Pictures of Women From the Industrial Revolution Pictures of Families From the Industrial Revolution

Women Workers in the British Industrial Revolution

Historians disagree near whether the British Industrial Revolution (1760-1830) was beneficial for women. Frederick Engels, writing in the belatedly nineteenth century, thought that the Industrial Revolution increased women's participation in labor outside the domicile, and claimed that this alter was emancipating. ¹ More recent historians dispute the claim that women's labor strength participation rose, and focus more on the disadvantages women experienced during this time period.² I affair is certain: the Industrial Revolution was a time of important changes in the manner that women worked.

The Census

Unfortunately, the historical sources on women's piece of work are neither as complete nor as reliable as we would similar. Aggregate information on the occupations of women is bachelor only from the census, and while census data has the advantage of beingness comprehensive, information technology is non a very good measure of work done by women during the Industrial Revolution. For one thing, the census does not provide whatsoever information on private occupations until 1841, which is subsequently the menses we wish to study.ⁱⁱⁱ Even so the information on women's occupations is questionable. For the 1841 census, the directions for enumerators stated that "The professions &c. of wives, or of sons or daughters living with and assisting their parents but non apprenticed or receiving wages, need non be inserted." Clearly this census would not give us an accurate mensurate of female person labor force participation. Table One illustrates the trouble further; it shows the occupations of men and women recorded in the 1851 census, for 20 occupational categories. These numbers advise that female labor force participation was depression, and that twoscore percent of occupied women worked in domestic service. However, economic historians take demonstrated that these numbers are misleading. First, many women who were actually employed were not listed as employed in the census. Women who appear in farm wage books have no recorded occupation in the demography.⁴ At the same fourth dimension, the census over-estimates participation by listing in the "domestic service" category women who were actually family members. In addition, the census exaggerates the extent to which women were concentrated in domestic service occupations because many women listed as "maids", and included in the domestic servant category in the aggregate tables, were really agricultural workers.⁵

Tabular array One

Occupational Distribution in the 1851 Census of Not bad Britain

Occupational Category	Males (thousands)	Females (thousands)	Percent Female
Public Administration	64	3	4.5
Armed Forces	63	0	0.0
Professions	162	103	38.9
Domestic Services	193	1135	85.five
Commercial	91	0	0.0
Transportation & Communications	433	13	ii.9
Agriculture	1788	229	11.4
Fishing	36	one	2.vii
Mining	383	11	2.eight
Metallic Articles	536	36	6.3
Building & Construction	496	1	0.2
Wood & Furniture	152	8	5.0
Bricks, Cement, Pottery, Glass	75	15	16.7
Chemicals	42	4	8.seven
Leather & Skins	55	five	8.3
Paper & Printing	62	16	xx.5
Textiles	661	635	49.0
Clothing	418	491	54.0
Food, Drink, Lodging	348	53	13.2
Other	445	75	fourteen.4
Full Occupied	6545	2832	xxx.two
Total Unoccupied	1060	5294	83.iii

Source: B.R. Mitchell, Abstract of British Historical Statistics, Cambridge: Cambridge Academy Press, 1962, p. threescore.

Domestic Service

Domestic piece of work – cooking, cleaning, caring for children and the sick, fetching water, making and mending clothing – took up the majority of women'south time during the Industrial Revolution period. Most of this work was unpaid. Some families were well-off enough that they could employ other women to do this piece of work, as live-in servants, as charring women, or as service providers. Alive-in servants were adequately common; even center-class families had maids to aid with the domestic chores. Charring women did housework on a daily basis. In London women were paid 2s.6d. per day for washing, which was more than three times the 8d. typically paid for agricultural labor in the state. However, a "solar day'due south piece of work" in washing could last 20 hours, more than than twice as long as a twenty-four hour period'southward work in agriculture.^six Other women worked as laundresses, doing the washing in their ain homes.

Cottage Industry

Before factories appeared, most cloth industry (including the main processes of spinning and weaving) was carried out under the "putting-out" system. Since raw materials were expensive, textile workers rarely had enough capital to be self-employed, but would take raw materials from a merchant, spin or weave the materials in their homes, and then return the finished production and receive a piece-rate wage. This arrangement disappeared during the Industrial Revolution as new mechanism requiring h2o or steam power appeared, and work moved from the home to the manufacturing plant.

Before the Industrial Revolution, manus spinning had been a widespread female employment. It could have as many as ten spinners to provide one hand-loom weaver with yarn, and men did non spin, so most of the workers in the textile industry were women. The new fabric machines of the Industrial Revolution changed that. Wages for hand-spinning fell, and many rural women who had previously spun institute themselves unemployed. In a few locations, new cottage industries such as straw-plaiting and lace-making grew and took the place of spinning, merely in other locations women remained unemployed.

Another of import cottage manufacture was the pillow-lace manufacture, and then called because women wove the lace on pins stuck in a pillow. In the belatedly-eighteenth century women in Bedford could earn 6s. a week making lace, which was about fifty percent more than women earned in argiculture. However, this industry besides disappeared due to mechanization. Following Heathcote'south invention of the bobbinet automobile (1809), cheaper lace could be made by embroidering patterns on machine-made lace internet. This new type of lace created a new cottage industry, that of "lace-runners" who emboidered patterns on the lace.

The straw-plaiting industry employed women braiding harbinger into bands used for making hats and bonnets. The manufacture prospered around the plow of the century due to the invention of a simple tool for splitting the straw and war, which cut off competition from Italy. At this time women could earn 4s. to 6s. per week plaiting straw. This industry too declined, though, following the increase in free merchandise with the Continent in the 1820s.

Factories

A defining characteristic of the Industrial Revolution was the rise of factories, specially textile factories. Work moved out of the dwelling and into a factory, which used a central power source to run its machines. Water power was used in most of the early factories, only improvements in the steam engine fabricated steam power possible also. The most dramatic productivity growth occurred in the cotton wool manufacture. The invention of James Hargreaves' spinning jenny (1764), Richard Arkwright'southward "throstle" or "water frame" (1769), and Samuel Crompton's spinning mule (1779, then named considering it combined features of the two earlier machines) revolutionized spinning. Great britain began to manufacture cotton cloth, and failing prices for the material encouraged both domestic consumption and export. Machines also appeared for other parts of the cloth-making process, the most important of which was Edmund Cartwright'southward powerloom, which was adopted slowly because of imperfections in the early designs, but was widely used by the 1830s. While cotton wool was the most important cloth of the Industrial Revolution, there were advances in mechanism for silk, flax, and wool production also.⁷

The appearance of new machinery changed the gender division of labor in material production. Before the Industrial Revolution, women spun yarn using a spinning wheel (or occasionally a distaff and spindle). Men didn't spin, and this division of labor made sense because women were trained to accept more dexterity than men, and because men's greater force made them more valuable in other occupations. In contrast to spinning, handloom weaving was done by both sexes, but men outnumbered women. Men monopolized highly skilled preparation and finishing processes such as wool combing and fabric-dressing. With mechanization, the gender division of labor changed. Women used the spinning jenny and water frame, but mule spinning was most exclusively a male occupation because information technology required more strength, and considering the male person mule-spinners actively opposed the employment of female mule-spinners. Women mule-spinners in Glasgow, and their employers, were the victims of violent attacks past male spinners trying to reduce the competition in their occupation.⁸ While they moved out of spinning, women seem to have increased their employment in weaving (both in handloom weaving and somewhen in powerloom factories). Both sexes were employed every bit powerloom operators.

Table Ii

Manufacturing plant Workers in 1833: Females as a Percentage of the Workforce

Manufacture	Ages 12 and under	Ages 13-twenty	Ages 21+	All Ages
Cotton	51.8	65.0	52.2	58.0
Wool	38.6	46.ii	37.7	40.9
Flax	54.8	77.3	59.5	67.4
Silk	74.3	84.3	71.3	78.1
Lace	38.7	57.four	16.6	36.5
Potteries	38.one	46.9	27.i	29.4
Dyehouse	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Glass	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Newspaper	–	100.0	39.2	53.6
Whole Sample	52.eight	66.4	48.0	56.viii

Source: "Study from Dr. James Mitchell to the Fundamental Board of Commissioners, respecting the Returns made from the Factories, and the Results obtained from them." British Parliamentary Papers, 1834 (167) Nineteen. Mitchell collected data from 82 cotton factories, 65 wool factories, 73 flax factories, 29 silk factories, 7 potteries, eleven lace factories, one dyehouse, one "drinking glass works", and ii paper mills throughout Great Britain.

While the highly skilled and highly paid chore of mule-spinning was a male occupation, many women and girls were engaged in other tasks in textile factories. For case, the moisture-spinning of flax, introduced in Leeds in 1825, employed mainly teenage girls. Girls often worked as administration to mule-spinners, piecing together broken threads. In fact, females were a majority of the factory labor force. Tabular array Two shows that 57 percent of factory workers were female, most of them under age twenty. Women were widely employed in all the textile industries, and constituted the majority of workers in cotton, flax, and silk. Outside of textiles, women were employed in potteries and newspaper factories, but not in dye or drinking glass manufacture. Of the women who worked in factories, 16 percentage were under historic period 13, 51 percent were between the ages of 13 and 20, and 33 percent were age 21 and over. On average, girls earned the same wages every bit boys. Children'south wages rose from about 1s.6d. per week at age 7 to about 5s. per week at historic period 15. Beginning at historic period sixteen, and a large gap betwixt male and female wages appeared. At age 30, women manufacturing plant workers earned merely ane-third as much as men.

Figure I
Distribution of Male person and Female Factory Employment past Historic period, 1833

Source: "Report from Dr. James Mitchell to the Central Board of Commissioners, respecting the Returns fabricated from the Factories, and the Results obtained from them." British Parliamentary Papers, 1834 (167) 19.
The y-axis shows the per centum of total employment within each sex activity that is in that five-year age category.

Figure Ii
Wages of Factory Workers in 1833

Source: "Report from Dr. James Mitchell to the Primal Board of Commissioners, respecting the Returns made from the Factories, and the Results obtained from them." British Parliamentary Papers, 1834 (167) XIX.

Agriculture

Wage Workers

Wage-earners in agronomics generally fit into one of 2 broad categories – servants who were hired annually and received part of their wage in room and board, and twenty-four hour period-laborers who lived independently and were paid a daily or weekly wage. Before industrialization servants comprised between one-third and i-half of labor in agriculture.^ix For servants the value of room and board was a substantial portion of their bounty, so the ratio of coin wages is an nether-approximate of the ratio of total wages (see Table 3). Almost servants were young and unmarried. Because servants were paid office of their wage in kind, every bit board, the use of the servant contract tended to autumn when food prices were high. During the Industrial Revolution the use of servants seems to take fallen in the S and Due east.¹⁰ The percentage of servants who were female person besides declined in the showtime one-half of the nineteenth century.¹¹

Table Three

Wages of Agricultural Servants (£ per year)

Year	Location	Male person Money Wage	Male In-Kind Wage	Female Coin Wage	Female In-Kind Wage	Ratio of Coin Wages	Ratio of Total Wages
1770	Lancashire	7	9	3	6	0.43	0.56
1770	Oxfordshire	10	12	4	8	0.40	0.55
1770	Staffordshire	eleven	9	4	six	0.36	0.50
1821	Yorkshire	16.5	27	7	18	0.42	0.57

Source: Joyce Burnette, "An Investigation of the Female-Male Wage Gap during the Industrial Revolution in Britain," Economical History Review 50 (May 1997): 257-281.

While servants lived with the farmer and received nutrient and lodging as role of their wage, laborers lived independently, received fewer in-kind payments, and were paid a daily or a weekly wage. Though the majority of laborers were male, some were female. Tabular array 4 shows the percentage of laborers who were female at various farms in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. These numbers suggest that female employment was widespread, but varied considerably from 1 location to the next. Compared to men, female laborers generally worked fewer days during the twelvemonth. The employment of female laborers was concentrated around the harvest, and women rarely worked during the winter. While men ordinarily worked six days per week, outside of harvest women mostly averaged effectually four days per calendar week.

Table Iv

Employment of Women as Laborers in Agriculture:
Pct of Almanac Piece of work-Days Worked by Females

Year	Location	Percent Female
1772-v	Oakes in Norton, Derbyshire	17
1774-vii	Dunster Castle Subcontract, Somerset	27
1785-92	Dunster Castle Subcontract, Somerset	forty
1794-5	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	42
1801-iii	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	35
1801-4	Nettlecombe Barton, Somerset	10
1814-6	Nettlecombe Barton, Somerset	vii
1826-8	Nettlecombe Barton, Somerset	5
1828-39	Shipton Moyne, Gloucestershire	19
1831-45	Oakes in Norton, Derbyshire	6
1836-9	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	26
1839-forty	Lustead, Norfolk	6
1846-nine	Dunster Castle Subcontract, Somerset	29

Sources: Joyce Burnette, "Labourers at the Oakes: Changes in the Need for Female Twenty-four hours-Laborers at a Farm near Sheffield During the Agricultural Revolution," Periodical of Economic History 59 (March 1999): 41-67; Helen Speechley, Female and Child Agricultural Day Labourers in Somerset, c. 1685-1870, dissertation, Univ. of Exeter, 1999. Sotheron-Estcourt accounts, Thou.R.O. D1571; Ketton-Cremer accounts, Due north.R.O. WKC 5/250

The wages of female person day-laborers were fairly compatible; mostly a farmer paid the same wage to all the developed women he hired. Women's daily wages were betwixt one-3rd and half of male person wages. Women generally worked shorter days, though, and so the gap in hourly wages was non quite this large.¹² In the less populous counties of Northumberland and Durham, male laborers were required to provide a "bondager," a woman (ordinarily a family unit member) who was bachelor for day-labor whenever the employer wanted her.¹³

Table Five

Wages of Agronomical Laborers

Year	Location	Male Wage (d./day)	Female Wage (d./24-hour interval)	Ratio
1770	Yorkshire	5	12	0.42
1789	Hertfordshire	vi	xvi	0.38
1797	Warwickshire	6	xiv	0.43
1807	Oxfordshire	ix	23	0.39
1833	Cumberland	12	24	0.50
1833	Essex	10	22	0.45
1838	Worcester	ix	18	0.50

Source: Joyce Burnette, "An Investigation of the Female-Male Wage Gap during the Industrial Revolution in U.k.," Economical History Review fifty (May 1997): 257-281.

Various sources suggest that women's employment in agriculture declined during the early on nineteenth century. Enclosure increased farm size and changed the patterns of animal husbandry, both of which seem to have led to reductions in female employment.¹⁴ More women were employed during harvest than during other seasons, simply women's employment during harvest declined as the scythe replaced the sickle equally the most popular harvest tool. While women frequently harvested with the sickle, they did not utilize the heavier scythe.¹⁵ Female employment fell the most in the E, where farms increasingly specialized in grain production. Women had more piece of work in the Due west, which specialized more than in livestock and dairy farming.^sixteen

Non-Wage-Earners

During the eighteenth century there were many opportunities for women to be productively employed in farm piece of work on their own account, whether they were wives of farmers on large holdings, or wives of landless laborers. In the early nineteenth century, all the same, many of these opportunities disappeared, and women'southward participation in agronomical product barbarous.

In a village that had a eatables, even if the family merely rented a cottage the wife could be cocky-employed in agriculture because she could keep a moo-cow, or other animals, on the eatables. By conscientious management of her stock, a adult female might earn as much during the twelvemonth as her husband earned equally a laborer. Women too gathered fuel from the commons, saving the family considerable expense. The enclosure of the eatables, though, eliminated these opportunities. In an enclosure, country was re-assigned then as to eliminate the commons and consolidate holdings. Fifty-fifty when the poor had clear legal rights to apply the commons, these rights were not always compensated in the enclosure agreement. While enclosure occurred at unlike times for different locations, the largest waves of enclosures occurred in the offset 2 decades of the nineteenth century, significant that, for many, opportunities for self-employment in agriculture declined as the same time every bit employment in cottage industry declined. ¹⁷

Only a few opportunities for agronomical production remained for the landless laboring family. In some locations landlords permitted landless laborers to rent small allotments, on which they could still grow some of their own food. The right to glean on fields after harvest seems to have been maintained at least through the middle of the nineteenth century, by which time information technology had go i of the few agronomical activities available to women in some areas. Gleaning was a valuable right; the value of the grain gleaned was often between 5 and 10 percent of the family'southward full almanac income.^xviii

In the eighteenth century information technology was common for farmers' wives to be actively involved in farm work, peculiarly in managing the dairy, pigs, and poultry. The diary was an important source of income for many farms, and its success depended on the skill of the mistress, who normally ran the functioning with no help from men. In the nineteenth century, still, farmer's wives were more likely to withdraw from farm direction, leaving the dairy to the management of dairymen who paid a fixed fee for the use of the cows.^nineteen While poor women withdrew from self-employment in agriculture because of lost opportunities, farmer's wives seem to have withdraw because greater prosperity allowed them to enjoy more than leisure.

It was less common for women to manage their own farms, but not unknown. Commercial directories list numerous women farmers. For example, the 1829 Directory of the County of Derby lists 3354 farmers, of which 162, or 4.8%, were clearly female.²⁰ While the commercial directories themselves exercise not indicate to what extent these women were actively involved in their farms, other evidence suggests that at to the lowest degree some women farmers were actively involved in the piece of work of the subcontract.²¹

Cocky-Employed

During the Industrial Revolution period women were also agile businesswomen in towns. Among business owners listed in commercial directories, nearly 10 percent were female person. Table Seven shows the per centum female person in all the trades with at to the lowest degree 25 people listed in the 1788 Manchester commercial directory. Single women, married women, and widows are included in these numbers. Sometimes these women were widows carrying on the businesses of their deceased husbands, merely fifty-fifty in this case that does not hateful they were merely figureheads. Widows often continued their hubby'south businesses because they had been agile in management of the business while their husband was alive, and wished to go along.²² Sometimes married women were engaged in merchandise separately from their husbands. Women most usually ran shops and taverns, and worked as dressmakers and milliners, but they were not confined to these areas, and appear in well-nigh of the trades listed in commercial directories. Manchester, for example, had six female blacksmiths and five female machine makers in 1846. Betwixt 1730 and 1800 there were 121 "rouping women" selling off estates in Edinburgh. ²³

Table 6

Business Owners Listed in Commercial Directories

Date	City	Male person	Female	Unknown Gender	Percent Female person
1788	Manchester	2033	199	321	8.9
1824-5	Manchester	4185	297	1671	six.half-dozen
1846	Manchester	eleven,942	1222	2316	9.iii
1850	Birmingham	15,054	2020	1677	11.8
1850	Derby	2415	332	194	12.1

Sources: Lewis's Manchester Directory for 1788 (reprinted by Neil Richardson, Manchester, 1984); Pigot and Dean'southward Directory for Manchester, Salford, &c. for 1824-5 (Manchester 1825); Slater'south National Commercial Directory of Ireland (Manchester, 1846); Slater'due south Royal National and Commercial Directory (Manchester, 1850)

Table Vii

Women in Trades in Manchester, 1788

Trade	Men	Women	Gender Unknown	Percent Female
Apothecary/ Surgeon / Midwife	29	ane	v	3.iii
Attorney	39	0	3	0.0
Boot and Shoe makers	87	0	1	0.0
Butcher	33	1	1	2.9
Calenderer	31	iv	5	11.iv
Corn & Flour Dealer	45	4	5	8.ii
Cotton Dealer	23	0	2	0.0
Draper, Mercer, Dealer of Cloth	46	15	19	24.vi
Dyer	44	3	18	half dozen.4
Fustian Cutter / Shearer	54	2	0	3.6
Grocers & Tea Dealers	91	16	12	15.0
Hairdresser & Peruke maker	34	ane	0	2.nine
Hatter	45	3	4	half dozen.3
Joiner	34	0	1	0.0
Liquor dealer	30	4	14	11.8
Manufacturer, cloth	257	iv	118	1.5
Merchant	58	one	xviii	1.7
Publichouse / Inn / Tavern	126	thirteen	two	9.4
School master / mistress	18	ten	0	35.seven
Shopkeeper	107	xvi	4	13.0
Tailor	59	0	1	0.0
Warehouse	64	0	14	0.0

Source: Lewis's Manchester Directory for 1788 (reprinted past Neil Richardson, Manchester, 1984)

Guilds often controlled access to trades, admitting merely those who had served an apprenticeship and thus earned the "freedom" of the trade. Women could obtain "freedom" not simply by apprenticeship, but besides by widowhood. The widow of a tradesman was often considered knowledgeable enough in the trade that she was given the right to behave on the trade fifty-fifty without an apprenticeship. In the eighteenth century women were apprenticed to a broad diverseness of trades, including butchery, bookbinding, brush making, carpentry, ropemaking and silversmithing.²⁴ Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the number of females apprenticed to trades declined, perhaps suggesting reduced participation past women. However, the power of the guilds and the importance of apprenticeship were also failing during this time, then the decline in female person apprenticeships may not take been an important barrier to employment.²⁵

Many women worked in the factories of the Industrial Revolution, and a few women actually owned factories. In Keighley, Due west Yorkshire, Ann Illingworth, Miss Rachael Leach, and Mrs. Betty Hudson built and operated textile mills.²⁶ In 1833 Mrs. Doig owned a powerloom manufactory in Scotland, which employed 60 workers.²⁷

While many women did successfully enter trades, at that place were obstacles to women's employment that kept their numbers low. Women generally received less education than men (though education of the time was of limited practical employ). Women may have found it more than hard than men to raise the necessary majuscule because English police force did non consider a married woman to have any legal being; she could not sue or exist sued. A married woman was a feme covert and technically could non brand any legally bounden contracts, a fact which may have discouraged others from loaning money to or making other contracts with married women. Withal, this law was not equally limiting in do as it would seem to be in theory considering a married woman engaged in trade on her own account was treated by the courts as a feme sole and was responsible for her own debts.²⁸

The professionalization of certain occupations resulted in the exclusion of women from work they had previously washed. Women had provided medical care for centuries, but the professionalization of medicine in the early-nineteenth century fabricated it a male occupation. The Royal College of Physicians admitted just graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, schools to which women were not admitted until the twentieth century. Women were even replaced past men in midwifery. The procedure began in the tardily-eighteenth century, when we detect the use of the term "man-midwife," an oxymoronic title suggestive of changing gender roles. In the nineteenth century the "man-midwife" disappeared, and women were replaced by physicians or surgeons for assisting childbirth. Professionalization of the clergy was also effective in excluding women. While the Church of England did non allow women ministers, the Methodists movement had many women preachers during its early years. All the same, even among the Methodists female preachers disappeared when lay preachers were replaced with a professional person clergy in the early nineteenth century.²⁹

In other occupations where professionalization was non as strong, women remained an important part of the workforce. Teaching, particularly in the lower grades, was a mutual profession for women. Some were governesses, who lived as household servants, but many opened their own schools and took in pupils. The writing profession seems to have been adequately open to women; the leading novelists of the period include Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Fanny Burney, George Eliot (the pen proper noun of Mary Ann Evans), Elizabeth Gaskell, and Frances Trollope. Female non-fiction writers of the menses include Jane Marcet, Hannah More, and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Other Occupations

The occupations listed higher up are by no means a complete listing of the occupations of women during the Industrial Revolution. Women made buttons, nails, screws, and pins. They worked in the tin plate, silver plate, pottery and Birmingham "toy" trades (which fabricated small-scale manufactures like snuff boxes). Women worked in the mines until The Mines Act of 1842 prohibited them from working underground, but afterwards women connected to pursue to a higher place-ground mining tasks.

Married Women in the Labor Market

While there are no comprehensive sources of information on the labor force participation of married women, household budgets reported by contemporary authors give us some information on women's participation.^xxx For the catamenia 1787 to 1815, 66 percent of married women in working-class households had either a recorded occupation or positive earnings. For the period 1816-twenty the rate fell to 49 percent, but in 1821-twoscore it recovered to 62 pct. Tabular array Eight gives participation rates of women by date and occupation of the husband.

Table Eight

Participation Rates of Married Women

	High-Wage Agronomics	Low-Wage Agriculture	Mining	Manufacturing plant	Outwork	Trades	All
1787-1815	55	85	40	37	46	63	66
1816-1820	34	NA	28	4	42	30	49
1821-1840	22	85	33	86	54	63	62

Source: Sara Horrell and Jane Humphries, "Women'south Labour Force Participation and the Transition to the male-Breadwinner Family, 1790-1865," Economic History Review 48 (Feb 1995): 89-117

While many wives worked, the amount of their earnings was small relative to their husband's earnings. Annual earnings of married women who did work averaged only about 28 percent of their husband's earnings. Because not all women worked, and because children usually contributed more to the family unit budget than their mothers, for the boilerplate family the wife contributed only around seven percentage of total family income.

Childcare

Women workers used a diverseness of methods to care for their children. Sometimes childcare and work were compatible, and women took their children with them to the fields or shops where they worked.³¹ Sometimes women working at home would give their infants opiates such as "Godfrey's Cordial" in order to keep the children tranquility while their mothers worked.³² The movement of piece of work into factories increased the difficulty of combining piece of work and childcare. In well-nigh factory piece of work the hours were rigidly prepare, and women who took the jobs had to accept the twelve or thirteen 60 minutes days. Work in the factories was very disciplined, so the women could not bring their children to the factory, and could non take breaks at will. However, these difficulties did not prevent women with pocket-size children from working.

Nineteenth-century mothers used older siblings, other relatives, neighbors, and matriarch schools to provide kid intendance while they worked.³³ Occasionally mothers would leave young children abode lonely, merely this was unsafe enough that only a few did so.³⁴ Children as young equally two might exist sent to dame schools, in which women would take children into their dwelling and provide child care, too as some bones literacy didactics.³⁵ In areas where lace-making or straw-plaiting thrived, children were sent from virtually historic period seven to "schools" where they learned the merchandise.³⁶

Mothers might use a combination of dissimilar types of childcare. Elizabeth Wells, who worked in a Leicester worsted factory, had five children, ages ten, 8, 6, ii, and 4 months. The eldest, a daughter, stayed dwelling to tend the house and care for the infant. The 2d child worked, and the six-year-erstwhile and two-year-old were sent to "an baby school."³⁷ Mary Wright, an "over-looker" in the rag-cut room of a Buckinghamshire newspaper factory, had five children. The eldest worked in the rag-cutting room with her, the youngest was cared for at domicile, and the middle three were sent to a school; "for taking care of an infant she pays 1s.6d. a-week, and 3d. a-week for the iii others. They become to a schoolhouse, where they are taken care of and taught to read."³⁸

The cost of childcare was substantial. At the end of the eighteenth century the price of child-intendance was almost 1s. a calendar week, which was almost a quarter of a adult female's weekly earnings in agriculture.³⁹ In the 1840s mothers paid anywhere from 9d. to 2s.6d. per week for child care, out of a wage of around 7s. per week.⁴⁰

For Farther Reading

Burnette, Joyce. "An Investigation of the Female person-Male person Wage Gap during the Industrial Revolution in Britain." Economic History Review 50 (1997): 257-281.

Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850. Chicago: University of Chicago Printing, 1987.

Honeyman, Katrina. Women, Gender and Industrialisation in England, 1700-1870. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Horrell, Sara, and Jane Humphries. "Women'south Labour Forcefulness Participation and the Transition to the Male-Breadwinner Family unit, 1790-1865." Economic History Review 48 (1995): 89-117.

Humphries, Jane. "Enclosures, Mutual Rights, and Women: The Proletarianization of Families in the Tardily Eighteenth and Early on Nineteenth Centuries." Journal of Economic History 50 (1990): 17-42.

Male monarch, Peter. "Customary Rights and Women's Earnings: The Importance of Gleaning to the Rural Labouring Poor, 1750-1850." Economic History Review 44 (1991): 461-476

Kussmaul, Ann. Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge Academy Printing, 1981.

Pinchbeck, Ivy. Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850, London: Routledge, 1930.

Sanderson, Elizabeth. Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.

Snell, Thou.D.M. Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrestal England, 1660-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Valenze, Deborah. Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female person Preaching and Pop Religion in Industrial England. Princeton University Press, 1985.

Valenze, Deborah. The Showtime Industrial Woman. Oxford: Oxford University Printing, 1995.

¹ "Since big-calibration manufacture has transferred the adult female from the firm to the labour market and the factory, and makes her, often enough, the breadstuff-winner of the family, the terminal remnants of male domination in the proletarian domicile have lost all foundation – except, perchance, for some of that brutality towards women which became firmly rooted with the establishment of monogamy. . . .It will and then go evidence that the first premise for the emancipation of women is the reintroduction of the entire female sex into public manufacture." Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family unit, Private Holding and the Country, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Works, New York: International Publishers, 1986, p. 508, 510.

² Ivy Pinchbeck (Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, Routledge, 1930) claimed that higher incomes allowed some women to withdraw from the labor forcefulness. While she saw some disadvantages resulting from this withdrawal, particularly the loss of independence, she idea that overall women benefited from having more time to devote to their homes and families. Davidoff and Hall (Family unit Fortunes: Man and Women of the English Middle Form, 1780-1850, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1987) agree that women withdrew from work, merely they see the modify as a negative result of gender discrimination. Similarly, Horrell and Humphries ("Women'south Labour Strength Participation and the Transition to the Male person-Breadwinner Family, 1790-1865," Economic History Review, Feb. 1995, XLVIII:89-117) do not discover that rising incomes caused declining labor force participation, and they believe that failing demand for female workers caused the female exodus from the workplace.

ⁱⁱⁱ While the British census began in 1801, individual enumeration did non brainstorm until 1841. For a detailed description of the British censuses of the nineteenth century, see Edward Higgs, Making Sense of the Census, London: HMSO, 1989.

⁴ For example, Helen Speechley, in her dissertation, showed that seven women who worked for wages at a Somerset farm had no recorded occupation in the 1851 census See Helen Speechley, Female and Child Agronomical Day Labourers in Somerset, c. 1685-1870, dissertation, Univ. of Exeter, 1999.

^five Edward Higgs finds that removing family unit members from the "servants" category reduced the number of servants in Rochdale in 1851. Enumerators did non clearly distinguish between the terms "housekeeper" and "housewife." See Edward Higgs, "Domestic Service and Household Product" in Angela John, ed., Unequal Opportunities, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, and "Women, Occupations and Piece of work in the Nineteenth Century Censuses," History Workshop, 1987, 23:59-80. In contrast, the censuses of the early 20th century seem to be fairly accurate; run into Tim Hatton and Roy Bailey, "Women's Piece of work in Census and Survey, 1911-1931," Economic History Review, February. 2001, LIV:87-107.

⁶ A shilling was equal to 12 pence, so if women earned 2s.6d. for twenty hours, they earned one.5d. per hour. Women agricultural laborers earned closer to 1d. per hour, then the London wage was college. See Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth-Century, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1925, p. 208, and Patricia Malcolmson, English Laundresses, Univ. of Illinois Printing, 1986, p. 25. .

^vii On the technology of the Industrial Revolution, see David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969, and Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches, Oxford Univ. Press, 1990.

⁸ A petition from Glasgow cotton manufactures makes the following claim, "In almost every department of the cotton spinning business, the labour of women would exist equally efficient with that of men; yet in several of these departments, such measures of violence take been adopted by the combination, that the women who are willing to be employed, and who are broken-hearted by being employed to earn the bread of their families, have been driven from their situations past violence. . . . Messrs. James Dunlop and Sons, some years ago, erected cotton mills in Calton of Glasgow, on which they expended upwards of [£]27,000 forming their spinning machines, (Importantly with the view of ridding themselves of the combination [the male person union],) of such reduced size as could hands be wrought by women. They employed women alone, equally not beingness parties to the combination, and thus more easily managed, and less insubordinate than male person spinners. These they paid at the same rate of wages, as were paid at other works to men. But they were waylaid and attacked, in going to, and returning from their piece of work; the houses in which they resided, were broken open in the night. The women themselves were cruelly beaten and abused; and the female parent of one of them killed; . . . And these nefarious attempts were persevered in and then systematically, so long, that Messrs. Dunlop and sons, found it necessary to dismiss all female person spinners from their works, and to use just male spinners, most probably the very men who had attempted their ruin." First Report from the Select Committee on Artizans and Machinery, British Parliamentary Papers, 1824 vol. V, p. 525.

⁹ Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early on Modern England, Cambridge Univ. Printing, 1981, Ch. 1

¹⁰ Come across Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, Routledge, 1930, Ch. 1, and Grand.D.K. Snell, Register of the Labouring Poor, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, Ch. 2.

^eleven For the flow 1574 to 1821 about 45 percent of servants were female, merely this fell to 32 pct in 1851. Come across Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Mod England, Cambridge Univ. Printing, 1981, Ch. one.

¹² Men usually worked 12-hour days, and women averaged closer to 10 hours. See Joyce Burnette, "An Investigation of the Female person-Male person Wage Gap during the Industrial Revolution in U.k.," Economic History Review, May 1997, 50:257-281.

¹³ See Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, Routledge, 1930, p. 65.

^xiv See Robert Allen, Enclosure and the Yeoman, Clarendon Press, 1992, and Joyce Burnette, "Labourers at the Oakes: Changes in the Need for Female 24-hour interval-Laborers at a Farm almost Sheffield During the Agricultural Revolution," Periodical of Economics History, March 1999, 59:41-67.

^xv While the scythe had been used for mowing grass for hay or cheaper grains for some fourth dimension, the sickle was used for harvesting wheat until the nineteenth century. Thus adoption of the scythe for harvesting wheat seems to exist a response to changing prices rather than invention of a new technology. The scythe required less labor to harvest a given acre, simply left more grain on the ground, then as grain prices fell relative to wages, farmers substituted the scythe for the sickle. See Due east.J.T. Collins, "Harvest Technology and Labour Supply in Britain, 1790-1870," Economical History Review, Dec. 1969, XXIII:453-473.

^xvi Grand.D.M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor, Cambridge, 1985.

¹⁷ See Jane Humphries, "Enclosures, Common Rights, and Women: The Proletarianization of Families in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries," Journal of Economic History, March 1990, 50:17-42, and J.M. Neeson, Commoners: Mutual Rights, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700-1820, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993.

^xviii Meet Peter King, "Customary Rights and Women's Earnings: The Importance of Gleaning to the Rural Labouring Poor, 1750-1850," Economic History Review, 1991, XLIV:461-476.

¹⁹ Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, Routledge, 1930, p. 41-42 See also Deborah Valenze, The Starting time Industrial Woman, Oxford Univ. Press, 1995

^twenty Stephen Glover, The Directory of the Canton of Derby, Derby: Henry Mozley and Son, 1829.

²¹ Eden gives an instance of gentlewomen who, on the death of their father, began to work every bit farmers. He notes, "not seldom, in ane and the same twenty-four hours, they have divided their hours in helping to fill the dung-cart, and receiving visitor of the highest rank and distinction." (F.One thousand. Eden, The State of the Poor, vol. i., p. 626.) One woman farmer who was clearly an active managing director celebrated her success in a letter sent to the Annals of Agriculture, (quoted by Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, Routledge, 1930, p. 30): "I bought a pocket-size manor, and took possession of it in the month of July, 1803. . . . As a woman undertaking to farm is by and large a subject area of ridicule, I bought the small manor past manner of experiment: the gentlemen of the county have now complimented me so much on having ready so good and example to the farmers, that I have determined on taking a very large subcontract into my hands." The Annals of Agronomics give a number of examples of women farmers cited for their experiments or their prize-winning crops.

²² Tradesmen considered themselves lucky to find a married woman who was adept at business. In his autobiography James Hopkinson, a cabinetmaker, said of his wife, "I found I had got a skillful and suitable companion 1 with whom I could have sweetness council and whose love and affections was only equall'd past her ability as a concern woman." Victorian Cabinet Maker: The Memoirs of James Hopkinson, 1819-1894, 1968, p. 96.

²³ Meet Elizabeth Sanderson, Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh, St. Martin'south Printing, 1996.

²⁴ See Thou.D.M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, Table 6.1.

²⁵ The police requiring a seven-year apprenticeship before someone could work in a merchandise was repealed in 1814.

²⁶ See Francois Crouzet, The First Industrialists, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, and M.L. Baumber, From Revival to Regency: A History of Keighley and Haworth, 1740-1820, Crabtree Ltd., Keighley, 1983.

²⁷ Offset Written report of the Central Lath of His Majesty's Commissioners for enquiry into the Employment of Children in Factories, with Minutes of Prove, British Parliamentary Papers, 1833 (450) XX, A1, p. 120.

²⁸ For case, in the case of "LaVie and another Assignees against Philips and some other Assignees," the court upheld the right of a adult female to operate as feme sole. In 1764 James Cox and his wife Jane were operating split businesses, and both went broke inside the space of ii months. Jane'due south creditors sued James's creditors for the recovery of five fans, goods from her store that had been taken for James's debts. The court ruled that, since Jane was trading every bit a feme sole, her married man did not ain the goods in her shop, and thus James's creditors had no correct to seize them. See William Blackstone, Reports of Cases determined in the several Courts of Westminster-Hall, from 1746 to 1779, London, 1781, p. 570-575.

²⁹ See Deborah Valenze, Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female person Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England, Princeton Univ. Printing, 1985.

³⁰ Run into Sara Horrell and Jane Humphries, "Women'southward Labour Forcefulness Participation and the Transition to the male-Breadwinner Family unit, 1790-1865," Economical History Review, February. 1995, XLVIII:89-117.

³¹ In his autobiography James Hopkinson says of his wife, "How she laboured at the printing and assisted me in the work of my printing office, with a child in her arms, I have no space to tell, nor in fact have I space to allude to the many means she contributed to my good fortune." James Hopkinson, Victorian Cabinet Marker: The Memoirs of James Hopkinson, 1819-1894, J.B. Goodman, ed., Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968, p. 96. A 1739 verse form by Mary Collier suggests that conveying babies into the field was adequately mutual; information technology contains these lines:

Our tender Babes into the Field nosotros behave,
And wrap them in our Cloaths to go along them warm,
While round about nosotros assemble upwards the Corn;
. . .
When Night comes on, unto our Home we go,
Our Corn we comport, and our Infant too.

Mary Collier, The Adult female'south Labour, Augustan Reprint Society, #230, 1985, p. x. A 1835 Poor Police report stated that in Sussex, "the custom of the female parent of a family carrying her infant with her in its cradle into the field, rather than lose the opportunity of adding her earnings to the full general stock, though partially practiced before, is condign very much more than general now." (Quoted in Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, Routledge, 1930, p. 85.)

³² Sarah Johnson of Nottingham claimed that she " Knows it is quite a mutual custom for mothers to give Godfrey's and the Anodyne cordial to their infants, 'it is quite too common.' It is given to infants at the breast; information technology is not given considering the child is ill, but 'to etch information technology to residuum, to slumber it,' so that the female parent may go to work. 'Has seen an infant lay asleep on its female parent's lap whilst at the lace-frame for half-dozen or eight hours at a time.' This has been from the effects of the cordial." [Reports from Assistant Handloom-Weavers' Commissioners, British Parliamentary Papers, 1840 (43) XXIII, p. 157] Mary Colton, a lace worker from Nottingham, described her use of the drug to parliamentary investigators thus: 'Was confined of an illegitimate child in November, 1839. When the child was a week old she gave it a half teaspoonful of Godfrey's twice a-day. She could not afford to pay for the nursing of the child, and so gave information technology Godfrey's to keep it quiet, that she might not exist interrupted at the lace piece; she gradually increased the quantity past a drop or ii at a fourth dimension until it reached a teaspoonful; when the baby was four months old it was so "wankle" and thin that folks persuaded her to requite it laudanum to bring it on, as it did other children. A halfpenny worth, which was about a teaspoonful and three-quarters, was given in 2 days; continued to requite her this quantity since February, 1840, until this last past (1841), and and so reduced the quantity. She now buys a halfpenny worth of laudanum and a halfpenny worth of Godfrey's mixed, which lasts her three days. . . . If it had not been for her having to sit down then close to work she would never have given the kid Godfrey's. She has tried to break it off many times but cannot, for if she did, she should not accept anything to eat." [Children's Employment Commission: Second Report of the Commissioners (Trades and Manufactures), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) XIV, p. 630].

³³ Elizabeth Leadbeater, who worked for a Birmingham brass-founder, worked while she was nursing and had her mother look later on the infant. [Children's Employment Commission: Second Report of the Commissioners (Trades and Articles), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) XIV, p. 710.] Mrs. Smart, an agricultural worker from Calne, Wiltshire, noted, "Sometimes I take had my mother, and sometimes my sister, to have intendance of the children, or I could not have gone out." [Reports of Special Assistant Poor Constabulary Commissioners on the Employment of Women and Children in Agronomics, British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (510) XII, p. 65.] More than usually, though, older siblings provided the childcare. "Older siblings" more often than not meant children of ix or ten years sometime, and included boys as well as girls. Mrs. Britton of Calne, Wiltshire, left her children in the intendance of her eldest boy. [Reports of Special Assistant Poor Law Commissioners on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (510) XII, p. 66] In a family from Presteign, Wales, containing children aged ix, vii, v, 3, and 1, we find that "The oldest children nurse the youngest." [F.Grand. Eden, State of the Poor, London: Davis, 1797, vol. 3, p. 904] When asked what income a labourer's married woman and children could earn, some respondents to the 1833 "Rural Queries" assumed that the eldest child would accept care of the others, leaving the mother costless to work. The returns from Bengeworth, Worcester, study that, "If the Mother goes to field work, the eldest Child had need to stay at dwelling, to tend the younger branches of the Family." Ewhurst, Surrey, reported that "If the Mother were employed, the elder Children at home would probably be required to attend to the younger Children." [Report of His Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiry in the Assistants and Practical Performance of the Poor Law, Appendix B, "Rural Queries," British Parliamentary Papers, 1834 (44) Thirty, p. 488 and 593]

³⁴ Parents heard of incidents, such as one reported in the Times (Feb. 6, 1819):

A shocking accident occurred at Llandidno, near Conway, on Tuesday night, during the absence of a miner and his wife, who had gone to attend a methodist meeting, and locked the firm door, leaving ii children inside; the house by some means took burn, and was, together with the unfortunate children, consumed to ashes; the eldest only four years erstwhile!

Mothers were enlightened of these dangers. One mother who admitted to leaving her children at home worried profoundly about the risks:

I have always left my children to themselves, and, God be praised! nothing has e'er happened to them, though I thought it dangerous. I have many a fourth dimension come home, and have thought it a mercy to find null has happened to them. . . . Bad accidents oftentimes happen. [Reports of Special Assistant Poor Law Commissioners on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (510) XII, p. 68.]

Leaving young children habitation without child care had real dangers, and the fact that most working mothers paid for childcare suggests that they did not consider leaving young children lonely to be an acceptable selection.

³⁵ In 1840 an observer of Spitalfields noted, "In this neighborhood, where the women every bit well equally the men are employed in the manufacture of silk, many children are sent to modest schools, not for didactics, only to exist taken care of whilst their mothers are at work."[ Reports from Assistant Handloom-Weavers' Commissioners, British Parliamentary Papers, 1840 (43) XXIII, p. 261] In 1840 the wife of a Gloucester weaver earned 2s. a week from running a school; she had twelve students and charged each second. a week. [Reports from Assistant Handloom Weavers' Commissioners, British Parliamentary Papers, 1840 (220) XXIV, p. 419] In 1843 the lace-making schools of the midlands generally charged 3d. per week. [Children's Employment Commission: 2nd Study of the Commissioners (Trades and Manufactures), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) XIV, p. 46, 64, 71, 72]

³⁶ At i straw-plaiting schoolhouse in Hertfordshire,

Children commence learning the trade virtually 7 years old: parents pay 3d. a-calendar week for each kid, and for this they are taught the merchandise and taught to read. The mistress employs about from 15 to 20 at work in a room; the parents get the profits of the children's labour.[ Children's Employment Commission: Second Study of the Commissioners (Trades and Manufactures), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) 14, p. 64]

At these schools there was very little educational activity; some fourth dimension was devoted to teaching the children to read, but they spent most of their fourth dimension working. One mistress complained that the children worked too much and learned as well niggling, "In my judgment I think the mothers task the children too much; the mistress is obliged to make them perform it, otherwise they would put them to other schools." Ann Page of Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, had "xi scholars" and claimed to "teach them all reading once a-mean solar day." [Children's Employment Commission: Second Study of the Commissioners (Trades and Manufactures), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) XIV, p. 66, 71] The standard rate of 3d. per week seems to take been paid for supervision of the children rather than for the instruction.

³⁷ Starting time Written report of the Central Board of His Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiring into the Employment of Children in Factories, British Parliamentary Papers, 1833 (450) Xx, C1 p. 33.

³⁸ Children'southward Employment Commission: Second Study of the Commissioners (Trades and Articles), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) Xiv, p. 46.

³⁹ David Davies, The Case of Labourers in Husbandry Stated and Considered, London: Robinson, 1795, p.14. Agronomical wages for this time period are found in Eden, State of the Poor, London: Davis, 1797.

⁴⁰ In 1843 parliamentary investigator Alfred Austin reports, "Where a daughter is hired to have care of children, she is paid virtually 9d. a week, and has her nutrient likewise, which is a serious deduction from the wages of the woman at work."[ Reports of Special Banana Poor Police force Commissioners on the Employment of Women and Children in Agronomics, British Parliamentary Papers,1843 (510) XII, p.26] Agricultural wages in the area were 8d. per mean solar day, then even without the toll of food, the cost of child intendance was about one-fifth a woman's wage. One Scottish woman earned 7s. per week in a coal mine and paid 2s.6d., or 36 per centum of her income, for the intendance of her children.[ B.P.P. 1844 (592) 16, p. vi] In 1843 Mary Wright, a "over-looker" at a Buckinghamshire newspaper factory, paid even more for child care; she told parliamentary investigators that "for taking care of an baby she pays 1s.6d. a-calendar week, and 3d. a-week for three others." [Children's Employment Commission: Second Report of the Commissioners (Trades and Manufactures), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) XIV, p. 46] She earned 10s.6d. per week, so her total child-care payments were 21 per centum of her wage. Engels put the cost of kid care at 1s. or 18d. a calendar week. [Engels, [1845] 1926, p. 143] Factory workers often made 7s. a week, so once again these women may have paid around one-fifth of their earnings for child intendance. Some estimates suggest even college fractions of women'south income went to child intendance. The overseer of Wisbech, Cambridge, suggests a higher fraction; he reports, "The earnings of the Wife we consider insufficiently small, in cases where she has a big family to nourish to; if she has one or two children, she has to pay one-half, or perhaps more of her earnings for a person to take care of them." [Report of His Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiry in the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Law, Appendix B, "Rural Queries," British Parliamentary Papers, 1834 (44) XXX, p. 76]

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