Adapting to Capitalism: Working Women in the English Economy, 1700–1850

235 Pages·1996·27.1 MB·English

by  Pamela Sharpe (auth.)

ADAPTING TO CAPITALISM
Adapting to Capitalism
Working Women in the
English Economy, 1700-1850
Pamela Sharpe
Lecturer in Social and Economic History
University of Bristol
First published in Great Britain 1996 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills. Basingstoke. Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-24458-4 ISBN 978-1-349-24456-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-24456-0
First published in the United States of America 1996 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC •.
Scholarly and Reference Division.
175 Fifth Avenue.
New York. N.Y. lDOlD
ISBN 978-0-312-12877-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sharpe. Pamela.
Adapting to capitalism: working women in the English economy.
1700-1850/ Pamela Sharpe.
p. COl.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-12877-7
I. WOll1en-Employment-England-History. 2. Capitalism-England-
-History. J. Title.
HD6136.S5 1996
331.4'0942-<lc20 95-42057
CIP
© Pamela Sharpe 1996
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1996
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written pemlission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the pn>visions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
or under the temlS of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
Road. London WI P 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
98765 4 3
05 04 03 02 01 00 99
In memory of Ruth White, 1891-1989
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Map of Essex by Thomas Kitchin, 1748 xi
Prologue: Making Shift 2
2 Introduction: Women Adapting to Capitalism 3
2 De-industrialisation and the Staple: The Cloth Trade 19
3 Re-industrialisation and the Fashion Trades 38
4 Agriculture: The Sexual Division of Labour 71
5 Shifts of Housewifery: Service as a Female Migration
Experience 101
6 The Economics of Body and Soul 130
Epilogue: Economic Change and Women's Status
in the Past 149
~~ 1~
Bibliography 202
Index 221
vii
Acknowl edgements
The research and writing of this book were funded by Essex County
Council. I had the privilege to be the first holder of the Essex County
Council Research Fellowship in Local History at the University of
Essex from 1990 to 1993. The fellowship allowed me to meet many
people with a long and deep interest in Essex history and I am grateful
to all of those who gave me help and advice during the development
of this book. In most cases I have tried to acknowledge them individually
in the notes, however, it has not always been possible to mention the
fleeting comments which sometimes later helped me to develop my ideas.
I benefited from holding this fellowship within the Local History
Centre in the History Department of Essex University. I would like to
thank all my colleagues there and Steve Smith and Ludmilla Jordanova
in particular, for their support and advice. Cathy Crawford, Jeremy
Krikler and Lucy Riall kept me happy. Arthur Brown provided me
with several references and helpful comments on an earlier and shorter
manuscript. The former Vice-Chancellor, Professor Martin Harris was
instrumental in setting up the fellowship in the department. Paul Thomp
son granted me generous access to the Sociology Department family
life archive. I must also thank the staff of the inter-library loans desk
in Essex University library for their everlasting attention to my needs.
Andrew Phillips provided access to oral history material.
The documents I used were generally located in the extremely effi
cient Essex Record Office. I thank all the staff of Chelmsford, Col
chester and Southend branches for their friendly help and, in particular,
the former County Archivist, Victor Gray, principal archivist at Chelms
ford, Janet Smith, and Colchester archivist, Jane Bedford.
Students on the History Department's (then) new undergraduate course
HR297 'Women in Comparative Historical Perspective 1700-1900'
helped me to refine my ideas. The thought process was also helped by
a series of one-day conferences at Essex especially the 'Women, Work
and Wages 1500-1800' workshop in 1991. I also appreciate the input
of the many local history students I have taught, particularly on the
WEA Week of Study and in my 'Women's History' evening class.
Their enthusiasm makes writing a book like this, which attempts to
bridge the awkward gap between local history and the academy, more
than worth the effort.
ix
x Acknowledgements
Chapter 2 was presented as a local history lecture at Essex Univer
sity and I appreciate John Smail's subsequent comments on it. I have
published some of the material used in Chapter 3 in two articles: 'De
industrialization and re-industrialization: women's employment and the
changing character of Colchester 1700-1850', Urban History, 21:1,
(1994). 77-96; and 'The women's harvest: straw-plaiting and the rep
resentation of labouring women's employment', Rural History, 5:2,
(1994). 129-42. I thank Cambridge University Press for permission to
reproduce material from these two articles. Versions of Chapter 4 were
presented as a paper to Women's History Network South-West and to
the Pre-Industrial Seminar at Cambridge University. I am grateful to
participants in those groups for their comments and also to Tim Mel
drum for his thoughts on both this chapter and Chapter 5. Thomas
Kitchin's map is reproduced by kind permission of Essex Record Office.
Turning to my family, I am grateful for my parents' long-lasting
interest in my historical endeavours. Dot Sharpe read the entire manu
script with a critical eye. Derek's help was mainly diversionary. As a
result I am probably the only historian ever to have read and researched
while sitting next to a test pile on a Bangkok building site. However,
finding myself in countries in the throes of uneven development and
observing the effects on ordinary people has been an instructive expe
rience in itself.
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Prologue: Making Shift
In the extremely high price year of 1801, Amy Hill wrote from Deptford
in London to her settlement parish of Rainham in Essex:
It grives me as food is Dear we canot get cloths to shift our selves
In; my husband has not only one old pachd shirt to put on as well
as the rest of the family and shall be humbly thankful for one a
peice wich your goodness be pleased to grant I will Take Care
with. . . . .. my husband as well as the rest of us livs so hard I
sometimes think he die as John Cook who doctor Smith says was
starved he was at work with my husband a fortnight befor he died
& has left a wif & three Children to the parish ... when my childrn
grow out of the way or food cheaper I am shur I believe I shall not
trouble any Moor.1
In the historical documents which inform this study people often de
scribed their access to employment and earnings as 'making shift'. In
the eighteenth century the word 'shift' had a rather different meaning
from the contemporary one. While we still retain the negative inver
sion with the word 'shiftless', we no longer use 'shift' in the eight
eenth-century sense of managing or contriving, of showing resource
fulness. As William Cobbett put it in his manual Cottage Economy
(1822), 'Scarcely anything is a greater misfortune than shiftlessness.
It is an evil little short of the loss of eyes or limbs ... .'2 Apart from
answering the exhortation to work which was instilled in labouring
people from the Reformation, 'shifting for oneself' was the way in
which the poor managed their livelihood. More specific words about
work or 'imploy' are rarely used by labouring people themselves in
the historical record. The word 'shift' also encapsulates the experi
ence of work as a composite of activities. In the past, occupations for
the poor - and particularly for women, frequently altered between, or
during the day, by the week and especially, by the season. Economic
activi-ties could be of either a waged or non-waged nature. They could
take place within the household or in the public sphere. While areas
of the developing world today have their own particular social, econ
omic and ideological conditions, we can identify certain similarities
with this reactive world of pre-industrial work. We are reminded, also
of Olwen Hufton's evocative phrase about single women being involved
1