First Woman in Britain to receive equal pay (1943)
November 2009, at home in Plymouth
b.1908, Plymouth. d.2012
In 1941, Edith Kent became the first woman to be employed as a welder at Devonport dockyard. By 1943 she made history, becoming the first woman in Great Britain to receive equal pay, earning the same wage as her male co-workers. Edith had the advantage of being only 4 feet 11 inches tall, meaning that she was small enough to weld inside torpedo tubes (places her male colleagues could not reach).