On April 8, 1919, a moment in history came to an end. That was the last day on which women conductresses punched tickets on Bradford Corporation’s trams.

With millions of men called up for the armed services in the 1914-18 First World War, women had to fill the gaps on the shopfloor in factories, in the offices and platforms of railway companies and on the city’s tramway system.

“You achieved the impossible. At least, everybody told us when you went on the cars that it was ‘no woman’s job’ and that you would be under the doctor most of the time,” said the Bradford Daily Telegraph.

It was rubbish, of course. As though the likes of Mary Seacole, Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale had never ventured into dangerous places and made the difference they did in the care of the physically and mentally wounded.

Not to mention the thousands of women who had worked in textile mills since industrialisation had brought about the shift from spinning and weaving at home to machine work in factories.

The paper’s backhanded fond farewell to women – “How sorry we shall be to see the last of you” – failed to imagine a further role for them in public life... come the next world war.