COLONY OF ANVIL AMAZONS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21580, 26 August 1933, Page 12 (Supplement)

COLONY OF ANVIL AMAZONS

ENGLAND'S UNIQUE COMMUNITY At Cradley Heath, a few miles from Wolverhampton, was discovered recently one of tho strangest communities in Britain. It is a colony of Amazons. And what Amazons! Over 2000 of thorn. Broad-hipped, strapping women, with brawn.v arms and hands i ns hard as granite. They are employed by the big steel factories as chainmakers. But instead of working actually in the factories thoy forge the chains in their own back yards. Sometimes their tiny kitchens servo as workshops. In a refuse-ridden yard behind a tumble-down cottage was lirst encountered by a visitor an amazing creature. She was well over six feet, with tawny hair nearly as short as a man's, and a ruddy complexion. In one huge hand was a metal tool holding a red-hot iron bar. In the other a 14-pound hammer. A cascade of golden sparks flew up into her sweat-grimed face as she swung the hammer and pounded tho hot iron bar into shape with rhythmic ease. These women get the iron bars from the factories, make them into chains, and are paid by length. Most of them start the work as young girls and carry on until they are old women. Physically and temperamentally they are stronger and harder than men. Any one of them could take three ordinary men by tho scruff of the neck, bang their heads together and fling them across the road without batting an eyelid.