Queens of Industry

Brochure for ‘A Story of Wool’, an exhibition that toured the wool and cotton manufacturing districts of the North of England from 1946. The exhibition featured the film ‘Three-Piece Suit’ starring Yorkshire Wool Queen Doreen Kerfoot.      

Detail of the script from the Wool Trade promotional film ‘Three Piece Suit’. In the film Doreen Kerfoot plays a textile worker who persuades a Bradford company to make a suit which she finally models.    

An accomplished soprano singer, Doreen sings to her mill workmates, according to the script.     

Becoming Yorkshire Wool Queen allowed Doreen Kerfoot to follow her passions of singing, modelling and acting. This safari suit is one of the many costumes she modelled.    

Britain’s railways were the first major industry to elect annual queens. In 1925 Ella Wooton, a railwayman’s daughter, became Britain’s first Railway Queen. Ella and subsequent queens wore this tiara.  

This tiara was worn by the Cotton Queens of Great Britain while out on public engagements. Elsie Kearsley from Longridge, near Preston was the last Queen to wear it. Her reign was cut short by the outbreak of hostilities with Germany in September 1939.       

The jersey on the left is a reproduction of a knitting pattern modelled by 1946 Yorkshire Wool Queen Doreen Kerfoot. The garment to the right is a ‘Calver’ smock, working-wear made by a contemporary craft practitioner.    

All Cotton Queens had to be women actively working in the industry. Here, newly-crowned Cotton Queen Marjorie Knowles celebrates with her fellow mill workers in Burnley in June 1932.   

Cotton Queen Marjorie Knowles steps out of her chauffeur-driven car. Standing to the right is her employer John Sharples. Sharples owned a chain of factory shops across Lancashire that sold cotton products made in his Burnley Mill.     

Marjorie Knowles with her chaperone on the steps of 10 Downing Street in 1932. She would have been meeting the Prime Minister of the day, Ramsay MacDonald, as was the tradition for all Cotton Queens.        

Frances Lockett is crowned as the first Cotton Queen of Great Britain at a ceremony in June 1930 at Blackpool’s Tower Circus.      

Public speaking was one of the most important duties for industry queens. Here Frances Lockett addresses a crowd in 1930.     

Eileen Conboy is crowned 1936 Morley Textile Queen by the town’s Mayor and Lady Mayoress. One of the prizes won by Eileen was a free haircut at the Vanity Box beauty salon.      

Large crowds welcome the 1936 Morley Textile Queen Eileen Conboy. In 1946 Yorkshire went on to elect Doreen Kerfoot as the county’s Wool Queen.