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The Domestic Image and Factory Culture: The Cotton District in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Carol E. Morgan
Carol E. Morgan
Affiliation:
University of Northern Iowa
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Type
Identity Formation and Class
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 49 , Spring 1996 , pp. 26 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1996

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References

NOTES

I wish to acknowledge the support of a Summer Fellowship from the University of Northern Iowa which enabled me to carry out part of the research for this paper.

1. Gray, Robert, “Factory Legislation and the Gendering of Jobs in the North of England, 1830–1860,” Gender and History 5 (Spring 1993):56–80;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRose, Sonya, Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England (Berkeley, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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3. Ibid., 47.

4. Ibid., 48; Hall, “Tale of Samuel and Jemima.” According to Wally Seccombe, “The male breadwinner version of a living wage became a powerful ideological fixture in the labour movement for over a century, despite the fact that it was never realizable by the labouring poor.” Seccombe, , “Patriarchy Stabilized: The Construction of the Male Breadwinner Wage Norm in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” Social History 11 (01 1986):55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Robert Gray has noted that, especially in the context of the short-time agitations, women were addressed as mothers and bearers of domestic virtue while men were constructed as citizens and free laborers. “Factory Legislation,” 60–64.

5. Lewis, Jane, “The Working-Class Wife and Mother and State Intervention, 1870–1918,” in Labour and Love: Women's Experience of Home and Family, 1850–1940, ed. Lewis, (Oxford, 1985), 102–3.Google Scholar

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16. Louise Tilly argues that, in approaching women's history, we need a theory that respects human agency rather than a focus on text which serves to downplay it. “Gender, Women's History, and Social History,” Social Science History 13 (Winter 1989):452–53.Google Scholar It is with this need in mind that I am approaching the issue of the domestic image of women.

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28. On the implications and operation of the New Poor Law, see The New Poor Law in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Fraser, Derek (New York, 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For its introduction and opposition to it in the North, see Edsall, Nicholas C., The Anti-Poor Law Movement, 1834–44 (Manchester, 1971).Google Scholar

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30. Holyoake, George Jacob, Life of Joseph Rayner Stephens, Preacher and Political Orator (London, 1881), 9.Google Scholar

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32. “Anti-Poor Law Meeting, Rochdale,” Northern Star (02 3, 1838).Google Scholar

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34. The Political Pulpit, no. 2: “A Sermon by the Rev. J. R. Stephens, Delivered at Hyde, in Lancashire, on Sunday Evening, February 17th, 1839,” 11.

35. The Political Pulpit, no. 1: “A Sermon by the Rev. J. R. Stephens, Delivered at Staley-Bridge, on Sunday Evening, February 10th, 1839,” 5.

36. The Political Pulpit, no. 2, 12; The Political Pulpit, no. 9, “A Sermon by the Rev. J. R. Stephens, Delivered at Ashton-under-Lyne, on Sunday Afternoon, May 26th, 1839,” 72.

37. The Political Pulpit, no. 3: “A Sermon by the Rev. J. R. Stephens, Delivered at Staley-Bridge, on Sunday Evening, February 24th, 1839,” 21.

38. Clark, Anna, “The Rhetoric of Chartist Domesticity: Gender, Language, and Class in the 1830s and 1840s,” Journal of British Studies 31 (01 1992):68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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43. On the breadth of meaning that was embedded in the term “domesticity,” see Clark, “Rhetoric of Chartist Domesticity,” 64–65.

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46. Copies of the True Bills Found Against the Rev. J. R. Stephens, at Liverpool and Chester, with Comments Thereon (published with The Political Pulpit, n.p., nd.). See also “Arrest of Mr. Stephens,” Northern Star (01 5, 1839).Google Scholar

47. Ibid.

48. “Female Radicals,” Northern Star (03 9, 1839).Google Scholar

49. “State of Political Feeling,” Northern Star (03 9, 1839).Google Scholar

50. “Female Radical Association,” Northern Star (03 30, 1839).Google Scholar

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52. As James Epstein has pointed out, men and women of the factory district realized an “identity of interests” through the vehicle of the mass platform. “Rethinking the Categories of Working-Class History,” Labour/Le Travail 18 (1986):199.Google Scholar

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56. Ibid., 296–97; British Parliamentary Papers, 1850, xlii, Returns of the Number of Cotton, Woollen, Worsted, Flax and Silk Factories Subject to the Factories Acts, 456–57; British Parliamentary Papers, 1857, xiv, Returns of the Number of Cotton, Woollen, Worsted, Flax and Silk Factories, 176–77; British Parliamentary Papers, 1862, lv, Returns of the Number of Cotton, Woollen, Worsted, Flax, Hemp, Jute, Hosiery, and Silk Factories Subject to the Factories Act, 630–31.

57. Michael Savage, “Women and Work,” 206–7; Farnie, English Cotton Industry, 296–97.

58. Walton, John K., Lancashire: A Social History, 1558–1939 (Manchester, 1987), 287–88.Google Scholar

59. Ibid., 177.

60. The Trial of Feargus O'Connor and 58 Others (London, 1843), 249.Google Scholar

61. Ibid., 249–53.

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65. Ibid. Instead, it appears that, with the continued expansion of weaving, men in Preston initially “seemed content to allow women into the weaving Sector.” Savage, Michael, The Dynamics of Working-Class Politics: The Labour Movement in Preston, 1880–1940 (Cambridge, 1987), 68.Google Scholar Male overlookers, who played the key role in the organization of the labor market, deliberately sought to hire women to limit competition. Yet the system of gender hierarchy was particularly pronounced here due to the overlookers' power extending beyond the usual supervisory role to control of the labor market. At the same time, comparatively few men were employed alongside women weavers and weaving, to a large extent, thus came to be considered “women's work.” Under these circumstances, the notion of a “natural” division of labor remained unchallenged, and appeals to domesticity for women could be readily invoked. Consequently, when spinning began to decline at the turn of the century, leading to unemployment among men, the male secretary of the weavers' union was able, despite a tradition of widespread women's employment, to appeal to the notion of separate spheres. He denounced employers who engaged “women in the sheds, leaving the husband to see to the house or walk the street,” contradicting accepted norms. Savage, Dynamics, 68, 79, 152.

66. Farnie, , English Cotton Industry, 296–97.Google Scholar

67. “Weavers' Meeting,” Burnley Advertiser (04 30, 1859);Google Scholar“The Wages Agitation,” Preston Guardian (02 16, 1861).Google Scholar

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70. During this transitional period, as the evidence below from Stockport and South (center of 1842 strike) and North Lancashire suggests, it is difficult to differentiate among localities regarding the degree of acceptance of women's work. However, I would suggest that, given the craft tradition among spinners and their aim of excluding women, the spinning areas of South Lancashire and Cheshire were less amenable to women's work. It is, rather, in the northern weaving districts that an acceptance of women's work is increasingly clear toward the turn of the century, as evidenced in Benenson, “The ‘Family Wage.’” While the situation in Preston was complicated, from Elizabeth Roberts' oral interviews it is also clear that employment outside the home was a part of women's lives, to be viewed along a continuum of activities in which women contributed to their families' well-being. Perhaps the evidence of an acceptance of women's work is strongest from Burnley and Nelson. Here, where men and women were nearly equally employed, weavers married each other, introduced their children to the trade, and assisted employers in recruiting through family contacts, all suggesting that weaving was a family affair. Savage, “Women and Work,” 211. In discussing fertility rates in relation to women's employment, Diana Gittins has argued that, in Burnley by the early twentieth century, such joint marital role relationships led to mutually planned smaller families. Here, home and work were not mutually exclusive roles, as the work experience was shared among parents and children, husbands and wives. With women's widespread employment, work in the home was also considered a mutual responsibility. Gittins, Diana, Fair Sex: Family Size and Structure in Britain, 1900–39 (New York, 1982), 92–130.Google Scholar

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72. Ten Hours' Advocate (September 1846-February 1847).

73. Gray, “Factory Legislation,” 65.

74. Women participated extensively in this strike. Jenkins, Mick, The General Strike of 1842 (London, 1980), 64, 214.Google Scholar

75. Trial of Feargus O'Connor, 253.

76. British Parliamentary Papers, 1849, xxii, Report of Leonard Homer for the Half-year Ended 31 October 1848.

77. Ibid., 31–33, 35.

78. Apparently many married women were employed at this particular mill; similar Comments were made by other operatives at other mills. Ibid., 28. 31.

79. Ibid., 29, 32–33.

80. Ibid., 57–58.

81. “Amendment of the Ten Hours' Bill,” Manchester Guardian (05 20, 1848).Google Scholar

82. “Attempt to Defeat the Ten Hours' Bill,” Blackburn Standard (05 24, 1848).Google Scholar

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84. British Parliamentary Papers, Report of Leonard Homer, 1849, xxii, 3–8; Driver, Tory Radical, 480.

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99. British Parliamentary Papers, 1849, xxii, Report of Leonard Homer, 33, 49.

100. Ibid., 28, 31–32, 72.

101. Roberts, A Woman's Place, 128.

102. Jane Lewis, “Working-Class Wife,” 108.

103. Thompson, Dorothy, “Women, Work and Politics in Nineteenth-Century England: The Problem of Authority,” in Equal or Different: Women's Politics 1800–1914, ed. Rendall, Jane (Oxford, 1987), 70–71.Google ScholarPubMed

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109. Roberts, A Woman's Place, 137; Benenson, “The ‘Family Wage,’” 79. Diana Gittins has argued that, particularly among cotton weavers, household management and paid labor were not mutually exclusive roles. Further, a sharing of work experience was reflected in shared values and household responsibilities among husbands and wives; Fair Sex, 104–130.

110. London, Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics, Webb Trade Union Collection, section A, vol. 47, 48. Sarah Dickenson figures prominently in Liddington, Jill and Norris, Jill, One Hand Tied Behind Us: The Rise of the Women's Suffrage Movement (London, 1978).Google Scholar

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