Returning once more to the archive, this is an article from April 1939 that shows how far emancipation had come since the turn of the century. The single, or bachelor, girl was no longer reliant on finding a husband in order to leave the familial home.

Jobs for women  paying a good enough salary to live on were few and far between in the twenties and thirties, but they did exist. It was beginning to emerge that an ordinary woman could plan, and participate fully in, a professional working career.

I have been unable to find any further information on Lilian Mattingly except that she was the cookery expert of a small format women’s magazine called ‘Home Notes’ during the thirties and forties.

This situation was to change forever during the following decade. As the men of the nation ‘went to war’ the work of man passed, of necessity, into the hands of the women who were left behind.

A Pandoras Box was to open that could never be fully reclosed and things would never be the same again.