English industrial history has been divided into three main epochs with
intervening periods of transition. These are (1) the mediaeval period,
(2) the period extending from Elizabeth's reign to the reign of George
III., and (3) the modern period.
In the first, the typical economic institutions are the manor and the
gild; in the second, domestic manufacture and convertible husbandry
are predominant; and in the third the factory system and capitalist
farming take their places.[22] Trade, too, undergoes a similar
evolution. In the first period it is intermunicipal rather than
international. In the second period, within each nation trade is free
and unfettered, and a considerable amount of territorial division of
labour and regional specialisation results. But external trade is
regulated by governments on the principles of the mercantile system. In
the third period, with the increase and improvement of the means of
communication, international trade becomes more and more important,
markets are immensely widened, and the economic organisation of society
reaches the complexity possessed by it to-day, which reacts in many
half comprehended ways on the household and on family life.
The main characteristics of these divisions of English industrial
history are, on the whole, clear and well-marked. But the transition
periods are more difficult to describe. It has often been pointed out
that the two industrial revolutions, as they have been named by some
writers, bear a certain resemblance to each other. Both involve a
reorganisation of industry which results in increased productivity on
the one hand, but in the demoralisation of certain classes of the
workers on the other hand. Both therefore require a revision of the
system of providing for the destitute. Both, too, produce the most
far-reaching effects on home-life and the economy of the household, and
influence profoundly the position of women. Both, too, are alike in that
it is not easy to fix dates to the periods within which the revolution
in industry takes place.[23] But roughly we may regard the late
fifteenth century and the early part of the sixteenth as a time of
stress and strain, due to the appearance of new methods both in
agriculture and in industry, especially in the wool trade; and in the
same way the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the
nineteenth was a period of sudden and violent economic transition. In
both cases alike the changes in agriculture preceded somewhat the
changes in industry, and the revolution made itself felt in different
ways and at different times in the various districts of the country.
There are still backward areas in the south of England and in the west
of Scotland where life has been very little affected, notwithstanding
trains and steam-engines, by the alterations in industry which have
produced the roaring mills and clattering shipyards of Lancashire and
the Clyde.
The task before us, then, is to sketch as clearly as possible from the
scanty material available the main features of domestic life at each one
of these epochs, and to show how the changes in industry reflected
themselves in the life of the household.
(_a_) THE HOUSEHOLD IN THE MEDIAEVAL PERIOD
(1) _The Serf--his Position and Domestic Arrangements_
In the mediaeval period, outside the small and scattered towns, the
prevailing form of economic organisation was the manor. We have to
imagine the surface of England dotted over with stretches of cultivated
land, with areas of waste, moorland or woodland intervening. Each
stretch of arable land was cultivated more or less in common by groups
of serfs, who lived generally in one long village street, with the
church and the lord's hall near at hand. Usually, in addition to the
arable land worked on the complicated "three-field" system soon to be
described, there were also hay-meadows down by the river, sometimes
permanent pasture held in common, while the waste was available for
extra pasturage, and for cutting turf and wood for fuel. Each serf
possessed, besides, a small croft attached to his house, and sometimes
an orchard and rude garden. The arable land was divided into three large
fields, not shut in as are our fields by hedges, but lying open. Each
field, again, was partitioned into numbers of strips more or less
regular in shape, and each serf possessed a certain number of these,
not, however, all lying together, but intermixed "mingle-mangle" with
the holdings of his neighbours. He was not allowed to cultivate these,
or indeed any of the land save his own tiny croft, as he pleased, but
was compelled to follow the traditional method of farming according to
the customs of his manor. Usually the rotation was wheat or rye in the
first year, oats or barley in the second year, fallow in the third year,
while the other two fields followed the same course a year and two years
later; so that in each year one field was fallow, one grew wheat or rye,
and the other oats or barley. The animals belonging to the serfs and
their lord were pastured on the arable fields when the crops were taken
off, and on the fallow field. The lord of the manor also possessed
strips in the common fields, and was regarded as the owner of the common
and waste, subject to the pasturage and fuel rights of the tenants. He
did not receive rent quite as we understand it, but each serf owed him
dues calculated in labour, in kind, and occasionally in money.
For instance, on the manor of Tidenham, in the time of Edward I., one
serf worked for the lord for five days in every alternate week for
thirty-five weeks in the year, two and a half days every week for six
weeks in the summer, and three days every week for eight weeks during
August and September (the three festival weeks of Easter, Christmas, and
Pentecost were holidays). Then, in addition to this regular weekly work,
he could also be required for extra work, commonly called boon-works or
precariae. "He made one precaria called churched, and he ploughed and
harrowed a half acre for corn and sowed it with one bushel of corn from
his own seed, and in the time of harvest he had to reap and bind and
stack the produce, receiving one sheaf for himself on account of the
half acre." And he had to plough one acre for oats. In addition, there
were dues in kind--one hen at Christmas, five eggs at Easter, eight
gallons of beer at every brewing, and also small payments in money,
commuted, one would conjecture, for payments in kind, _i.e._ one penny
for every yearling pig, and one halfpenny for those only of the half
year.[24]
In other cases the tenants paid dues of lambs, of fish, of honey, of
clews of net yarn, of straw, &c. One of the tenants of the great
monastic establishment at Glastonbury had to find thirty salmon, "each
as thick as a man's fist at the tail."[25] A curious form of labour due
is described in the Boldon Book. The tenants of certain manors in Durham
had to build each summer a hunting-lodge for the bishop and his retinue
when they came to take their pleasure in the moors in the west of
Durham.
At different periods and in different districts the subdivisions of the
tenants vary greatly, and for complete details the reader must be
referred to the special works on the subject. But two classes can
usually be distinguished--(1) the villeins, who possessed oxen and
worked the larger holdings (often about thirty acres--called virgates or
yard lands); and (2) the cotters, who held about five acres, and whose
domestic animals consisted of pigs and poultry. In addition there were
often found socmen, who were personally free; and, at the other end of
the social scale, slaves, who, largely through the influence of the
Church, were manumitted before the end of the Middle Ages.
The most striking feature about the manors is that each was almost
completely self-supporting. Each manor provided corn, meat, eggs, milk,
cheese, poultry, &c., for its own inhabitants. Fuel, and perhaps game
and rabbits, came from the waste. The furniture was of rude wood, and
the clothes would be sheep-skin and coarse cloth spun and woven from the
wool grown on the sheep that were fed on the manor lands. The ordinary
serf would very rarely either receive or spend coin of the realm. Salt
he would buy and the metal pots and pans used for cooking, and, as
Ashley suggests, tar.[26] But the greater amount of the goods required
for himself and his family would be produced under what the economists
call "natural economy," _i.e._ they were made by the people who intended
to use them, directly, without the intervention of money or any
mechanism of exchange.
Together with this self-sufficiency would go a considerable amount of
co-operation. Economists are not yet agreed as to the precise extent to
which co-operation was used in the manorial village. But we know that
tenants frequently lent their oxen to one another to make up the
necessary team; that in some of the Durham manors there was a communal
smith, who received payment in the possession of a strip of land; and
that the tenants owned a common oven. It was customary, too, for one
shepherd or swineherd to guard the sheep or the pigs of the whole
community. The village mill, when first established, was also a common
boon to the whole body of serfs, but later on the obligation to grind
their corn at the lord's mill and to pay the dues came to be regarded as
an onerous burden.
A curious and important person on the mediaeval estate was the
bee-keeper. Particulars are given of his duties and rewards in one
Durham manor by the Boldon Book.[27] He does no regular weekly work, the
care of the bees apparently taking the place of this, but he must take
part with the other serfs in the boon-works necessary at harvest and
other times of pressure. As honey was almost the only source of
sweetness in early mediaeval cooking, it can be understood why the
bee-keeper ranked only a little below the shepherd. The Boldon Book,
unfortunately, since its aim is to define the relations between the
villeins and their lord, does not tell us whether he superintended the
bees belonging to his fellow tenants. On the analogy of the shepherd and
swineherd, we should assume that he did.
How, then, are we to describe the domestic life of the various
sections of rural society at this time? Unfortunately, very little
material exists on which to draw for the account of the household
arrangements of the serfs. They have naturally left no account-books;
they enter rarely into the literature of the period; there are no
remains of their houses or clothing, and it is, in fact, far from
easy to decide how they did live. But it seems probable that a rude and
dirty plenty, procured by long hours of toilsome open-air labour, was
the prevailing characteristic of the serf household. The house would
be of clay or wattles or wood, probably without windows--and those
certainly unglazed--and with a hole in the middle of the roof to let out
the smoke, the fire being placed in the centre of the floor. The
furniture must have been rough but solid, its most valuable items being
the brass or iron cooking-pots. On the other hand, I do not believe
that, in the more prosperous villein households at all events, the
level of domestic comfort was so low as has sometimes been represented.
Rough cloth was probably woven or sometimes bought. There is one case
on record where, in return for a small piece of land, one family
undertook to do the weaving for another, and Gasquet mentions[28] that
to the common Christmas feast on one of the Glastonbury manors some of
the tenants brought their own napkins, "if he wanted to eat off a
cloth." I see no reason to doubt that some at least of the villein
households were provided with coarse coverings for bed and table. On
the other hand, it seems doubtful whether any form of artificial
light was commonly used in the poorer households. The food, too, would
show what to us would seem strange contrasts of plenty and of
poverty. It would include neither tea nor coffee, neither sugar nor
spices, nor yet potatoes. On the other hand, there was probably,
save at times of famine, a sufficiency of bread,[29] and eggs and
dairy produce would be used in quantities now quite beyond the reach of
the ordinary working-man. The butter, it is true, was not of a high
standard, for it was usually liquid, but the children must have had
milk to drink and cheese and eggs to eat. Even the poorest serfs
apparently kept a few fowls, since their dues are so often payable in
eggs, and some of the eggs and the chickens would be available for
family consumption. But their meat must have been much poorer than
ours. Fresh mutton and beef were rarely eaten, except in the case of
animals who had died a natural death. The others were much too valuable
for draught purposes, for milk or for wool. Among the maxims of an
old agriculturist of the thirteenth century we find the following
remark: "If a sheep die suddenly, they put the flesh in water for so
many hours as are between midday and three o'clock, and then hang it
up, and when the water is drained off they salt it and then dry it. But
I do not wish you to do this."[31] In the autumn, animals which it
was impossible to keep during the winter, owing to the absence of
root-feeding, were killed and salted down. Occasionally, however, fresh
pork would be used, and no doubt every now and then a wild beast or
bird from the common or waste would find its way into the housewife's
iron pot. The food, then, would be rough and sometimes unwholesome,
but on the other hand it contained many most desirable forms of
nourishment which are absent from the labourer's diet to-day, and which
are, it might be observed, those specially suitable for children.[32]
The fuel used was wood or peat, or in some cases dried cow-dung.
On the whole, then, the household arrangements of the mediaeval serf were
primitive, and in times of famine he and his family must have endured
great hardships. The winters, too, when the tracks were deep in mud and
artificial light was absent or scarce, must have been recurring times of
considerable suffering. But on the other hand, fresh air and easy access
to the land were benefits hardly valued until in later times they have
been lost to whole sections of the population.
(2) _The Lord of the Manor--his House and Household_
There is more material available for the description of the household of
the lord than of his serf. Account-books, directions for household
administration, and in the fifteenth century very curious rhymed rules
of behaviour and of precedence are available. Naturally, however, it is
of the king's household and of the households of the nobles and of the
great monasteries that we know most. Very little can now be discovered
of the details of the domestic arrangements of the master in possession
of one manor only, and it is not certain that we should be justified in
supposing that what we find to be true of the great household will
necessarily hold also for the smaller one. For example, in the families
of which we have records the great majority of the servants are men,
cooking in particular being in the Middle Ages a masculine vocation. But
is it safe to assume that the same would be the case in the household of
a simple knight? It must therefore be clearly understood that what
follows has reference mainly to royal and noble families.
The domestic buildings of all manors were on a more or less uniform
plan. They were grouped round a quadrangle, one side of which consisted
of the great hall where dinner was served, business transacted, and
where servants and the humbler guests slept at night. The door was at
one end, usually protected by screens, behind which was another door
leading to the buttery, and above which the musicians' gallery was often
placed. Opposite the door was a raised dais, where stood the table
reserved for the master, his family, and important guests. In the body
of the hall dinner was served to the rest of the household. A private
chamber called the solar or bower, reached by a staircase either inside
the hall or placed in the quadrangle outside, was kept for the special
use of the lord and his family. There occasionally they took meals,
though it was regarded as a sign of luxurious self-seeking to avoid the
formality and bustle of the meals in the great hall. In the solar, too,
beds were placed for important guests, and any particularly valuable
articles of furniture would be kept there. On the other sides of the
quadrangle were the chapel, granaries, storehouses, dairies and
bakehouses, and the kitchen. This was often placed at a little distance
to guard against fire. The cooking was usually carried on at an iron
grate placed in the middle of the floor, and pictures show us that
sometimes it was even done in the open air. Refuse was carried off by an
open drain running across the centre of the kitchen.
As an illustration let me quote an account of a typical manor-house of
the twelfth century. "The manor-house of Ardleigh consisted of a hall
with bower annexed. Also a kitchen, a stable, a bakehouse, two stores
for corn (granges) and a servants' house. In the hall were two moveable
benches, a fixed table, and a buffet." [33]
In course of time other rooms were added, and the furniture and
equipment became more elaborate. But until Elizabeth's reign the great
hall where master and servants dined together was the central feature in
the wealthy English home.
The food was derived from the manor, and purchases were only made of
such things as could not be produced in England, notably red wine,[34]
spices, almonds and rice, all much used in mediaeval cookery. Sugar, too,
would be bought, when it replaced honey for sweetening purposes. But the
corn, meat, milk, cheese, and eggs would be all home-grown, and as it
was easier in the state of transport at that time to bring the family to
the food than the food to the family, part of the duties of housekeeping
consisted in so arranging the sojourn of the household as to draw
food-supplies from each manor in the most convenient way. The great
Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grossetete, gives elaborate directions on this
head to a widowed friend of his, Margaret, Countess of Lincoln.
"Every year at Michaelmas when you know the measure of all your corn,
then arrange your sojourn for the whole of that year and for how many
weeks in each place according to the seasons of the year and the
advantages of the country in flesh and in fish, and do not in any wise
burden by debt or long residence the places where you sojourn.
"I advise that at two seasons of the year you make your principal
purchases, that is to say, your wines, your wax, and your
wardrobe."[35]
And there follows a list of the fairs recommended by the pious bishop.
The materials of mediaeval food, then, would be similar to the diet of
the serfs already described, but would be used in greater plenty and
would be supplemented by luxuries imported from the East and bought at
the fairs. If we keep in mind these conditions, as well as the leisure
and the large supply of labour available, we shall understand why
mediaeval cooking was so elaborate; for, contrary to ordinary opinion, it
was distinguished by a large number of complicated made dishes. Small
birds were commonly roasted, but other forms of meat were stewed or
minced. They would in this way both be more easily dealt with at the
open fire of the mediaeval kitchen, and more easily served in the
mediaeval dining-room, where knives and spoons were the only implements
in common use. Moreover, there was what seems to us an extraordinary
liking for violent and mixed flavourings and brilliant colouring.
Bucknade, for instance, was made of meat hewn in gobbets, pounded
almonds, raisins, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, onions, salt and
fried herbs, thickened with rice-flour and coloured yellow with saffron.
Here, again, is the recipe for mortrews, a dish mentioned in Chaucer's
"Canterbury Tales."
"Take hennes and pork and seethe them together. Take the flesh of the
hennes and of the pork and hack it small and grind it all to dust. Take
bread y-grated, and add thereto and temper it with the self-broth[36]
and mix it with yolks of eggs, and cast thereon powder fort,[37] and
boil it and do thereto powder of ginger, saffron, and salt, and look
that it is standing,[38] and flour it all with powder of ginger." The
lavish use of eggs, pork, and chickens in this recipe could be
paralleled in many others, and is evidently to be connected with the
custom of receiving manorial dues in kind at stated intervals. Hundreds
of eggs would be sent in by the tenants at Easter, and the problem of
the housekeeper would not be how to lessen the consumption of eggs in
order to keep down the bills, but how to get through those in store
before they were hopelessly spoiled.
For the earlier period menus are not available, but a curious rhymed
treatise on servants' duties dating from the middle of the fifteenth
century, entitled "John Russell's Boke of Nurture," has been reprinted
by the Early English Lent Society[39] in the volume entitled "Meals and
Manners of the Olden Time," and from it I extract the following:--
Furst set forth mustard and brawne of boore, the wild swine,
Suche pottage as the cooke hath made of herbis, spice, and wine,
Beef, mutton, stewed feysaund, swan with the chawdyn[40]
Capoun, pigge, venisoun bake, leche lombard,[41] fritter, viant fine,
And then a soteltie.[42]
Maydon Marie that holy Virgin
And Gabrielle greeting her with an ave.
This is followed by two other courses rather lighter in character,
though still including venison, peacocks, quails, &c., and then comes
dessert:
After this delicatis mo,
Blanderelle or pepins with caraway in confite,
Wayfurs to eat, hypocras[43] to drink with delite.
The service in the wealthy mediaeval manor was as elaborate as the
cooking, at all events in the later period. The Bishop of Lincoln finds
it necessary to warn the Countess of Lincoln not to permit slovenliness
among her retainers. She is not to allow "old tabards, and soiled
herigauts, and imitation short-hose." But even this widow lady is served
with considerable pomp. "Command that your panter[44] with the bread and
your butler[45] with the cup, come before you to the table foot by foot
before grace and that three valets be assigned by the marshal each day
to serve the high table and the two tables at the side with drink. And
at each course call the servers to go to the kitchen, and they
themselves to go always before your seneschal as far as you until the
dishes be set before you, and see that all servants with meats go
orderly and without noise to one part and another of the hall to those
who shall be assigned to divide the meats, so that nothing be placed or
served disorderly."[46]
In the "Boke of Nurture," which refers of course to a much later
period, the service is even more elaborate, and we gather indeed that
the dinner was a social function at which all classes of the community
met together. Even the poorest were not forgotten, as there was a
special officer whose business it was to distribute alms of broken meats
to the beggars waiting at the door. The rules of precedence were most
elaborate, and the serving seems on special occasions to have risen
almost to the rank of a solemn ritual. In addition, dinner was
accompanied by music and sometimes enlivened at intervals by pageants
and shows.
Domestic service in these great households was very different from what
it is to-day. There was, in the first place, no fixed line drawn as
there is now between the menial and the non-menial classes of the
community. The higher servants were often people of nearly the same
social rank as those whom they served. Sir William de Mortimer was the
head-steward of Bishop Swinfield, Sir Gilbert Brydges the steward of
Gloucester Abbey.[47] Young men who entered the service of a lord might
one day be called on to carve or serve wine, and the next day might sit
at meat in the same room.[48]
Through the account-books and the household ordinances of the period, we
can trace four grades of household servants--squires or gentlemen,
valets or yeomen, grooms, and pages. The last grade had been recently
introduced into the royal household in Edward IV.'s time, and they did
not eat in hall. "A page etyth in his office or with his next fellow,
not in the halle at noe place, taking dayly one lofe, one messe of great
meate, half a gallon of ale; one reward quarterly in the counting-house,
twenty pence of clothing when the household hathe at every one of the
four feasts, one napron of one elle and part of the King's great rewards
given yearly amongst them in household."[49]
The last quotation illustrates also the method of remuneration. The
money received was a very minor and unimportant factor. The servants
were paid mostly in kind, and the share of each in food, fuel, and
clothing is very fully and carefully stated. The chief porter of the
Abbey of Gloucester, for instance, had a chamber next to the abbey gate.
His weekly allowance was three white loaves, called myches, and two
called holyers, with seven loaves of squire bread; for ale every quarter
3s. 4d. On every flesh or fish day he had a mess of flesh or fish of the
first course, as much as was set before two monks. He had a gown every
year of the suit of the gentlemen of the Lord Abbot, and in addition
13s. 4d. per annum. These fixed rations of food clothing &c., are called
livery, a term now restricted to clothing alone.
It is noticeable that these servants are almost all men. Washerwomen
(lotrices) are women, and there are occasionally notices of young girls
in attendance on the lady of the house. But so far as our information
goes, cooking and cleaning and serving are carried on by men, though
mention is made of women pastry-cooks who in monasteries, to avoid
scandal, had to be accommodated in a separate kitchen, called the
pudding-house.[50] But in the Middle Ages domestic service was not, as
it is now, regarded as a menial occupation to be left, save in some of
its higher branches, exclusively to women.
I can find no trace at this period of any difficulty in obtaining
service. Bishop Grossetete assures the Countess of Lincoln that she can
easily obtain servers if she needs them, and the young men addressed in
the rhyming exhortations preserved in "Meals and Manners" evidently
regard it as promotion almost beyond their hopes to become members of a
lord's household. Whether this would be equally the case if we had
information about the smaller households, it is not easy to say. But
when we remember that the alternatives were laborious and monotonous
work at agriculture or the chance of finding a place in the gilds or
fraternities which monopolised the trade in towns at that period, we can
believe that the plentiful fare, the lively society, and the not too
strenuous[51] work required of a serving-groom or yeoman would be
regarded as a prize worth striving for and worth keeping.
It would be interesting, had I more space at my disposal, to discuss
mediaeval town life and the domestic arrangements of the monasteries,
which are very fully and interestingly described in Abbe Gasquet's book,
"English Monastic Life." But I must content myself solely with one or
two extracts illustrating the household furniture of the mediaeval
town-dwellers.
In 1303, a certain Alan de Bedeford, a baker of London, was sold up for
arrears of taxes, and the following were the goods seized by the
inexorable tax-gatherer: "One brass pot weighing 18 lbs., value 2s. 6d.,
and another brass pot weighing 13 lbs., value 21d., and one kettle value
14d., the total whereof amounts to 5s 5d."[52]
In 1337, an inventory was preserved of the goods of a felon. It was
probably exhaustive, and may therefore be taken as indicating with
tolerable precision the standard of household comfort of a London
burgess at that time. It is too long to quote in full (the list of
garments in particular is rather tedious), but it is interesting to note
that it includes a mattress, three feather-beds, five cushions, six
blankets, seven linen-sheets, four table-cloths, six whole brass pots of
varying value and one broken one, one candlestick and two plates of
metal, two basins and one washing-vessel, a spit, a frying-pan, and a
funnel.[53]
Further study of wills and inventories would yield a fresh store of
information with regard to mediaeval household equipment, and might not
improbably upset some preconceived ideas as to the ordinary standard of
life at that time.
(_b_) THE POSITION OF THE HOUSEHOLD FROM THE FIFTEENTH TO THE NINETEENTH
CENTURIES
(1) _The First Industrial Revolution and its Effects_
The fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century were
marked by great economic changes. The manorial system, modified before
this period by the gradual commutation of labour dues and especially by
the catastrophe of the Black Death, was replaced on the one hand by
enclosures for sheep-farming and on the other by convertible husbandry,
when the farmer possessed or rented his own separate holding and managed
it as he pleased, using the same land alternately for pasturage and as
arable.[54] At the same time, the gild organisation of industry was
replaced by the system commonly known as domestic manufacture. This
spread largely in the country districts, and profoundly influenced home
life and the position of women. At the same time both home and foreign
trade greatly increased, and "natural economy" was almost entirely
replaced by "money economy," the necessities of life being no longer
produced by the family for their own use; men worked instead for
payment, and then with the money so earned bought in the market the
goods they required.[55] These changes, like the corresponding changes
at the end of the eighteenth century, brought greater wealth and pomp to
some classes, increased comfort to the bulk of the people, but called
into existence a new class of landless labourers, whose needs and
importunities finally led to the establishment of the poor-law.
It would require a volume to describe how these changes reflected
themselves in the daily life of the people, and at present I must
content myself with noting very briefly the main effects of this first
industrial revolution.
In the country two classes appeared: the labourer, who, although he
might possess a small piece of land of his own[56] or at the least had
grazing rights over a neighbouring common, yet depended for his
livelihood on the wages paid by his master. So far I have not discovered
any reliable source of information with regard to the family expenditure
of this class.[57]
Next there was the farmer either renting or owning a farm. Very often
farming would be combined with spinning or weaving wool. Agriculture
of this kind, partly for subsistence and partly for the market,
supplemented by the practice of domestic industries, remained the
dominant type in England until the introduction of capitalist farming
in the eighteenth century, and indeed can still be found in backward
districts. The part played in it by women can be illustrated by a
curious account of the duties of the wife of a husbandman given in
Fitzherbert's "Book of Husbandry" (1534).
"First in a morning when thou art waked and purposiste to rise, lyfte up
thy hands and blesse thee.... And when thou art up and redy, then first
sweep thy house, dress up thy dysshe-board, and sette all things in good
order within thy house. Milk thy kye, suckle thy calves, sye up thy
mylke, take up thy children and array them, and provide for thy
husband's brekefaste, dinner, souper, and thy children and servants, and
take thy part with them. And to ordayne corn and malt to the myll, to
bake and brue withal whanne need is. And meete it to the mill and fro
the mill, and see that thou have thy measure again beside the toll or
else the miller dealeth not truly with the or els thy corn is not drye
as it should be. Thou must make butter or cheese whan thou maist, serve
thy swyne both morning and evening, and give thy poleyn[58] meat in the
morning, and when tyme of the year cometh, thou must take heed how thy
duckes henne and geese do lay and to gather up their eggs and when they
wax brodie to get them.... And in the beginning of March or a little
before is time for a wife to make her garden and to gette as many good
seedes and herbes as she can and specially such as be good for the potte
and to eat. [Then come lengthy and technical directions for sowing and
working up flax and hemp] and thereof may they make shetes, bordclothes,
towels, shirts, smocks and such other necessaries and therefore let thy
distaff be always ready for a pastime that thou be not idle.... It is
convenient for a husband to have shepe of his owne for many causes, and
then maye his wife have part of the woll to make her husband and herself
some clothes. And at the very least way she may have the locks of the
sheep either to make clothes or blankets or coverlets or both. And if
she have no wool of her own, she may take wool to spyn of cloth-makers
and by that means she may have a convenient living.... It is a wife's
occupation to wynowe all manner of corns, to make malt, to wasshe and
wrynge, to make haye, shere corn, and in tiyme of nede to help her
husband to fyll the muck-wain or dung-cart, drive the plough, to load
hay, corn or such other. And to go or ride to the market, to sell
butter, cheese, eggs, chekyns, capons, hennes, pigs, geese, and all
manner of corns, and also to bye all manner of necessary things
belonging to the household and to make a trewe reckoning and account to
her husband what she hath paid. And if the husband go to the market to
bye or sell, as they oft do, he then to show his wife in like manner."
It is interesting to note in this extract the mixture of natural and
money economy, the appearance of domestic manufactures, and the
energetic co-operation of the wife in the work of the farm. The
sixteenth century would have had little sympathy with the
sentimentalists who hold that womanhood in itself is a burden so heavy
that all active occupations should be forbidden to the married woman.
According to Harrison[59] the standard of comfort among the agricultural
classes rose markedly at this time. Chimneys became common, pewter
plates and silver or tin spoons are used in place of "tinn platters and
wooden spoons." A farmer thinks his gains very small "if he have not a
fair garnish of pewter on his cupboard, with so much more in odd vessels
going about the house, three or four feather-beds, so manie coverlids or
carpets of tapestry, a silver salt, a bowl for wine if not a whole nest,
and a dozen of spoons to furnish up the suit."
Food, too, according to Harrison, was plentiful and varied. The increase
in pasture farming and the decrease in arable land had made meat (often,
it is true, salted) cheaper and corn-stuffs dearer, at least in
proportion. This tendency can be traced in the menus and accounts of the
period, and certainly appears in the following extract:[60] "The
artificers and husbandmen make greatest account of such food as they may
soonest come by and have it quickliest ready. Their food also consisteth
principallie in beef and such meat as the butcher selleth; that is to
saie, mutton, veal, lamb, pork, whereof he findeth great store in the
markets adjoining, besides souse,[61] brawn, bacon, fruit, pies of
fruit, fowles of sundrie sort, cheese, butter, eggs." A little lower
down he notes that venison and a cup of wine are luxuries reserved for
special occasions.
It is not easy to estimate the worth of Harrison's testimony to the
social habits of a class which he did not probably know intimately. It
is certain, too, that he was not speaking here of the poorest class of
labourers,[62] those who later recruited the class eligible for poor-law
relief. But even making these admissions, his words seem to be evidence
of a standard of comfort higher in some respects than could be attained
by the corresponding classes to-day. Chicken, for instance, practically
never forms part of the dietary of even the well-to-do urban artisan of
the present time.
In the organisation of the wealthy household, the economic changes of
the time produced important alterations. The increase in buying and
selling made the landlords more anxious to dispose of their surplus
produce in the markets, and on the other hand provided new luxuries on
which money could be spent. There resulted a tendency, which can be
traced in all the household books of the period, to limit the numbers of
servants and retainers. At the same time there was a growing desire for
privacy, and a widening gulf between the upper and the lower classes of
society. Hence the hall, the general assembly-place for the entire
household, lost its importance; dining-rooms and withdrawing-rooms for
the exclusive use of the family and guests, took its place, and the
servants were relegated to their own part of the house. Partly as cause
of this, partly as effect, domestic administration ceases to be a career
for men of better social rank, a tendency which would of course be
intensified by the fact that in commerce, in literature, in exploration,
&c., new opportunities were perpetually being opened up. Hence
Elizabeth's reign is a turning-point for the history both of domestic
service and of domestic architecture. It was probably about this time
that women superseded men as cooks and cleaners, and it is certain that
the increase in Elizabeth's reign of industries worked for profit must
have diminished the production for use in the household of many articles
of common domestic utility.[63]
(2) _Life in the Stuart Period_
For 150 years after the death of Elizabeth no startling changes occur in
the organisation of the household or in its economic relations. The
marked feature of this period is the existence of domestic manufactures,
engaging the head of the household and his family, one or two
apprentices, and sometimes a journeyman or two. It was common, indeed
all but universal, for the small master manufacturers to board and lodge
their employees, as it was common for farmers to board and lodge their
labourers. The larger households carried on at home many of the
operations--baking, brewing, washing, jam-making--which have now passed
to the factory. There was a steady growth of domestic luxury and of
convenience. The development of commerce made available new commodities,
such as tea, coffee, cocoa, and thereby influenced social life.
Furniture became more elegant, and perhaps at the same time more
stuffy.
It would require much reading and research to elaborate the details of
this progress, and for our present purpose it is hardly necessary, as it
involved alteration in particulars but not in the general organisation
of household economy. The difficulties of finding domestic servants
begin, however, to make themselves felt, and are amusingly discussed by
such writers as Defoe and Swift. It is at some time during this period
that houses are first built in terraces and squares on an identical
plan for letting purposes. But there are no sweeping changes, such as
mark the eighty years before the accession of Victoria.
(3) _The Influence of the Second Industrial Revolution on the Home_
In the last half of the eighteenth century agriculture and industry
were once more revolutionised, the former by the introduction of
capitalist farming, the rotation of crops, and the further enclosure of
common fields, commons, and wastes, the latter by the introduction of
machinery and mechanical motor power. For a detailed account of the
enormous changes consequent on these new methods of production, I must
refer the reader to the special treatises on the subject,[64] but we
must spend some time in considering the ways in which the home,
family life, and the position of women have been modified by these
industrial developments.
In the first place, the introduction of machinery meant the growth of
the factory system, and in consequence work left the home, which ceased
to be the institution where productive industry was carried on, and
became instead a centre solely of emotional and domestic life. At the
same time, the alteration in the land system made it impossible any
longer to combine home weaving, spinning, &c. with subsistence farming;
the worker becomes an employee in a business where the capital is owned
by his employer, and he depends absolutely on the skill of his own hands
for his livelihood.
Nothing could be more curious than to contrast Defoe's celebrated
picture of the wool-weaving districts of Yorkshire[65] with those
districts in their present condition. Then the workers,
semi-independent, farming small enclosures of two to six or seven acres,
laboriously produced cloth by hand processes in their own houses. Now
they work in enormous factories, fitted up with machinery which can spin
and weave wool both easier and better than in earlier days. They return
to their homes for rest and leisure alone. Work for wages and the home
are now separated, and, unless the use of cheap electrical power brings
about a counter-revolution, are likely to remain so. At the same time,
since mobility is in modern economic conditions of prime importance, it
is becoming less and less common for the manual worker, or indeed for
the citizen of any class, to own his house, and therefore the new trade
of the speculative builder comes into existence, its place being taken
in some cases, specially in mining districts, by the "company" houses
provided by masters for their employees.
These alterations in the framework of society inevitably influenced home
life, which was still further affected at a later period by an analogous
movement. Not merely the work done for wages left the home, but also
many of the commodities formerly produced for its own use by each
household came to be made by outside labour.
A very interesting and quite untouched field of inquiry here awaits the
economist. Why, for instance, is it customary to bake bread at home in
some districts and to buy it from a shop in others? Probably the
explanation is to be found in the relative cheapness of fuel. Yorkshire
and the North of England are close to abundant coalfields, and in the
days before cheap and quick transit the difference in the price of coal
in the South and North of England must have been even greater. At a
time, too, before the improvement of ovens, owing to the introduction of
the iron range and kitchener, the amount of fuel used for baking bread
would be even larger than at present. Therefore in the south there grew
up a race of housekeepers and servants unskilled in the making of the
delicious, crusty home-baked loaf, while in the north, even though
conditions have changed, the tradition still remains, and the weekly or
bi-weekly baking day is a regular institution. But this theory does not
explain why bread is not baked at home in Scotland, even in Glasgow and
the districts near it, or in Fife, which are all situated right in the
coal-bearing areas.
And at present there is little material for describing how brewing, jam
and cake-making, biscuit-making, the making and the washing of clothes,
the cleaning of furniture and carpets, &c., passed from the household to
the factory and laundry. It is a process which has evidently been much
quickened by the growth of town life, itself one of the most important
effects of the industrial revolution.[66]
The aggregation of population in towns in the first place made the
space available for household operations much smaller than was the case
when the kitchen was supplemented by rows of outhouses, a green and a
garden. In modern conditions, washing at home results in the discomfort
of the whole family, whether that family lives in a single room or in a
decent middle-class house of ten or twelve rooms. In the second
place, the massing into a comparatively small area of a homogeneous
population makes it easy to arrange for other methods of cleansing
clothes, either in the working-class districts by the provision of
municipal washing-houses, or in the more well-to-do suburbs through
the appearance of steam laundries. In the same way, when each
household possessed a garden it was natural to pick the fruit and
make it into jam. It is a different thing to buy fruit specially for
the purpose. Many housewives find that when the cost of the fruit,
sugar, and extra fuel is calculated, taking into account also the
dislocation of the regular routine of the household caused by the extra
work, it pays them better to buy the jam ready-made. On the other hand,
the use of machinery, the existence of cheap methods of transit, and
the multiplication of grocers' shops makes it increasingly possible to
produce jam in large quantities actually cheaper than it can be made
at home, and to distribute it quickly to the consumer.
The same cause, acting within and without the home in different ways, is
resulting in a steady transference of these domestic avocations from the
household. Moralists often lament this tendency, and attribute it
entirely to increased love of ease and leisure among women. But it is no
more possible to draw an indictment against a whole sex than against a
whole people, and an alteration in custom so widespread as this which we
are discussing must have deeper roots than a personal defect of laziness
in particular individuals.
This removal of production for domestic use from the home operates,
however, in very different ways in different cases. Sometimes the
article is produced much more cheaply outside the home than within,
owing to the lower cost and greater efficiency of large-scale methods of
manufacture. But this is not invariably the case. Laundry-work, for
instance, is probably done more cheaply in the private household. The
few attempts hitherto made to provide hot cooked food from a central
kitchen at a reasonable price have not been successful. On the other
hand, no individual household could hope to rival Messrs. Huntley &
Palmer as producers of biscuits. The factors which prevent the full
economies of the large-scale method of production from being realised in
the making of certain commodities are twofold. (1) Some goods are of
such a kind that they must be consumed where they are produced. Jam or
even plum-puddings can be made in a factory in the North of England and
afterwards transferred to London. But roast beef, omelettes, and
rice-puddings must be eaten within at least a hundred yards of the place
where they are cooked. This obvious fact effectually retains the
supremacy of the home in the provision of hot cooked food, and disposes
once and for all of the cruder arguments for co-operative housekeeping.
(2) Certain commodities must be made for or returned to individual
owners. If, for instance, we did not trouble to receive our own sheets
and towels from the laundry, but simply made a contract that each week
we should be supplied with a certain number, then the washing and
sorting could be done wholesale at a much cheaper rate. If we sent our
own fruit to the factories to be made into jam, jam would be much more
expensive.
Thus the household will compete successfully with outside agencies, in
the case of all commodities which must be consumed on the spot, and the
outside agencies will have only a small advantage--will do the washing
or dressmaking more conveniently, but not much cheaper--when wholesale
methods are forbidden by the personal interest of each consumer in one
special portion of the commodities dealt with.[67]
Still, regarding the matter from the general economic standpoint, it
cannot be denied that the result of the industrial revolution has been
to transfer many branches of production both for profit and for use from
the home to the factory.
(4) _The Position of Women as Affected by the Industrial Revolution_
This in its turn affected the position of women, and is probably, if not
the sole, at least the most important reason for the discontent and
unrest to be traced among women of many different classes in the
nineteenth century. But the women belonging to the manual labouring
class and the women belonging to the upper classes were influenced in
different ways.
The former had always been accustomed to work for their living,
indirectly if not directly. On the little farms they looked after the
cow, the hens, and the garden. They did the carding and the spinning of
flax and of wool. True, these industries were carried on at home, and
probably the decent "manufacturer," then literally a hand-worker, would
have regarded himself as disgraced had his wife or daughters needed to
go outside his home to find work.[68] But when the factory system came,
with the horrible sufferings caused by the transition from one system of
industry to another, the women and children always accustomed to toil at
home followed their work to the factory, and there, owing to the new
methods of competition and to the absence of any regulation of industry,
they suffered hardships of overwork and underpayment which seem to the
present generation nearly incredible.
Home life for a time almost disappeared, and the suffering and
degeneration was only checked by the series of Factory Acts, imposing
ever fresh and fresh restrictions on the treatment of women and
children.[69] The policy underlying these acts was much criticised at
the time, and was indeed not fully comprehended until recently. But it
is now all but universally admitted that the Factory Acts have in the
main achieved their object, and have greatly improved the position of
women in the districts most affected by them; and reformers are
constantly urging their extension to fresh trades.
This movement was not understood, and was in consequence opposed by
the women of the middle-classes, whose position was affected quite
differently by the industrial revolution. They too found their
occupations within the home to a large extent destroyed. And in
other ways their situation was altered. For some reason not yet
explained, there appeared in the middle-classes a surplus of women.
This is no doubt partly due to the colonial expansion of the period,
which sent young men out to Australia, Canada, and South Africa,
while their natural mates remained behind in England. It is not easy to
give precise statistics, as our statistical tables make no distinction
of classes, but common observation and the description of social life
in the novels of the nineteenth century afford evidence of this fact.
Some statistics bearing on the subject can be found in Miss Clara
Collet's[70] article, "Prospects of Marriage for Women," and also in
"Die Frauenfrage," by Lilie Braun, pp. 157 _ff._ Frau Braun, whose
book is marked throughout by characteristic German thoroughness, sums
up:[71] "Es hat sich gezeigt, dass die Zunahme der allein stehenden
Frauen, die Abnahme der Heiratsfrequenz und die wirtschaftliche Not
als Ursache der Frauenbewegung in aller Laende anzusehen sind."
But it was not merely the decreased chance of marriage which made the
lives of middle-class women difficult in the last century. There was
also a change in the position of the fathers, which decreased their
opportunity for providing for their unmarried daughters. The
middle-class man is now less and less frequently at the head of a
business of his own, and is more and more frequently a salaried clerk,
manager, or engineer.
Formerly the shop or farm when it passed to the eldest son was burdened
with the charge of the spinster sisters, who often would help in the
dairy or behind the counter. Now, when a middle-class man dies, his hold
on the industrial world, so to speak, passes away with him, unless he
has been at once able and willing to lay by savings out of his salary, a
duty too often neglected. Briefly, therefore, the unmarried woman of the
middle-classes is less likely to marry, has less to occupy her at home,
and cannot so easily be provided for by her father if she remains a
spinster.
Is it then to be wondered at if women insist, in increasing numbers,
upon a thorough education as well as the right to enter a profession in
which they can be self-supporting?[72] But the first women who decided
that a way must be opened by which they could earn for themselves
honourable maintenance not unnaturally fell into what we cannot but
regard now as regrettable mistakes, however unavoidable these errors may
have been at the time. Their great difficulties were to win admission to
the universities and permission to practise what had hitherto been
regarded as men's professions. Therefore they dreaded all restrictions
liable to be laid upon the entrance of women to occupations, and were
led in consequence to oppose the Factory Acts, designed for the
protection of women of the working-classes. It is only to-day and only
partially that the woman teacher, doctor, or journalist has come to
understand that the position and problems of the factory-hand are very
different from her own, and that confusion is created if she insists on
judging them from her own standpoint.
In the next place, they were almost forced to become masculine and
aggressive in their manners and outlook upon life. In particular, the
need of conformity to a system of education framed for men and not for
women led to an undervaluation of domestic pursuits. It was not realised
that in managing a household and in bringing up children there was scope
for the most developed character and the finest education.
But with the twentieth century,[73] college-trained women themselves are
coming to see that their previous neglect of those principles of science
and economics which underlie household administration was unwise and
unwarranted. Of that change of attitude, the new courses in home science
at King's College are the firstfruits, and this book is a small
contribution to a movement which is destined, perhaps, to revolutionise
housekeeping, as a band of devoted women succeeded some few years since
in revolutionising the profession of nursing.
The main lines on which the influence of the industrial revolution on
women's position has operated can be but briefly indicated in this very
summary sketch. Want of space prevents me from doing more than allude to
other aspects of the question, such as the employment of married women,
the status of women in government offices, women's trade unions,
homework and sweating, the prevention of infant mortality, the work of
women in the administration of charity and in local government, together
with many other developments of the one cause--the alteration between
the relations of the home and of society due to the changes in our
commercial and manufacturing system.
I must turn now to a study of the economics of the household as it
actually exists to-day.