• Munition girls at a Luton factory.

The lure of pay at munitions factories was causing staffing problems for Luton's traditional hat manufacturers and firms in allied trades. A report in The Luton News of September 7th, 1916, told of one employer who had decided to make an example of one girl who quit without giving due notice.

At the Borough Court yesterday, cardboard box makers Messrs C. A. Coutts and Co, of Old Bedford Road, Luton, summoned a girl named Ruby Violet Wilson to claim 19 shillings, her minimum week's wage, in lieu of a week's notice.

Mr H. W. Lathom, prosecuting, said the girl had been with the firm for two years and five months, and in the middle of the week she left to go into munition work, as many a score of girls have done in the town with the idea, he supposed, of earning more money.

William S. Thorogood, manager of the firm, said the girl left on August 16th, and he did not see her again until she came to see one or two of the girls.

The girl told the court that she had asked for an hour's notice. Other girls had left at a minute's notice. "I have nobody and cannot pay the money," she said, "and I am the only one he has taken proceedings against. I took the advice of the other girls."

Asked by Magistrates Clerk Mr William Austin why he had taken action against this girl only, Mr Thorogood replied: "It is about time. They are all leaving at a minute's notice and I must do something."

The girl had given in her notice twice but she had been talked over. He did not want the girl or her money, he wanted to show that a week's notice must be given.

Mr Austin: "It is rather rough on the girl that she is singled out."

Mr Thorogood: "I don't want to penalise the girl, but she says that because others did it she could do it."

The girl said she was now earning 15 shillings on days and 18 shillings on nights, and she would get a bonus when she had been there a month. She was in lodgings and had to pay her board.

The manager said he would let as many as possible go on munitions, but he also was on war work, although not Government controlled.

After the Mayor (Alderman J. H. Staddon, presiding) said some of this work was quite as important as that at controlled factories, he said the case would be dismissed. owing to the leniency of the employer. But the defendant would have to pay court costs.

A number of young people thought they could do as they liked with their employers because they could get a shilling or two more elsewhere, he said. It was not right and must be stopped.

[The Luton News: Thursday, September 7th, 1916]