A hundred years ago, Miss Elise Updyke, of 2320 West Harold St., Philadelphia, worked as the operator of a bobbin winder machine at the Belmont Manufacturing Company, 2545 North Broad Street. a one mile walk away from her home.  Today, both addresses are within a block of the same bus line, and it’s likely there were then as well.  The material on the bobbins was woven into neckties.

So chances are, Miss Updyke got up every morning, took the streetcar or bus to work, and filled bobbins.  Her picture appeared a hundred years ago today in the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, October 11, 1920, in a daily feature, “Our City’s Workers and What They Do.”