Edna went to work at Cadbury's when she left school at the age of 14. When war came she was moved to making rockets and later graduated to inspection. The rockets were liable to explode so water was sprayed onto the roof of the hangers in Summer. They experimented with different types of cordite and when they found success the production was moved to rural Wales. Edna was allowed to remain in Birmingham because she needed to take care of her mother.

She became a 'clippy' on the trams which she enjoyed enormously despite the fact that they were once machine gunned on the Bristol Road. Another story she told was of thick fog in the city centre so the trams had to crawl along so slowly that some of the passengers were able to walk into town, see a show and get back on the same tram to go home. There had been no fog in Cotteridge so Edna had a difficult job convincing her mother of the reason she was late home!

Edna, like others had to take fire-fighting duty and her home was a designated First Aid post.

At the end of the war Edna returned to work at Cadbury's.