The Needlework Depôt

5GFS/2/2 Two sample cuffs, submitted with applications for work in the Needlework Depot, demonstrating the applicants' skills at, for example, buttonholes, gathering and drawn thread work.

The Society helped sick Members by providing small grants and pensions, and through the Needlework Department which took orders for clothes to be made by the 'invalids' in their own homes. This was followed, in 1899, by the pioneering Central Industrial Depôt which ran needlework correspondence courses for Members with chronic illnesses and disabilities, then sent them work and sold the items produced. Members seeking employment applied through their Associates who forwarded a sample of the applicant's work and gave the nature of her illness, length of membership and the kind of needlework desired. Minnie Sloper, for example, who applied in 1913, aged 46, had joined the GFS in 1879, had 'Chronic Hip disease - quite crippled,' and could do 'All kinds of fine needlework.' In 1906 '405 invalids' were employed and sales amounted to more than £2,000.