The thesis examines the case of Barrow-in-Furness through the period of the First World War. As a town dominated by one of the UK’s most important armaments firms, Vickers, Barrow experienced the full force of industrial mobilisation and government intervention. In analysing the responses to these events, the thesis provides insights into their impact on a town and population dependent on industries stimulated by war. Barrow had special problems arising from its geographical isolation and large munitions population. Vickers, the work force and the town at large were used to negotiating their own difficulties, but these were severely tested by the impact of war. Industrial relations in a heavily unionised but strategically important town were complicated by the different positions of Vickers, unions, shop stewards, rival government agencies, and the role of women, yet ultimately all parties found ways of working together. The knock-on effects of the war on industry were extensive and far reaching. The life of the town was intimately bound up with the war industry and the changes in war requirements ultimately affected its population through housing, health and welfare and the need for utilities and transport. Addressing these difficulties posed some of the greatest problems. Political implications of wartime in a working-class town led to a split in the Labour Party and ultimately the return of a Tory in 1919. While historians have considered how the nation met the demands of the war, a focus on the regionality of the home front highlights more precisely the impact on specific places and how the war effort was sustained in practice. The experience of the town of Barrow throughout the period of the First World War is therefore invaluable for demonstrating the complexity and inter-relatedness of how the war affected people, industry and infrastructure on the home front.

'Marry - Stitch - Die - or Do Worse' ran a Times newspaper leader in 1857. Yet a significant proportion of the adult female population at this time were surviving without a husband, particularly in London. This thesis focuses on the activities of such women who never married, were deserted or became widowed. Sometimes labelled 'redundant', 'distressed' or 'failed' by their contemporaries, they were frequently unsupported. In the face of substantial barriers to paid employment, this thesis argues that self-employment and small business proprietorship was often a viable option. The evidence presented suggests a somewhat different picture to that often generalised for all middle and upper class women in the nineteenth century - that of retreat into the private sphere of home to become the ‘angel in the house’. A wide variety of sources have been drawn upon to examine women's use of small business proprietorship as a strategy in nineteenth century London, including published diaries, trade cards, opinion pieces, trade directories and insurance records. In addition, it is argued that it is only by following the female proprietor home that we can begin to understand the role of proprietorship in women's work-life strategies. Record linkage has been used to obtain more detailed and consistent information on the families and household's of female proprietors than that available from trade directories or newspaper advertisements. Common stereotypes of women in business in this period relating to age, marital status and so on have been assessed in the light of this evidence. This research has revealed that these stereotypes have some truth in their application to women engaged in the production and typically 'male' trades but that such trades represent only a small fraction of the experience and activities of female proprietors.

Choosing to Run: A History of Athletics and Gender in Kenya, c. 1940s – 1980s explores the history of gender and athletics in Kenya, with focus on the Rift Valley Province, from the onset of late colonial rule in the 1940s through the professionalisation of the sport during the last decades of the twentieth century. The first two empirical chapters provide a history of athletics during the colonial period. The first highlights the continuity of ideas about sport and masculinity that were developed in nineteenth century Britain and were subsequently perpetuated by the men in charge of colonial sport in Kenya. The next chapter considers how pre-colonial divisions of labour and power within Rift Valley communities informed local peoples' cultures of running. The absence of women’s running was not only the result of sexism translated from the British metropole to its Kenyan colony but also of pre-existing divisions of responsibilities of indigenous Kenyan men and women into separate, gendered domains. The second half of the thesis considers the impact of social change within women’s athletics internationally and of marriage, childbirth and education locally on female runners in the Rift Valley during the post-colonial period. Most women abandoned athletics once they reached maturity. Those who sought to do otherwise, as the final chapter argues, found that they could only do so by replicating the prototype of masculine runners that had already been established. Later, after the professionalisation of running allowed women to become wealthy, female patrons took this a step further by providing resources to those in their community in need, setting themselves up as 'Big (Wo)men'. This thesis uses athletics to reveal how gender relations and gender norms have evolved and the benefits and challenges that the sport has brought both to individual Kenyan women and their communities.

Die Böhme Fettchemie ging aus der 1881 von Hermann Theodor Böhme errichteten „Drogen-, Farben- und chemische Produktehandlung“ hervor. Am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts als kleine Verkaufshandlung gegründet, etablierte es sich innerhalb von 50 Jahren zu einem weltbekannten Unternehmen zunächst im Bereich der Textilhilfsmittel. Doch auch im Bereich der Haushaltswaschmittel erreichte es in den 1930er Jahren ebenfalls einen großen Bekanntheitsgrad. Mit der Werbefigur Johanna, die das weltweit erste synthetische Waschmittel „Fewa“ anpries, war es der Firma gelungen, ein breites Publikum auf sich aufmerksam zu machen. Neben der Unternehmensgeschichte – von der Gründung bis in die Mitte der 1940er Jahre – gibt die Autorin Ivonne Reichmann mit dem vorliegenden Werk Auskunft über soziale und wirtschaftliche Aspekte der Böhme Fettchemie. Die einzelnen, chronologisch gegliederten Kapitel erschließen die bauliche Erweiterung, die Mitarbeiterstruktur, den Ausbau der Produktpalette sowie die weltweite Ausdehnung des Unternehmens. Deren Werbemaßnahmen spielen dabei ebenso eine Rolle wie die Übernahme durch den Henkel-Konzern in den 1930er Jahren. Mit dieser Studie wird eine Forschungslücke zum bisher wenig betrachteten Bereich der chemischen Industrie im südwestsächsischen Raum geschlossen.:1. Fragestellung und Methode 2. Voraussetzungen und Anfänge der Unternehmensgründung 3. Unternehmensentwicklung bis zum Ende der 1920er Jahre 4. Die turbulenten 1930er Jahre 5. Das Unternehmen während des Zweiten Weltkriegs 6. Nachkriegsjahre / Böhme Fettchemie emerged from a 'drugs, dyes and chemical products shop' established by Hermann Theodor Böhme in 1881. Founded at the end of the 19th century as a small sales business, it established itself within 50 years as a world-famous company, initially in the field of textile auxiliaries. But also in the field of household laundry detergents it achieved a high degree of recognition in the 1930s. With the advertising figure Johanna, who praised the world's first synthetic detergent 'Fewa', the company succeeded in attracting the attention of a wide audience. In addition to the company's history – from its foundation to the mid-1940s – the author Ivonne Reichmann provides information about the social and economic aspects of Böhme Fettchemie with this work. The individual, chronologically structured chapters reveal the structural expansion, the employee structure, the expansion of the product range as well as the worldwide expansion of the company. Their advertising measures play just as much a role as the takeover by the Henkel Group in the 1930s. This study closes a research gap to the hitherto little considered area of the chemical industry in southwest Saxony.:1. Fragestellung und Methode 2. Voraussetzungen und Anfänge der Unternehmensgründung 3. Unternehmensentwicklung bis zum Ende der 1920er Jahre 4. Die turbulenten 1930er Jahre 5. Das Unternehmen während des Zweiten Weltkriegs 6. Nachkriegsjahre