Scammell lorry parked outside a roadside café at night in 1930s Britain
The appearance of "Lorry girls" on Britain's roads was a regular occurrence in the 1930s. Now largely forgotten, these were young women, mostly between fifteen and thirty years of age, who wandered across Northern England from town to town in search of work. With no money for train fares they thumbed rides on lorries. While the 1930s were a lot more innocent than the times we live in now, these girls still faced all the obvious risks. Some young women were picked up by lorry drivers who expected to be paid by sexual favours, some risked being sexually assaulted. While most of the young women were genuinely looking for work, others sought adventure. Some young women offered sex in exchange for money.
The following report is from Blackshirt, the weekly newspaper of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, August 23, 1935.
Scammell Lorry leaves a roadside café in 1930s Britain
The Lorry Girl
A Lancashire Woman Tramp's Story of Distress
(by our Lancashire Correspondent)
Much attention is being paid in Lancashire to "lorry-girls," young women between fifteen and thirty years of age, who wander across Northern England from town to town in search of work, getting rides on lorries and often begging food from the drivers when they stop at road-side cafés.
The Medical Officer for Health for Salford recently reported that "the nefarious activities of the 'lorry-girl' require the urgent attention of the police and of the Ministry of Transport." Probation officers, rescue workers and Salvation Army officials, all bear out this statement, quoting many cases.
I started out to endeavour to find one of these unfortunate girls. Lancashire, the greatest industrial county in England, has many towns separated from each other by only a few miles, consequently there is an abundance of transport upon the roads.
Hailing Lorries
Nevertheless, I had to wait many hours before I finally found one of these girls. But eventually I was successful. I found her walking along the new main road between Manchester and Liverpool. She was dressed in a shabby, threadbare, blue serge costume. hatless, and carrying a heavy canvass haversack on her back. I followed her for about a mile and a half, watching her hail lorries going towards Liverpool. Eventually, as I caught her up, a lorry stopped and she got in. I asked for a lift also and got in beside her. Between there and Liverpool, some twenty five miles away, I managed to get her story.
The engine was started by giving the starting handle a hefty turn with your foot
Six years ago she was a cotton worker. When the crisis of 1931 came she, her father and brother lost their jobs at the mill. For months she queued at the Labour Exchange in her town—she would not tell me where it was, or her name—for a job, prepared to do anything rather than stay at home. Her sister, a married woman living in a London suburb, wrote to her, asking her to go to London, where there was more chance of getting a job. (!)
The girl went and, after a fortnight, managed to obtain a situation in a combine café as a waitress. She was unable to stand the strain, however, after six months she had a breakdown which forced her to leave her work. Again she tried to get work but was unfortunate. She "hitch-hiked" back to Lancashire, where she found her father still out of work and her brother gone abroad.
Impossible to get a job
After a few weeks searching hopelessly for work, she decided to leave home again. As it was, she was only proving an additional drain upon her father's meagre resources. So she left him. Now she does odd jobs in towns all over the North; unable to stay long in any job through lack of references. She told me that it is almost impossible to get a good job unless you have good references, or a friend or relative to help.
Both she and the lorry driver told me there are many women tramps on the road. The great white highway has many of these unfortunate women walking along it at this very moment.
Taking to the Roads
Some of them ran away from their homes at sixteen or seventeen years of age, rather than stay to be dependant on their families. Others, drilled into thinking like men by constant work in industry, prefer not to find work in their home towns, but set off to seek their fortunes directly they get sacked. It is not to be denied that some of them have harrowing experiences, which embitter and harden them, as they tramp the highway, but generally they travel in twos for company and safety.
The number of these women grows every year. "Lorry-girls" are becoming a regular feature of the road, some drivers told me at a Liverpool tea-shop. Hardly any main road is free from them. During the hot weather they sleep on the side of the road or in the bordering fields in the day-time, walking on again to the next town at night.
These women, pilloried upon the modern system of industry, are a terrible condemnation of present-day society.
