There are two classes of milliners’ girls. In the first class are those
who live in the house at which they work, receiving for their labour
board, what passes for lodging, and as much pay as a governess--a
sum that may be twelve or twenty pounds, or may be even four times
that amount, per annum. Girls in this class are stimulated by some
prospect of promotion: they may live to be forewomen, or to have shops
of their own. The second class consists of day-workers, who go to the
milliners, at eight in the morning, after an early breakfast, and (with
an allowance of time during which they may depart in search of dinner)
work until eight or nine at night; sometimes in the season, until ten
or eleven. Work over, the labourers return to their own lodgings. A
young woman in this class earns about seven shillings a week, wherewith
to pay for lodging, food, and clothes. If she have any relatives in
London to whose homes she can betake herself, then it is well; if she
be a solitary worker, forced to earn an independent livelihood--a young
girl from the country, or an orphan--she goes to her garret; and there,
sitting in utter cheerlessness, suffers temptations which there is no
poor man, even though a rogue, who would not wish to see his daughter
spared.
These workers labour in support of luxury all the day long: their sense
of pleasure, love of ornament and colour, is developed, and their
honest earnings only suffer them to lodge in dingy garrets chiefly
found among back streets. Two shillings a week, or at the utmost,
half-a-crown, is all that can be spared, for rent out of an income
that is only fourteen pence a working day; at most a penny-farthing
for the working hour. Half-a-crown or two shillings is the rent of a
dilapidated room, even among the pauperised inhabitants of Bethnal
Green. Necessarily it can purchase no very pleasant dwelling, we may be
assured, in the purlieus of Regent Street.
To make the position of such young women pleasanter and safer is not
difficult; but there is only one way of improving it. The solitary
day-worker cannot do much for herself with seven shillings; but,
by associating with companions of her own class and adopting some
system of combination, her funds may be made sufficient to maintain a
tolerably happy little household. How to begin is the question. Two
ladies, thoughtful for their less fortunate sisters--the Lady Hobart,
and the Viscountess Goderich--have been endeavouring, during the last
few months, to help them in the making of the troublesome first step.
Their chief difficulty has lain in the necessity of having one of these
associated homes not distant from the places of business, which are
most numerous at the west end of London. In extending the experiment
which these benevolent ladies have commenced, care must be taken,
therefore, to select a house which, for the rent it costs, supplies
within its walls space enough for every just want of as many inmates as
are necessary to the working of the system. The ladies before mentioned
have taken upon themselves the first risk by opening a home of this
description at number two, Manchester Street, Manchester Square. It
allows ample sleeping space; each dormitory containing four or six
single beds. It supplies also a spacious sitting-room, in which there
is a hired piano and a little library of cheap and pleasant books; the
use of a kitchen-range, light, firing, and all necessary household
furnishing--linen, plates and dishes, knives, forks, and spoons--all
for the price of a cold, dark garret--two shillings a week. If two
persons unite, and pay rent for a double bed, the charge is only
eighteenpence to each of them.
Possibly, for accommodation and the quality provided in this instance,
the rent ought to be a few pence higher. Be that as it may, the
establishers of this nest think, that when it contains its full
complement of thirty-five or forty inmates, it will pay its own
expenses, even with no higher contribution from each inmate than that
now fixed. All they desire is that its existence should be widely
known, and that especially the hard-working girls who may be made
happier by adopting the suggestion it embodies, may hear of it; may
understand the comfort of it; and learn to co-operate with one another
not merely in this house, but in a great many others of the kind.
It is entirely their own affair: nothing is meant but to help them
through the difficulty of beginning. In the home now established there
are at present not more than eleven inmates; and only ignorance of its
existence or its meaning could keep out the other five-and-twenty. It
means no charity, no intrusion, no meddling supervision; only such help
as woman may receive from woman, willingly and thankfully. The house to
be self-supporting must indeed be full; but once understood, there will
rarely be, in any of these snug little establishments, a vacant bed.
If it be ever the privilege of this journal to cheer during an odd
half-hour, the weary heart of a young day-worker, and this page comes
to be read by her; and if she be not by happy chance, already well
lodged, let her accept our counsel, offered with all cordiality, and
with the most sincere good-will: we recommend that she should visit
Manchester Street, look at the house, and talk all its arrangements
over with the Mrs. Lomas, who, as matron, watches on the spot over the
beginnings of the scheme. She will find this matron herself to be young
and cheerful, and in earnest with the wish to be of use. She is one who
has paid many a friendly visit to day-workers in their garrets, for the
purpose of explaining to them what it is so much for their own comfort
to understand.
When this house is full, it will belong fairly to the day-workers
themselves; and there are no rules but such as they would, with
a regard to the economy of their funds, and to their personal
respectability, make for their own following. Though few return from
duties until nine in the evening the sitting-room fire, in winter-time,
is lighted at six o’clock and it is kept alight all day on Sunday; so
that the apartment is always warm and comfortable when the inmates use
it. At eleven at night it is put out; and any inmate staying out of
the house after eleven must give a reason for so doing. A respectable
reference is necessarily required with each new-comer (if only to her
own employer), and there are no other customs that are not to be found
usual in any other private household. The girls buy what they please,
and cook it how and when they please for themselves, at their kitchen
ranges. If any or all of them like to associate their funds for common
meals, it is for them to say and do what they desire.
At Manchester Street, it should be added, there is a free
singing-class, and there are evenings of music. Opportunities of
self-improvement are also supplied by the warmhearted promoters of the
scheme. But in all this the sole desire is, to give a kindly and a
hearty lift at starting, to a way--into which those whom it concerns
may soon get for themselves--of extracting all the happiness, security,
and comfort in their power out of scanty incomes.