Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century

								

thanks are also due to many other friends whose sympathy and interest
have played a larger part than they know in the production of this book.



    Mill Field,



        Street, Somerset.

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                                CONTENTS

                    I. INTRODUCTORY                  1



                   II. CAPITALISTS                  14



                  III. AGRICULTURE                  42



                   IV. TEXTILES                     93



                    V. CRAFTS AND TRADES           150



                   VI. PROFESSIONS                 236



                  VII. CONCLUSION                  290



                       LIST OF AUTHORITIES         309



                       LIST OF WAGES ASSESSMENTS   320



                       INDEX                       322

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                               CHAPTER I



                              INTRODUCTORY
EFFECT of environment on Women’s development. Possible reaction on men’s

   development—Importance of seventeenth century in historic development

   of English women—Influence of economic position—Division of Women’s

   productive powers into Domestic, Industrial, and Professional—Three

   systems of Industrial Organisation—Domestic Industry—Family

   Industry—Capitalistic Industry or Industrialism—Definition of these

   terms—Historic sequence. Effect of Industrial Revolution on Women—in

   capitalistic class—in agriculture—in textile industries—in crafts and

   other trades. Transference of productive industry from married women

   to unmarried women—with consequent increase of economic independence

   for the latter and its loss for the former. Similar evolution in

   professions shows this was not due wholly to effect of capitalism.

HITHERTO the historian has paid little attention to the circumstances of
women’s lives, for women have been regarded as a static factor in social
developments, a factor which, remaining itself essentially the same,
might be expected to exercise a constant and unvarying influence on
Society.
This assumption has however no basis in fact, for the most superficial
consideration will show how profoundly women can be changed by their
environment. Not only do the women of the same race exhibit great
differences from time to time in regard to the complex social instincts
and virtues, but even their more elemental sexual and maternal instincts
are subject to modification. While in extreme cases the sexual impulses
are liable to perversion, it sometimes happens that the maternal
instinct disappears altogether, and women neglect or, like a tigress in
captivity, may even destroy their young.
These variations deserve the most careful examination, for, owing to the