Mrs Irene Henry, shoe factory worker, Leyton, 1957
I’ve been working on this exhibition for the last six months, uncovering fascinating documents in The Women’s Library and the TUC archives. Some are unbelievably sad, like the records of the young women poisoned by working with toxic materials. Some are very funny, like the satirical verses in the 1929 textile strikers’ songbook. Some are just amazing glimpses of a world of work that most of us will never know – like the portraits of workers in the Co-Operative Wholesale Society’s shoe factory, taken in 1957. Where are these young women now, I wonder?