How Did The Industrial Revolution Change The Lives Of Women

Women Workers in the British Industrial Revolution

Historians disagree about whether the British Industrial Revolution (1760-1830) was beneficial for women. Frederick Engels, writing in the late nineteenth century, thought that the Industrial Revolution increased women's participation in labor exterior the home, and claimed that this change 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 matter is certain: the Industrial Revolution was a fourth dimension of of import changes in the way that women worked.

The Census

Unfortunately, the historical sources on women'due south work are neither as complete nor as reliable as nosotros would similar. Aggregate information on the occupations of women is available only from the demography, and while census data has the reward of being comprehensive, it is not a very proficient measure out of work done by women during the Industrial Revolution. For one thing, the demography does not provide any data on individual occupations until 1841, which is subsequently the menses we wish to study.ⁱⁱⁱ Even and then the data 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 not apprenticed or receiving wages, need not be inserted." Clearly this demography would non give us an authentic measure of female labor force participation. Table One illustrates the problem farther; it shows the occupations of men and women recorded in the 1851 demography, for 20 occupational categories. These numbers suggest that female labor force participation was low, and that xl percentage of occupied women worked in domestic service. However, economic historians have demonstrated that these numbers are misleading. Outset, many women who were actually employed were not listed as employed in the census. Women who appear in farm wage books take no recorded occupation in the demography.⁴ At the aforementioned time, the census over-estimates participation by list in the "domestic service" category women who were really family members. In addition, the census exaggerates the extent to which women were concentrated in domestic service occupations because many women listed every bit "maids", and included in the domestic retainer category in the aggregate tables, were really agricultural workers.^v

Table One

Occupational Distribution in the 1851 Census of Slap-up Great britain

Occupational Category	Males (thousands)	Females (thousands)	Percent Female
Public Administration	64	three	four.5
Armed Forces	63	0	0.0
Professions	162	103	38.9
Domestic Services	193	1135	85.5
Commercial	91	0	0.0
Transportation & Communications	433	13	two.9
Agronomics	1788	229	11.iv
Fishing	36	1	2.7
Mining	383	11	2.viii
Metal Manufactures	536	36	half dozen.three
Building & Construction	496	i	0.ii
Wood & Furniture	152	8	5.0
Bricks, Cement, Pottery, Glass	75	fifteen	16.7
Chemicals	42	4	viii.7
Leather & Skins	55	5	8.three
Paper & Printing	62	16	20.5
Textiles	661	635	49.0
Clothing	418	491	54.0
Food, Drink, Lodging	348	53	13.2
Other	445	75	14.four
Total Occupied	6545	2832	30.2
Full Unoccupied	1060	5294	83.3

Source: B.R. Mitchell, Abstruse of British Historical Statistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962, p. 60.

Domestic Service

Domestic work – cooking, cleaning, caring for children and the sick, fetching water, making and mending clothing – took up the bulk of women'south fourth dimension during the Industrial Revolution period. Near of this work was unpaid. Some families were well-off enough that they could use other women to do this piece of work, equally live-in servants, as charring women, or as service providers. Live-in servants were fairly mutual; even eye-grade families had maids to aid with the domestic chores. Charring women did housework on a daily ground. In London women were paid 2s.6d. per 24-hour interval for washing, which was more iii times the 8d. typically paid for agricultural labor in the country. Nevertheless, a "day'southward piece of work" in washing could terminal 20 hours, more than twice as long every bit a 24-hour interval's work in agriculture.⁶ Other women worked equally laundresses, doing the washing in their own homes.

Cottage Industry

Before factories appeared, most textile manufacture (including the main processes of spinning and weaving) was carried out nether the "putting-out" system. Since raw materials were expensive, textile workers rarely had enough upper-case letter to exist self-employed, but would take raw materials from a merchant, spin or weave the materials in their homes, and then return the finished product and receive a piece-charge per unit wage. This system disappeared during the Industrial Revolution every bit new mechanism requiring water or steam power appeared, and piece of work moved from the home to the factory.

Before the Industrial Revolution, manus spinning had been a widespread female employment. It could accept as many as ten spinners to provide one hand-loom weaver with yarn, and men did not spin, then most of the workers in the cloth industry were women. The new textile machines of the Industrial Revolution inverse that. Wages for hand-spinning fell, and many rural women who had previously spun constitute themselves unemployed. In a few locations, new cottage industries such as straw-plaiting and lace-making grew and took the identify of spinning, but in other locations women remained unemployed.

Another important cottage industry was the pillow-lace industry, so chosen considering 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 50 percent more than than women earned in argiculture. Even so, this manufacture too disappeared due to mechanization. Following Heathcote'south invention of the bobbinet machine (1809), cheaper lace could be made by embroidering patterns on machine-fabricated lace net. 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 straw into bands used for making hats and bonnets. The industry prospered effectually the plough 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 gratis trade with the Continent in the 1820s.

Factories

A defining feature of the Industrial Revolution was the rise of factories, specially textile factories. Work moved out of the home and into a factory, which used a central ability source to run its machines. Water power was used in most of the early on factories, simply improvements in the steam engine made steam power possible as well. The most dramatic productivity growth occurred in the cotton industry. The invention of James Hargreaves' spinning jenny (1764), Richard Arkwright's "throstle" or "water frame" (1769), and Samuel Crompton's spinning mule (1779, so named because it combined features of the two earlier machines) revolutionized spinning. U.k. began to manufacture cotton fiber cloth, and declining prices for the cloth encouraged both domestic consumption and export. Machines as well appeared for other parts of the cloth-making process, the almost important of which was Edmund Cartwright's powerloom, which was adopted slowly because of imperfections in the early on designs, but was widely used by the 1830s. While cotton wool was the near important cloth of the Industrial Revolution, there were advances in machinery for silk, flax, and wool production too.^vii

The advent of new mechanism changed the gender division of labor in cloth product. Before the Industrial Revolution, women spun yarn using a spinning bicycle (or occasionally a distaff and spindle). Men didn't spin, and this division of labor made sense considering women were trained to have more dexterity than men, and because men's greater forcefulness fabricated them more valuable in other occupations. In dissimilarity to spinning, handloom weaving was done by both sexes, just men outnumbered women. Men monopolized highly skilled preparation and finishing processes such as wool combing and cloth-dressing. With mechanization, the gender division of labor changed. Women used the spinning jenny and water frame, but mule spinning was almost exclusively a male occupation considering it required more than strength, and because 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 take increased their employment in weaving (both in handloom weaving and somewhen in powerloom factories). Both sexes were employed as powerloom operators.

Table 2

Factory Workers in 1833: Females as a Percentage of the Workforce

Industry	Ages 12 and under	Ages 13-20	Ages 21+	All Ages
Cotton fiber	51.8	65.0	52.ii	58.0
Wool	38.half dozen	46.2	37.7	twoscore.nine
Flax	54.8	77.3	59.five	67.4
Silk	74.iii	84.iii	71.iii	78.i
Lace	38.seven	57.4	16.half-dozen	36.five
Potteries	38.1	46.9	27.1	29.4
Dyehouse	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Drinking 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.eight

Source: "Report from Dr. James Mitchell to the Central Board of Commissioners, respecting the Returns made from the Factories, and the Results obtained from them." British Parliamentary Papers, 1834 (167) XIX. Mitchell collected information from 82 cotton wool factories, 65 wool factories, 73 flax factories, 29 silk factories, 7 potteries, 11 lace factories, one dyehouse, one "glass works", and 2 newspaper mills throughout Not bad 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 example, the moisture-spinning of flax, introduced in Leeds in 1825, employed mainly teenage girls. Girls often worked as assistants to mule-spinners, piecing together broken threads. In fact, females were a majority of the factory labor force. Table Two shows that 57 pct of mill workers were female, most of them under age 20. Women were widely employed in all the textile industries, and constituted the majority of workers in cotton wool, flax, and silk. Outside of textiles, women were employed in potteries and paper factories, simply not in dye or glass manufacture. Of the women who worked in factories, 16 pct were under age 13, 51 percent were between the ages of 13 and 20, and 33 percent were historic period 21 and over. On boilerplate, girls earned the aforementioned wages as boys. Children's wages rose from about 1s.6d. per week at age seven to about 5s. per week at age 15. Showtime at age xvi, and a big gap betwixt male person and female person wages appeared. At age 30, women factory workers earned only i-third as much equally men.

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

Source: "Report from Dr. James Mitchell to the Central Board of Commissioners, respecting the Returns made from the Factories, and the Results obtained from them." British Parliamentary Papers, 1834 (167) XIX.
The y-axis shows the percentage of total employment within each sexual practice that is in that five-yr age category.

Figure Two
Wages of Factory Workers in 1833

Source: "Study from Dr. James Mitchell to the Central 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 agriculture more often than not fit into one of 2 broad categories – servants who were hired annually and received part of their wage in room and lath, and twenty-four hours-laborers who lived independently and were paid a daily or weekly wage. Before industrialization servants comprised between 1-third and one-half of labor in agronomics.⁹ For servants the value of room and board was a substantial portion of their compensation, so the ratio of money wages is an under-estimate of the ratio of total wages (run across Table Iii). Most servants were young and single. Because servants were paid role of their wage in kind, as board, the apply of the servant contract tended to autumn when nutrient prices were high. During the Industrial Revolution the use of servants seems to have fallen in the Southward and East.^ten The pct of servants who were female person also declined in the start half of the nineteenth century.¹¹

Table Three

Wages of Agricultural Servants (£ per twelvemonth)

Yr	Location	Male Money Wage	Male person In-Kind Wage	Female person Money Wage	Female In-Kind Wage	Ratio of Money Wages	Ratio of Total Wages
1770	Lancashire	7	9	3	6	0.43	0.56
1770	Oxfordshire	10	12	four	8	0.40	0.55
1770	Staffordshire	11	9	4	6	0.36	0.50
1821	Yorkshire	16.5	27	vii	18	0.42	0.57

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

While servants lived with the farmer and received nutrient and lodging as part of their wage, laborers lived independently, received fewer in-kind payments, and were paid a daily or a weekly wage. Though the bulk of laborers were male, some were female person. Tabular array Four shows the percentage of laborers who were female person at diverse farms in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. These numbers suggest that female employment was widespread, but varied considerably from ane location to the next. Compared to men, female laborers generally worked fewer days during the yr. The employment of female laborers was full-bodied around the harvest, and women rarely worked during the winter. While men usually worked half-dozen days per calendar week, exterior of harvest women more often than not averaged around four days per week.

Tabular array Four

Employment of Women as Laborers in Agronomics:
Percentage of Almanac Work-Days Worked by Females

Year	Location	Percent Female
1772-5	Oakes in Norton, Derbyshire	17
1774-7	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	27
1785-92	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	40
1794-5	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	42
1801-three	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	35
1801-4	Nettlecombe Barton, Somerset	10
1814-6	Nettlecombe Barton, Somerset	7
1826-viii	Nettlecombe Barton, Somerset	v
1828-39	Shipton Moyne, Gloucestershire	nineteen
1831-45	Oakes in Norton, Derbyshire	6
1836-ix	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	26
1839-forty	Lustead, Norfolk	half-dozen
1846-9	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	29

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

The wages of female day-laborers were adequately uniform; by and large a farmer paid the same wage to all the adult women he hired. Women's daily wages were between one-third and one-half of male wages. Women generally worked shorter days, though, then the gap in hourly wages was not quite this large.¹² In the less populous counties of Northumberland and Durham, male laborers were required to provide a "bondager," a woman (usually a family member) who was available for day-labor whenever the employer wanted her.¹³

Table Five

Wages of Agronomical Laborers

Year	Location	Male person Wage (d./mean solar day)	Female Wage (d./day)	Ratio
1770	Yorkshire	5	12	0.42
1789	Hertfordshire	six	16	0.38
1797	Warwickshire	half-dozen	14	0.43
1807	Oxfordshire	9	23	0.39
1833	Cumberland	12	24	0.50
1833	Essex	10	22	0.45
1838	Worcester	9	18	0.50

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

Diverse sources suggest that women's employment in agronomics declined during the early nineteenth century. Enclosure increased farm size and inverse the patterns of fauna husbandry, both of which seem to take led to reductions in female person employment.¹⁴ More women were employed during harvest than during other seasons, but women's employment during harvest declined equally the scythe replaced the sickle as the nearly popular harvest tool. While women frequently harvested with the sickle, they did not utilize the heavier scythe.^xv Female person employment vicious the most in the Due east, where farms increasingly specialized in grain production. Women had more than work in the West, which specialized more in livestock and dairy farming.¹⁶

Non-Wage-Earners

During the eighteenth century in that location were many opportunities for women to be productively employed in farm work on their own business relationship, whether they were wives of farmers on large holdings, or wives of landless laborers. In the early nineteenth century, however, many of these opportunities disappeared, and women's participation in agricultural output fell.

In a village that had a commons, even if the family merely rented a cottage the wife could be self-employed in agronomics because she could go along a cow, or other animals, on the commons. By careful management of her stock, a woman might earn as much during the year as her husband earned as a laborer. Women likewise gathered fuel from the commons, saving the family considerable expense. The enclosure of the commons, though, eliminated these opportunities. In an enclosure, country was re-assigned so as to eliminate the commons and consolidate holdings. Even when the poor had clear legal rights to use the commons, these rights were non always compensated in the enclosure agreement. While enclosure occurred at different times for different locations, the largest waves of enclosures occurred in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, pregnant that, for many, opportunities for self-employment in agriculture declined as the same fourth dimension as employment in cottage industry declined. ¹⁷

Only a few opportunities for agricultural output remained for the landless laboring family. In some locations landlords permitted landless laborers to rent pocket-size allotments, on which they could still grow some of their ain food. The right to glean on fields after harvest seems to have been maintained at least through the middle of the nineteenth century, past which fourth dimension it had become one of the few agricultural activities available to women in some areas. Gleaning was a valuable right; the value of the grain gleaned was oftentimes between 5 and x pct of the family's full almanac income.¹⁸

In the eighteenth century information technology was mutual 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 unremarkably ran the functioning with no help from men. In the nineteenth century, however, farmer's wives were more likely to withdraw from farm management, 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'southward wives seem to have withdraw because greater prosperity allowed them to enjoy more leisure.

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

Self-Employed

During the Industrial Revolution catamenia women were besides active businesswomen in towns. Among business organization owners listed in commercial directories, about x percent were female. Table Seven shows the percentage female person in all the trades with at least 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, but even in this case that does not mean they were just figureheads. Widows often continued their husband's businesses because they had been active in management of the business while their husband was alive, and wished to proceed.²² Sometimes married women were engaged in merchandise separately from their husbands. Women near unremarkably ran shops and taverns, and worked every bit dressmakers and milliners, but they were not confined to these areas, and appear in most of the trades listed in commercial directories. Manchester, for example, had six female blacksmiths and 5 female motorcar makers in 1846. Between 1730 and 1800 at that place were 121 "rouping women" selling off estates in Edinburgh. ²³

Table Half-dozen

Business Owners Listed in Commercial Directories

Engagement	City	Male person	Female person	Unknown Gender	Pct Female
1788	Manchester	2033	199	321	8.nine
1824-5	Manchester	4185	297	1671	6.6
1846	Manchester	11,942	1222	2316	nine.iii
1850	Birmingham	15,054	2020	1677	11.viii
1850	Derby	2415	332	194	12.one

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

Table Seven

Women in Trades in Manchester, 1788

Trade	Men	Women	Gender Unknown	Percentage Female person
Apothecary/ Surgeon / Midwife	29	1	five	3.3
Chaser	39	0	3	0.0
Boot and Shoe makers	87	0	1	0.0
Butcher	33	1	i	2.9
Calenderer	31	4	five	xi.4
Corn & Flour Dealer	45	4	5	8.2
Cotton fiber Dealer	23	0	ii	0.0
Draper, Mercer, Dealer of Material	46	15	19	24.6
Dyer	44	3	18	6.4
Fustian Cutter / Shearer	54	2	0	3.6
Grocers & Tea Dealers	91	16	12	xv.0
Hairdresser & Peruke maker	34	1	0	2.9
Hatter	45	3	4	half dozen.iii
Joiner	34	0	1	0.0
Liquor dealer	30	4	14	11.8
Manufacturer, fabric	257	four	118	1.5
Merchant	58	1	18	1.7
Publichouse / Inn / Tavern	126	13	2	9.4
School primary / mistress	eighteen	10	0	35.7
Shopkeeper	107	xvi	4	13.0
Tailor	59	0	1	0.0
Warehouse	64	0	14	0.0

Source: Lewis'south Manchester Directory for 1788 (reprinted by Neil Richardson, Manchester, 1984)

Guilds often controlled admission to trades, admitting only those who had served an apprenticeship and thus earned the "freedom" of the trade. Women could obtain "freedom" not simply by apprenticeship, but likewise by widowhood. The widow of a tradesman was ofttimes considered knowledgeable enough in the trade that she was given the right to carry on the merchandise fifty-fifty without an apprenticeship. In the eighteenth century women were apprenticed to a wide variety 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 declining during this time, so the decline in female person apprenticeships may non accept been an important barrier to employment.²⁵

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

While many women did successfully enter trades, there were obstacles to women'south employment that kept their numbers low. Women generally received less instruction than men (though education of the time was of express practical apply). Women may have found it more difficult than men to heighten the necessary capital considering English police force did not consider a married adult female to have any legal existence; she could not sue or be sued. A married adult female was a feme covert and technically could not make whatever legally binding contracts, a fact which may have discouraged others from loaning money to or making other contracts with married women. However, this police force was not as limiting in practice as it would seem to be in theory because a wife engaged in trade on her ain 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 done. Women had provided medical intendance for centuries, but the professionalization of medicine in the early-nineteenth century made it a male person occupation. The Royal College of Physicians admitted merely graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, schools to which women were non admitted until the twentieth century. Women were even replaced by men in midwifery. The procedure began in the late-eighteenth century, when we observe the use of the term "human being-midwife," an oxymoronic championship suggestive of changing gender roles. In the nineteenth century the "human being-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 building of England did not permit women ministers, the Methodists move had many women preachers during its early years. However, fifty-fifty among the Methodists female person preachers disappeared when lay preachers were replaced with a professional clergy in the early nineteenth century.²⁹

In other occupations where professionalization was not equally strong, women remained an important part of the workforce. Teaching, particularly in the lower grades, was a common profession for women. Some were governesses, who lived every bit household servants, but many opened their own schools and took in pupils. The writing profession seems to accept been adequately open up to women; the leading novelists of the period include Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Fanny Burney, George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans), Elizabeth Gaskell, and Frances Trollope. Female non-fiction writers of the period include Jane Marcet, Hannah More than, and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Other Occupations

The occupations listed to a higher place are by no means a consummate list of the occupations of women during the Industrial Revolution. Women fabricated buttons, nails, screws, and pins. They worked in the tin plate, silver plate, pottery and Birmingham "toy" trades (which made small-scale manufactures like snuff boxes). Women worked in the mines until The Mines Deed of 1842 prohibited them from working secret, but later on women connected to pursue higher up-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 requite us some information on women's participation.³⁰ For the menstruation 1787 to 1815, 66 percent of married women in working-class households had either a recorded occupation or positive earnings. For the period 1816-20 the charge per unit fell to 49 percent, but in 1821-40 it recovered to 62 per centum. Tabular array Eight gives participation rates of women by date and occupation of the hubby.

Table Viii

Participation Rates of Married Women

	High-Wage Agriculture	Low-Wage Agriculture	Mining	Mill	Outwork	Trades	All
1787-1815	55	85	twoscore	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's Labour Force Participation and the Transition to the male person-Breadwinner Family, 1790-1865," Economic History Review 48 (February 1995): 89-117

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

Childcare

Women workers used a variety of methods to intendance for their children. Sometimes childcare and work were uniform, 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 lodge to go on the children repose while their mothers worked.³² The movement of piece of work into factories increased the difficulty of combining work and childcare. In most manufacturing plant work the hours were rigidly set, and women who took the jobs had to take the twelve or 13 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 preclude women with small children from working.

Nineteenth-century mothers used older siblings, other relatives, neighbors, and dame schools to provide child intendance while they worked.³³ Occasionally mothers would leave young children dwelling house lonely, only this was dangerous plenty that but a few did and then.³⁴ Children every bit young every bit 2 might be sent to dame schools, in which women would take children into their habitation and provide child care, likewise every bit some basic literacy educational activity.³⁵ In areas where lace-making or harbinger-plaiting thrived, children were sent from about age vii to "schools" where they learned the trade.³⁶

Mothers might use a combination of different types of childcare. Elizabeth Wells, who worked in a Leicester worsted manufacturing plant, had five children, ages 10, eight, half-dozen, two, and 4 months. The eldest, a daughter, stayed habitation to tend the house and care for the infant. The 2d child worked, and the six-year-old and two-yr-old were sent to "an infant schoolhouse."³⁷ Mary Wright, an "over-looker" in the rag-cutting room of a Buckinghamshire paper factory, had five children. The eldest worked in the rag-cutting room with her, the youngest was cared for at home, and the middle 3 were sent to a school; "for taking intendance of an infant she pays 1s.6d. a-week, and 3d. a-week for the three others. They get to a school, 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-care was about 1s. a week, which was well-nigh a quarter of a adult female's weekly earnings in agriculture.³⁹ In the 1840s mothers paid anywhere from 9d. to 2s.6d. per calendar week for child care, out of a wage of around 7s. per week.⁴⁰

For Further Reading

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

Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Form, 1780-1850. Chicago: Academy of Chicago Press, 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 Force Participation and the Transition to the Male-Breadwinner Family, 1790-1865." Economic History Review 48 (1995): 89-117.

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

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

Kussmaul, Ann. Servants in Husbandry in Early on Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 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'southward Printing, 1996.

Snell, One thousand.D.M. Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Modify and Agrarian England, 1660-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Valenze, Deborah. Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England. Princeton University Printing, 1985.

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

¹ "Since large-scale industry has transferred the woman from the house to the labour market and the factory, and makes her, often enough, the bread-winner of the family, the concluding remnants of male domination in the proletarian home have lost all foundation – except, perhaps, for some of that brutality towards women which became firmly rooted with the establishment of monogamy. . . .It will and then go evidence that the get-go premise for the emancipation of women is the reintroduction of the unabridged female person sexual activity into public industry." Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the Country, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Works, New York: International Publishers, 1986, p. 508, 510.

ⁱⁱ 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 thought that overall women benefited from having more than time to devote to their homes and families. Davidoff and Hall (Family Fortunes: Human being and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1987) concord that women withdrew from piece of work, merely they encounter the change equally a negative result of gender discrimination. Similarly, Horrell and Humphries ("Women'due south Labour Force Participation and the Transition to the Male-Breadwinner Family, 1790-1865," Economic History Review, Feb. 1995, XLVIII:89-117) exercise non find that rise incomes caused declining labor force participation, and they believe that declining demand for female workers acquired the female exodus from the workplace.

³ While the British census began in 1801, individual enumeration did not begin until 1841. For a detailed clarification 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 subcontract had no recorded occupation in the 1851 census Meet Helen Speechley, Female and Child Agricultural Twenty-four hours Labourers in Somerset, c. 1685-1870, dissertation, Univ. of Exeter, 1999.

⁵ Edward Higgs finds that removing family members from the "servants" category reduced the number of servants in Rochdale in 1851. Enumerators did non clearly distinguish betwixt the terms "housekeeper" and "housewife." Run across Edward Higgs, "Domestic Service and Household Production" in Angela John, ed., Unequal Opportunities, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, and "Women, Occupations and 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 authentic; see Tim Hatton and Roy Bailey, "Women's Piece of work in Census and Survey, 1911-1931," Economic History Review, Feb. 2001, LIV:87-107.

^six A shilling was equal to 12 pence, so if women earned 2s.6d. for 20 hours, they earned one.5d. per hr. Women agricultural laborers earned closer to 1d. per hour, so the London wage was college. Come across 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 Press, 1986, p. 25. .

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

⁸ A petition from Glasgow cotton manufactures makes the following merits, "In almost every department of the cotton spinning business organisation, the labour of women would be equally efficient with that of men; notwithstanding in several of these departments, such measures of violence have been adopted by the combination, that the women who are willing to be employed, and who are anxious by being employed to earn the bread of their families, take been driven from their situations by 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, (Chiefly with the view of ridding themselves of the combination [the male person union],) of such reduced size as could easily exist wrought past women. They employed women alone, as not being parties to the combination, and thus more easily managed, and less rebel than male spinners. These they paid at the same rate of wages, every bit were paid at other works to men. But they were waylaid and attacked, in going to, and returning from their work; the houses in which they resided, were broken open up in the night. The women themselves were cruelly browbeaten and abused; and the mother of 1 of them killed; . . . And these nefarious attempts were persevered in so systematically, so long, that Messrs. Dunlop and sons, found it necessary to dismiss all female spinners from their works, and to apply only male spinners, nearly probably the very men who had attempted their ruin." Starting time Report from the Select Committee on Artizans and Machinery, British Parliamentary Papers, 1824 vol. V, p. 525.

^ix Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981, Ch. 1

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

¹¹ For the period 1574 to 1821 nearly 45 pct of servants were female, but this savage to 32 percent in 1851. Meet Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early on Modern England, Cambridge Univ. Printing, 1981, Ch. 1.

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

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

¹⁴ Encounter Robert Allen, Enclosure and the Yeoman, Clarendon Printing, 1992, and Joyce Burnette, "Labourers at the Oakes: Changes in the Demand for Female Day-Laborers at a Farm about Sheffield During the Agronomical Revolution," Journal of Economics History, March 1999, 59:41-67.

¹⁵ 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 be a response to changing prices rather than invention of a new applied science. The scythe required less labor to harvest a given acre, but left more grain on the basis, so every bit grain prices barbarous relative to wages, farmers substituted the scythe for the sickle. See E.J.T. Collins, "Harvest Applied science and Labour Supply in Britain, 1790-1870," Economic History Review, December. 1969, XXIII:453-473.

^sixteen Chiliad.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.Thousand. Neeson, Commoners: Common Rights, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700-1820, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993.

^xviii See 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.

^xix Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, Routledge, 1930, p. 41-42 Encounter likewise Deborah Valenze, The Kickoff Industrial Woman, Oxford Univ. Press, 1995

²⁰ Stephen Glover, The Directory of the Canton of Derby, Derby: Henry Mozley and Son, 1829.

²¹ Eden gives an case of gentlewomen who, on the death of their father, began to work as farmers. He notes, "not seldom, in 1 and the same day, they take divided their hours in helping to fill the dung-cart, and receiving company of the highest rank and distinction." (F.M. Eden, The State of the Poor, vol. i., p. 626.) One woman farmer who was clearly an agile managing director historic 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 small estate, and took possession of it in the month of July, 1803. . . . As a adult female undertaking to farm is generally a subject field of ridicule, I bought the modest estate by fashion of experiment: the gentlemen of the county accept now complimented me so much on having ready and so expert and example to the farmers, that I take determined on taking a very large farm into my hands." The Annals of Agriculture give a number of examples of women farmers cited for their experiments or their prize-winning crops.

²² Tradesmen considered themselves lucky to observe a married woman who was skilful at business. In his autobiography James Hopkinson, a cabinetmaker, said of his wife, "I found I had got a good and suitable companion ane with whom I could take sweet quango and whose love and affections was only equall'd by her power as a business adult female." Victorian Chiffonier Maker: The Memoirs of James Hopkinson, 1819-1894, 1968, p. 96.

²³ See Elizabeth Sanderson, Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh, St. Martin's Press, 1996.

²⁴ Run across K.D.Thou. Snell, Register of the Labouring Poor, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, Tabular array half dozen.i.

²⁵ The law requiring a 7-year apprenticeship before someone could piece of work in a trade was repealed in 1814.

²⁶ Come across Francois Crouzet, The First Industrialists, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, and One thousand.Fifty. Baumber, From Revival to Regency: A History of Keighley and Haworth, 1740-1820, Crabtree Ltd., Keighley, 1983.

²⁷ Get-go Report of the Central Board of His Majesty'south Commissioners for inquiry into the Employment of Children in Factories, with Minutes of Prove, British Parliamentary Papers, 1833 (450) Xx, A1, p. 120.

²⁸ For example, in the case of "LaVie and another Assignees against Philips and some other Assignees," the courtroom upheld the right of a woman to operate equally feme sole. In 1764 James Cox and his wife Jane were operating separate businesses, and both went bankrupt within the infinite of ii months. Jane's creditors sued James'southward creditors for the recovery of five fans, goods from her shop that had been taken for James's debts. The court ruled that, since Jane was trading as a feme sole, her husband did not own the goods in her shop, and thus James'southward creditors had no correct to seize them. Run into William Blackstone, Reports of Cases determined in the several Courts of Westminster-Hall, from 1746 to 1779, London, 1781, p. 570-575.

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

³⁰ See Sara Horrell and Jane Humphries, "Women'south Labour Force Participation and the Transition to the male-Breadwinner Family, 1790-1865," Economic History Review, February. 1995, XLVIII:89-117.

³¹ In his autobiography James Hopkinson says of his wife, "How she laboured at the press and assisted me in the work of my printing office, with a kid in her artillery, I take no space to tell, nor in fact have I space to allude to the many ways she contributed to my practiced 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 poem by Mary Collier suggests that conveying babies into the field was fairly mutual; it contains these lines:

Our tender Babes into the Field we deport,
And wrap them in our Cloaths to keep them warm,
While round virtually nosotros assemble upwardly the Corn;
. . .
When Night comes on, unto our Home we go,
Our Corn we carry, and our Infant too.

Mary Collier, The Woman's Labour, Augustan Reprint Society, #230, 1985, p. 10. A 1835 Poor Constabulary written report stated that in Sussex, "the custom of the mother of a family unit carrying her infant with her in its cradle into the field, rather than lose the opportunity of adding her earnings to the general stock, though partially practiced before, is condign very much more general at present." (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 common custom for mothers to give Godfrey'south and the Anodyne cordial to their infants, 'information technology is quite besides common.' Information technology is given to infants at the breast; it is not given considering the kid is ill, only 'to compose it to residue, to sleep it,' so that the mother may become 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 Banana Handloom-Weavers' Commissioners, British Parliamentary Papers, 1840 (43) XXIII, p. 157] Mary Colton, a lace worker from Nottingham, described her apply of the drug to parliamentary investigators thus: 'Was confined of an illegitimate child in Nov, 1839. When the child was a week old she gave information technology a half teaspoonful of Godfrey's twice a-day. She could non afford to pay for the nursing of the child, and so gave information technology Godfrey'south to keep it tranquility, that she might non be interrupted at the lace slice; she gradually increased the quantity by a drop or two at a time until it reached a teaspoonful; when the babe was 4 months old it was so "wankle" and thin that folks persuaded her to give it laudanum to bring information technology on, equally it did other children. A halfpenny worth, which was about a teaspoonful and three-quarters, was given in two days; continued to give her this quantity since February, 1840, until this last by (1841), and then reduced the quantity. She now buys a halfpenny worth of laudanum and a halfpenny worth of Godfrey'due south mixed, which lasts her three days. . . . If it had non been for her having to sit and then close to piece of work she would never have given the child Godfrey's. She has tried to interruption it off many times but cannot, for if she did, she should not have anything to eat." [Children's Employment Commission: Second Report of the Commissioners (Trades and Manufactures), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) 14, p. 630].

³³ Elizabeth Leadbeater, who worked for a Birmingham brass-founder, worked while she was nursing and had her mother look afterward the babe. [Children'due south Employment Committee: Second Study of the Commissioners (Trades and Manufactures), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) XIV, p. 710.] Mrs. Smart, an agricultural worker from Calne, Wiltshire, noted, "Sometimes I accept had my mother, and sometimes my sister, to take care 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 Agriculture, British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (510) XII, p. 65.] More commonly, though, older siblings provided the childcare. "Older siblings" generally meant children of nine or x years onetime, and included boys as well as girls. Mrs. Britton of Calne, Wiltshire, left her children in the intendance of her eldest male child. [Reports of Special Assistant Poor Police Commissioners on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (510) XII, p. 66] In a family unit from Presteign, Wales, containing children anile 9, 7, five, 3, and 1, we discover that "The oldest children nurse the youngest." [F.M. Eden, State of the Poor, London: Davis, 1797, vol. iii, p. 904] When asked what income a labourer'southward wife and children could earn, some respondents to the 1833 "Rural Queries" causeless that the eldest kid would accept care of the others, leaving the mother gratuitous to work. The returns from Bengeworth, Worcester, report that, "If the Mother goes to field piece of work, the eldest Child had need to stay at home, to tend the younger branches of the Family." Ewhurst, Surrey, reported that "If the Mother were employed, the elder Children at domicile would probably exist required to attend to the younger Children." [Written report of His Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiry in the Administration and Practical Functioning of the Poor Law, Appendix B, "Rural Queries," British Parliamentary Papers, 1834 (44) Xxx, p. 488 and 593]

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

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

Mothers were enlightened of these dangers. One mother who admitted to leaving her children at dwelling worried greatly near the risks:

I have always left my children to themselves, and, God exist praised! nil has e'er happened to them, though I thought information technology dangerous. I take many a time come abode, and have thought it a mercy to notice cypher has happened to them. . . . Bad accidents ofttimes happen. [Reports of Special Assistant Poor Constabulary Commissioners on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (510) XII, p. 68.]

Leaving immature children dwelling house without child care had real dangers, and the fact that most working mothers paid for childcare suggests that they did non consider leaving immature children alone to be an acceptable option.

³⁵ In 1840 an observer of Spitalfields noted, "In this neighborhood, where the women too every bit the men are employed in the manufacture of silk, many children are sent to small-scale schools, not for instruction, but to be taken care of whilst their mothers are at work."[ Reports from Banana 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 2d. 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 mostly charged 3d. per calendar week. [Children's Employment Committee: Second Report of the Commissioners (Trades and Manufactures), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) Fourteen, p. 46, 64, 71, 72]

³⁶ At one straw-plaiting school in Hertfordshire,

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

At these schools in that location was very little instruction; some fourth dimension was devoted to instruction the children to read, simply they spent most of their time working. One mistress complained that the children worked too much and learned too piddling, "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 one time a-day." [Children's Employment Committee: Second Report of the Commissioners (Trades and Manufactures), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) Xiv, p. 66, 71] The standard charge per unit of 3d. per week seems to have been paid for supervision of the children rather than for the pedagogy.

³⁷ First Report of the Key Board of His Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiring into the Employment of Children in Factories, British Parliamentary Papers, 1833 (450) 20, C1 p. 33.

³⁸ Children'south Employment Commission: Second Report of the Commissioners (Trades and Manufactures), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) Fourteen, p. 46.

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

^twoscore In 1843 parliamentary investigator Alfred Austin reports, "Where a girl is hired to take care of children, she is paid about 9d. a week, and has her nutrient besides, which is a serious deduction from the wages of the woman at work."[ Reports of Special Assistant Poor Law Commissioners on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, British Parliamentary Papers,1843 (510) XII, p.26] Agricultural wages in the area were 8d. per 24-hour interval, so fifty-fifty without the cost of food, the cost of child care was near 1-fifth a woman'south 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) Sixteen, p. 6] In 1843 Mary Wright, a "over-looker" at a Buckinghamshire paper manufactory, paid even more than for child care; she told parliamentary investigators that "for taking care of an infant she pays 1s.6d. a-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 kid-care payments were 21 percent of her wage. Engels put the price of child intendance at 1s. or 18d. a week. [Engels, [1845] 1926, p. 143] Factory workers often made 7s. a week, then again these women may take paid around one-fifth of their earnings for child care. Some estimates suggest even higher fractions of women'southward income went to kid intendance. The overseer of Wisbech, Cambridge, suggests a higher fraction; he reports, "The earnings of the Wife we consider comparatively small, in cases where she has a large family unit to attend to; if she has one or ii children, she has to pay one-half, or peradventure more than of her earnings for a person to take intendance of them." [Written report of His Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiry in the Administration and Practical Functioning of the Poor Police, Appendix B, "Rural Queries," British Parliamentary Papers, 1834 (44) Xxx, p. 76]

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