Notes on the Text

A hurrier is typically a six to eight-year-old girl equipped with a belt and swivel chain. After harnessing into this, the free end of the chain attaches to a sled in which the hurrier pulls for over a mile underground through small tight passages in a mine. These passages are so small that the hurrier is physically unable to stand, so one would crawl.

               Commentary on the Text

Jillian Vasquez & Tiffanee Wheeler, 2.18.2008

 In the late nineteenth century, female factory workers became overwhelmed by colossal amounts of work; so much, in fact, that required taking home in order to complete. In this period, what is referred to as “sweated work” (or work in the sweatshops) became increasingly associated with homework. This changed a British woman’s working day to beginning at three or four in the morning and ending at eleven or twelve at night.

 “Sweating” is known a result of the industrial developments of the nineteenth century and as a precursor to development. This work form involved the dilution of skills women needed to perform their work and emphasized dependency on machine-operated production.

Barbara Harrison, author of Not Only the ‘Dangerous Trades’, reports of a typical female “homeworker” in the tailoring industry who finished pants. She had to “supply her own trimmings, thread, cotton, soap and heat (for irons). She was paid [about 2 shillings] for each pair which took her two hours, and a further half hour per day was spent in collecting and delivering work.” (Harrison 94)

Deterioration of health was evident as well, as women’s rights activist and author Clementina Black describes:

“[The] most worn out girl I remember ever to have seen…She may have been eighteen or nineteen; she was absolutely colorless, and . . . seemed exhausted literally almost to death! She sat day after day pouring powdered cocoa into ready made paper products which she then folded down the tops and pasted on the wrappers. She received a halfpenny for every gross.” (Harrison 95)

Life in the home was no better than the conditions women were subject to in the factories. Most working-class homes were “overcrowded, unventilated and inadequately heated and lit.” An investigator emphasized the “strain and wear and tear of working in a crowded space, in the midst of cross tiresome children, leaving off constantly to mind a fretful baby”. In addition to this, much time was lost “in fetching and carrying work and standing for two or three hours to get it examined”. (Harrison 95)

There seemed to be more concern over threats to consumer health rather than threats to employer health. Partly due to this neglect, outbreaks of scarlet fever, smallpox, and typhus were linked to factories and the drinking water through which two hundred sewers flowed. These outbreaks of disease “killed 16,437 people in England and Wales in 1832”. (Altick 44)

            Feminists of the time supported homework for women under the grounds that if it was “economically necessary for them to have work, then it was preferable that they did this in the home”. (Harrison 96) It was argued that homework did not expose women to the “moral risks associated with performing hard physical labour in male company and it would let a woman care for her children while she worked”. (Harrison 96) It was further argued:

            “Women with invalid or disabled husbands, widows with young children, women who are not strong enough for the long hours and exhausting conditions of factory life – are they to be deprived of the power of earning a livelihood at home? Is it not moreover probable that if a mother can be at home children will be better looked after than if she is absent all day?” (Knightley 288)

            A former factory-worker, testifying before the Select Committee on Homework, stated in support of this feminist idea:

            “I found my child neglected. When I had the second child I stayed at home and looked after it and had my work at home. I found an improvement in my health, in my home, in my children and in every way.” (Select Committee on Homework 125)

            The Women’s Industrial Council investigated the conditions of 400 homeworkers in London in 1897. The investigation culminated in the Women’s Industrial Council (WIC) Bill which proposed that “premises used for homework should be inspected and licensed as ‘fit for work’” (Harrison 97).

                Works Cited

 

Altick, Richard D. Victorian People and Ideas. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1973.

Children's Employment Commission Report. 1842-1843.

Harrison, Barbara. Not Only the ‘Dangerous Trades’: Women’s Work and Health in Britain, 1880-1914. London: Taylor & Francis Inc., 1996.

Knightley (1901) Women as homeworkers, Nineteenth Century p.288.

Select Committee on Homework (1908) PP VI, Minutes of Evidence, p.125, response 2879.

                For Additional Reading

 

Christ, Carol T. & Robson, Catherine. The Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume E: The Victorian Age. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006.

Barker, Hannah. Women’s History, Britain 1700-1850. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Simonton, Deborah. The Routledge History of Women in Europe Since 1700. New York: Routledge, 2006.

                Project Group Members

Member Name	University	Course
Jillian Vasquez	Western Washington University	English 310
Tiffanee Wheeler	Western Washington University	English 310

     Project Completed: semester and year

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