Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century

								

view from which the enquiry has been made, is not yet available. Many
records of Gilds, Companies, Quarter Sessions and Boroughs which must be
studied in extenso before a just idea can be formed of women’s
position, have up to the present been published only in an abbreviated
form, if at all.
Another difficulty has been the absence of knowledge regarding women’s
position in the years preceding the Seventeenth Century. This want has
to some extent been supplied through the kindness of Miss Eileen Power,
who has permitted me to use some of the material collected by her on
this subject, but not yet published.
The Seventeenth Century itself forms a sort of watershed between two
very widely differing eras in the history of Englishwomen—the
Elizabethan and the Eighteenth Century. Thus characteristics of both can
be studied in the women who move through its varied scenes, either in
the pages of dramatists or as revealed by domestic papers or in more
public records.
Only one aspect of their lives has been described in the present volume,
namely their place in the economic organisation of society. This has its
own special bearing on the industrial problems of modern times; but Life
is a whole and cannot safely be separated into watertight departments.
The productive activity which is here described was not the work of
women who were separated from the companionship of married life and the
joys and responsibilities of motherhood. These aspects of their life
have not been forgotten, and will, I hope, be dealt with in a later
volume, along with the whole question of girls’ education.
How inseparably intertwined are these different threads of life will be
shown by the fact that apprenticeship and service are left to be dealt
with in the later volume as links in the educational chain, although in
many respects they were essential features of women’s economic position.
The conception of the sociological importance of past economic
conditions for women I owe to Olive Schreiner, whose epoch-making book
“Women and Labour” first drew the attention of many workers in the
emancipation of women to the difference between reality and the commonly
received generalisations as to women’s productive capacity. From my
friend, Dr. K. A. Gerlach came the suggestion that I, myself, should
attempt to supply further evidence along the lines so imaginatively
outlined by Mrs. Schreiner. To Dr. Lilian Knowles I am indebted for the
unwearied patience with which she has watched and directed my
researches, and to Mrs. Bernard Shaw for the generous scholarship with
which she assists those who wish to devote themselves to the
investigation of women’s historic past.
I should like here to express the deep sense of gratitude which I feel
to those who have helped my work in these different ways, and to Mrs.
George, whose understanding of Seventeenth Century conditions has
rendered the material she collected for me particularly valuable. My