STUDIES IN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
Edited by
The Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science
No. 56 in the series of Monographs by writers connected
With the London School of Economics and Political Science
------------------------------------
THE WORKING LIFE OF WOMEN
IN THE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
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WORKING LIFE OF WOMEN
IN THE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
BY
ALICE CLARK
Shaw Research Student of the London School of Economics and Political
Science
LONDON:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD.
NEW YORK : E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1919
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DEDICATED
TO MY
FATHER AND MOTHER
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PREFACE
THE investigation, whose conclusions are partly described in the
following treatise, was undertaken with a view to discovering the actual
circumstances of women’s lives in the Seventeenth Century.
It is perhaps impossible to divest historical enquiry from all personal
bias, but in this case the bias has simply consisted in a conviction
that the conditions under which the obscure mass of women live and
fulfil their duties as human beings, have a vital influence upon the
destinies of the human race, and that a little knowledge of what these
conditions have actually been in the past will be of more value to the
sociologist than many volumes of carefully elaborated theory based on
abstract ideas.
The theories with which I began this work of investigation as to the
position occupied by women in a former social organisation have been
abandoned, and have been replaced by others, which though still only
held tentatively have at least the merit of resting solely on
ascertained fact. If these theories should in turn have to be discarded
when a deeper understanding of history becomes possible, yet the picture
of human life presented in the following pages will not entirely lose
its value.
The picture cannot pretend to be complete. The Seventeenth Century
provides such a wealth of historical material that only a small fraction
could be examined, and though the selection has been as representative
as possible, much that is of the greatest importance from the point of
view from which the enquiry has been made, is not yet available. Many
records of Gilds, Companies, Quarter Sessions and Boroughs which must be
studied _in extenso_ before a just idea can be formed of women’s
position, have up to the present been published only in an abbreviated
form, if at all.
Another difficulty has been the absence of knowledge regarding women’s
position in the years preceding the Seventeenth Century. This want has
to some extent been supplied through the kindness of Miss Eileen Power,
who has permitted me to use some of the material collected by her on
this subject, but not yet published.
The Seventeenth Century itself forms a sort of watershed between two
very widely differing eras in the history of Englishwomen—the
Elizabethan and the Eighteenth Century. Thus characteristics of both can
be studied in the women who move through its varied scenes, either in
the pages of dramatists or as revealed by domestic papers or in more
public records.
Only one aspect of their lives has been described in the present volume,
namely their place in the economic organisation of society. This has its
own special bearing on the industrial problems of modern times; but Life
is a whole and cannot safely be separated into watertight departments.
The productive activity which is here described was not the work of
women who were separated from the companionship of married life and the
joys and responsibilities of motherhood. These aspects of their life
have not been forgotten, and will, I hope, be dealt with in a later
volume, along with the whole question of girls’ education.
How inseparably intertwined are these different threads of life will be
shown by the fact that apprenticeship and service are left to be dealt
with in the later volume as links in the educational chain, although in
many respects they were essential features of women’s economic position.
The conception of the sociological importance of past economic
conditions for women I owe to Olive Schreiner, whose epoch-making book
“Women and Labour” first drew the attention of many workers in the
emancipation of women to the difference between reality and the commonly
received generalisations as to women’s productive capacity. From my
friend, Dr. K. A. Gerlach came the suggestion that I, myself, should
attempt to supply further evidence along the lines so imaginatively
outlined by Mrs. Schreiner. To Dr. Lilian Knowles I am indebted for the
unwearied patience with which she has watched and directed my
researches, and to Mrs. Bernard Shaw for the generous scholarship with
which she assists those who wish to devote themselves to the
investigation of women’s historic past.
I should like here to express the deep sense of gratitude which I feel
to those who have helped my work in these different ways, and to Mrs.
George, whose understanding of Seventeenth Century conditions has
rendered the material she collected for me particularly valuable. My
thanks are also due to many other friends whose sympathy and interest
have played a larger part than they know in the production of this book.
_Mill Field,_
_Street, Somerset._
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CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. CAPITALISTS 14
III. AGRICULTURE 42
IV. TEXTILES 93
V. CRAFTS AND TRADES 150
VI. PROFESSIONS 236
VII. CONCLUSION 290
LIST OF AUTHORITIES 309
LIST OF WAGES ASSESSMENTS 320
INDEX 322
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
EFFECT of environment on Women’s development. Possible reaction on men’s
development—Importance of seventeenth century in historic development
of English women—Influence of economic position—Division of Women’s
productive powers into Domestic, Industrial, and Professional—Three
systems of Industrial Organisation—Domestic Industry—Family
Industry—Capitalistic Industry or Industrialism—Definition of these
terms—Historic sequence. Effect of Industrial Revolution on Women—in
capitalistic class—in agriculture—in textile industries—in crafts and
other trades. Transference of productive industry from married women
to unmarried women—with consequent increase of economic independence
for the latter and its loss for the former. Similar evolution in
professions shows this was not due wholly to effect of capitalism.
HITHERTO the historian has paid little attention to the circumstances of
women’s lives, for women have been regarded as a static factor in social
developments, a factor which, remaining itself essentially the same,
might be expected to exercise a constant and unvarying influence on
Society.
This assumption has however no basis in fact, for the most superficial
consideration will show how profoundly women can be changed by their
environment. Not only do the women of the same race exhibit great
differences from time to time in regard to the complex social instincts
and virtues, but even their more elemental sexual and maternal instincts
are subject to modification. While in extreme cases the sexual impulses
are liable to perversion, it sometimes happens that the maternal
instinct disappears altogether, and women neglect or, like a tigress in
captivity, may even destroy their young.
These variations deserve the most careful examination, for, owing to the
indissoluble bond uniting the sexes, and the emotional power which women
exert over men, the character of men’s development is determined in some
sort by the development which is achieved by women. In a society where
women are highly developed men’s characters are insensibly modified by
association with them, and in a society where women are secluded and
immature, men lack that stimulus which can only be supplied by the other
sex.
It may be true, as Goethe said, that the eternal feminine leadeth us
onwards, but whether this be upwards or downwards depends upon the
characters of individual women.
Owing to the subtle reactions which exist between men and women and
between the individual and the social organism in which he or she lives,
accurate and detailed knowledge of the historic circumstances of human
life becomes essential for the sciences of Sociology and Psychology. The
investigation, of which the results are described in the following
chapters, was undertaken with the object of discovering these
circumstances as regards women in a limited field and during a short
period.
The economic field has been chosen because, though woman no more than
man lives by bread alone, yet without bread assuredly she cannot live at
all, and without an abundant supply of it she cannot worthily perform
her maternal and spiritual functions. These latter are therefore
dependent upon the source of her food supply. The economic position has
a further attraction to the student because it rests upon facts which
can be elucidated with some degree of certainty. When these have once
been made clear the way will have been prepared for the consideration of
other aspects of women’s lives.
The period under review, namely the seventeenth century, forms an
important crisis in the historic development of Englishwomen. The gulf
which separates the women of the Restoration period from those of the
Elizabethan era can be perceived by the most casual reader of
contemporary drama. To the objection that the heroines of Shakespeare on
the one hand and of Congreve and Wycherley on the other are creations of
the imagination, it must be replied that the dramatic poet can only
present life as he knows it. It was part of Shakespeare’s good fortune
to live in a period so rich and vivid in its social life as was the
reign of Elizabeth; and the objective character of his portraits can be
proved by the study of contemporary letters and domestic papers.
Similarly the characters of the Restoration ladies described in the
diary of Samuel Pepys and by other writers, confirm the picture of
Society drawn by Congreve.
So profound a change occurring in the character of women indicates the
seventeenth century as a period of special interest for social
investigation, and consequently the economic position has been
approached less from its direct effect upon the production of wealth
than from its influence upon women’s development. The mechanical aspect
has in fact only been touched incidentally; an attempt being rather made
to discover how far the extent of women’s productive capacity and the
conditions under which it was exercised affected their maternal
functions and reacted upon their social influence both within and beyond
the limits of the family.
Generalisations are of little service for this purpose. Spinoza has said
that the objects of God’s knowledge are not universals but particulars,
and it is in harmony with this idea that the following chapters consist
chiefly of the record of small details in individual lives which
indicate the actual relation of women to business and production,
whether on a large scale or a small. The pictures given are widely
representative, including not only the women of the upper classes, but
still more important, those of the “common people,” the husbandmen and
tradesmen who formed the backbone of the English people, and also those
of the tragic class of wage-earners, who, though comparatively few in
numbers, already constituted a serious problem in the seventeenth
century.
In the course of the investigation, comparison is frequently made with
the economic position of mediæval women on the one hand, and with
women’s position under modern industrial conditions, on the other. It
must be admitted, however, that comparisons with the middle ages rest
chiefly on conjecture.
Owing to the greater complexity of a woman’s life her productive
capacity must be classified on different lines from those which are
generally followed in dealing with the economic life of men.
For the purposes of this essay, the highest, most intense forms to which
women’s productive energy is directed have been excluded; that is to
say, the spiritual creation of the home and the physical creation of the
child. Though essentially productive, such achievements of creative
power transcend the limitations of economics and one instinctively feels
that there would be something almost degrading in any attempt to weigh
them in the balance with productions that are bought and sold in the
market or even with professional services. Nevertheless it must never be
forgotten that the productive energy which is described in the ensuing
chapters was in no sense alternative to the exercise of these higher
forms of creative power but was employed simultaneously with them. It
may be suspected that the influences of home life were stronger in the
social life of the seventeenth century than they are in modern England,
and certainly the birth-rate was much higher in every class of the
community except perhaps the very poorest.
But, leaving these two forms of creative power aside, there remains
another special factor complicating women’s economic position, namely,
the extent of her production for domestic purposes—as opposed to
industrial and professional purposes. The domestic category includes all
goods and services, either material or spiritual, which are produced
solely for the benefit of the family, while the industrial and
professional are those which are produced either for sale or exchange.
In modern life the majority of Englishwomen devote the greater part of
their lives to domestic occupations, while men are freed from domestic
occupations of any sort, being generally engaged in industrial or
professional pursuits and spending their leisure over public services or
personal pleasure and amusement.
Under modern conditions the ordinary domestic occupations of
Englishwomen consist in tending babies and young children, either as
mothers or servants, in preparing household meals, and in keeping the
house clean, while laundry work, preserving fruit, and the making of
children’s clothes are still often included in the domestic category. In
the seventeenth century it embraced a much wider range of production;
for brewing, dairy-work, the care of poultry and pigs, the production of
vegetables and fruit, spinning flax and wool, nursing and doctoring, all
formed part of domestic industry. Therefore the part which women played
in industrial and professional life was in addition to a much greater
productive activity in the domestic sphere than is required of them
under modern conditions.
On the other hand it may be urged that, if women were upon the whole
more actively engaged in industrial work during the seventeenth century
than they were in the first decade of the twentieth century, men were
much more occupied with domestic affairs then than they are now. Men in
all classes gave time and care to the education of their children, and
the young unmarried men who generally occupied positions as apprentices
and servants were partly employed over domestic work. Therefore, though
now it is taken for granted that domestic work will be done by women, a
considerable proportion of it in former days fell to the share of men.
These circumstances have led to a different use of terms in this essay
from that which has generally been adopted; a difference rendered
necessary from the fact that other writers on industrial evolution have
considered it only from the man’s point of view, whereas this
investigation is concerned primarily with its effect upon the position
of women.
To facilitate the enquiry, organisation for production is divided into
three types:
(a) Domestic Industry.
(b) Family Industry.
(c) Capitalistic Industry, or Industrialism.
No hard-and-fast line exists in practice between these three systems,
which merge imperceptibly into one another. In the seventeenth century
all three existed side by side, often obtaining at the same time in the
same industries, but the underlying principles are quite distinct and
may be defined as follows:
(a) _Domestic Industry_ is the form of production in which the goods
produced are for the exclusive use of the family and are not therefore
subject to an exchange or money value.
(b) _Family Industry_ is the form in which the family becomes the unit
for the production of goods to be sold or exchanged.
The family consisted of father, mother, children, household servants and
apprentices; the apprentices and servants being children and young
people of both sexes who earned their keep and in the latter case a
nominal wage, but who did not expect to remain permanently as
wage-earners, hoping on the contrary in due course to marry and set up
in business on their own account. The profits of family industry
belonged to the family and not to individual members of it. During his
lifetime they were vested in the father who was regarded as the head of
the family; he was expected to provide from them marriage portions for
his children as they reached maturity, and on his death the mother
succeeded to his position as head of the family, his right of bestowal
by will being strictly limited by custom and public opinion.
Two features are the main characteristics of Family Industry in its
perfect form;—first, the unity of capital and labour, for the family,
whether that of a farmer or tradesman, owned stock and tools and
themselves contributed the labour: second, the situation of the workshop
within the precincts of the home.
These two conditions were rarely completely fulfilled in the seventeenth
century, for the richer farmers and tradesmen often employed permanent
wage-earners in addition to the members of their family, and in other
cases craftsmen no longer owned their stock, but made goods to the order
of the capitalist who supplied them with the necessary material.
Nevertheless, the character of Family Industry was retained as long as
father, mother, and children worked together, and the money earned was
regarded as belonging to the family, not to the individual members of
it.
From the point of view of the economic position of women a system can be
classed as family industry while the father works at home, but when he
leaves home to work on the capitalist’s premises the last vestige of
family industry disappears and industrialism takes its place.
(c) _Capitalistic Industry_, or _Industrialism_, is the system by which
production is controlled by the owners of capital, and the labourers or
producers, men, women and children receive individual wages.[1]
Footnote 1:
The term “individual wages” is used here to denote wages paid either
to men or women as individuals, and regarded as belonging to the
individual person, while “family wages” are those which cover the
services of the whole family and belong to the family as a whole. This
definition differs from the common use of the terms, but is necessary
for the explanation of some important points. In ordinary conversation
“individual wages” indicate those which maintain an individual only,
while “family wages” are those upon which a family lives. This does
not imply a real difference in the wages, as the same amount of money
can be used to support one individual in comfort or a family in
penury. In modern times the law recognises a theoretic obligation on
the part of a man to support his children, but has no power to divert
his wages to that purpose. His wages are in fact recognised as his
individual property. The position of the family was very different in
the seventeenth century.
Domestic and family industry existed side by side during the middle
ages; for example, brewing, baking, spinning, cheese and butter making
were conducted both as domestic arts and for industrial purposes. Both
were gradually supplanted by capitalistic industry, the germ of which
was apparently introduced about the thirteenth century, and gradually
developed strength for a more rapid advance in the seventeenth century.
While the development of capitalistic industry will always be one of the
most interesting subjects for the student of political economy, its
effect upon the position and capacity of women becomes of paramount
importance to the sociologist.
This effect must be considered from three stand-points:—
(1) Does the capitalistic organisation of industry increase or
diminish women’s productive capacity?
(2) Does it make them more or less successful in their special
function of motherhood?
(3) Does it strengthen or weaken their influence over morals and
their position in the general organisation of human society?
These three questions were not asked by the men who were actors in the
Industrial Revolution, and apparently their importance has hitherto
escaped the notice of those who have written chapters of its history.
Mankind, lulled by its faith in the “eternal feminine” has reposed in
the belief that women remain the same, however completely their
environment may alter, and having once named a place “the home” thinks
it makes no difference whether it consists of a workshop or a boudoir.
But the effect of the Industrial Revolution on home life, and through
that upon the development and characters of women and upon their
productive capacity, deeply concerns the sociologist, for the increased
productive capacity of mankind may be dearly bought by the
disintegration of social organisation and a lowering of women’s capacity
for motherhood.
The succeeding chapters will show how the spread of capitalism affected
the productive capacity of women:—
(1) In the capitalist class where the energy and hardiness of
Elizabethan ladies gave way before the idleness and pleasure which
characterised the Restoration period.
(2) In agriculture, where the wives of the richer yeomen were
withdrawing from farm work and where there already existed a
considerable number of labourers dependent entirely on wages, whose
wives having no gardens or pastures were unable to supply the families’
food according to old custom. The wages of such women were too irregular
and too low to maintain them and their children in a state of
efficiency, and through semi-starvation their productive powers and
their capacity for motherhood were greatly reduced.
(3) In the Textile Trades where the demand for thread and yarn which
could only be produced by women and children was expanding. The
convenience of spinning as an employment for odd minutes and the
mechanical character of its movements which made no great tax on eye or
brain, rendered it the most adaptable of all domestic arts to the
necessities of the mother. Spinning became the chief resource for the
married women who were losing their hold on other industries, but its
return in money value was too low to render them independent of other
means of support. There is little evidence to suggest that women shared
in the capitalistic enterprises of the clothiers during this period, and
they had lost their earlier position as monopolists of the silk trade.
(4) In other crafts and trades where a tendency can be traced for women
to withdraw from business as this developed on capitalistic lines. The
history of the gilds shows a progressive weakening of their positions in
these associations, though the corporations of the seventeenth century
still regarded the wife as her husband’s partner. In these corporations
the effect of capitalism on the industrial position of the wage-earner’s
wife becomes visible.
Under family industry the wife of every master craftsman became free of
his gild and could share his work. But as the crafts became capitalised
many journeymen never qualified as masters, remaining in the outer
courts of the companies all their lives, and actually forming separate
organisations to protect their interests against their masters and to
secure a privileged position for themselves by restricting the number of
apprentices. As the journeymen worked on their masters’ premises it
naturally followed that their wives were not associated with them in
their work, and that apprenticeship became the only entrance to their
trade.
Though no written rules existed confining apprenticeship to the male
sex, girls were seldom if ever admitted as apprentices in the gild
trades, and therefore women were excluded from the ranks of journeymen.
As the journeyman’s wife could not work at her husband’s trade, she
must, if need be, find employment for herself as an individual. In some
cases the journeyman’s organisations were powerful enough to keep wages
on a level which sufficed for the maintenance of their families; then
the wife became completely dependent on her husband, sinking to the
position of his unpaid domestic servant.
In the Retail and Provision Trades which in some respects were
peculiarly favourable for women, they experienced many difficulties
owing to the restrictive rules of companies and corporations; but where
a man was engaged in this class of business, his wife shared his
labours, and on his death generally retained the direction of the
business as his widow.
The history of brewing is one of the most curious examples of the effect
of capitalism on women’s position in industry, for as the term
“brewster” shows, originally it was a woman’s trade but with the
development of Capitalism it passed completely from the hands of women
to those of men.
The tendency of capitalism to lessen the relative productive capacity of
women might be overlooked if our understanding of the process was
limited to the changes which had actually taken place by the end of the
seventeenth century. No doubt the majority of the population at that
time was still living under conditions governed by the traditions and
habits formed during the period of Family and Domestic Industry. But the
contrast which the life described in the following chapters presents to
the life of women under modern conditions will be evident even to
readers who have not closely followed the later historical developments
of Capitalism.
In estimating the influence of economic changes on the position of women
it must be remembered that Capitalism has not merely replaced Family
Industry but has been equally destructive of Domestic Industry.
One unexpected effect has been the reversal of the parts which married
and unmarried women play in productive enterprise. In the earlier stages
of economic evolution that which we now call domestic work, _viz._,
cooking, cleaning, mending, tending of children, etc., was performed by
unmarried girls under the direction of the housewife, who was thus
enabled to take an important position in the family industry. Under
modern conditions this domestic work falls upon the mothers, who remain
at home while the unmarried girls go out to take their place in
industrial or professional life. The young girls in modern life have
secured a position of economic independence, while the mothers remain in
a state of dependence and subordination—an order of things which would
have greatly astonished our ancestors.
In the seventeenth century the idea is seldom encountered that a man
supports his wife; husband and wife were then mutually dependent and
together supported their children. At the back of people’s minds an
instinctive feeling prevailed that the father furnished rent, shelter,
and protection while the mother provided food; an instinct surviving
from a remote past when the villein owed to his lord the labour of three
or four days per week throughout the year in addition to the boon work
at harvest or any other time when labour was most wanted for his own
crops; surely then it was largely the labour of the mother and the
children which won the family’s food from the yard-land.
The reality of the change which has been effected in the position of
wife and mother is shown by a letter to _The Gentleman’s Magazine_ in
1834 criticising proposed alterations in the Poor Law. The writer
defends the system then in use of giving allowances from the rates to
labourers according to the number of their children. He says that the
people who animadvert on the allowance system “never observe the cause
from which it proceeds. There are, we will say, twenty able single
labourers in a parish; twenty equally able married, with large families.
One class wants 12s. a week, one 20s. The farmer, who has his choice of
course takes the single.” The allowance system equalises the position of
married and single. Formerly this inequality did not exist “_because it
was of no importance to the farmer whether he employed the single or
married labourer, inasmuch as the labourer’s wife and family could
provide for themselves_. They are now dependent on the man’s labour, or
nearly so; except in particular cases, as when women go out to wash, to
nurse, or take in needlework, and so on. The machinery and manufactures
have destroyed cottage labour—spinning, the only resource formerly of
the female poor, who thus were earning their bread at home, while their
fathers and husbands were earning theirs abroad.... In agricultural
parishes the men, the labourers, are not too numerous or more than are
wanted; but the families hang as a dead weight upon the rates for want
of employment. The girls are now not brought up to _spin_—none of them
know the art. They all handle when required, the hoe, and their business
is weeding. Our partial remedy for this great and growing evil is
allotments of land, which are to afford the occupation that the distaff
formerly did; and so the wife and daughters can be cultivating small
portions of ground and raising potatoes and esculents, etc., the while
the labourer is at his work.”[2]
Footnote 2:
_Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1834, Vol. I., p. 531. _A Letter to Lord
Althorp on the Poor Laws_, by Equitas.
These far-reaching changes coincided with the triumph of capitalistic
organisation but they may not have been a necessary consequence of that
triumph. They may have arisen from some deep-lying cause, some tendency
in human evolution which was merely hastened by the economic cataclysm.
The fact that the evolution of women’s position in the professions
followed a course closely resembling that which was taking place in
industry suggests the existence of an ultimate cause influencing the
direction in each case.
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