How Did The Industrial Revolution Change Access For Women To Work Outside The Home?

Women Workers in the British Industrial Revolution

Historians disagree nigh whether the British Industrial Revolution (1760-1830) was benign for women. Frederick Engels, writing in the late nineteenth century, thought that the Industrial Revolution increased women'southward participation in labor exterior the dwelling, and claimed that this modify was emancipating. ¹ More recent historians dispute the claim that women'due south labor strength participation rose, and focus more on the disadvantages women experienced during this time menses.^two One thing is certain: the Industrial Revolution was a time of important changes in the way that women worked.

The Census

Unfortunately, the historical sources on women'due south piece of work are neither every bit complete nor equally reliable as we would similar. Amass information on the occupations of women is bachelor only from the census, and while demography data has the reward of being comprehensive, it is not a very skilful measure of piece of work washed by women during the Industrial Revolution. For one thing, the census does not provide any information on private occupations until 1841, which is subsequently the menstruation we wish to study.³ Fifty-fifty then the data on women'southward 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 merely not apprenticed or receiving wages, need not be inserted." Conspicuously this census would not give us an accurate measure of female labor forcefulness participation. Table I illustrates the problem further; it shows the occupations of men and women recorded in the 1851 census, for 20 occupational categories. These numbers suggest that female labor forcefulness participation was low, and that 40 percentage of occupied women worked in domestic service. Nonetheless, economic historians take demonstrated that these numbers are misleading. Beginning, 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 census.⁴ At the same time, the census over-estimates participation by listing in the "domestic service" category women who were really family members. In addition, the demography 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 actually agricultural workers.^v

Table One

Occupational Distribution in the 1851 Demography of Peachy Britain

Occupational Category	Males (thousands)	Females (thousands)	Percentage Female
Public Administration	64	iii	iv.v
Armed forces	63	0	0.0
Professions	162	103	38.9
Domestic Services	193	1135	85.v
Commercial	91	0	0.0
Transportation & Communications	433	xiii	2.9
Agronomics	1788	229	11.4
Line-fishing	36	1	2.vii
Mining	383	11	ii.8
Metal Manufactures	536	36	half dozen.iii
Edifice & Construction	496	1	0.ii
Wood & Furniture	152	8	5.0
Bricks, Cement, Pottery, Glass	75	15	16.seven
Chemicals	42	4	8.7
Leather & Skins	55	5	viii.three
Paper & Printing	62	sixteen	20.5
Textiles	661	635	49.0
Clothing	418	491	54.0
Food, Drink, Lodging	348	53	13.ii
Other	445	75	14.iv
Total Occupied	6545	2832	30.2
Total Unoccupied	1060	5294	83.3

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

Domestic Service

Domestic piece of work – cooking, cleaning, caring for children and the ill, fetching h2o, making and mending habiliment – took up the bulk of women's time during the Industrial Revolution period. Nigh of this work was unpaid. Some families were well-off enough that they could utilise other women to exercise this work, as live-in servants, as charring women, or as service providers. Alive-in servants were adequately common; even middle-class families had maids to help 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 than three times the 8d. typically paid for agricultural labor in the country. However, a "mean solar day's work" in washing could last 20 hours, more than twice as long every bit a 24-hour interval's piece of work in agriculture.⁶ Other women worked as laundresses, doing the washing in their ain homes.

Cottage Industry

Before factories appeared, most textile manufacture (including the main processes of spinning and weaving) was carried out under the "putting-out" system. Since raw materials were expensive, fabric workers rarely had enough capital letter 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 product and receive a piece-charge per unit wage. This system disappeared during the Industrial Revolution as new mechanism requiring water or steam power appeared, and piece of work moved from the home to the factory.

Before the Industrial Revolution, paw spinning had been a widespread female employment. It could take as many as 10 spinners to provide i manus-loom weaver with yarn, and men did not spin, and so about of the workers in the textile industry were women. The new material machines of the Industrial Revolution inverse that. Wages for mitt-spinning savage, and many rural women who had previously spun plant themselves unemployed. In a few locations, new cottage industries such equally straw-plaiting and lace-making grew and took the place of spinning, merely in other locations women remained unemployed.

Another important cottage industry was the pillow-lace manufacture, so chosen because women wove the lace on pins stuck in a pillow. In the late-eighteenth century women in Bedford could earn 6s. a calendar week making lace, which was about fifty percent more than women earned in argiculture. Nonetheless, this industry likewise disappeared due to mechanization. Following Heathcote's invention of the bobbinet machine (1809), cheaper lace could exist made by embroidering patterns on motorcar-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 harbinger into bands used for making hats and bonnets. The industry prospered around the turn of the century due to the invention of a unproblematic tool for splitting the straw and war, which cut off competition from Italy. At this time women could earn 4s. to 6s. per calendar week plaiting straw. This industry also 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, peculiarly fabric factories. Piece of work moved out of the home and into a factory, which used a central power source to run its machines. Water power was used in well-nigh of the early factories, but improvements in the steam engine made steam power possible also. The virtually 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, and then named because it combined features of the ii earlier machines) revolutionized spinning. Uk began to manufacture cotton fiber cloth, and declining prices for the cloth encouraged both domestic consumption and consign. Machines likewise appeared for other parts of the material-making procedure, the near important of which was Edmund Cartwright's powerloom, which was adopted slowly because of imperfections in the early designs, but was widely used by the 1830s. While cotton was the most important textile of the Industrial Revolution, in that location were advances in mechanism for silk, flax, and wool production besides.⁷

The advent of new mechanism changed the gender segmentation of labor in textile product. Earlier the Industrial Revolution, women spun yarn using a spinning bike (or occasionally a distaff and spindle). Men didn't spin, and this segmentation of labor fabricated sense because women were trained to have more than dexterity than men, and because men's greater force fabricated 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 cloth-dressing. With mechanization, the gender sectionalization of labor changed. Women used the spinning jenny and water frame, but mule spinning was almost exclusively a male occupation considering it required more strength, and because the male 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 eventually in powerloom factories). Both sexes were employed as powerloom operators.

Tabular array Two

Factory Workers in 1833: Females every bit a Percent of the Workforce

Industry	Ages 12 and under	Ages thirteen-20	Ages 21+	All Ages
Cotton	51.8	65.0	52.two	58.0
Wool	38.6	46.ii	37.vii	twoscore.9
Flax	54.8	77.3	59.5	67.iv
Silk	74.three	84.3	71.3	78.1
Lace	38.7	57.4	sixteen.six	36.5
Potteries	38.1	46.ix	27.1	29.4
Dyehouse	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Glass	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Paper	–	100.0	39.2	53.six
Whole Sample	52.8	66.iv	48.0	56.8

Source: "Written report from Dr. James Mitchell to the Central Lath of Commissioners, respecting the Returns fabricated from the Factories, and the Results obtained from them." British Parliamentary Papers, 1834 (167) Xix. Mitchell collected information from 82 cotton fiber factories, 65 wool factories, 73 flax factories, 29 silk factories, 7 potteries, xi lace factories, one dyehouse, one "glass works", and 2 paper mills throughout Uk.

While the highly skilled and highly paid task of mule-spinning was a male occupation, many women and girls were engaged in other tasks in textile factories. For instance, the wet-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 percent of factory workers were female person, most of them under age 20. Women were widely employed in all the cloth industries, and constituted the majority of workers in cotton, flax, and silk. Outside of textiles, women were employed in potteries and newspaper factories, but non in dye or glass industry. Of the women who worked in factories, 16 per centum were nether age 13, 51 pct were between the ages of 13 and twenty, and 33 per centum were age 21 and over. On average, girls earned the same wages every bit boys. Children's wages rose from near 1s.6d. per week at age 7 to nigh 5s. per week at historic period xv. Beginning at age sixteen, and a large gap between male and female person wages appeared. At age 30, women mill workers earned but 1-third as much as men.

Figure One
Distribution of Male and Female Manufacturing plant Employment by Age, 1833

Source: "Written 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 pct of full employment inside each sex that is in that 5-yr age category.

Figure Two
Wages of Factory Workers in 1833

Source: "Report from Dr. James Mitchell to the Central Lath of Commissioners, respecting the Returns made from the Factories, and the Results obtained from them." British Parliamentary Papers, 1834 (167) 19.

Agriculture

Wage Workers

Wage-earners in agriculture generally fit into one of two broad categories – servants who were hired annually and received part of their wage in room and board, and solar day-laborers who lived independently and were paid a daily or weekly wage. Before industrialization servants comprised between ane-tertiary and one-half of labor in agriculture.⁹ For servants the value of room and board was a substantial portion of their compensation, so the ratio of money wages is an nether-estimate of the ratio of total wages (see Table Iii). Most servants were young and unmarried. Because servants were paid part of their wage in kind, as board, the utilise of the servant contract tended to fall when food prices were high. During the Industrial Revolution the utilize of servants seems to have fallen in the Southward and E.^x The percentage of servants who were female also declined in the commencement half of the nineteenth century.^xi

Tabular array Three

Wages of Agricultural Servants (£ per yr)

Year	Location	Male person Money Wage	Male person In-Kind Wage	Female 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	ix	iv	6	0.36	0.50
1821	Yorkshire	16.five	27	7	xviii	0.42	0.57

Source: Joyce Burnette, "An Investigation of the Female person-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 food and lodging as function 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. Table Iv shows the percentage of laborers who were female at diverse farms in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. These numbers suggest that female employment was widespread, but varied considerably from one location to the next. Compared to men, female laborers mostly worked fewer days during the year. The employment of female person laborers was full-bodied around the harvest, and women rarely worked during the winter. While men commonly worked six days per week, exterior of harvest women generally averaged around four days per week.

Table 4

Employment of Women every bit Laborers in Agriculture:
Percentage of Almanac Work-Days Worked by Females

Year	Location	Percentage Female person
1772-5	Oakes in Norton, Derbyshire	17
1774-seven	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	27
1785-92	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	twoscore
1794-5	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	42
1801-3	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	35
1801-iv	Nettlecombe Barton, Somerset	10
1814-vi	Nettlecombe Barton, Somerset	seven
1826-eight	Nettlecombe Barton, Somerset	5
1828-39	Shipton Moyne, Gloucestershire	19
1831-45	Oakes in Norton, Derbyshire	6
1836-nine	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	26
1839-40	Lustead, Norfolk	6
1846-ix	Dunster Castle Farm, Somerset	29

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

The wages of female day-laborers were fairly compatible; generally a farmer paid the same wage to all the developed women he hired. Women'due south daily wages were betwixt one-third and one-one-half of male wages. Women generally worked shorter days, though, 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 (normally a family member) who was available for day-labor whenever the employer wanted her.^thirteen

Table Five

Wages of Agronomical Laborers

Yr	Location	Male Wage (d./day)	Female Wage (d./day)	Ratio
1770	Yorkshire	v	12	0.42
1789	Hertfordshire	half-dozen	16	0.38
1797	Warwickshire	vi	xiv	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.l

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

Various sources propose that women's employment in agriculture declined during the early nineteenth century. Enclosure increased farm size and changed the patterns of creature husbandry, both of which seem to accept led to reductions in female employment.¹⁴ More women were employed during harvest than during other seasons, only women's employment during harvest declined as the scythe replaced the sickle as the virtually popular harvest tool. While women frequently harvested with the sickle, they did not apply the heavier scythe.¹⁵ Female employment fell the well-nigh in the Due east, where farms increasingly specialized in grain production. Women had more work in the West, which specialized more in livestock and dairy farming.^xvi

Not-Wage-Earners

During the eighteenth century there 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'due south participation in agricultural output vicious.

In a village that had a commons, even if the family unit but rented a cottage the wife could exist self-employed in agriculture considering she could keep a cow, or other animals, on the commons. Past careful management of her stock, a woman might earn as much during the year equally her husband earned equally a laborer. Women also gathered fuel from the commons, saving the family considerable expense. The enclosure of the commons, though, eliminated these opportunities. In an enclosure, state 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 not always compensated in the enclosure agreement. While enclosure occurred at different times for different locations, the largest waves of enclosures occurred in the starting time two decades of the nineteenth century, meaning 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 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 correct to glean on fields after harvest seems to have been maintained at least through the middle of the nineteenth century, by which time it had become ane of the few agricultural activities available to women in some areas. Gleaning was a valuable right; the value of the grain gleaned was often betwixt 5 and 10 percent of the family's total almanac income.¹⁸

In the eighteenth century it was mutual for farmers' wives to exist actively involved in farm work, especially in managing the dairy, pigs, and poultry. The diary was an of import source of income for many farms, and its success depended on the skill of the mistress, who commonly ran the operation with no help from men. In the nineteenth century, however, farmer's wives were more than likely to withdraw from subcontract management, leaving the dairy to the management of dairymen who paid a fixed fee for the employ of the cows.¹⁹ While poor women withdrew from self-employment in agriculture because of lost opportunities, farmer's wives seem to have withdraw considering greater prosperity immune them to enjoy more than leisure.

Information technology was less common for women to manage their own farms, but non unknown. Commercial directories listing numerous women farmers. For example, the 1829 Directory of the Canton of Derby lists 3354 farmers, of which 162, or iv.viii%, were conspicuously female.²⁰ While the commercial directories themselves do non indicate to what extent these women were actively involved in their farms, other prove suggests that at to the lowest degree some women farmers were actively involved in the work of the subcontract.²¹

Self-Employed

During the Industrial Revolution menses women were also active businesswomen in towns. Amidst business concern owners listed in commercial directories, almost ten 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. Unmarried 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 instance that does not hateful they were simply figureheads. Widows oftentimes connected their husband's businesses because they had been agile in management of the business while their hubby was alive, and wished to continue.²² Sometimes married women were engaged in trade separately from their husbands. Women well-nigh commonly ran shops and taverns, and worked as dressmakers and milliners, only they were not confined to these areas, and appear in almost of the trades listed in commercial directories. Manchester, for instance, had half dozen female blacksmiths and five female automobile makers in 1846. Between 1730 and 1800 in that location were 121 "rouping women" selling off estates in Edinburgh. ²³

Table 6

Business organisation Owners Listed in Commercial Directories

Engagement	City	Male	Female	Unknown Gender	Percent Female
1788	Manchester	2033	199	321	8.9
1824-5	Manchester	4185	297	1671	6.half dozen
1846	Manchester	11,942	1222	2316	9.iii
1850	Birmingham	15,054	2020	1677	11.viii
1850	Derby	2415	332	194	12.ane

Sources: Lewis'due south 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's National Commercial Directory of Republic of ireland (Manchester, 1846); Slater's Royal National and Commercial Directory (Manchester, 1850)

Table 7

Women in Trades in Manchester, 1788

Merchandise	Men	Women	Gender Unknown	Percent Female person
Apothecary/ Surgeon / Midwife	29	1	5	iii.iii
Attorney	39	0	iii	0.0
Boot and Shoe makers	87	0	1	0.0
Butcher	33	one	ane	ii.9
Calenderer	31	four	5	eleven.4
Corn & Flour Dealer	45	iv	5	viii.2
Cotton Dealer	23	0	ii	0.0
Draper, Mercer, Dealer of Cloth	46	15	19	24.half-dozen
Dyer	44	3	18	six.four
Fustian Cutter / Shearer	54	2	0	3.six
Grocers & Tea Dealers	91	xvi	12	15.0
Barber & Peruke maker	34	1	0	ii.9
Hatter	45	3	iv	6.3
Joiner	34	0	1	0.0
Liquor dealer	30	iv	14	11.viii
Manufacturer, cloth	257	iv	118	ane.5
Merchant	58	ane	18	one.7
Publichouse / Inn / Tavern	126	13	2	9.4
School master / mistress	xviii	x	0	35.7
Shopkeeper	107	16	4	13.0
Tailor	59	0	1	0.0
Warehouse	64	0	fourteen	0.0

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

Guilds often controlled access to trades, albeit only those who had served an apprenticeship and thus earned the "liberty" of the trade. Women could obtain "liberty" non but by apprenticeship, but also by widowhood. The widow of a tradesman was often considered knowledgeable plenty in the trade that she was given the correct to carry on the trade even 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, possibly suggesting reduced participation by women. However, the power of the guilds and the importance of apprenticeship were also failing during this time, then the pass up in female 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 really owned 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 lx workers.²⁷

While many women did successfully enter trades, in that location were obstacles to women's employment that kept their numbers low. Women generally received less education than men (though teaching of the fourth dimension was of express applied utilize). Women may take found it more difficult than men to raise the necessary capital because English law did not consider a wife to have any legal existence; she could not sue or be sued. A married woman was a feme covert and technically could not make any legally binding contracts, a fact which may take discouraged others from loaning money to or making other contracts with married women. However, this police was not equally limiting in practice as it would seem to exist in theory because a married adult female engaged in merchandise on her own business relationship was treated past the courts every bit a feme sole and was responsible for her ain debts.²⁸

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

In other occupations where professionalization was not as strong, women remained an important part of the workforce. Teaching, specially in the lower grades, was a common profession for women. Some were governesses, who lived as household servants, only many opened their own schools and took in pupils. The writing profession seems to accept been fairly open to women; the leading novelists of the catamenia 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 ways a consummate listing of the occupations of women during the Industrial Revolution. Women made buttons, nails, screws, and pins. They worked in the tin can plate, silvery plate, pottery and Birmingham "toy" trades (which made small manufactures similar snuff boxes). Women worked in the mines until The Mines Act of 1842 prohibited them from working secret, but afterwards women continued to pursue above-basis 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 past gimmicky authors give us some information on women'south participation.^xxx For the period 1787 to 1815, 66 per centum of married women in working-class households had either a recorded occupation or positive earnings. For the period 1816-xx the rate roughshod to 49 pct, but in 1821-40 it recovered to 62 percent. Table Viii gives participation rates of women by date and occupation of the husband.

Table Eight

Participation Rates of Married Women

	Loftier-Wage Agriculture	Low-Wage Agriculture	Mining	Manufacturing plant	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 Forcefulness 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 pocket-size relative to their husband's earnings. Almanac earnings of married women who did work averaged simply near 28 percent of their husband's earnings. Because not all women worked, and because children ordinarily contributed more to the family budget than their mothers, for the average family the wife contributed only effectually 7 percent of total family unit income.

Childcare

Women workers used a multifariousness of methods to care 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 dwelling would give their infants opiates such as "Godfrey'south Cordial" in order to keep the children quiet while their mothers worked.³² The motion of work into factories increased the difficulty of combining piece of work and childcare. In most factory work the hours were rigidly set, and women who took the jobs had to accept the twelve or thirteen hour days. Piece of work in the factories was very disciplined, so the women could non bring their children to the factory, and could non take breaks at volition. However, these difficulties did not forbid women with small children from working.

Nineteenth-century mothers used older siblings, other relatives, neighbors, and dame schools to provide child care while they worked.³³ Occasionally mothers would exit immature children home solitary, but this was unsafe plenty that only a few did so.³⁴ Children as young every bit two might exist sent to dame schools, in which women would take children into their home and provide child care, as well equally some basic literacy teaching.³⁵ In areas where lace-making or straw-plaiting thrived, children were sent from about age seven to "schools" where they learned the trade.³⁶

Mothers might use a combination of dissimilar types of childcare. Elizabeth Wells, who worked in a Leicester worsted factory, had v children, ages ten, 8, half dozen, 2, and four months. The eldest, a daughter, stayed domicile to tend the house and care for the infant. The second child worked, and the six-twelvemonth-old and ii-year-former were sent to "an infant school."³⁷ Mary Wright, an "over-looker" in the rag-cut 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 domicile, and the middle iii 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 go to a schoolhouse, where they are taken care of and taught to read."³⁸

The cost of childcare was substantial. At the terminate of the eighteenth century the price of child-care was about 1s. a week, which was most a quarter of a woman'south 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 calendar week.^xl

For Further Reading

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

Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. Family unit Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Center Class, 1780-1850. Chicago: University 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's 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." Periodical of Economic History 50 (1990): 17-42.

Male monarch, Peter. "Customary Rights and Women'due south 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 Modernistic England. Cambridge: Cambridge University 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'southward Press, 1996.

Snell, M.D.1000. Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrestal England, 1660-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Printing, 1985.

Valenze, Deborah. Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Pop Organized religion in Industrial England. Princeton University Printing, 1985.

Valenze, Deborah. The First Industrial Woman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

¹ "Since large-scale industry has transferred the woman from the house to the labour marketplace and the manufacturing plant, and makes her, oftentimes plenty, the bread-winner of the family unit, the terminal remnants of male domination in the proletarian dwelling house 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 so get testify 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, Private Holding and the State, 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 force. While she saw some disadvantages resulting from this withdrawal, particularly the loss of independence, she idea that overall women benefited from having more than time to devote to their homes and families. Davidoff and Hall (Family Fortunes: Man and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850, Univ. of Chicago Printing, 1987) agree that women withdrew from work, but they come across the change every bit a negative consequence of gender discrimination. Similarly, Horrell and Humphries ("Women'south Labour Force Participation and the Transition to the Male-Breadwinner Family, 1790-1865," Economic History Review, February. 1995, XLVIII:89-117) exercise not find that rising incomes caused declining labor force participation, and they believe that declining demand for female person workers caused the female person exodus from the workplace.

³ While the British census began in 1801, private enumeration did non brainstorm 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 Encounter Helen Speechley, Female and Child Agronomical Twenty-four hour period 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 conspicuously distinguish between the terms "housekeeper" and "housewife." See 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 dissimilarity, the censuses of the early 20th century seem to be fairly accurate; meet Tim Hatton and Roy Bailey, "Women's Work in Census and Survey, 1911-1931," Economic History Review, Feb. 2001, LIV:87-107.

⁶ A shilling was equal to 12 pence, so if women earned 2s.6d. for 20 hours, they earned ane.5d. per 60 minutes. Women agricultural laborers earned closer to 1d. per hour, and so 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 Press, 1986, p. 25. .

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

⁸ A petition from Glasgow cotton manufactures makes the following claim, "In almost every section of the cotton spinning business, the labour of women would be every bit efficient with that of men; notwithstanding in several of these departments, such measures of violence have been adopted past the combination, that the women who are willing to be employed, and who are anxious past existence employed to earn the bread of their families, accept been driven from their situations past violence. . . . Messrs. James Dunlop and Sons, some years ago, erected cotton wool 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 union],) of such reduced size equally could easily be wrought by women. They employed women lonely, as non being parties to the combination, and thus more easily managed, and less insubordinate than male spinners. These they paid at the same rate of wages, equally 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 cleaved open in the night. The women themselves were cruelly beaten and abused; and the mother of one of them killed; . . . And these nefarious attempts were persevered in so systematically, and so long, that Messrs. Dunlop and sons, found it necessary to dismiss all female spinners from their works, and to use merely male spinners, most probably the very men who had attempted their ruin." Commencement 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 Modern England, Cambridge Univ. Printing, 1981, Ch. 1

^x See Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, Routledge, 1930, Ch. 1, and K.D.Thou. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor, Cambridge Univ. Printing, 1985, Ch. two.

¹¹ For the menses 1574 to 1821 nigh 45 percent of servants were female, only this fell to 32 pct in 1851. See Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981, Ch. ane.

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

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

¹⁴ See Robert Allen, Enclosure and the Yeoman, Clarendon Press, 1992, and Joyce Burnette, "Labourers at the Oakes: Changes in the Demand for Female Twenty-four hours-Laborers at a Farm near Sheffield During the Agricultural Revolution," Journal of Economic science History, March 1999, 59:41-67.

^fifteen While the scythe had been used for mowing grass for hay or cheaper grains for some time, 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, so as grain prices fell relative to wages, farmers substituted the scythe for the sickle. See E.J.T. Collins, "Harvest Technology and Labour Supply in Great britain, 1790-1870," Economic History Review, Dec. 1969, XXIII:453-473.

¹⁶ K.D.K. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor, Cambridge, 1985.

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

^xviii Meet Peter King, "Customary Rights and Women'southward 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 Encounter also Deborah Valenze, The Starting time Industrial Adult female, Oxford Univ. Press, 1995

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

²¹ Eden gives an example of gentlewomen who, on the death of their father, began to work as farmers. He notes, "not seldom, in one and the aforementioned day, they take divided their hours in helping to make full the dung-cart, and receiving company of the highest rank and distinction." (F.Thou. Eden, The Country of the Poor, vol. i., p. 626.) One adult female farmer who was clearly an active managing director celebrated her success in a letter sent to the Annals of Agriculture, (quoted past Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, Routledge, 1930, p. xxx): "I bought a small manor, and took possession of it in the month of July, 1803. . . . As a woman undertaking to subcontract is more often than not a subject field of ridicule, I bought the small estate by fashion of experiment: the gentlemen of the county have at present complimented me then much on having set so expert and example to the farmers, that I accept determined on taking a very large farm into my easily." 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 wife who was good at business. In his autobiography James Hopkinson, a cabinetmaker, said of his wife, "I constitute I had got a good and suitable companion one with whom I could take sweet quango and whose dear and affections was only equall'd past her power every bit a business adult female." Victorian Cabinet Maker: The Memoirs of James Hopkinson, 1819-1894, 1968, p. 96.

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

²⁴ See K.D.M. Snell, Register of the Labouring Poor, Cambridge Univ. Printing, 1985, Tabular array six.1.

²⁵ The law requiring a seven-twelvemonth apprenticeship before someone could work in a trade was repealed in 1814.

²⁶ See Francois Crouzet, The Commencement 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 Beginning Report of the Central Board of His Majesty'southward Commissioners for research into the Employment of Children in Factories, with Minutes of Testify, British Parliamentary Papers, 1833 (450) 20, A1, p. 120.

²⁸ For instance, in the example of "LaVie and some other Assignees against Philips and some other Assignees," the courtroom upheld the right of a woman to operate every bit feme sole. In 1764 James Cox and his wife Jane were operating carve up businesses, and both went bankrupt within the infinite of two months. Jane's creditors sued James's 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 non own the goods in her shop, and thus James'due south creditors had no right to seize them. Run across William Blackstone, Reports of Cases adamant 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 Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England, Princeton Univ. Press, 1985.

³⁰ See Sara Horrell and Jane Humphries, "Women'due south Labour Force Participation and the Transition to the male-Breadwinner Family unit, 1790-1865," Economic History Review, Feb. 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 piece of work of my printing function, with a child in her artillery, I have no space to tell, nor in fact accept I infinite to allude to the many ways she contributed to my good fortune." James Hopkinson, Victorian Chiffonier Marking: 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 carrying babies into the field was fairly mutual; it contains these lines:

Our tender Babes into the Field we bear,
And wrap them in our Cloaths to go along them warm,
While round about we get together up the Corn;
. . .
When Night comes on, unto our Dwelling we become,
Our Corn nosotros carry, and our Babe too.

Mary Collier, The Woman's Labour, Augustan Reprint Guild, #230, 1985, p. 10. A 1835 Poor Constabulary study stated that in Sussex, "the custom of the mother of a family conveying her infant with her in its cradle into the field, rather than lose the opportunity of calculation her earnings to the full general stock, though partially practiced before, is becoming very much more 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 common 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; it is not given considering the child is ill, only 'to etch it to rest, to sleep it,' so that the mother may become to work. 'Has seen an infant lay asleep on its mother's lap whilst at the lace-frame for six 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 use of the drug to parliamentary investigators thus: 'Was confined of an illegitimate child in November, 1839. When the child was a week quondam she gave it a one-half teaspoonful of Godfrey'south twice a-day. She could not afford to pay for the nursing of the child, and and then gave it Godfrey's to keep it tranquility, that she might not be interrupted at the lace piece; she gradually increased the quantity by a drop or two at a time until it reached a teaspoonful; when the infant was iv months old it was so "wankle" and thin that folks persuaded her to give it laudanum to bring it on, every bit it did other children. A halfpenny worth, which was near a teaspoonful and three-quarters, was given in two days; connected to give her this quantity since Feb, 1840, until this final past (1841), and then 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 non been for her having to sit so close to piece of work she would never take given the child Godfrey's. She has tried to interruption information technology 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 Articles), 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 expect after the infant. [Children'southward 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 have had my mother, and sometimes my sister, to take care of the children, or I could not accept gone out." [Reports of Special Assistant Poor Police force Commissioners on the Employment of Women and Children in Agronomics, British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (510) XII, p. 65.] More commonly, though, older siblings provided the childcare. "Older siblings" generally meant children of nine or ten years onetime, and included boys as well as girls. Mrs. Britton of Calne, Wiltshire, left her children in the care of her eldest male child. [Reports of Special Assistant Poor Law Commissioners on the Employment of Women and Children in Agronomics, British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (510) XII, p. 66] In a family from Presteign, Wales, containing children aged 9, 7, 5, iii, and 1, we find that "The oldest children nurse the youngest." [F.M. Eden, Country of the Poor, London: Davis, 1797, vol. iii, p. 904] When asked what income a labourer's wife and children could earn, some respondents to the 1833 "Rural Queries" assumed that the eldest child would take care of the others, leaving the mother gratuitous to work. The returns from Bengeworth, Worcester, report that, "If the Female parent goes to field piece of work, the eldest Kid had demand to stay at home, to tend the younger branches of the Family unit." Ewhurst, Surrey, reported that "If the Female parent were employed, the elderberry Children at home would probably be required to attend to the younger Children." [Report of His Majesty's Commissioners for Research in the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Police force, 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. six, 1819):

A shocking blow occurred at Llandidno, well-nigh Conway, on Tuesday night, during the absence of a miner and his wife, who had gone to attend a methodist meeting, and locked the house door, leaving two children within; the house past some ways took fire, and was, together with the unfortunate children, consumed to ashes; the eldest only 4 years sometime!

Mothers were enlightened of these dangers. 1 mother who admitted to leaving her children at home worried greatly about the risks:

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

Leaving young children habitation without child intendance 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 also as the men are employed in the manufacture of silk, many children are sent to small schools, not for instruction, merely to be 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 by and large charged 3d. per week. [Children's Employment Commission: Second Study of the Commissioners (Trades and Manufactures), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) XIV, p. 46, 64, 71, 72]

³⁶ At i harbinger-plaiting school in Hertfordshire,

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

At these schools there was very little educational activity; some time was devoted to didactics the children to read, just they spent almost of their fourth dimension working. One mistress complained that the children worked likewise much and learned as well little, "In my judgment I think the mothers chore 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 "eleven scholars" and claimed to "teach them all reading once a-day." [Children's Employment Commission: Second Report of the Commissioners (Trades and Manufactures), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) 14, p. 66, 71] The standard rate of 3d. per week seems to have been paid for supervision of the children rather than for the instruction.

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

³⁸ Children's Employment Committee: Second Report of the Commissioners (Trades and Manufactures), 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 fourth dimension flow are establish in Eden, State of the Poor, London: Davis, 1797.

^twoscore In 1843 parliamentary investigator Alfred Austin reports, "Where a daughter is hired to take care of children, she is paid near 9d. a week, and has her food besides, which is a serious deduction from the wages of the woman at piece of 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 surface area were 8d. per day, and then even without the cost of food, the cost of kid care was about i-fifth a woman's wage. One Scottish adult female earned 7s. per calendar week in a coal mine and paid 2s.6d., or 36 pct of her income, for the care of her children.[ B.P.P. 1844 (592) XVI, p. 6] In 1843 Mary Wright, a "over-looker" at a Buckinghamshire newspaper factory, paid even more for kid intendance; she told parliamentary investigators that "for taking care of an infant she pays 1s.6d. a-calendar week, and 3d. a-calendar week for 3 others." [Children's Employment Commission: Second Report of the Commissioners (Trades and Articles), British Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (431) Xiv, p. 46] She earned 10s.6d. per week, and then her total child-intendance payments were 21 pct of her wage. Engels put the cost of child intendance at 1s. or 18d. a week. [Engels, [1845] 1926, p. 143] Factory workers often fabricated 7s. a week, and so again these women may accept paid around 1-fifth of their earnings for child intendance. Some estimates advise fifty-fifty higher fractions of women'southward income went to child care. The overseer of Wisbech, Cambridge, suggests a higher fraction; he reports, "The earnings of the Married woman we consider insufficiently modest, in cases where she has a big family to nourish to; if she has one or ii children, she has to pay one-half, or perhaps more than of her earnings for a person to take intendance of them." [Report of His Majesty's Commissioners for Enquiry in the Administration and Applied Performance of the Poor Law, Appendix B, "Rural Queries," British Parliamentary Papers, 1834 (44) XXX, p. 76]

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