L. Luck, ‘Straw-plait worker’, in J. Burnett (ed.), Useful Toil: Autobiographies of working people from the 1820s to the 1920s, 1994 (1974). For other autobiographical accounts of the effects of death or desertion on families, see D. Vincent, Bread, Knowledge and Freedom: A Study of Nineteenth-century Working Class Autobiography, 1981, chapters 3 and 4
S. Harding, ‘Can Feminist thought make economics more objective?’ Feminist Economics, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1995), pp. 7-32
‘Can Feminist thought make economics more objective?’
Feminist Economics
1
7
32
G. S. Jones, ‘Working-class culture and working-class politics in London 1870-1900: Notes on the remaking of a working class’, Journal of Social History, vol. 7 (1974), pp. 460-508; G. Crossick, An Artisan Elite in Victorian Society, 1978; R.Q Gray, The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh, Oxford, 1976; R. Q. Gray, The Aristocracy of Labour in Nineteenth-Century Britain, 1981; M. J. Daunton, House and Home in the Victorian City: Working Class Housing 1850-1914, 1983
‘Working-class culture and working-class politics in London 1870-1900: Notes on the remaking of a working class’
Journal of Social History
7
460
508
S. Horrell and J. Humphries, ‘Old questions, new data, and alternative perspectives: Families’ living standards in the industrial revolution', Journal of Economic History, vol. 52, no. 4 (December 1992), pp. 849-80
‘Old questions, new data, and alternative perspectives: Families’ living standards in the industrial revolution'
Journal of Economic History
52
849
80
S. Horrell and J. Humphries, ‘Women's labour force participation and the transition to the male-breadwinner family, 1790-1865’, Economic History Review, vol. 48, no. 1 (February 1995), pp. 89-117
‘Women's labour force participation and the transition to the male-breadwinner family, 1790-1865’
Economic History Review
48
89
117
S. Horrell and J. Humphries, ‘"The exploitation of little children": Child labor and the family economy in the industrial revolution’, Explorations in Economic History, vol. 32, no. 4 (October 1995), pp. 485-516
‘"The exploitation of little children": Child labor and the family economy in the industrial revolution’
Explorations in Economic History
32
485
516
S. Horrell, ‘Home demand and British industrialisation’, Journal of Economic History, vol. 56, no. 3 (September 1996), pp. 561-604
‘Home demand and British industrialisation’
Journal of Economic History
56
561
604
R. Wall, ‘Some implications of the earnings, income and expenditure patterns of married women in the populations in the past’, in J. Henderson and R. Wall (eds), Poor Women and Children in the European Past, 1994, pp. 312-35
Pamela Sharpe found that separation occurred in ten per cent of all marriages which took place in Colyton between 1725 and 1765, see P. Sharpe, ‘Literally spinsters: a new interpretation of local economy and demography in Colyton in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, Economic History Review, vol. 44, no. 1 (February 1991), pp. 46-65
‘Literally spinsters: a new interpretation of local economy and demography in Colyton in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’
Economic History Review
44
46
65
H. Southall, ‘The tramping artisan revisited: Labour mobility and economic distress in early Victorian England’, Economic History Review, vol. 44, no. 2 (May 1991), pp. 272-96
‘The tramping artisan revisited: Labour mobility and economic distress in early Victorian England’
Economic History Review
44
272
96
The army severely discouraged marriage, providing in a meagre fashion only for six wives for every hundred private soldiers. Other ‘unauthorised’ wives suffered terrible privation, particularly if their husbands were posted overseas, see M. Trustram, Women of the Regiment: Marriage and the Victorian Army, Cambridge, 1984. The desperate circumstances of women in this position is important when considering times as bellicose as the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Deborah Valenze provides a sad example of the way in which marriage to a man forced by his work to travel, and the laws of settlement, which reduced wives to appendages of husbands, could interact to leave lone mothers in distress. Bridget Gibson found herself employment as a wet nurse with a family called Benn when her first husband, a sailor, departed on a voyage. Her own baby died while she remained in service but the Benns renewed her contact though no formal acknowledgement of the second term was made. In her second year of service Bridget learned that her husband had died near Guinea. Eventually and partly because of the help provided by Mr Benn she received part of his unpaid wages. Perhaps this made her a desirable marriage partner. Anyway in 1777 she married a William Gibson and began married life in Whitehaven. When Gibson died in 1782 Bridget and another newborn child represented a potential financial burden on the parish. Because her deceased husband had only told her that his settlement was in Yorkshire, she had no idea where her legal claim to relief was. The court finally ordered Bridget and the baby back to the parish of the Benns at Hensingham, even though she had not lived there for five years. See D. Valenze, The First Industrial Woman, Oxford, 1995, pp. 21-2
Women of the Regiment: Marriage and the Victorian Army
D. Kent, ‘"Gone for a soldier": family breakdown and the demography of desertion in a London Parish’, Local Population Studies, no. 45 (Autumn 1990), pp. 27-42. Snell's data from settlement examinations also suggests an increase in desertion from 1751-80 to 1781-1800, see K. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England 1660-1900, Cambridge, 1985, p. 361
‘"Gone for a soldier": family breakdown and the demography of desertion in a London Parish’
Local Population Studies
27
42
B. S. Rowntree, Poverty: A Study of Town Life, 1901
S. Rose, ‘Widowhood and poverty in nineteenth-century Nottinghamshire’, in Wall and Henderson (eds), Poor Women and Children in the European Past, pp. 269-91; S. Rose, Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England, 1992
M. Dupree, Family Structure in the Staffordshire Potteries: 1840-1880, Oxford, 1995
Family Structure in the Staffordshire Potteries: 1840-1880
To the extent that female household heads were concentrated in particular jobs and industries which fared badly during the industrial revolution, they and their families would be dragged down by their economic location. This is part of the story. For an excellent summary of the fragmentary evidence on trends in traditionally female work during industrialisation which comes to negative conclusions about aggregate opportunities see Valenze, The First Industrial Woman.
For comparison, earnings plus poor relief provided weavers with an average income per annum of £22.53, about seventy-two per cent of my figure for the broader category of outworkers for the period 1841-5; see Henry Ashworth, ‘Statistics of the present depression of Trade at Bolton: Showing the mode in which it affects the different classes of a manufacturing population’, Journal of the Statistical Society of London, vol. 5 (April 1842), pp. 74-81
R. Watson, ‘Poverty in north-east Lancashire in 1843: Evidence from Quaker charity records’, Local Population Studies, No. 55 (Autumn 1995), pp. 28-45
‘Poverty in north-east Lancashire in 1843: Evidence from Quaker charity records’
Local Population Studies
28
45
P. Earle, ‘The female labour market in London in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries’, Economic History Review, vol. 42, no. 3 (August 1989), pp. 328-53
‘The female labour market in London in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries’
Economic History Review
42
328
53
Statistical analysis of the combined sample of households confirms that both the earnings and the presence of husbands reduced the probability of female labour force participation. Widows appear to have higher participation rates than wives in other nineteenth century evidence including the censuses, usually at least thirty per cent higher; see, Earle, ‘The female labour market’; For evidence for Leicester from the 1851 census see W Neff, Victorian Working Women: An Historical and Literary Study of Women in British Industries and Professions, 1832-1850, 1966
For explanations of the low participation rates of unemployed husbands see R. Davies, P. Elias and R. Penn, ‘The relationship between a husband's unemployment and his wife's participation in the labour force’, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, vol. 54, no. 2 (May 1992), pp. 145-71. Another possible, but implausible explanation is that the leisure is complementary. The hypothesis that the welfare system might discourage the participation of wives of sick or unemployed men is considered below
‘The relationship between a husband's unemployment and his wife's participation in the labour force’
Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics
54
145
71
See A. Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century, 1968
For women nailers see, Neff, Victorian Working Women, pp. 95-6
E. Higgs, ‘Domestic service and household production’, in A.V John (ed.), Unequal Opportunities: Women's Employment in England, 1800-1919, 1986, pp. 125-52
Thus sixteen per cent of the 680 women whose marital status was revealed in the London settlement examinations analysed by D. A. Kent for 1750-60 had entered or returned to service in widowhood, see D. A. Kent, ‘Ubiquitous but invisible: Female domestic servants in mid-eighteenth century London’, History Workshop Journal, vol. 28 (Autumn 1989), pp. 111-28
L. Davidoff, ‘The separation of home and work? Landladies and lodgers in nineteenth and twentieth century England’, in S. Burman (ed.), Fit Work for Women, 1979; Dupree, Family Structure.
Dupree, Family Structure, p. 199
Neff, Victorian Working Women, p. 31
J. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, Cambridge, 1980
Prostitution and Victorian Society
E. A. Rymer, The Martyrdom of the Mine or a 60 Years' Struggle for Life Dedicated to the Miners of England, 1898, excerpts from Vincent, Bread, Knowledge and Freedom, p. 78. Vincent provides other examples of the links between a lack of family protection, early working and later ill-health from the working-class autobiographies, see Bread, Knowledge and Freedom, pp. 78-9
Quoted in P Thane, ‘Women and the poor law in Victorian and Edwardian England’, History Workshop Journal, vol. 6 (Autumn 1978), p. 44
‘Women and the poor law in Victorian and Edwardian England’
History Workshop Journal
6
44
Thane, ‘Women and the Poor Law’; M. A. Crowther, The Workhouse System, 1834-1929, 1981; K. D. M. Snell and J. Millar, ‘Lone parent families and the welfare state: past and present’, Continuity and Chance, vol. 2, no. 3 (1987), pp. 387-422
On the perception of women's claims as legitimate see Valenze, The First Industrial Woman. Receiving poor relief was not an attractive option but as Barbara Todd emphasises it must be understood in the context of cultural understandings of widowhood. English communities underwrote the desirable and honourable course of persisting as widows via poor relief. The relief was not intended to be enough to live on but to supplement earnings, B. Todd, ‘Demographic determinism and female agency: the remarrying widow reconsidered … again’, Continuity and Change, vol. 9, no. 3 (1994), pp. 421-50
Extracts from John Castle's autobiography appear as ‘John Castle’ in J. Burnett (ed.), Destiny Obscure: Autobiographies of childhood, education and family from the 1920s, 1982, pp. 272-79
See Dupree, Family Structure, p. 310 ff; Rose, ‘Widowhood and poverty’, pp. 283-5
Dupree, Family Structure, p. 340. Dupree notes that the number of desertions seemed to increase during the ban!
L. Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900, 1983, pp. 62-3
P Lindert, ‘Unequal incomes’, in R. Floud and D. McCloskey (eds), The Economic History of Britain since 1700, vol. 1, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 357-86
The Economic History of Britain since 1700
1
357
86
See the literature surveyed in J. Humphries, ‘"Lurking in the wings …" Women in the historiography of the industrial revolution’, Business and Economic History, vol. 20 (November 1991), pp. 32-44
‘"Lurking in the wings …" Women in the historiography of the industrial revolution’
Business and Economic History
20
32
44