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Life in Shirt Sleeves


By Marie Ørstedholm

When Mathilde Fibiger began her training to become a telegraph operator, she gave up her dream of becoming a writer. She became Denmark’s first female telegraph operator and fought her battle for women’s independence by her own example.


Females at the Telegraph
During the first decade of the State Telegraph it was discussed several times during the preparation of the telegraph service budget whether it was possible to save money on personnel by employing "females". In autumn 1863, when lack of manpower was foreseen as telegraph operators liable for military service had to take the field, they decided to make an attempt. Mathilde Fibiger was recommended to director Faber by her close friend, Minister of Finance C.E. Fenger. She began in the winter of 1863.

Training as a Telegraph Operator
Mathilde was determined to prove that women’s worth as labour was equal to that of men. Nevertheless, she was often afraid to "fall from her horse". In a letter for a friend she writes from the telegraph station in 1864: "I manage! – but not in any smooth and secure way; when the station in Copenhagen gets all out of hand, I have to "fight the bad boys" and then I am really in distress, but the situation amuses me afterwards. I can endure life in shirt sleeves when I bear in mind that I have gained my footing on earth".

Mathilde finished her training at Elsinore Telegraph Station in 1866 and had her appointment confirmed. At that time she met director Faber who on the same occasion pointed out that "you have trained now and it has turned out that you are doing as well as anybody else". His words encouraged Mathilde who - being of the first woman at the station - had had a hard time at the male-dominated workplace.

Station Manager
After two years as a telegraph operator Mathilde was transferred to Nysted on the island of Lolland to be manager of a newly opened station. She arrived in the town in 1869 and experienced for the first time to be met "with mistrust because I am a lady". She was the only employee at the station and had to learn the heavy, practical work that her male colleagues had carried out so far. It amused her, however, to demonstrate these skills and she did it proudly. Her biggest challenge was, however, to make ends meet. When all bills had been paid out of her modest remuneration, there was not enough left to live for. Much to her annoyance she had to apply for another transfer after about a year.

Aarhus
Mathilde was then moved to the telegraph station in Aarhus where new hardship awaited her. Her employment had been arranged against the station manager’s will and his attitude rubbed off on the rest of the staff. In a letter to a friend she writes about her "sorrows at the Aarhus station": "If only it was all imagination …, but I have the testimony of remembrance of actually experienced scenes and actually spoken words that are too strange not to be true, but which nobody would believe if I told them about it".

Worn-Out
Mathilde’s health had suffered from many years of struggling for survival and the resistance in Aarhus broke her in the end. She died in 1872 in at the age of 41. The year before she had had the honour of being solicited to be a founder member of Danish Women’s Society, but she did not have the strength and declined "not because of indifference to the cause, but conscious of my complete powerlessness in relation to serve in any other way than I do".

Also as a telegraph operator Mathilde became a pioneer: The State Telegraph eventually developed into on of the large women’s workplaces in Denmark.



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