Want to make creations as awesome as this one?

Transcript

Let's go!

WOMEN

industrial revolution

Astrid, Chada, Yara

The Plight of Women's Work in the Early Industrial Revolution in England and Wales

The Industrial Revolution in part was fueled by the economic necessity of many women, single and married, to find waged work outside their home. Women mostly found jobs in domestic service, textile factories, and piece work shops. They also worked in the coal mines. For some, the Industrial Revolution provided independent wages, mobility and a better standard of living. For the majority, however, factory work in the early years of the 19th century resulted in a life of hardship.

The following selections are testimonies from England and Wales collected by Parliamentary commissions who began to investigate the industrial employment of women and children in the early 1840s.

Click on each category down below to access

SUMMARY

Vocabulary

QUESTIONS

Comparison

Testimonies

Introduction

VOCABULARY

Hurriers were people that moved the coal from the face (where the coal was cut) to the horses -ways. Horse-ways were the main passages where horses could be used for hauling. Sometimes they used a pulley system to wind up the trams. A level is a tunnel into sloping ground, like a cave. The coal was mined without having to dig a shaft.

Peacock Watson

Jane

Mary and Rachell

Enock

Gooder

Maria

Wilson

Isabel

learn more

learn more

learn more

learn more

Testimonies from South Wales Mines

OTHER TESTIMONIES

, 38 years old.

Isabel Wilson

"I have been married 19 years and have had 10 bairns [children]:...My last child was born on Saturday morning, and I was at work on the Friday night... None of the children read, as the work is no regular..When I go below my lassie 10 years of age keeps house..."

OTHER TESTIMONIES

"I hurry for a man with my sister Anne who is going 18. He is good to us. I don't like being in the pit. I am tired and afraid. I go at 4:30 after having porridge for breakfast. I start hurrying at 5. We have dinner at noon. We have dry bread and nothing else. There is water in the pit but we don't sup it. "

Maria Gooder

OTHER TESTIMONIES

Mary and Rachell Enock

"We are door-keepers in the four foot level. We leave the house before six each morning and are in the level until seven o'clock and sometimes later. We get 2 pennies a day and our light costs us 2 1/2 pENNIES. a week. Rachel was in a day school and she can read a little. She was run over by a tram a while ago and was home ill a long time, but she has got over it."

OTHER TESTIMONIES

"I have wrought in the bowels of the earth 33 years. I have been married 23 years and had nine children, six are alive and three died of typhus a few years since. Have had two dead born. Horse-work ruins the women; it crushes their haunches, bends their ankles and makes them old women at 40. "

Jane Peacock Watson

Before

Nowadays

Working conditions evolution

power steam engines

brush their teeth

  • What do you think coal was used for in this period?

16 hours a day

13 hours a day

  • Generally, how many hours did these women and children work each day?

Chicken pox

Typhus

  • What health problems were generated by mine labor?

UNEMPLOYEMENT

DEAD BORN CHILDREN

  • Name some ways this type of work affected family life?

Women's income are two times higher than the men's

Wages and educational increase

  • How did women's conditions evolve?

conclusion

  • Working conditions were often unsanitary and the work dangerous. Education suffered because of the demands of work.
  • Home life suffered as women were faced with the double burden of factory work followed by domestic chores and child care.
  • Men assumed supervisory roles over women and received higher wages. Unsupervised young women away from home generated societal fears over their fate.
  • As a result of the need for wages in the growing cash economy, families became dependent on the wages of women and children.
  • There was some worker opposition to proposals that child and female labor should be abolished from certain jobs.

THAnkSfor playing we hope you enjoyed