Preparation, reading lists and resources for 2017 weekly class

A woman's work is never done? Women’s livelihoods in England and Wales 1600-1914

Tutor: Dr Frances Richardson

E-mail:

Course website:

Background reading list

Author / Title
Clark, A. / Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century
Hill, B. / Women, Work & Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England
Pinchbeck, I. / Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution 1750 -1850
Goose, N. (ed.) / Women's Work in Industrial England: Regional and Local Perspectives

Main reading list

Sharpe, P. / Women's Work : the English Experience 1650-1914
Berg, M. / The Age of Manufactures 1700-1820
Sharpe, P. / Adapting to Capitalism: Working Women in the English Economy, 1700-1850
Burnette, J. / Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain
John, A. (ed.) / Unequal Opportunities: Women's Employment in England 1800-1918
Holloway, G. / Women and Work in Britain since 1840
Horn, P. / Victorian Countrywomen
Steedman, C. / Labours Lost: Domestic Service and the Making of Modern England
Neff, W. / Victorian Working Women: An Historical and Literary Study of Women in British Industries and Professions 1832-1850
Sutherland, G. / In Search of the New Woman: Middle-Class Women and Work in Britain 1870-1914

Week 1. Introduction

Follow-up podcast on latest research on women’s earnings:
Professor Jane Humphries, Eve also Delved: Gendering Economic History, Ellen McArthur Lectures 2016. University of Cambridge podcast:

Week 2. Women in the seventeenth-century household economy

Preparation

What role did housewives and/or unmarried female servants play in the seventeenth century?

*Alice Clark,Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (1917) (The Internet Library: Especially Introductory, pp. 5-12, and Conclusion, pp. 290-296.

* Gervaise Markham, Countrey Contentments, or the English Huswife (1615) (The Digital Library, – dip into this.

Jane Whittle, ‘The house as a place of work in early modern rural England’, Home Cultures (2011), pp. 133-150. (Online in Resources room or Continuing Education Library - OU e-Journals, Home Cultures.) 2 hard copies for loan.

Jane Whittle, ‘Enterprising widows and active wives: Women's unpaid work in the household economy of early modern England’,History of the Family, vol. 19, no. 3, (2014), pp. 283-300. (Online in Resources room or Continuing Education Library - OU e-Journals, History of the Family). 2 hard copies for loan.

Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1981) (Continuing Education Library), especially pp. 31-42.

Week 3. Women in agriculture

Preparation:

1.What do we learn about the work of early 18c agricultural labourers’ wives from Mary Collier’s poem The Woman’s Labour?

*Mary Collier, The Woman’s Labour (1739)

AND/OR

2.What changes in women’s work in agriculture in the 18th and 19th centuries can we see from paintings – including the use of the sickle or scythe?

*Search websites such as using keywords like harvest, reaping, milkmaid.

Eve Hostettler, ‘Gourlay Steell and the sexual division of labour’, History Workshop, No. 4 (Autumn, 1977). (Online in Resources room or Continuing Education Library - OU e-Journals, History Workshop, 2 loan copies)

Keith Snell, ‘Agricultural seasonal unemployment, the standard of living, and women’s work 1690-1860’, in Pamela Sharpe (ed.) Women's Work : the English Experience 1650-1914 (1998). (Loan copy in Continuing Education Library, reference copies in Bodleian and History Faculty Library.)

Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution 1750 -1850, Chapters III-V, (Online in Resources room or Continuing Education Library - 2 copies in Library.

Nicola Verdon, ‘A diminishing force? Reassessing the employment of female day labourers in English agriculture, c.1790-1850’, in P. Lane, N. Raven and K. D. M. Snell (eds.), Women, Work and Wages in England, 1600-1850 (Woodbridge, 2004). (One copy in Continuing Education Library, one class loan copy.)

Nicola Verdon, Rural Women Workers in 19th Century England (2002), especially Chapters 2 and 3. (Reference-only in Bodleian or History Faculty Library, Radcliffe Camera).

P. Sharpe, Adapting to Capitalism, Chapter 4. (One copy in Continuing Education Library.)

On attitudes to women in agriculture in the later 19c, see History Today website,

Week 4. Proto-industry – women in cottage industries

Preparation

1.What were the reasons for the development of cottage industries (proto-industry) in the 18th century?

•Sheila Ogilvie and Marcus Cerman,European Proto-industrialization (1996). ‘Introduction’,

•Deborah Valenze, The First Industrial Woman (1995), (Online in Resources room or Continuing Education Library - especially Ch. 6., ‘Invisible breadwinners: women workers and the declining status of cottage industry’.

AND/OR

2. What had happened to women’s spinning earnings by the time of Sir Frederick Morton Eden’s survey ‘The State of the Poor’ in 1797, and what impact did this have on family living standards?

Google e-books, *Sir Frederick Eden, The State of the Poor (1797), 3 volumes free on Google e-books, Vol. II:

AND/OR

  1. What caused the rise and decline of straw plaiting in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire?

•* Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution 1750-1850 (1930), (Online in Resources room or Continuing Education Library - especially Chapters VI and VII, ‘Textile industries’, and Ch. X, ‘Smaller domestic industries’. 2 hard copies in Continuing Education Library

•*The History of Straw Plait in Hertfordshire,

•Nigel Goose, The straw plait and hat trades in nineteenth-century Hertfordshire’, in Nigel Goose (ed.) Women’s Work in Industrial England: Regional and Local Perspectives (2007), in Continuing Education Library.

Nancy Grey Osterud, ‘'Gender divisions and the organisation of work in the Leicester hosiery industry', in A. V. John (ed.), Unequal Opportunities: Women's Employment in England 1800-1918 (Oxford, 1986). In Continuing Education Library.

Week 5. Women in the Industrial Revolution – textiles

Preparation:

  1. What do we learn from Sir Edward Baines’ History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain about the type of work, wages, and conditions of women working in cotton factories in 1835?

Chapter XVI, pp. 433-9, 482-3, and 493-4. Online via the Bodleian Library in the Continuing Education Library or Student Resources room, or online via

AND/OR

2.How have historians explained the changing gender division of labour with the transition to factory production of cotton?

  • *Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures 1700-1820, Chapter 10, ‘The textile industries: technologies’. (2 copies in Continuing Education Library, 2 for class loan)
  • *Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution 1750-1850 (1930), especially Chapter VII, ‘Textile industries, the transition from hand to machine spinning’, and Ch. IX, ‘Textile industries – factory workers’. (Online in Resources room or Continuing Education Library - 2 hard copies in Continuing Education Library.)
  • Deborah Valenze, The First Industrial Woman (1995), Ch. 5, ‘A new world of work: female labor and the development of the factory system’. (Online in Resources room or Continuing Education Library -

Week 6. Other industries in the industrial revolution

Preparation:

How did industrialization affect the gender division of labour in:

  • the Birmingham metal trades or toy industry, AND/OR
  • the Staffordshire pottery industry, AND/OR
  • the Midlands hosiery industry?
  • *Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution 1750-1850 (1930), Chapter XI, Metal trades.(Online in Resources room or Continuing Education Library - 2 hard copies in Continuing Education Library.2 class loan copies.)
  • *Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures 1700-1820, Chapter 12,’The Birmingham toy trades’. (2 copies in Continuing Education Library. One copy for class loan)

Nancy Grey Osterud, ‘'Gender divisions and the organisation of work in the Leicester hosiery industry', in A. V. John (ed.), Unequal Opportunities: Women's Employment in England 1800-1918 (Oxford, 1986). In Continuing Education Library. (2 class loan copies).

  • R. Whipp, 'Women and the social organisation of work in the Staffordshire pottery industry, 1900-1930', Midland History 12 (1987), pp. 103-121.(Online in Resources room or Continuing Education Library -
  • Marguerite Dupree, ‘Women as wives and workers in the Staffordshire potteries in the nineteenth century’, in N. Goose (ed.), Women’s Work in Industrial England (Hertfordshire, 2007) (Continuing Education Library, 1 class loan copy)

Week 7. Domestic service

Preparation:

1.What do we learn about the work of a Victorian maid of all work from Hannah Cullwick’s diaries and female servants in larger households from Mrs. Beeton?

*M. Hiley, Victorian Working Women: Portraits from Life (London, 1979), Ch. 7, Maids of all work (Class handout)

*Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management ( Ch. 41, ‘Domestic servants’.

AND/OR

2.Did domestic service provide young women with an opportunity for social betterment in the nineteenth century?

*Edward Higgs, ‘Domestic service and household production’, in A. V. John (ed.)Unequal Opportunities: Women's Employment in England 1800-1918 (Oxford, 1986), especially pp. 133-145. (In Continuing Education Library. 2 class loan copies)

Pamela Sharpe, Adapting to Capitalism: Working Women in the English Economy, 1700-1850 (Basingstoke, 1996), Ch. 5, ‘Shifts of housewifery: service as a female migration experience’. (One copy in Continuing Education Library, one class copy.

Carolyn Steedman,Labours Lost: Domestic Service and the Making of Modern England(Cambridge, 2009). One copy in Continuing Education Library.

ASSIGNMENT TOPICS

Option A: 3-5 short pieces (total about 1500 words), based on discussion topics listed above and for later classes.

Option B:A 1500 word essay. Possible questions:

  • How and why did women’s agricultural work reduce during the nineteenth century?
  • To what extent was married women’s contribution to family budgets undermined by industrialization?
  • Why did a greater gender division of labour arise during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?
  • What factors influenced the rise and fall of women’s work in proto-industry (or a specific cottage industry)?
  • How did industrialization affect the gender division of labour in the nineteenth century?

OR a topic of your choice, to be agreed with Frances.

Option C: A 10 minute presentation, topic to be agreed with Frances.

Some readings for assignment topics:

  1. LACEMAKING
  • Ivy Pinchbeck,Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution 1750 -1850, Ch. 10.
  • G. F. R. Spenceley, ‘The English pillow lace industry 1840-80: a rural industry in competition with machinery’, Business History 19 (1997).
  1. SILK INDUSTRY
  • Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures
  • Lane, Raven & Snell (eds.), Women, Work and Wages in England, 1600-1850, Ch. 7 on women’s employment and industry in the small towns of southern England, c. 1790-1840
  • Judy Lown, Women and Industrialization: Gender at Work in Nineteenth-Century England (1990)
  • J. Prest, The Industrial Revolution in Coventry(1960)
  • Pamela Sharpe,Adapting to Capitalism: Working Women in the English Economy, 1700-1850 (1996)
  • F. Warner, The Silk Industry of the UK (1921)
  1. Femmes soles traders

Joanne Bailey, ‘Favoured or oppressed? Married women, property and ‘coverture’ in England, 1660–1800’, Continuity and Change, 2002, Vol.17(3)

  • Mary Beth Combs, ‘Wives and household wealth: the impact of the 1870 British Married Womens Property Act on wealth-holding and share of household resources’, Continuity and Change, 2004, Vol.19(1)
  • Amy Louise Erickson, Women & Property in Early Modern England (1993)
  • Amy LouiseErickson,‘Married women's occupations in eighteenth-century London’, Continuity and Change, 2008, Vol.23(2)
  • Bridget Hill, Women Alone: Spinsters in England 1660-1850, Ch. 4, ‘Single Women in Business’
  • MarjorieMcIntosh, ‘The Benefits and Drawbacks of Femme Sole Status in England, 1300–1630’Journal of British Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3 (July 2005)

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