GIRLS AND HOUSEWORK

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 10, 13 January 1933, Page 11

GIRLS AND HOUSEWORK

SEVEN • TRAINING CENTRES

"Girls have never shown< a greater desire, to -go .into 'domestic service than they do toVday," states Lady Patricia Ward in tho "Daily Mail." . "Applications to ■"enter the various residential, training centres for domestic workers which are established throughout the country are - becoming more numerous every day; and at niany. of them there are waiting lists.for months ahead. The woman who was speaking . paused and tapped on her desk with a pencil to emphasise her next, statement. 'The reason for the increase in tho number of' applicants is j that at Jong last the prejudice against j domestic service as a means of liveli-. hood has been broken down; and neither girls nor their parents look upon it any longer as an inferior form of work.' "I was in the London office of Miss Purdon, an official of the Central Committee 011 Women's Training and Employment, the Government organisation which within the last ten' years has established a number of: residential centres for training girls in domestic work.'.. . ;■ " 'There are six of them in England and one in Scotland; the girls are given a free training from eight to ten weeks, during which they learn cookery, housewifery, laundering, and needlework,' said Miss 1 Purdon. '' Later, at Lapswood,' tho residential training centre at Sydenham Hill, S.E., I saw forty girls busy over their evening tasks. ; There were girls from Wales, Yorkshire, and from districts round London. '■ 'Angelina,' a pretty, friendly Lewisham girl, who had nearly finished her training, told me, rather shyly, why she loved it, It's work in which one can take such.personal pride, you see. Keeping everything nice and bright in a house, I mean, and knowing how to cook and sew and launder — it makes one feel of real use." That soft fawn-beige shade known as mushroom is always becoming, and when this colour reveals itself in tho new peau d'ange velvet with chenille surface it has charming lights, states an Englishwoman. It is this new shade which has been choseii by recent society brides for wedding frocks.