Women and the Industrial Revolution

Elva Card
Social Studies department
WT Woodson High School
Fairfax, VA
NEH Seminar 2004

Women hold up half the sky, according to a famous saying by Chairman Mao,
but in the history of the Industrial Revolution it is hard to find much mention of women
or their part of the sky. The list of inventors and entrepreneurs rolls on with the names of
significant men who wrought the incredible phenomenon that changed the way the whole
world lives and works, men like John Kay, Richard Arkwright, Samuel Crompton,
Edmund Cartwright. The female name Jenny does appear, but only because James
Hargreaves named his new invention, the spinning jenny, in honor of his wife. While
women may have had little to do with creating the Industrial Revolution, they were
indeed greatly affected by it and some women even played a role in effecting its
subsequent course of development. This paper will look at women affected by changes
and effecting change themselves.

Women Affected by Change

The term Industrial Revolution brings to mind pictures of women and children
working in unwholesome and dangerous conditions, but it should be remembered that
women and children worked in agricultural economies too. They were always expected
to work. What changed with the Industrial Revolution was the type of work they did and
the conditions under which they worked.
Women had long been involved in textile work, but they worked in their home, at
times that fit with other responsibilities. A primitive type of spinning, distaff spinning,
could be done anywhere. Maxine Berg quotes an observer in Scotland as saying one
rarely met with an old women in the north of Scotland, that is not otherwise employed,
but who has got a distaff stuck in her girdle and a spindle at her hand. (Berg, 142)
Another observer in the Scottish Highlands commented:

Here as in all semi-barbarous countries, is the woman seen to be regarded rather

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the drudge than the companion to the man. The husband turns up the land and
sows it the wife conveys the manure to it in a creel, tends the corn, reaps it, hoes
the potatoes, digs them up, carries the whole home on her back, when bearing the
creel she is also engaged with spinning with the distaff (Berg 143)

In towns women might work along side their husbands in their crafts. They might
manage the shop and the handle the accounts, in addition to giving birth, raising children
and running the home. The Industrial Revolution was not the beginning of work for
women. Women had long been doing hard work for long hours. The Industrial
Revolution did bring new hardships.
John and Barbara Hammond point out:
What the new order did was to turn the discomforts of the life of the
poor into a rigid system. Hours were not shortened, the atmosphere in which they
worked was not made fresher or cleaner, .In none of these respects was the
early factory better than the home, in some it was worse. But to all the evils from
which the domestic worker had suffered, the Industrial Revolution added
discipline, and the discipline of a power driven by a competition that seemed as
inhuman as the machines that thundered in factory and shed. (19)

No longer able to pace their day to their own stamina, workers now had to answer
the summons of the factory bell, keep the schedule of the machines, obey the rules of the
owner. Conditions were dangerous, noisy and unhealthy. Women were routinely paid
less than men for the same work.
Factory owners preferred women to men workers for several reasons. As
Deborah Valenze points out:
Factory owners preference for female labor was based not only on its cheapness:
many women assumed the yoke of hard labor in the factories without complaint,
and this fostered the widespread opinion that female workers were more docile,
and therefore less likely to cause trouble than men. (91)

Since their days were spent in long hours at the factory, women had to find other ways to
care for their children. Not available to nurse their babies themselves, women frequently
had to send them off to wet nurses. One source estimated that close to one third of all
babies born in Lyons (some 2,000 of 5,000-6000) were carted off to the countryside to
be nursed. (Tilly and Scott, 46)
In its early days, the Industrial Revolution did indeed change the lives of women,
and not for the better. In the developing world today this pattern is frequently repeated,
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but today in the industrialized world those early conditions have changed for the better.
Most of the effectors of these changes have been male, but some women also made their
contributions.

Women as Effectors of Change

The Industrial Revolution is famous, or perhaps more accurately infamous, for the
terrible working conditions that marked the early factories, the dark Satanic mills of
Blakes description. One of the influences that brought about changes in those conditions
was the description of them in popular fiction writing. This made the general public not
only aware of the conditions, but also created a climate of public opinion receptive, if not
demanding, of improvements. The best know fiction author of this genre is Charles
Dickens, but there were also female writers such as Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte
and Frances Trollope (mother of the famous Anthony Trollope) writing in this vein.
As the wife of a Unitarian minister in Manchester, Elizabeth Gaskell worked
among the poor, and so had first hand knowledge of their lives. Born in 1810, she
published her first book, Mary Barton, in 1848. It made her instantly famous, and
showed her firmly on the side of the workers in the worker/owner categories into which
industrial novels were divided. Many felt that she had done very great injustice to the
employers, that she had misunderstood and over-sympathized with the plight of the
workers. She had evidently failed to see that they suffered evisceration in the necessary
cause of their masters profit. (Ingham, xiii)
Her next novel, North and South, is perhaps more nuanced. It is the story of
Margaret Hale, who found herself suddenly removed from a bucolic South to the
industrial wasteland of the North, following her fathers resignation from his post as a
vicar in the Church of England and his acceptance of a tutoring job in Milton-Northern,
a stand-in for Gaskells own town of Manchester. Like Dickens in his novel Hard Times,
there are descriptions of the unpleasant conditions of the smoke filled air in industrial
cities and the poverty of the workers, but neither novel contains description of the actual
horror of the factory conditions themselves.
Gaskells novel catches the readers sympathy for the working class with the
portrayal of Nicholas Higgins and his daughter Bessy. He is a lowly mill worker, but is
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also a man of character, pride and high morals. Bessy is a model of Christian acceptance
as she faces her fate of an early death from an unspecified disease connected to her work
in the mill. Like Dickens, Gaskells attitude toward unions is not wholly supportive. The
noble Nicholas supports the union as the only way workingmen will be able to get a
decent life. When confronted with the harshness and violence of some union policies, he,
and Gaskell, make the case for unions.
And its th masters as has made us sin, if th Union is a sin. Not this generation
maybe, but their fathers. Their fathers ground our fathers to the very dust;
ground us to powder! . In those days of sore oppression th Unions began; it
were a necessity. Its a necessity now, according to me. Its a withstanding of
injustice, past, present or to come. It may be like war; along wi it come crimes;
but I think it were a greater crime to let it alone. Our only chance is binding men
together in one common interest; and if some are cowards and some are fools,
they mun [sic] come along and join the great march, whose only strength is in
numbers. (North and South, 229)
The response to Higgins comes from Margarets father, Mr. Hale. Oh, your
Union in itself would be beautiful, glorious it would be Christianity itself if it were
but for an end which affected the good of all, instead of that of merely one class as
opposed to another. (North and South, 229) Events seem to cast doubts on the ability of
the union to take care of the working men. The strike brings hunger to their families and
division within their ranks, resulting eventually in a tragic suicide. Meanwhile the loss of
revenue caused by the strike comes close to bringing bankruptcy to one mill and the end
of employment to all its workers.
Unlike Mr. Bounderby of Hard Times, the owner of the mill in North and South is
a man of high ethical standards. John Thornton has worked his way up from poverty,
paying off his fathers bad debts. Though coming from poverty himself, he is strangely
indifferent to the plight of his workers, or hands as he calls them. However Margarets
softening influence brings him to seeking a greater harmony with his workers, and in the
end her inheritance saves his mill, even as he wins her hand for the typical marriage and
happily ever after ending. So, like Dickens, Gaskell portrays the life of the working
class, sketches some of the conflict inherent in industry, but offers no real solutions for
their problems beyond the idea that everyone should be kinder to each other. Making the
workers plight known to the general public, however, was an important first step in
bringing about the needed changes, so it was a significant contribution.
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Another female writer who brought social issues to the attention of the public in
her novels was Frances Trollope. Born in 1780, the daughter of a clergyman, she began
writing books at the age of fifty-two, when her husbands business failed and they had
enormous debts to pay off. By the time she died in 1863, she had written forty books and
had easily paid off the familys debts. (National Archives Learning Curve website)
Trollope tackled important social issues, such as slavery, church corruption and
children working in factories in her various novels. She became active in the campaign
against child labor and visited factories in Manchester and Bradford. From this research
came Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy, a vivid portrayal of factory conditions. One
excerpt dealt with a young girl:
A little girl about seven years old, whose job as scavenger was to collect
incessantly from the factory floor the flying fragments of cotton that might
impede the work while the hissing machinery passed over her, and when this
is skillfully done, and the head, body, and the outstretched limbs carefully glued
to the floor, the steady moving, but threatening mass, may pass and repass over
the dizzy head and trembling body without touching it. But accidents frequently
occur; and many are the flaxen locks, rudely torn from infant heads, in the
process (Ibid.).

Trollope was accused of encouraging people to hate factory owners, and one
critic even suggested that she should be sent to prison for writing such a dangerous
book. (Ibid.) The book may not have contained solutions for the problems of factory
conditions, but in making the general public aware of the conditions, Trollope and other
writers like her helped move the climate of public opinion toward finding solutions.
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Another woman who tried to improve conditions for the working class was
Hannah More, whom Anna Clark calls the archetypal Evangelical moralist. (120) Born
in 1745, and given a good education by her schoolmaster father, More was one of the
most well-known and influential English women of her day, though today few people
would recognize her name. (hannahmore website) Her first published work, a pastoral
drama, The Search After Happiness, was written at the age of sixteen and was followed
by more dramas and poems. Around 1779, however, her writing and her life took a
religious turn and she decided to devote herself to Christian work. She and her sister
established Sunday Schools to help children from poor areas learn to read, to develop
Christian morals and to acquire life-skills that they would keep with them forever.
Within ten years, she was responsible for the running of sixteen schools. (Ibid.)
Although she was deeply involved in this work, writing many of the texts herself,
she also found time to maintain her contacts with polite society and to write a number of
books and pamphlets, including a series of conduct books. From her earnings, she gave
generously to charities. One source calls her one of the most successful writers, and
perhaps the most influential woman, of her day. (Ibid.}
The Hammonds, while acknowledging that people receiving food and sustenance
from Hannah More were indeed helped, see her as part of the establishment supporting
church that helped perpetuate the status quo by making the owners comfortable with the
situation and urging the workers to accept and make the best of it. The Hammonds write:
It never seems to have crossed the minds of these philanthropists that it was
desirable that men and women should have decent wages, or decent homes, or
that there was something wrong with the arrangements of a society that left the
mass of people in this plight. (227)

If More was unable to envision a better world, she certainly was not alone. The
changes that seem so inevitable, the reforms that seem so unquestionably just to todays
world, seemed neither inevitable nor unquestionable in Mores day. In fact, her conduct
book, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, is distinctly protofeminist,
calling as it does for better education and career opportunities for women. (hannahmore
web site)
Another woman who tried to better the plight of the poor, especially of prisoners,
through Christian outreach was Elizabeth Fry. Born into a Quaker family, Fry felt a
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calling to use her life to help others. She was fortunate in having a husband like Joseph
Fry who was willing to let his wife take an active role outside of the home. She was also
fortunate that she could afford plenty of help with the twelve children she bore him.
(quaker.org.uk web site)
She began visiting women prisoners at Newgate prison. She was shocked at the
wretched conditions she found. Prisoners were lying on the bare stone floors. Newborn
babies lacked clothes. Fry marshaled the resources of her Quaker friends to find clothes
for the children and straw to give some comfort to the beds. Eventually she organized a
school for the children and arranged for the women to get materials so that they could
sew, knit and make goods for sale. Then the prisoners could use the money from the
sales to buy food, clothing and fresh straw for their bedding. She became well known,
and was asked to testify before a committee of the House of Commons. Her programs at
Newgate were copies in other prisons. (Ibid.)
In addition to her prison work, Fry set up District Visiting Societies to work with
the poor. She set up libraries for coastguards, a training school for nurses, and a Ladies
Committee to offer hot soup and beds to the homeless. In honor of all her charitable
work, her picture is on the backside of the British five-pound note.
An amazing lady who broadened opportunities for women was Florence
Nightingale, the famed lady with the lamp. Turning down several marriage proposals,
she felt called to something special with her life. She went to Germany for nursing
training, then returned to England to work in a hospital. When the Crimean War broke
out, she managed, against great opposition, to lead a group of nurses to the battlefront.
Resented at first by the army surgeons and limited in her scope of action, she used
connections at home to get papers to publish the appalling conditions in the field
hospitals. Men were left in their dirty uniforms and given neither blankets nor decent
food. Typhus, cholera and dysentery were killing more men than battle wounds. In fact,
only one in six died from war injuries. Most were dying from disease. (Florence
Nightingale site)
Given authority to clean up the hospitals and to institute needed reforms,
Nightingale was able to reduce the death rate dramatically, as well as increase the comfort
level of the wounded. She became a national heroine. She used her fame and her
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influence to raise the standards of hygiene in hospitals and to improve the training of
nurses. She believed in womens rights, and wrote a book on the subject, Suggestions for
Thought to Searchers after Religious Truths. She argued that women should have the
same opportunities as men to have careers. Her book greatly influenced John Stuart Mill
and his book on womens rights, The Subjection of Women. (Ibid.)
In spite of her advanced ideas about womens rights, she did not support a
movement to expand the medical profession to permit women doctors. She thought it
more important for women to become better-trained nurses than to try to break into the
ranks of doctors. Ironically, the famous nurse herself needed nursing during the final
fifteen years of her life, when she became a total invalid. She died in 1910, at the age of
ninety. Though she accepted limitations on womens careers in medicine, she greatly
expanded their role as nurses and was a pioneer in raising the standards of hygiene and
patient care in hospitals. (Ibid.)
In conclusion, though women do indeed hold up half the sky, they were much
more affected by the Industrial Revolution than effecting of events. Some women were,
however, able to contribute to improving conditions for the working class.

Works Cited
Berg, Maxine. The Age of Manufactures. Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble
Books, 1985.
Clark, Anna. The Struggle for the Breeches. Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1995.
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. North and South. With introduction by Patricia Ingham. Penguin
Books, 1995.
Hammond, J.L. and Barbara Hammond. The Town Labourer. 1917.
Tilly, Louise A. and Joan W. Scott. Women, Work and Family. New York:
Routledge,1987.
Valenze, Deborah. The First Industrial Woman. New York: Oxford University
Press,1995.
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www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Irtrollope.htm

www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Renightingale.htm

www.Tl.essortment.com/hannahmore_rene.htm

www.quaker.org.uk/more/qviews4.html