Elsie Oates

War Service

Elsie Oates of Racca Green, Knottingley was a gun shell filler, working at Barnbow Munitions factory at Crossgates.
It was just after 10pm on Tuesday 5th December 1916, when several hundred women and girls had just begun their night shift. Their tasks consisted of filling, fusing, finishing off and packing 4½ inch shells. Room 42 was mainly used for the filling, and between 150 and 170 girls worked there. Shells were brought to the room already loaded with high explosive and all that remained was the insertion of the fuse and the screwing down of the cap. A girl inserted the fuse by hand, screwed it down and then it was taken and placed into a machine that revolved the shell and screwed the fuse down tightly.
At 10.27 pm a violent explosion occurred in Room 42 killing 35 women outright, maiming and injuring dozens more. In some cases identification was only possible by the identity disks worn around the necks of the workers. The machine where the explosion had occurred was completely destroyed. Steam pipes had burst open and covered the floor with a cocktail of blood and water.
Elsie Oates died aged twenty years old on 2 Feb 1917. Her inquest was held at the Cherry Tree Inn, Knottingley on 6 February 1917, where it was found that she had died from “Malignant jaundice consequent on Trinitro-toluene poisoning by absorption. Misadventure.” She was buried the same day in Knottingley Cemetery on Womersley Road - plot 4727.
Her mother, Mrs Annie Oates, sent a photograph of her daughter to the Imperial War Museum when it appealed for information as its Women’s Collection was being established. The letter she enclosed with it said “Dear madam, I am enclosing my daughter’s photograph. It is only very small and was took when she went to school, but if it will be of any use I shall be pleased for you to keep it. I only wish I had a larger one of her.”

Elsie Oates