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Ethel May Kerr (1876-1942)

Kerr was a modern languages graduate of Somerville College, Oxford who became the assistant works manager of Number 4 Shell Filling Factory, Georgetown, near Paisley, an unusually senior role for a woman on the technical side of managing such a large factory , Scotland during the first world war. She was born in Garnethill in the city centre of Glasgow on 18^th May 1875. Her father, John Smith Kerr (1843-1918), was a tea and sugar merchant and her mother:was Sarah Ann Bray (1844-1908).

Family

Kerr's father started out as a clerk with a firm of tea merchants in Glasgow, In 1862 he traveled to Australia where he remained for 4 years and where he met his wife Sarah Ann Bray. They then returned to Glasgow, where he obtained work as a sugar salesman with Smith & Sharp. By 1871 they were living at 158 Hill Street, Garnethill, where Ethel May was born. In 1881 the family had moved to Greenock, then a key centre for the sugar industry, where her father was now a sugar wholesaler. The family was living at 5 Newark St, Greenock West, including her siblings John H Kerr, 9; Alice V Kerr, and  Amy E Kerr, aged 1. At the date of the 1881 decennial census her mother was at the West Of Scotland Hydro-Pathic Establishment (possibly attending her father who died there in June 1881). The family moved to 49 Margaret St, Greenock West, where they also had three live-in servants.

Her mother predeceased her father in 1908, who spent the last years of his life at Red Lodge Sea View Road, Worthing, Sussex.

Early life and Education

Kerr was educated at the Greenock Ladies College and later at the Kensington High School for Girls, London, where she took the Oxford and Cambridge.Higher Certificate in 1894. She attended Somerville College, Oxford to obtain a degree in modern languages (1896-1900), before undertaking teacher training at St Mary's College, Paddington. She obtained work as an assistant mistress at the John Roan Girls School, Greenwich in 1904.

World War 1

When the war broke out, Kerr initially did some volunteer work with the Soldiers & Sailors Family Association, but in 1915 was recruited to be one of a group of 11 women, led by Agnes Borthwick, to be trained to be 'overlookers' in shell filling, at Woolwich Arsenal. The Official Report described this first group as having been recruited from a "a very superior type". Having been trained in both the theory and practice of shell and cartridge filling, they returned to Scotland to start the work at the Number 4 Shell Filling Factory, at Georgetown, near Paisley. In November 1915 Borthwick, as forewoman (Later to quickly rise to become Works Manager), set the newly-qualified overlookers to train the new workers, whilst waiting for the construction of the factory to be completed and work to start on actual shell filling in January 1916. Kerr became one of Borthwick's two assistant works managers in charge of the management of the entire factory with thousands of workers.

At this time all munitions works which employed any significant number of women had to have a Lady Superintendent to oversee the recruitment and welfare of the female workforce. In the larger factories such as the one at Georgetown, this department could be very large, as it would include administrators, medical staff, cleaning and laundry staff and canteen workers. Many women who later became well-known pioneering women in engineering, such as Dorothee Pullinger, started their careers doing this work. The difference between the work of the Lady Superintendents and that of the few women who rose up the works' management hierarchy is that the former were essentially personnel workers whereas the latter were in charge of the technical operations of the factory. Neither the works manager, Agnes Borthwick, nor Ethel Kerr, in her role as assistant works manager, had prior technical training (in contrast to Pullinger), but rose to the position where the works general manager was the only man senior to Borthwick.

Due to the isolated location of the Georgetown complex, the site included a lot of residential accommodation, ranging from a large detached house for the General Manager, through a hierarchy of sizes and designs of temporary housing. This ranged from hostels for the ordinary workers, through terraced and semi-detached houses for the various grades of management staff. Borthwick and Kerr would have had the privilege of living in nicer accommodation: "“The only women who lived in the Ministry accommodation were women in management positions such as Agnes Borthwick, the works manager, who listed her address as 10 Netherfield Cottages, Georgetown, Paisley; and Ethel Kerr, the assistant works manger, who was pleased that she had been' given a furnished cottage with garden and electric light free.”

Later life

There are no records of what Kerr did after the war, but the Scottish Shell Filling Factory, as with all other factories specifically built for war purposes only, was closed down and all the workers 'demobilised'. Some effort to find work locally was made but Kerr probably returned to her previous teaching career. Kerr died 7^th December 1942, having been living at Rosemount, Bentick street, Greenock, Renfrewshire, still a spinster.