International Women's Day

Photo: Link4Life

Halftimers at Parkinsons Weaving Shed in Heywood 1910

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Long before industrialisation ushered in the drudgery and long hours of factory-based work, or the rise of the middle classes created a demand for vast armies of domestic servants, women toiled along with men and children.

Earlier occupations were often centred around the family as a working unit. Agriculture and the domestic textile industry were particularly well suited to this system, but it was not unusual to find women working alongside their parents or husbands as brewers, chainmakers or blacksmiths.

We don't usually associate women in this area with the metal trades, although we know they worked in these trades in the Midlands. Adam Hill, a Milnrow blacksmith, employed women in his smithy as chainmakers (see photograph). It was a very heavy job, even for a man.

In 1814 a woman called Mary Standring is listed in a Rochdale Trade Directory as a 'doffing plate maker,' whilst a woman called Elizabeth Healey was working as a blacksmith. In 1814 too, a woman called Ellizabeth Skelern took over her husband's occupation as a 'tinman and brazier.' In all probability she had assisted him in his work prior to his death.

Women could – and did – inherit family businesses. In 1805, James Leach of Rochdale made a will which left his butchering business and stall on Yorkshire Street to his wife, Hannah. Conversely, he left one of his daughters – Mary, the wife of James Turner – “1/- (5p) only, I having already given her as much or more than her portion of my property.”

Trades were often combined with subsistence farming, dividing work between the male and female members of the family – both young and old. Under this system tasks differed and life was hard, but all contributed equally to the family economy.

Where the domestic textile industry was tied to farming, for instance, the women (and children) would card, slub and spin the yarn then warp it for the loom. They were also responsible for household tasks and for activities such as brewing, butter and cheese making, keeping poultry and care of the sick. Surplus dairy products and eggs were often sold at market, providing valuable extra income for the family. The men of the family would tend to many of the farming tasks (aided by women at harvest and haymaking) and would take their share of textile work – sizing and drying the warp, and beaming it onto the looms.

Writing 1850, Middleton’s Sam Bamford declared that in the 18th century weaving was carried out by both males and females “whichever happened to be least otherwise occupied”.

Factories changed everything, not least the way of life and status of women. Personal freedoms were lost to the tyrannical clamour of the factory bell and incessant clatter of machinery.

Mothers still worked alongside their children in the factories, but under dreadful conditions. They had little choice, it was work or starve. Women had become dependent upon outside employers who demanded long hours of their workforce, whatever their age or sex. Tasks were tedious, repetitive and often dangerous. Pay was poor.

Moving into the towns for work brought other problems. Living conditions worsened, so that women had to contend with squalid overcrowding of their families, and the rapid spread of disease – and since factory work allowed little time for food preparation, cleanliness or recreation, family health suffered.

By 1848 the Victorian middle class, itself a new phenomenon, had developed a zeal for reform. In order to protect their ideals of the family and the ‘dignity’ of women, whilst still upholding the freedom of the market place, they proceeded to classify women (legally) as ‘non-adults’. This enabled them to limit the hours worked by women, as well as children, to ten hours daily in the textile industry. Nor, in the interests of ‘morals’, were women or children allowed to work at night.

Alongside these developments came the idea of the ‘family wage’. Men, it was argued, should earn enough to keep the whole family. Women were presumably intended to remain at home in a caring capacity. Unfortunately few men were able to earn sufficient money to meet family needs, as employers rarely shared the moralists’ vision, preferring to obtain the cheapest possible labour. All too often cheapest meant female or child labour.

At the same time, male dominated trades unions tried to prevent the employment of female labour in many trades (e.g. mule spinning) claiming that the work was unsuitable for women. Their real concern was that women, being cheaper to employ, threatened their jobs - especially when new technology reduced the need for muscle power, or long apprenticeships. These attitudes bred the restrictive practices which kept women and some unskilled men out of particular jobs. They were also the root of the idea that the work of men and women was properly considered as dissimilar. These concepts have been difficult to eradicate, and for some the debate about women’s working abilities lingers on.

‘Suitable’ occupations for women were deemed to be those based on the traditional domestic and caring skills. So women became domestic servants, seamstresses, laundresses, shop assistants, nurses and teachers, and latterly clerical workers and hairdressers.

Nursing was elevated to respectability by Florence Nightingale's work at Scutari during the Crimean War. However, throughout the Victorian and Edwardian periods, at least, wives and mothers continued to bear the brunt of nursing their families at home. Nursing and teaching attracted professional status, but once a woman married she was expected to leave her job.

Then there were the more traditional occupations, like that of Nell Racker, a midwife and 'wisewoman,' with her herbal remedies and skills in bone setting. Or unusual occupations like that of Ailse O' Fussars (Mary Hartley) who had a string of around 25 Galloway packhorse ponies (Limegals). Ailse and her pack ponies transported lime from Clitheroe and coal from Shawclough.

Others fell prey to the ‘sweated’ trades, ruining their eyesight in close sewing by candle or lamplight in their own homes for a pittance. Homeworkers still earn meagre wages for long hours.

In textile areas like Rochdale, women also worked in the mills, at processes which had their origins in the earlier domestic tasks of carding, spinning and weaving.

Many married women or widows earned a living by ‘taking in’ washing, a traditional occupation which became mechanised with the advent of the steam laundry. Women and girls formed the bulk of employees in these establishments.

Change began to occur when women ‘proved’ their abilities during the two world wars. With men away fighting, women filled the gap, taking over jobs as diverse as engineering and postal deliveries.

Within trades such as engineering, union rules had been relaxed at the plea of the Government, allowing women to work at semi-skilled jobs, or to assist with skilled work, but once the war ended in 1914, men took their jobs back. Within engineering the firms were encouraged to employ two women to release one man to fight.

Rochdale women worked on munitions at Tweedales & Smalleys between 1915-18, making large quantities of shells, bombs and grenades, and women were amongst the workforce at Rochdale Electric Co., Shawclough, which had also turned to wartime grenade production.

Post-women were employed by Rochdale’s main Post Office during World War One, delivering mail in the town. Rochdale's first postwoman was Annie Clegg, who started in 1916 with a round that covered the Manchester Road and Merefield area. She was soon joined by other women. Another post-woman who had a wartime round taking in Firgrove and Broad Lane recalled being treated to a daily ‘basin’ of cocoa at a cottage in Willows Lane.

During World War One Rochdale Infirmary appointed its first woman medical officer, Miss M. L. Mercardo. A radiographer's post was created during the same period, but it was held open until the end of the war, so that men could apply for it. And it was a woman, Marie Curie, who discovered radium.

A woman ambulance driver, Mrs Schofield, who served in Rochdale during the Second World War, recalls being ‘sent to Coventry for weeks’ by her male colleagues, who presumably resented her encroachment onto their territory. They may also have been resentful of the women’s shorter working day, which was later extended to the male ambulance drivers.

The wartime ambulance service was based at Lea Hall, subsequently the Broadwater Centre, and staff attended courses in Midwifery at Birch Hill, and basic mechanics at Burnley Technical College. Like the men, the women went out alone in the blackout except when there were stretcher cases to be carried.

Wage lists for Petrie’s Whitehall Street Foundry in 1945 show women working as coremakers, dressers, and machinists, and in all cases their daily earning were thirty or forty shillings less than those of their male colleagues, with their base rates less than half the men’s rate. Piecework rates for male coreworkers were 92 shillings, whilst women received only 51 shillings. Interestingly enough, all the women received ten shillings as a ‘cost of living’ bonus (this does not appear to have been paid to the men). It’s hardly surprising that in the years following the Second World War equal pay became as issue.

Just as the vote had finally been gained for all women over 21 by 1928, following their wartime work, so, eventually (after 25 years) came the Equal Pay Act of 1970, and the Amendment of 1984, which promised equal pay for work which is different but of equal value.

Today’s women count engineering, medicine, business, firefighting, plumbing, piloting planes, driving heavy goods vehicles, buses and trains, banking, policing, forestry and dentistry amongst their ‘suitable’ occupations. Once married, however, the 80% of women who continue to work still juggle the demands of their jobs with the responsibilities of home – and probably always will.

http://www.link4life.org/discover/local-history-online/trade-industry-and-transport/women-work