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Recorded by Pamela Brown

I worked in a reserved occupation in Manchester with a firm that made hospital uniforms.
Our Managing Director, Betty Burton, used to visit Miss Lees, the Matron of St Mary’s Hospital. Miss Lees was a leading Soroptimist and she invited Betty to join. The Soroptimists are an International Women’s Organisation for women in decision-making occupations.
This started a whole new war effort for all the staff. The Manchester Soroptimists ran a canteen trolley at Central Station and we were recruited to help.
This had been started in 1940 for members of H.M.Forces. It was manned on a rota basis night and day. Miss Connie Dale was the liaison with the military forces and would receive a telephone call that a troop train would be coming into Manchester in the early hours or the middle of the night. She then alerted extra helpers, often they would walk into Manchester in the black-out.

The trolley became inadequate so the Soroptimist Club replaced it with a wooden kiosk. Over one million members of the forces benefited from this canteen service.
In April 1947 the Canteen was handed over as a gift to the Y.M.C.A. Many letters of appreciation were received from individuals and senior ranking officers.

The Soroptimist members must have been very stretched;as during 1940 — 41 they were also assisting nightly at the all-night Canteen for the Forces at the Allied Newspaper Building.
Added to that an average of 600 sea-men’s stockings and sweaters were knitted every year during the war.
In 1940 Miss Geen, (president of the collection of clubs in the North West), proposed to the Board of Governors that all the Clubs in Great Britain should raise sufficient money to provide and equip an ambulance to replace at least one lost at Dunkirk.
The response was so good that THREE fully equipped ambulances were presented to the R.A.M.C. The Canadian Soroptimists provided a fourth ambulance.

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