one of those princess types, and he was very unhappy...
Notes:
On her naturalization certiificate, she calls her job "Science Abstractor."
Looking up, I found an article about the Institute and "Dr. Withers" was "J. C. Withers," who was the head of the information bureau and was elected to be a Vice President of the Council in 1943. He had been a member of the Institute since 1925.
In my own wandering, I followed up and did a blog post on "Dr. Toy."