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Victorian Values in the Marketplace: Single Women and Work in Boston, 1800–1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Susan L. Porter
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Extract

Lydia J ——, daughter of a widow with five children, was admitted to the Boston Female Asylum, an orphanage run by women, in 1826, at the age of four. When she was 11 she was apprenticed to a Boston physician and his wife. On her eighteenth birthday, Lydia agreed to remain with the family as a salaried servant, but six months later she left “to learn the business of dressmaking.” Lydia’s specialized training in a needlework trade supported her until her marriage, four years later, and in all likelihood at later periods in her life.’

Type
Special Section: Women and Labor
Information
Social Science History , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , Spring 1993 , pp. 109 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1993 

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