The Dagenham Girl Pipers are a female bagpipe marching band

Marching band

Marching band is a physical activity in which a group of instrumental musicians generally perform outdoors and incorporate some type of marching with their musical performance. Instrumentation typically includes brass, woodwinds, and percussion instruments...

 based in Dagenham

Dagenham

Dagenham is a large suburb in East London, forming the eastern part of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and located east of Charing Cross. It was historically an agrarian village in the county of Essex and remained mostly undeveloped until 1921 when the London County Council began...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, UK.

The band was formed in by a Congregational

Congregational church

Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs....

 minister, Rev Joseph Waddington Graves, in 1930, turning professional three years later, and have toured internationally. The girls were initially taught in secret by Scottish

Scottish people

The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...

 Pipe Major

Pipe Major

The Pipe Major is the director of bagpipe music in a Scottish or Irish pipe band. Like Drum Major, the position of Pipe Major is derived from British Army traditions. During the early twentieth century, the term Sergeant Piper was used for the role in place of "Pipe Major".Civillian and military...

 Douglas Scott-Taylor who, it is said, thought teaching women would damage his reputation.

The pipers were also known for having the first female, and first non-Scot pipe major who came from their own ranks, when Sgt Edith Turnbull --the first member of the band -- was made a Pipe Major in the band.

During a pre-war performance in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, Hitler was heard to remark: "I wish I had a band like that."

During World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, the pipers were members of ENSA

Entertainments National Service Association

The Entertainments National Service Association or ENSA was an organisation set up in 1939 by Basil Dean and Leslie Henson to provide entertainment for British armed forces personnel during World War II. ENSA operated as part of the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes...

 (Entertainments National Service Association) and entertained the troops.

Dagenham Girl Pipers in popular culture

In an essay by Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams

Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...

 published in The Salmon of Doubt

The Salmon of Doubt

The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time is a posthumous collection of previously published and unpublished material by Douglas Adams...

, Adams described the Dagenham Girl Pipers as his "dream lover", writing "With all due respect and love to my dear wife, there are some things that, however loving or tender your wife may be, only a large pipe band can give you".

The Dagenham girl pipers were often referred to by Eric Morecambe

Eric Morecambe

John Eric Bartholomew OBE , known by his stage name Eric Morecambe, was an English comedian who together with Ernie Wise formed the award-winning double act Morecambe and Wise. The partnership lasted from 1941 until Morecambe's death of a heart attack in 1984...

 during episodes of The Morecambe and Wise Show and are referenced during George and Mildred

George and Mildred

George and Mildred is a British sitcom produced by Thames Television that aired from 1976 to 1979. It was a spin-off from Man About the House and starred Brian Murphy and Yootha Joyce as an ill-matched married couple, George and Mildred Roper...

series 1, episode 10.