Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T06:27:12.430Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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
Affiliation:
University of Northern Iowa

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Identity Formation and Class
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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):5680;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRose, Sonya, Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England (Berkeley, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Rose, , Limited Livelihoods, 141–3;Google ScholarHall, Catherine, “The Tale of Samuel and Jemima:Gender and Working-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century England,” in E. P. Thompson: Critical Perspectives, ed. Kaye, Harvey J. and McClelland, Keith (Cambridge, 1990), 8687.Google Scholar

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

6. Benenson, Harold, “The ‘Family Wage’ and Working Women's Consciousness in Britain, 1880–1914,” Politics and Society 19 (03 1991):7778.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Ibid.; Savage, Michael, “Women and Work in the Lancashire Cotton Industry, 1890–1939,” in Employers and Labour in the English Textile Industries, ed. Jowitt, J. A. and McIvor, A. J. (London, 1988), 211.Google Scholar

8. Blewett, Mary H., “Traditions and Customs of Lancashire Popular Radicalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Industrial America,” International Labor and Working-Class History 42 (Fall 1992):10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Benenson, “Family Wage,” 79–90; Roberts, Elizabeth, A Woman's Place: An Oral History of Working-Class Women, 1890–1940 (Oxford, 1984), 137.Google Scholar

10. Benenson, “Family Wage,” 86–89.

11. Hareven, Tamara, Family Time and Industrial Time (Cambridge, 1982), 79.Google Scholar

12. Glenn, Susan A., Daughters of the Shtetl: Life and Labor in the Immigrant Generation (Ithaca, 1990), 124–38.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., 124.

14. Ibid., 238.

15. In accepting “that the ultimate responsibility for the home was theirs,” Elizabeth Roberts states, women's “dual role as family financial manager and moral guide Cannot be underestimated.” Woman's Place, 125.

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.

17. Kaplan, Temma, “Female Consciousness and Collective Action: The Case of Barcelona, 1910–1918,” Signs 7 (Spring 1982):545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. By the 1790s, due to the strength required to operate the newly perfected jennies and hand mules, mule spinning had become a male craft. In the late 1820s, however, a “putting-up motion” was invented which utilized power, enabling women to operate mules with additional spindles. See Lazonick, William, “Industrial Relations and Technical Change: The Case of the Self-Acting Mule,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 3 (1979):232–35;Google ScholarKirby, R. G. and Musson, A. E., The Voice of the People: John Doherty, 1798–1854, Trade Unionist, Radical and Factory Reformer (Manchester, 1975), 7378;Google ScholarFreifeld, Mary, “Technological Change and the ‘Self-Acting’ Mule: A Study of Skill and the Sexual Division of Labour,” Social History 11 (10 1986):333–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. A Report of the Proceedings of a Delegate Meeting of the Operative Spinners of England, Ireland and Scotland, Assembled at Ramsey, Isle of Man, on Saturday, December 5, 1829, and Three Following Days (Manchester, 1829).Google Scholar

20. Kirby and Musson, Voice of the People, 109.

21. Report of the Proceedings of the Great Leeds Meeting, Jan. 9, 1831 (Leeds, 1831), 29. London, University of London Library, White Slavery Collection, vol. IV, no. 6.Google Scholar

22. The Report and Resolutions of a Meeting of Deputies from the Hand Loom Worsted Weavers Residing in and Near Bradford, Leeds, Halifax, etc., Yorkshire (Bradford, n.d.), 12.Google Scholar London, University of London Library, White Slavery Collection, vol. VIII, no. 5. As the production of worsted cloth became fully mechanized by the 1850s, the labor force came to be predominantly female and young. Even in spinning, girls and young women predominated while among weavers, a higher proportion were women than in cotton. Tony Jowitt “The Retardation of Trade Unionism in the Yorkshire Worsted Textile Industry,” in Employers and Labour, ed. J. A. Jowitt and A. J. McIvor, 85–86.

23. Greg, William Rathbone, An Enquiry into the State of the Manufacturing Population and the Causes and Cures of the Evils Therein Existing (London, 1831);Google ScholarKay, James Phillips, The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes Employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester (London, 1832).Google Scholar

24. British Parliamentary Papers, 18311832, xvGoogle Scholar, Report from the Select Committee on the “Bill to Regulate the Labour of Children in the Mills and Factories of the United Kingdom with Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index,” 318–20.

25. The Ten Hours' Factory Question,” Manchester and Salford Advertiser (01 8, 1842).Google Scholar

26. von Plener, Ernst, The English Factory Legislation, from 1802 till the Present Time, trans. Weinmann, Frederick L. (London, 1873), 1516.Google Scholar

27. Ward, J. T., The Factory Movement, 1830–1850 (London, 1962), 146–73;Google ScholarDriver, Cecil, Tory Radical: The Life of Richard Oastler (New York, 1946), 331–77.Google Scholar

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

29. Driver, , Tory Radical, 313.Google Scholar

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

31. Driver, , Tory Radical, 314.Google Scholar

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

33. The Political Pulpit, no. 8: “A Sermon by the Rev. J. R. Stephens, Delivered on Kennington Common, on Sunday Afternoon, May 12th, 1839,” 63.

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

39. Ibid., 69.

40. Ibid., 73.

41. Yeo, Eileen, “Chartist Religious Belief and the Theology of Liberation,” in Disciplines of Faith: Studies in Religion, Politics and Patriarchy, ed. Obelkevich, Jim, Roper, Lyndal, and Samuel, Raphael (London, 1987), 420.Google Scholar

42. Regarding the significance of this outlook, see Kirk, Neville, “In Defence of Class: A Critique of Recent Revisionist Writing upon the Nineteenth-Century English Working Class,” International Review of Social History 32 (1987):23;CrossRefGoogle ScholarJoyce, Patrick, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1848–1914 (Cambridge, 1991), 34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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

44. Jones, Gareth Stedman, “Rethinking Chartism,” in his Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982 (Cambridge, 1983), 96.Google Scholar

45. Clark, “Rhetoric of Chartist Domesticity,” 78.

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

51. Female Association,” Northern Star (04 20, 1839).Google Scholar

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

53. Farnie, D. A., The English Cotton Industry and the World Market, 1815–1896 (Oxford, 1979), 280–82.Google Scholar

54. Litchfield, R. Burr, “The Family and the Mill: Cotton Mill Work, Family Work Patterns, and Fertility in Mid-Victorian Stockport,” in The Victorian Family: Structure and Stresses, ed. Wohl, Anthony (New York, 1978), 185–92.Google Scholar

55. Farnie, , Cotton Industry, 6970, 136.Google Scholar

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.

62. Female Factory Operatives,” Ten Hours' Advocate (10 3, 1846).Google Scholar

63. The Ten Hours Factory Bill: Meeting at the Corn Exchange,” Manchester and Salford Advertiser (03 16, 1844).Google Scholar

64. The Labour Crisis,” Preston Pilot and County Advertiser (11 12, 1853).Google Scholar

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 ScholarThe Wages Agitation,” Preston Guardian (02 16, 1861).Google Scholar

68. Rose, , Limited Livelihoods, 173.Google Scholar

69. The Crisis in the Cotton Trade,” Blackburn Times (04 13, 1878).Google Scholar

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), 92130.Google Scholar

71. Weaving was also, although not generally recognized as such, “a highly skilled job,” requiring constant attention to the looms to ensure smooth production. Savage, Mike, “Capitalist and Patriarchal Relations at Work: Preston Cotton Weaving, 1890–1940,” in Localities, Class, and Gender, ed. Murgatroyd, Linda et al. (London, 1985), 181;Google ScholarStockport Advertiser (May 29, June 12, and July 10, 1840); Trial of Feargus O'Connor, 249; Manchester Guardian (November 25 and 29 and December 2 and 9, 1843).

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

83. Ibid.

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

85. More Ways of Working in Leech's Mill,” Ashton Chronicle (01 20, 1849).Google Scholar

86. Morgan, Carol E., “Women, Work, and Consciousness in the Mid-Nineteenth- Century English Cotton Industry,” Social History 17 (01 1992):3738.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

87. Ten Hours' Bill—Over Darwen,” Blackburn Standard (11 14, 1849).Google Scholar

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

89. British Parliamentary Papers, 1849, xxii, Report of Leonard Horner for the Half-year Ended 31 October 1848, 31–35, 55–56, 58, 60.

90. Reach, Angus Bethune, Manchester and the Textile Districts in 1849, ed. Aspin, C. (Helmshore, 1972), 34, 3637.Google Scholar

91. Ibid., 43–46; Laqueur, Thomas Walter, Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture, 1780–1850 (New Haven, 1976), 9091.Google Scholar

92. Letter to editor, Ten Hours' Advocate (December 26, 1846).Google Scholar

93. Purvis, June, Hard Lessons: The Lives and Education of Working-Class Women in Nineteenth-Century England (Minneapolis, 1989), 101–41.Google Scholar

94. Quoted in ibid., 144.

95. Evans, Clare, “Unemployment and the Making of the Feminine during the Lancashire Cotton Famine,” in Women's Work and the Family Economy in Historical Perspective, ed. Hudson, Pat and Lee, W. R. (Manchester, 1990), 248–70.Google Scholar

96. Reach, , Manchester and the Textile Districts, 78.Google Scholar

97. Pat Hudson and W. R. Lee, “Women's Work and the Family Economy in Historical Perspective,” in their Women's Work, 18.

98. Reach, , Manchester and the Textile Districts, 1011.Google Scholar

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), 7071.Google ScholarPubMed

104. Roberts, , A Woman's Place, 137.Google Scholar

105. Hudson, and Lee, , “Women's Work,” 33.Google Scholar

106. Urry, John and Warde, Alan, “Introduction,” in Localities, Class, and Gender, ed. Murgatroyd, Linda et al. , (London. 1985), 135.Google Scholar

107. Benenson, , “The ‘Family Wage,’” 7778.Google Scholar

108. Preston Pilot and County Advertiser (september 1853-May 1854); Burnley Advertiser (April-August 1859); Blackburn Times (April-June 1878).

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

111. Benenson, “The ‘Family Wage,’” 79.

112. Turbin, Carole, “Beyond Dichotomies: Interdependence in Mid-Nineteenth Century Working Class Families in the United States,” Gender and History 1 (Autumn 1989):293308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

113. While they may “appear to be caught up in objective cyclical repetition in which no creativity or subjectivity is possible…. the history of nineteenth-century working-class women, who applied their wits and skill to bring in petty earnings while also caring for children…. challenges this denial of agency.” Smith, Ruth L. and Valenze, Deborah M., “Mutuality and Marginality: Liberal Moral Theory and Working-Class Women in Nineteenth-Century England,” Signs (Winter 1988):295.Google Scholar

114. Ibid., 296; Gittins, Diana, “Marital Status, Work and Kinship,” in Labour and Love, ed. Lewis, , 249.Google Scholar