(Studies in Labour History) Isabelle Baudino, Jacques Carré, Cécile Révauger - The Invisible Woman - Aspects of Women's Work in Eighteenth-Century Britain-Ashgate - Routledge (2005)

The Invisible Woman
The Invisible Woman

Aspects of Women's Work in
Eighteenth-Century Britain
Edited by
ISABELLE BAUDINO
Ecole Normale Superieure Lyon, France
JACQUES CARRE
Universite, Paris IV-Sorbonne, France
CECILE REVAUGER
University of Bordeaux III, France
~~ ~~o~;!~n~~:up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2005 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge

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Copyright ©Isabelle Baudino, Jacques Carre and Cecile Revauger 2005
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

The invisible woman : aspects of women's work in eighteenth-century Britain. -(Studies in
labour history)
1. Women employees - Great Britain - History - 18th century 2. Women - Great
Britain- Social conditions- 18th century
I. Baudino, Isabelle II. Carre, Jacques III. Revauger, Cecile
331.4'0941 '09033
Library of Congress Control Number: 2005922123
ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-3572-7 (hbk)

Contents
s
General Editor Preface vii
List of Figures ix
List of Contributors XI
Introduction
I. Baudino, J. Carre and C. Revauger
PART I: WOMEN IN THE DOMESTIC SPHERE
The Birth of a New Profession: The Housekeeper and her

Status in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Gilly Lehmann 9
2 The Representation of Housework in the Eighteenth-Century

Women's Press
Marie-Claire Rouyer-Daney 27
3 Needlework and the Rights of Women in England at the End

of the Eighteenth Century
Christine Hivet 37
4 Governesses of the Royal Family and the Nobility in Great

Britain, 1750-1815
Sophie Loussouarn 47
PART II: WOMEN IN MALE STRONGHOLDS
5 The Labour and Servitude of Women in the Highlands of

Scotland in the Eighteenth Century
Marie-Helene Thevenot- Totems 59
6 Women in the Army in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Guyonne Leduc 75
7 Hospital Nurses in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Service

without Responsibility
Jacques Carre 89
vi The Invisible Woman
8 Claiming their Place in the Corporate Community: Women's

Identity in Eighteenth-Century Towns
Deborah Simonton 101
9 Women Barred from Masonic 'Work': A British Phenomenon

Cecile Revauger ll7
PART III: WOMEN AND THE CULTURAL SCENE
10 The Actress and Eighteenth-Century Ideals of Femininity

Severine Lancia 131
II Women in Action: Elizabeth Inchbald, Heroines and Serving

Maids in British Comedies of the 1780s and 1790s
Angela J. Smallwood 139
12 Profession: Siren-The Ambiguous Status of Professional

Women Musicians in Eighteenth-Century England
Pierre Dubois 147
13 The Lee Sisters: Eighteenth-Century Commercial Heroines

Marion Marceau 161
14 Eighteenth-Century Images of Working Women

Isabelle Baudino 173
Index 183
Studies in Labour History
General Editor's Preface
Labour history has often been a fertile area of history. Since the Second World War
its best practioners-such as E. P. Thompson and E. J. Hobsbawm, both Presidents
of the British Society for the Study of Labour History-have written works which
have provoked fruitful and wide-ranging debates and further research, and which
have influenced not only social history but history generally. These historians, and
many others, have helped to widen labour history beyond the study organised labour
to labour generally, sometimes to industrial relations in particular, and most
frequently to society and culture in national and comparative dimensions.
The assumptions and ideologies underpinning much of the older labour history
have been challenged by feminist and later by postmodemist and anti-Marxist
thinking. These challenges have often led to thoughtful reppraisals, perhaps
intellectual equivalents of coming to terms with a new post-Cold War political
landscape.
By the end of the twentieth century, labour history had emerged reinvigorated
and positive from much introspection and external criticism. Very few would wish
to confine its scope to the study of organised labour. Yet, equally, few would wish
now to write the existence and influence of organised labour out of nations'
histories, any more than they would wish to ignore working-class lives and focus
only on the upper echelons.
This series of books provides reassessments of broad themes oflabour history as
well as some more detailed studies arising from recent research. Most books are
single-authored but there are also volumes of essays centred on important themes or
periods, some arising from major conferences organised by the Society for the Study
of Labour History. The series also includes studies of labour organisations,
including international ones, as many of these are much in need of a modem
reassessment.
Chris Wrigley
British Society for the Study of Labour History
University ofNottingham
List of Figures
Fig. 5.1 From: Edward Burt, Letters from a Gentleman in the

North of Scotland to his Friend in London (London:
S. Birt, 1754) I, 52 (author's collection) 69
Fig. 5.2 From: Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Scotland and Voyage

to the Hebrides [1772] (London: Benj. White, 1776),
328 (author's collection) 70

Fig. 5.4 'Graddaning' (Sketch from the National Museum of

Antiquities of Scotland, Edinburgh) 72
Fig. 5.5 From: Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Scotland and Voyage

to the Hebrides [1772] (London: Benj. White, 1776),
246 (author's collection) 73

List of Contributors
IsABELLE BAUDINO is lecturer in British cultural history at the Ecole Normale

Superieure in Lyon. She works on Georgian art and aesthetics. She has published
Peinture et historicite: les mutations de la peinture d'histoire en Grande-Bretagne,
1707-1768 (Liiie, 1997).
JACQUES CARRE is professor of British cultural history at the Sorbonne (Universite

Paris IV). He currently works on poverty and charity in the Georgian and Victorian
ages. He has edited Ecrire la pauvrete: les enquetes sociales britanniques aux XJXe
et xxe siecles (Paris, 1995) and Les Visiteurs du pauvre: anthologie d'enquetes
britanniques sur la pauvrete urbaine, XJXe-xxe siecles (Paris, 2000).
PIERRE DuBOIS is lecturer in British cultural history at the Sorbonne (Universite

Paris IV). He works on music and aesthetics in the Georgian age. He has published
L 'Orgue dans la societe anglaise: ethique et esthetique de la moderation (Lille,
1997) and is currently editing Charles Avison's Essay on Musical Expression (to be
published by Ashgate).
CHRISTINE RIVET is a lecturer in the English department at the University of Caen.

She works on eighteenth-century literature and the condition of women. She has
published Voix de femmes: roman feminin et condition feminine de Mary
Wollstonecraft aMary Shelley (Paris, 1997).
SEVERINE LANCIA is completing a doctoral thesis on the social status of late

Georgian actresses.
GUYONNE LEDUC is professor of English literature at the Universite Charles de

Gaulle in Lille. She has published L 'Education des Anglaises au XVIIIe siecle: la
conception de Henry Fielding (Paris, 1999) and edited L 'Education des femmes en
Europe et en Amerique du nord de la Renaissance a 1848 (Paris, 1997).
GILLY LEHMANN is a professor in the English department at the University of

Franche-Comte in Besan~on. She is the author of several articles, in English and in
French, on seventeenth and eighteenth-century cookbooks and cookery. She is a
contributor to the New DNB and to the Oxford Companion to Food. Her most recent
publication is The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in
Eighteenth-Century Britain (Prospect Books, 2003).
SoPHIE LoussouARN is a lecturer in the English department at the Universite de

Picardie in Ami ens. She works on the education of women and on manners in the
Georgian age.
xii The Invisible Woman
MARION MARCEAU is a lecturer in the English department at the Universite of

Paris IX-Dauphine. She has written a thesis on the life and work of the late
eighteenth-century novelists Sophia and Harriet Lee.
CECILE REvAUGER is professor of British cultural history at the Universite Michel de

Montaigne in Bordeaux. She works on the history of freemasonry and the history of
ideas. She has published Le Fait Ma9onnique au XVIIJe siecle en Grande-Bretagne
et aux Etats-Unis (Paris, 1990) and edited Pauvrete et assistance en Grande-
Bretagne, 1688-1834 (Aix-en-Provence, 1999).
MARIE-CLAIRE RoUYER-DANEY is professor of English at the Universite Michel de

Montaigne in Bordeaux. She is a specialist of the Georgian stage and also works in
women's studies.
DEBORAH SIMONTON teaches at the University of Aberdeen. Her recent publications

include Gendering Scottish History (Glasgow, 1999) and A History of Women:S
Work, 1700 to the Present (London, 1998).
ANGELA J. SMALLWOOD is a senior lecturer in English literature at the University of

Nottingham and was awarded a British Academy Readership to launch her research
into eighteenth-century women playwrights. Her recent publications include:
'Women and Theatre' in V. Jones (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain 1700-IBOO
(Cambridge, 2000) and Plays ofElizabeth lnchbald, Vol. 6 of D. Hughes (gen. ed.),
Eighteenth-Century Women Playwrights, (London, 2001 ).
MARIE-HELENE THEVENOT-TOTEMS is professor of Scottish Studies at the Sorbonne

(Universite Paris IV). She has collaborated in creating the CD-ROM 'Georgian
Cities' (Paris, 2000) with a research team from the Sorbonne. She is the author of
La decouverte de l 'Ecosse du XVIIJe siecle a travers les recits des voyageurs
britanniques (Paris, 1990, 2 vols) and she has published many articles on eighteenth
century Scota1nd.
Introduction
I. Baudino, J. Carre and C. Revauger
Since Alice Clark's pioneering study 1 most social historians writing about working
women in pre-nineteenth-century Britain have tried to throw light on fairly large
occupational groups of working women, such as factory workers2 or domestic
servants,3 often in an attempt to reach some conclusive evidence as to the evolution
of their general standards ofliving. 4 Another approach has led feminist historians to
look for the major reason for working women's exploitation: was it class? was it
gender?5 Without ignoring these crucial questions, the present book, written by
cultural historians, focuses on the status of small, sometimes even tiny groups of
women holding fairly marginal positions in the labour market, and often employed
on an irregular basis. Women like housekeepers, hospital nurses, camp followers,
governesses, actresses, musicians, to take some of the cases examined here, generally
did not have stable, permanent employments. Even female tradesmen, sometimes
succeeding a husband or brother, often worked only for a short period of their lives.
The temporary, unreliable character of such work can of course be partly related to
the changing needs of women at different periods of their lives, but it also has a lot
to do with the status of women's work at the time.
One major field of enquiry in this book is therefore the degree of recognition of
women's skills in Georgian society. Many jobs occupied by women were related to
domestic skills, and for this reason most employers refused to confer them a high
status on the labour market. It has often been remarked by historians that domestic
Alice Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge,
1919).
2 Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (London:
Routledge, 1930); Deborah Valenze, The First Industrial Woman (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995).
3 Jean Hecht, The Domestic Servant Class in Eighteenth-Century England (London:
Routledge, 1956); Bridget Hill, Servants: English Domestics in the Eighteenth Century
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
4 Bridget Hill, Women, Work and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England, 2nd. ed.
(Montreal & Kingston: MeGill-Queen's University Press, 1994); Pamela Sharpe,
Adapting to Capitalism: Working Women in the English Economy, 1700-1850 (London:
Macmillan, 1996).
5 For a presentation of the controversy over the relative importance of sex oppression and
class oppression, see chapters 2 and 3, respectively by Bridget Hill and Judith Bennett,
in Pamela Sharpe ed., Womens Work: The English Experience 1650-1914 (London:
Arnold, 1998).
2 The Invisible Woman
work was not recognized as 'real' work. 6 And even salaried work outside the home
was far from being primarily considered in terms of skill. For example a servant's
place was seen above all as the proper station for a poor girl, rather than as a proper
job, or even a source of income. In fact, many types of female employment were
hardly perceived as 'work' at all: governesses' work was mostly seen as an
extension of maternal duties; and actresses' performances as a morally suspect
mixture of art and exhibitionism. These two examples, examined in the present
book, alert us to the necessity of constantly relating women's work, from the most
menial to the most 'artistic', from the hearth to the stage, to the construction of
femininity in the eighteenth century. The notion that a woman might have a profession
(and the corresponding status and income) was almost unthinkable, as Mary
Wollstonecraft complained in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792):
How many women thus waste away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as
physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own
industry, instead of hanging their heads ... 7
And yet, some of the occupations examined here, such as those of housekeepers in
the houses of the gentry, matrons in the new infirmaries, businesswomen in various
trades, involved highly skilled supervisory tasks. As for the actresses and musicians
discussed in the third part of this book, they had undergone serious training and
often achieved considerable professional competence. One major contention of this
book, then, is that the contemporary perception of the range of women's
employments did not correspond to what it really was: far from being employed
exclusively in domestic and pseudo-domestic tasks, working women were also
found (or should we say hidden away?) in supervisory and professional jobs.
This contention has led us to deal with a second major issue, that of the
representation of women's work. It is not just the relative lack of archival sources on
women's work that invites the cultural historian to use indirect evidence as found in
the press, in essays, even in plays and pictures. As shown by Pierre Dubois, in the
case of musicians, and Isabelle Baudino, in the case of street-sellers, the texts and
images showing women at work have an ideological significance. They tend to
ignore women's skills and their actual conditions of work, in order to concentrate on
their supposedly 'natural' abilities, which often boil down to sexual characteristics.
The reality of women's work was then often denied or distorted in the name of a
postulated essence of woman. For example, as soon as a woman was 'in the public
eye', either on stage, or in a picture, the question of her identity was implicitly raised.
Why should she be offered for public inspection, if her proper place was the seclusion
of domesticity? The only possible answer was: as an object of (male) desire. Yet
when she was engaged in paid work, a woman could no longer be exclusively
considered a sexual object. And then her identity as a worker tended to become
6 See for example Caroline Davidson, A Woman s Work is never Done: A History of
Housework, 1650-1850 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1982).
7 Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication ofthe Rights of Woman [1792] (Oxford: Oxford U.P.,
1999) 230.
Introduction 3
invisible, or more accurately unrepresentable. Thus it was only in virtue of their

picturesqueness that working women were included in George Walker's Costumes of
Yorkshire (1814 ). This relative invisibility of the Georgian working woman should
precisely invite us to reconsider the codes of representation as historical evidence.
The reader will fmd here case-studies of women's work in three different
environments: first middle- and upper-class households, secondly male-dominated
communities and institutions, and fmally the world of the arts. The first part of the
book features women working and ladies living in genteel households. They were
inevitably involved in class relationships, yet what the present contributors
concentrate on is status rather than class, trying to identify the distinctions between
menial and supervisory tasks, between skills and accomplishments, between
dependent and autonomous work. It is shown here that the eighteenth century saw a
general downgrading of domestic work, accompanied by a new distribution of roles
among the women in the household. Thus, in the first chapter, Gilly Lehmann
explores the domestic background of the new female gentility: while the fashionable
lady increasingly despised domestic management, this task was now taken up by the
new class of professional housekeepers. This increasing estrangement of the genteel
woman from domestic tasks is further explored by Marie-Claire Rouyer-Daney in
chapter 2 where she examines the picture of housekeeping provided by magazines for
middle-class women from the 1750s. Their pages reflected an uneasiness with the
new fashionable ideal of elegant idleness that Wollstonecraft so pungently criticized
in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman. At the same time, in a context of
moralization of conjugal life, the magazines recommended a sublimated form of
domestic work, as they praised the merits of certain 'accomplishments' like
needlework and embroidery. Christine Rivet, however, warns us in chapter 3 against
systematically identifying needlework as a symbol of women's alienation. Using
literary sources, she shows how needlework, after all, could be perceived as a useful
skill in the context of charitable work, and even Gust like hack-writing!) as a humble
job providing some modest independence to single women. The imaginary world of
a novel thus allows us to explode the stereotype of useless needlework, and to see
how such typically domestic work may be related to the world outside the home. The
fourth chapter, by Sophie Loussouarn, takes the reader into the highly conservative
atmosphere of royal and aristocratic mansions. In the royal family, the late
eighteenth-century governesses were still comparable to the waiting gentlewomen of
the previous century, and were indeed part of the establishment. But in aristocratic
country-houses, on the contrary, governesses belonging to a much humbler social
sphere increasingly took over the teaching formerly performed by the lady of the
house, in striking parallel with the emergence of the housekeeper as professional
domestic manager.
The second part of the book begins by three chapters illustrating the relentless
exploitation of working women in various environments that can be described as
'male strongholds', and where women's work was restricted to domestic, or rather
pseudo-domestic, drudgery. Life in Scottish clans, in the army, in the infirmaries,
involved working women in some sort of public life in the sense that they daily met
people outside their immediate family circle. Yet for them the frontier between the
'sphere' of domesticity and the outside world was far from clear. Our case-studies
suggest that working outside the conjugal household did not necessarily foster
autonomy and independence. The curiously parallel cases of the slave-like Highland
wives, explored by Marie-Helene Thevenot-Totems, and of women camp-followers,
studied by Guyonne Leduc, provide examples of the inability of women to secure
either respect or status in the more archaic male-dominated milieus. For example
women working in the army often tended to be considered as prostitutes. Yet camp-
followers were in fact mainly housekeepers, sutlers, nurses, laundresses, cooks (and
even occasionally soldiers). The extreme case of the Highlands gender structure
interestingly contrasts male idleness with female industry, and the reader will note
the shocked response of enlightened travellers faced with what was for them an
exotic Highlands culture, and connecting economic backwardness with archaic
gender roles. In the case of hospital nurses, studied by Jacques Carre, one finds a
less unusual but more sophisticated form of female exploitation by males. Nurses
were not just the general drudges of the new Georgian 'infirmaries'. They were also
constantly reminded of their ignorance by the medical men who dominated these
charitable but science-driven institutions. They thus found themselves in an
impossible situation, being reproached with irresponsibility while they were refused
any kind of training before the nursing reforms of the mid-Victorian age.
The world of urban commerce was also dominated by men, in particular through
guilds and corporations. But here the prospects were less dark for ambitious women.
Economically dynamic cities could be a favourable environment for business-
minded women. As Debbie Simonton shows in the case of commercial Aberdeen, a
small percentage of women, often widows or single women, managed to become
independent by setting up their own small businesses, especially in trades seen as
feminine (such as millinery, mantua-making, lace-making, etc.). Some of these
women might enter into female partnerships, take apprentices, even join guilds, and
sometimes secure an enviable economic position and social status. Simonton's
chapter thus confirms the fmdings of Hannah Barker about women's involvement in
the urban printing trade: 'Neither technological innovation nor the development of
"separate spheres" ideology appear to have made women less likely to play active
roles in heading businesses.' 8
The last, and most impregnable male stronghold examined here is freemasonry.
In the days of 'operative' masonry, a few women, surprisingly, had been admitted
into the stonemasons' guilds of the seventeenth century. But when, at the beginning
of the next century, the masonic lodges ceased to be actual working units and
became for the most part social clubs, in keeping with the mainstream men's clubs
and coffee-houses, women had to leave. They were no longer welcome as full
members of the lodge but only encouraged to boost the ego of their husbands by
doing charitable work and thus operating for the good name of the lodge.
The third part of this book is devoted to some of the connections between
women's work and the 'public' world of leisure and culture-first with women
performing in public and secondly with the representations of women at work.
8 Hannah Barker, 'Women, work and the industrial revolution: female involvement in the
English printing trades, c.l700-1840', in H. Barker and E. Chalus, eds., Gender in
Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities (London:
Longman, 1997) 100.
Introduction 5
Severine Lancia and Pierre Dubois illustrate the problematic status of actresses and
professional female musicians in an age when public appearance on stage was often
interpreted as a commercialization of the female body, and was therefore morally
repellent. Public opinion tended to ignore the artistic skills and techniques that had
to be acquired by them, and to consider that what was exhibited was themselves
rather than their art. Singers and actresses provide good examples of the reduction
of women's qualifications to a mere 'essence', a downgrading that tends to deny not
just the skills, but the very existence of women's work.
In the late eighteenth century, however, there was an increasing interplay between
the stage and the town, in the sense that fashionable female behaviour could now be
influenced by plays, as well as the reverse. Lancia demonstrates how new types of
heroines, especially in genteel sentimental comedies, had an influence on the current
behaviour and/or image of some actresses who now began to boast about their genteel
way of life. On the other hand, as Angela Smallwood shows, some of Elizabeth
Inchbald's upper class heroines borrowed some of their vitality from the stock character
of the proactive maidservant, without sacrificing their claim to femininity. Here the
stage seemed to open the way for a possible redefmition of socially acceptable female
behaviour. In real life, some single women even managed to combine several images
of womanhood at the same time: the Lee sisters, as Marion Marceau demonstrates,
managed the feat of simultaneously living several lives at the same time, as school
mistresses, fashionable ladies as well as commercial authors of Gothic fiction. But
would have this been possible outside the sophisticated world of Bath or London?
This part of the book concludes on Isabelle Baudino's study of the relatively
scarce pictures of working women. As she remarks, there was a general
'euphemization' of women's work in the eighteenth century whenever it was
publicly visible or represented by artists. This was clear not just in the 'pretty'
pictures of girls in the engraved series The Cries of London. More generally the
quasi-absence of images of professional women or of women carrying out their own
businesses distorts the reality of their involvement in such activities. Whereas men
were represented as writers, painters or actors, it was not the case for women. There
is no female equivalent of the superb portrait by Hogarth of Garrick as Richard III.
Dubois recounts the telling story of Elizabeth Linley-Sheridan who was painted by
Reynolds in the guise of Saint Cecilia, but only after she had given up her career as
professional singer to become a presumably modest and virtuous wife.
The case of women painters is specially interesting since they appear to have
been reluctant to represent themselves in the practice of their art. Mary Grace's
self-portrait, which she dared to entitle Mrs Grace, paintress is an exception and
even Mary Moser or Angelica Kauffmann, tended to avoid direct references to their
profession or to conceal them behind mythology. 9 Both Moser and Kauffmann,
who were among the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768, were even
excluded from the group portrait of academicians that Johann Zoffany painted at
the beginning of the 1770s. In The Academicians at the Royal Academy, they do
not appear in the flesh, but as mere pictures facing each other on the wall whereas
9 On Mary Grace see Marcia Pointon, Strategies for Showing. Women, Possession and
Representation in English Visual Culture 1665-1800 (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1997).
their male counterparts are taking part in an instructive life class. It has been said
that the painter had deemed it improper to show women looking at nude men. Yet
drawing from life was an essential part of artists' training and by denying women
access to these classes, he was casting doubts on the reality of their presence and
thus of the reality of their academic status.
It is clear that working women were even less appropriate subjects for academic
painters. The strict definition of genres excluded images of industrious people from
history paintings or landscapes and even from portraits. The bias against them is
obvious since practically no illustration of female work inside households can be
found. I 0 William Hogarth was something of a maverick when he painted pictures
such as Heads of Servants or The Shrimp Girl in the 1750s. Indeed work was
generally never represented per se but only appeared in the setting of everyday life
scenes. On the rare occasions when labouring women were represented, they tended
in fact either to be idealized or ridiculed. One can easily figure out that drudging
servants or sellers carrying very heavy quantities of goods were far from
picturesque. Yet, in engravings, they were inevitably translated into elegant figures
or quaint characters. Both idealization and ridicule in the modes of representation
betray the uneasiness and disapproval of eighteenth-century British society towards
all female workers, even when they belonged to the lower classes. Since
helplessness was considered as an intrinsic feminine quality, producing an image
representing women capable of earning their livelihood was almost unthinkable.
The reluctance of artists to picture women's work is typical of the general
blindness of the Georgian elites to women's work. When this work took place within
the domestic circle, it seemed so 'natural' as hardly to raise an eyebrow. Lady
Pennington's An Unfortunate Mother's Advice to her Absent daughters (1761)
clearly stated: 'The management of all domestic affairs is certainly the proper
business ofwoman.'ll But women's salaried work outside the home was a different
matter altogether, as it had a potentially destabilizing, even transgressive effect in
British society. This may be why it, too, was kept invisible.
I0 For a detailed analysis of this situation see more particularly Tim Meldrum, 'London
Domestic Servants from Depositional Evidence 1660-1750: Servant-Employer
Sexuality in the Patriarchal Household', in Tim Hitchcock, Peter King and Pamela
Sharpe' eds., Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies ofthe English Poor, 1640-
1840 (London: Macmillan, 1997) 47-69.
II Lady Pennington, An Unfortunate Mothers Advice to her Absent Daughters [1760]
(Dublin, 1790) 77.
PART I
WOMEN IN THE
DOMESTIC SPHERE
Chapter 1
The Birth of a New Profession:

The Housekeeper and her Status in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Gilly Lehmann
Although there have now been several studies of eighteenth-century servants since
Hecht's book, The Domestic Servant Class, appeared in 1956, most have enlarged
our knowledge by focusing on servants in general, with particular emphasis on
women and on service in houses below the level of the aristocracy, whether in the
analysis of the parish settlement examinations at St Martin's-in-the-Fields by D. A.
Kent (1989), 1 which attempted to make more visible the unseen body of maid-
servants working for the urban middle class, or more recently in Bridget Hill's book,
Servants ( 1996), which explores lesser-known aspects of domestic service among the
gentry and professional class, such as the widespread use of kin as servants, or the
relationship between master and servant. The aim of the present study is to focus on
a specific job, that of the housekeeper, who was at the top of the female domestic
hierarchy, in order to examine the questions of job status, wages, and why women
servants, even the most highly placed, were apparently so under-valued, in terms
both of image and rewards. In order to try to answer these questions, it is necessary
to begin by looking at how the job developed, and who did it; both of these problems
are rather more complicated than one might imagine.
Surprisingly, the use of the word 'housekeeper' to refer to a woman in charge of
supervising the household, is not attested before the eighteenth century: the
references given by the OED (Compact Edition, 1991) date from 1724 and 1766. And
yet the activity of 'housekeeping' and thus the word 'housekeeper' to designate the
person who performs such an activity date back much further. The earliest meaning
of the fust word refers to the maintenance of a house, and thus a 'housekeeper' in the
fifteenth century was simply a householder; by the sixteenth century the first word
was also being used (with a qualifying adjective) to mean keeping a good table, and
the 'good housekeeper' was one who kept open house and offered hospitality. The
use of the word 'housekeeper' to mean a person in charge of a house, or indeed an
office, dates from 1632, and the citations given by OED all refer, without exception,
to men. Thus the early modem uses of the word covered a variety of situations, and
D. A. Kent, 'Ubiquitous but Invisible: Female Domestic Servants in Mid-Eighteenth

Century London', History Workshop 28 (Autumn 1989): 111-128.
it is often difficult to disentangle the precise meaning in texts dating from before the
nineteenth century. By the time the word took on its modem meaning it had acquired
the idea of domestic management, but was also linked to the public face a household
presented to the world as a dispenser of hospitality. As we shall see, these apparently
arcane considerations do have a bearing on the development of what seems to have
been a relatively new profession in the eighteenth century.
How did an upper-class household manage its domestic affairs before the arrival
of the housekeeper? The standard answer to this question has traditionally looked at
the aristocratic model of the household. Before domestic service became feminized
(and exactly when this took place is a matter of debate, with some historians situating
it at the beginning of the nineteenth century, others proposing a late seventeenth-
century take-off point2), household management in the great houses was shared
among various male servants, such as the steward, the acater, and the clerk of the
kitchen; some of the duties which were later to become part of the housekeeper's role
were carried out by the mistress of the household herself. Until the seventeenth
century, virtually all the servants in an aristocratic household were men, apart from the
nurses and laundrymaids. The only other women were the lady of the house and her
daughters, and the waiting-gentlewomen who acted as companions and upper servants
to the ladies of the family. Not until the middle of the seventeenth century did this
almost exclusively male household begin to accommodate more women, and thus not
until this period did housekeepers begin to appear. This is the picture presented by
most commentators who have focused on the upper classes. 3 But this model
conveniently ignores what was going on lower down the social scale, and as a result
has presented over-simplified conclusions about female involvement in the day-to-day
running of the upper-class household. Even in Tudor times, mistresses and female
upper servants performed at least some of the tasks which we now associate with the
housekeeper, the degree of involvement varying according to the social status of the
household. A few examples from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries will
demonstrate the variety of situations even amongst the upper classes.
It was only in the very grandest houses that the all-male domestic establishment
was the norm. Here, the lady of the house was not involved in any managerial role,
although she and her waiting-gentlewomen shared the prestigious household tasks
of preparing medicines and sweetmeats. These upper servants were drawn from the
2 Evidence for a nineteenth-century date is set out in Leonore Davidoff and Catherine
Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and women of the English middle class, 1780-1850
(London: Hutchinson, 1987), 388-95; for a late seventeenth-century date, with signs of
increased specialization in women's tasks, in Peter Earle, The Making of the English
Middle Class (1989; London: Methuen, 1991 ), 218-20. For a discussion of the question,
see Bridget Hill, Servants (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 35-43.
3 See, for instance, Girouard, Life in the English Country House (1978; Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1980), 27-8, 82-83, 142; Dorothy Marshall, The English Domestic Servant in
History ([London]: George Philip/Historical Association, 1949), 6-7. See also the
comment by C. Anne Wilson on the housekeeper's post being 'relatively new' in the
later seventeenth century, in her essay on 'Stillhouses and Stillrooms', in The Country
House Kitchen, 1650-1900, ed. Pamela A. Sambrook and Peter Brears (1996; Stroud:
Sutton/National Trust, 1997), 140.
The Birth of a New Profession 11
ranks of respectable society, and service in a grand household was a way to learn
household skills, and to make useful contacts and perhaps an advantageous
marriage. 4 Early in the seventeenth century, Lady Anne Clifford (1590-1676)
recorded in her diary that she and her maids shared such domestic activities as
gathering fruit, making sweetmeats, and even on one occasion tossing pancakes at
Candlemas. 5 This was during her first marriage, when she lived at Knole from 1608
to 1619; although Lady Anne kept a record of her own expenditure, mostly on
rewards to messengers, she had no need to trouble herself with the running of the
great house: the 1613 list of the household shows that there was a steward, an auditor,
and two clerks of the kitchen. The list records the presence of six gentlewomen, who
dined at the 'parlour table', but the only other women servants worked in the nursery
or the laundry, with the addition of a dairymaid. 6 At the end of her life, in 167 6, Lady
Anne recorded that one of her waiting-gentlewomen, Mrs Frances Pate, made
preserves and sweetmeats for her; in other words, the servant had taken over a task
which was normally shared by the lady and her gentry companions.? In such grand
establishments, there was no need for a housekeeper, but the fact that the mistress and
her waiting-gentlewomen were associated in some domestic activities is a significant
pointer to later developments. Another point is that these waiting-gentlewomen were
much more likely to be literate than the lower servants, and would therefore be in a
position to help the mistress with such tasks as keeping her private accounts, copying
receipts, and transmitting written instructions to the other servants.
Even very slightly lower down the social scale, however, there are signs of a
much greater female presence. One Tudor lady who was an expert in medicine,
Lady Grace Mildmay (1552-1620), prepared remedies herself, and when she was
away from home, sent precise instructions to her maid Bess, her 'housekeeper',
about making them; 8 quite what Lady Mildmay meant by the term is uncertain. It is
impossible to determine whether Bess was the housekeeper in our sense of the term,
or simply a personal maid who stayed at home and thus 'kept the house'. Another,
less ambiguous, Tudor reference to the 'housekeeper' comes from the accounts of
4 One example of a woman learning medical skills is the famous Bess of Hardwick
(? 1527 -1608), who met her first husband when they were both attached to the household
of Lady Zouch (Bess apparently shared in the task of nursing her future husband
through an illness), and later, as a young widow of respectable parentage but little
fortune, joined the household of the Marchioness of Dorset in 1545, where she met her
second husband, Sir William Cavendish, whom she married in 1547. Towards the end
of her life, Bess employed a housekeeper, Ellen Steward, at Chatsworth, while she
herself resided at Hardwick, where the household was in the hands of a steward and a
clerk comptroller. See David N. Durant, Bess ofHardwick (1977; London: Peter Owen,
1999), 1-12, 183.
5 See D. 1. H. Clifford (ed.), The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford (Stroud: Alan Sutton,
1990), 52, 57, 62, 68.
6 The list is reproduced in V. Sackville-West (ed.), The Diary of Lady Anne Clifford
(London: Heinemann, 1923), lvii-lxi.
7 See Clifford (1990), 255,261.
8 See Linda Pollock, With Faith and Physic: the life ofa Tudor gentlewoman, Lady Grace
Mildmay (London: Collins & Brown, 1993), 140-141.
Sir William Petre at lngatestone: in 1550 the quarterly wage lists show that although
there was a male house-steward, acater and cook, there was also a housekeeper,
Mistress Percy, as well as the more usual nursemaid, plus four other maids. The
housekeeper received the same wages, 1Os. a quarter, as the butler and the cook
(while the house-steward and the acater received no wages but held farms at low
rents), 9 and the courtesy title in the wage lists indicates that she was on a par with
the two waiting-gentlewomen who were employed in 1554, when Petre's household
had grown from 17 to 60 servants.
At a lower level of society again, even the gentlewoman who had a number of
servants was her own housekeeper. The diary of Lady Margaret Hoby (1571-1633)
for the years 1599-1605 shows her spending her days in private devotions, reading,
sewing, and ordering her household. This last activity was mostly supervisory, and
included keeping an eye on outdoor work on the estate, as well as on the work of
the indoor servants. Within doors, she gave orders to the servants, paid bills and kept
the accounts, but she also made remedies, preserves and sweetmeats herself,
although she did not normally cook food for dinner. There was a big difference in
the status of kitchen and still-room, the latter being the domain of the mistress of the
house, where she prepared distilled waters and preserves and sweetmeats. 1o The
other important part of her role as mistress of the house was to doctor neighbours
and servants: dressing sores and wounds was a regular occurrence. 11 The daughter
of a prosperous Yorkshire landowner, she had been trained in these activities by
service in the household ofthe Countess of Huntingdon. Lady Hoby's diary shows
the vast extent of the skills involved in 'housekeeping', at a time when the notion of
hospitality still implied various services to the local community: feeding and
sometimes housing casual guests, putting on a show of largesse for visiting
dignitaries, offering medical assistance to dependants and neighbours. 12 Here, the
9 See F. G. Emmison, Tudor Secretary: Sir William Petre at Court and Home (London:
Longman, 1961), 151-152.
10 The association of remedies and sweetmeats may seem surprising, but it must be
remembered that sugar was originally used medicinally. Seventeenth and early
eighteenth-century still-rooms and still-houses contained equipment for both distilling
and making dishes for the banquet course; one example of this is the 1677 inventory of
the still-house at Ham House, which contained stills, preserving-pans, and an oven, as
well as a variety of other equipment; the black and white marble flooring shows that this
was the domain of the lady of the house, and the doorway was situated to enable her to
reach the still-house without passing through the servants' quarters. See C. Anne Wilson,
'Stillhouses and Stillrooms', in The Country House Kitchen, 1650-1900, ed. Pamela A.
Sambrook and Peter Brears (1996, Stroud: Sutton/National Trust, 1997), 138-140.
Another example is found in the 1710 inventory ofDyrham Park, where the still-room
contained a limbeck and scales and weights for measuring tiny quantities, but also a
copper preserving-pan, biscuit pans (indicating the presence of an oven), and fifty glasses
for sweetmeats and creams. See Christina Hardyment, Home Comfort (London:
Viking/National Trust, 1992), 42.
11 See Dorothy M. Meads ( ed. ), The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 1599-1605 (London:
Routledge, 1930), passim.
12 For a discussion of the implications of hospitality, particularly for women, see Felicity
Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), especially
pp. 1-22, 178-183.
mistress made remedies and preserves herself; these skills were more specialized
than general cookery, and required precise measuring of expensive ingredients as
well as the ability to read a receipt. Lady Hoby's personal maid, Annie France, was
illiterate, and so it is not surprising to fmd Lady Hoby sewing with her maids, but
preserving alone.
Such examples are easy to find, and give a picture of increasing involvement in
domestic management and in certain tasks on the part of the mistress of a household
and her women servants as soon as one goes even a little down the social scale, and
it seems clear that some households did employ housekeepers well before the
seventeenth century. Even in the seventeenth century, however, they were probably
not employed in very great numbers: it is significant that when the justices of
Buckinghamshire set wages at the Easter sessions in 1688, they fixed the wages of
cook-maids and dairy-maids at £2 lOs. a year, and those of other maid servants at
£2; no mention was made of housekeepers. 13 But after the Restoration, the
housekeeper does become more obviously visible. One household whose staff can
be followed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that of the Brownlows of
Belton, shows the shift to more women servants in the seventeenth century. Whereas
the 1617 accounts and documents from the 1660s and 1670s show that men still
dominated in the household (in 1679 there were thirteen men and four women), and
that the steward and cook were both men, by 1691 there was a housekeeper and a
woman cook. 14 That housekeeping was just beginning to be a recognized job is
shown by the various books of advice to women written by Hannah Woolley
(c. 1622-after 1674) and others. Woolley herself served a 'Noble Lady' as what
would in modem parlance be called her 'personal assistant', and it was from this
employer, who recognized her talent and bought her books, as well as from her
family, that she picked up the lore she then transmitted to others through her books.
In 1670, in the second part of The Queen-like Closet, Woolley gives advice to
several categories of servant: the cook, the cook-maid, the butler, the carver, and the
servants, male or female, who wait at table; these pages are followed by directions
to the 'Gentlewomen who have the Charge of the Sweet-Meats, and such like
Repasts' . 15 The directions explain how to set out the banquet (i.e. dessert) course in
summer and winter, and Woolley explains that she gives these instructions in order
to help gentlewomen who are forced to become servants because of family
impoverishment due to 'the late Calamities, viz. the late Wars, Plague, and Fire' .16
Three years later, a book which bears Woolley's name on the title-page (but which
was, in fact, a compilation based on her work with additional material lifted from a
variety of sourcesl7), The Gentlewomans Companion, a guide for the upwardly and
13 See G. E. Fussell and K. R. Fussell, The English Countrywoman (London: Melrose,

1953), 95.
14 See Elizabeth Cust, Records of the Cust F amity, Series 2: 'The Brownlows of Belton
1550-1779' (London: Mitchell Hughes & Clarke, 1909), 40, 61, 77, 97, 169.
15 Woolley, The Queen-like Closet (London: R. Lowndes, 1670), 370-383.
16 Woolley (1670), 378-379.
17 For a discussion of the authorship of this book, see Elaine Hobby, Virtue of Necessity
(Ann Arbor, Michigan UP, 1989), 172-174. Woolley herself rejected the book, although
she did say that it was based on her own writing. See below, n. 21.
downwardly mobile, gives directions to a wider range of lower servants (the

positions are those of chamber-maid, nursery-maid, cook-maid and under-cook-
maid, dairy-maid, laundry-maid, house-maid and scullery-maid), 18 and suggests a
further opening for gentlewomen, who are advised of the skills required to take up
positions either as a waiting-gentlewoman, or as a housekeeper. There is some
overlap in the requirements for the two jobs: candidates for both must have a good
knowledge of preserving, but whereas the waiting-gentlewoman is expected also to
dress well, to write good English, to be able to do basic arithmetic, and to carve well,
the housekeeper must be 'grave and solid', 'able to govern a Family', skilled in
distilling and making 'spoon-meats' (in other words, foods and medicines for the
sick), purchasing supplies, and generally supervising the household.l9
The advice and even the receipts in this book were taken up later in the
anonymous handbook for servants, The Compleat Servant-Maid (1677), which was
compiled from the manual attributed to Woolley; this later book was still being
reprinted in 1729, suggesting that the comments published in 1673 remained valid
well into the eighteenth century. What is obvious here is that the mistress's role is
being divided between these two servants, the waiting-gentlewoman taking on the
more 'public' aspects, the housekeeper acting behind the scenes. The Gentlewomans
Companion deplores the lack of education given to girls of good birth, who, when
reduced to seeking paid employment, are often forced into inferior positions, having
to become mere chamber-maids, instead of taking on the more honourable positions
which would enable them to maintain status. The advantages of the two good jobs
are enumerated: proximity to their employer, sitting at their mistress's table for
meals, being treated with respect by the rest of the servants, wearing good clothes
and earning a 'considerable sallary'. 20 This rosy picture is followed by dire
warnings about the fate of unqualified girls, who are 'only fit companions for
Grooms and Footboys'.
Woolley's own career, recounted in a somewhat boastful autobiography which
appeared in the supplement added to The Queen-like Closet from the third edition
of 1675 (but which had already appeared in greatly embellished form in The
Gentlewomans Companion21 ), shows her playing parts of both these roles during
her years of service from the age of seventeen with the 'Noble Lady' who
encouraged her to exercise her skills, particularly in medicine; clearly, Woolley was
a valued servant who was on intimate terms with her employer. The more detailed
version of Woolley's life, which must be regarded with suspicion since it differs
18 The Gentlewomans Companion (London: A. Maxwell for Dorman Newman, 1673),

207-217.
19 The Gentlewomans Companion (1673), 205-206.
20 The Gentlewomans Companion (1673), 204.
21 See The Gentlewomans Companion (1673), 10-14, and The Queen-like Closet (ed. 5,
London, 1684), supplement pp. 8-12. The latter version is the authentic one; later in the
supplement, Woolley complains bitterly that Dorman Newman, the publisher of the first
edition of The Gentlewomans Companion, had employed another author to transform
her book, The Ladies Guide, which she had written 'about Eight years or more since'
(1684: 93), in other words around 1665-6. The spurious version contains far more detail.
from her 'official' version, gives an even more interesting view of the servant as
privileged companion: according to this version, one employer taught her
preserving and cookery, and then from another lady she acquired such
accomplishments as writing, reading aloud, carving, and the rudiments of medicine;
by the time she left this lady, after seven years, Woolley had risen from governess
to become her lady's 'Woman, her Stewardess and her Scribe or Secretary'.
Even though we must consider this version of her life to be fiction, showing an
upper servant combining the skills and the roles of both waiting-gentlewoman and
housekeeper, and mastering an impossible range of accomplishments, it is
interesting to note that the author of this improved version of Woolley's career does
not consider the term 'housekeeper' adequate for such a servant: this job-title is
eschewed in favour of a feminized version of that of the steward, the highest-
ranking man-servant in the aristocratic household. In spite of the book's propaganda
about the prestige of the two jobs open to well-qualified gentlewomen, the supposed
author does not fmd the title of her lady's 'woman', or indeed 'housekeeper',
adequate for herself. This is a clear sign that the shift towards employing women
rather than men (seen in the proliferation of specific job descriptions in The
Gentlewomans Companion) meant lower wages and lower status, and soon the
vicious circle of diminishing returns would contribute to the devaluation of
household skills, whether practised by women servants or the mistress herself.
At the end of the seventeenth century, however, the active mistress was still the
norm in all households below the very greatest. In spite of the instructions to
servants capable of replacing the mistress in every aspect of her supervisory role,
there is nothing in the books by Woolley and her imitators to suggest that a lady
could abandon her domestic cares, and Woolley's account of her own prowess
shows that it was actively fostered by aristocratic employers. The instructions to the
ladies in all these books exhort them to acquire the same skills as their upper-class
employees, in order to guide rather than be guided by their servants; it is, however,
noteworthy that by 1673 the author feels obliged to stress that cookery is not
'dishonourable' .22 Attitudes to domestic skills were changing, and while the still-
room activities of preserving and distilling kept their prestige into the early years of
the eighteenth century, partly because of the cost of the raw ingredients and of the
equipment, cookery was already becoming an activity with which a lady could not
be familiar without loss of status. In 1694 a book of advice to ladies pointed out that
they should not meddle in cookery, because 'it is not very pleasing to their Maids,
whose proper Province it is' .23 Soon, other household skills would go the same way.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, there was a torrent of complaint from
the moralists that ladies had become idle, frivolous creatures who disdained all
household activities; as one commentator put it in 1722:
The great Fatigue, or rather Slavery, of House-keeping[ ... ] is but too much neglected by
Ladies of Fashion, as [ ... ]too mean and insignificant for Persons of their Quality; and
22 The Gentlewomans Companion (1673), 112. See also an earlier book by Woolley, The
Cooks Guide (London, 1664), dedication to Mary Wroth.
23 The Ladies Dictionary (London, 1694), 420.
rather fit for Women of inferior Rank and Condition, as Farmers Wives, &c. or, at best,
is most proper for their Housekeepers; when at the same time this is only an Excuse for
their Laziness.24
Of course, such complaints are as much evidence of male anxieties, linked to the
eighteenth-century terror of the debilitating effects of the rise of'luxury' on the moral
and economic health of the nation, as of what was really happening amongst upper-
class women, but there can be no doubt that many women would have liked to retire
from active household involvement, even though reality usually conspired to prevent
this. After all, as Peter Earle points out when discussing the jobs open to women,
'neither men nor women worked in 1700 if they did not have to' ,25 and it must be
remembered that household tasks were far more arduous then than today, a point
developed at some length by Caroline Davidson in her history of housework
(A Woman s Work Is Never Done, 1982). The fact that so many women were unable
to leave household tasks to a body of efficient and disciplined servants did not
necessarily diminish their desire to do so, even though such a domestic ideal was
virtually unattainable. Study after study from Hecht onwards has shown that servants
were a volatile group, liable to flit from one job to another, constituting a 'supremely
unreliable workforce' .26 In spite of the practical difficulties, active participation in
household tasks was increasingly seen as demeaning as the century wore on, and
even Amanda Vickery, who makes a vigorous case for the 'status and satisfaction to
be drawn from genteel housekeeping', points out that household management was
supposed to be invisible, with the lady assiduously concealing all signs of her own
industry.2 7 This does not argue for any very positive status attached to housekeeping:
while men might be lost without the services of their wives or housekeepers, it was
the negative consequences of the absence of such a useful person which received
comment rather than the affirmative value of services actually rendered.
There is a substantial body of evidence to show that the lady who was an active
housekeeper was seen as rather ridiculous in the eighteenth century, and inevitably this
negative image rubbed off on the upper servant. Conduct books and other publications
aimed at ladies warned them of the dangers of displaying their housekeeping skills: as
Eliza Haywood put it in the Female Spectator, a lady of condition who spent too much
time on household matters might acquire the reputation of a 'notable house-wife, but
not of a woman offme taste' .28 Novels reinforced the message: Pamela, the eponymous
heroine of Richardson's novel (and it must be noted that the domestic world here is very
old-fashioned), proposes that after marriage she will continue to assist the housekeeper,
but once married she does no such thing; Tabitha Bramble, in Smollett's Humphry
Clinker, is ridiculed for being a hands-on housewife of the old school, worrying about
24 John Essex, The Young Ladies Conduct (London, 1722), xxxiv-xxxv.

25 Earle, 'The Female Labour Market in London in the late seventeenth and early eigh-
teenth centuries', Economic History Review Series 2, 42,3 (1989): 342.
26 This phrase is taken from Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman s Daughter (New Haven
and London: Yale UP, 1998), 135.
27 Vickery (1998), 130, 131.
28 [Eliza Haywood], The Female Spectator (1744-46; London, 1748): vol. III, 154.
the productivity ofher daicy. 29 Even the bunch of keys at a lady's (or, one might add,
housekeeper's) waist, which Amanda Vickery sees as a badge of 'female domestic
authority', an honourable symbol of her 'unproductive' but none the less necessary
household activity,3° acquired very negative connotations: when the anonymous author
of a tract denouncing the power of the upper servants over the lower wanted to fmd a
suitably infamous badge of office for the housekeeper, he proposed 'a Bunch of Keys
[ ... ] fastened to her Neck, like a Solitair, with a black Velvet Collar', and in his
proposals for reform, he announced that the good housekeeper, who acted fairly
towards the other servants, would be excused 'from her sollitair ofKeys'. 31 While it
might be objected that what was infamous for the lady was not so for the upper servant,
this last example points to a degree of conflation, at least in situations where the upper
servant replaced the mistress.
The poor image ofhousekeeping and thus of housekeepers in the eighteenth century
is due to a host of interconnected factors which go beyond the diminishing value of
traditional housewifely skills amongst the upper classes. The rise of the housekeeper
coincides with the retreat of the mistress in the grandest homes, but it also coincides
with a shift in the status of upper servants in general, male and female, as the tradition
of gentry service in aristocratic households withered. Increasingly, the men employed
in great houses were no longer drawn from the gentry but from lower down the social
scale, from the ranks of tenant farmers or urban professionals, and this contributed to
diminish the status of servants as a whole. Women servants too were less recruited from
the gentry than from their social inferiors. This, combined with the desire of those who
aspired to join 'polite society' to distance themselves from the vulgar, was a major
factor in the devaluation of women servants. While in the seventeenth century the
aristocratic mistress and her gentlewomen were associated in many household
activities, the breakdown of this model in the eighteenth century, with a transfer of
responsibilities to the servant, could not but diminish the status of the person who now
performed the role which had once been a badge of social standing.
The prestige associated with these activities, no matter who performed them,
was also in decline, and not simply because of the image of the ideal lady as a
creature of leisure. Changing tastes in food also played an important part in this loss
of status. There is plenty of contemporary comment to show that the seventeenth-
century gentlewoman's skill in preparing sweetmeats and remedies was widely
appreciated; her ability to put on a magnificent banquet-course and to help the sick
conferred prestige and, as Felicity Heal points out, gave her a gratifying role to
play. 32 Seventeenth-century printed cookery books are full of receipts such as
'Sweet-meats of my Lady Windebanks', or 'The Lady Giffords cordial Water' ,33
29 For other examples from novels and periodicals, see Bridget Hill, Women, Work, and
Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 123-124.
30 Vickery (1998), 135.
31 A Treatise on the Use and Abuse ofthe Second[. .. } Table (London, [c. 1750]), 22, 64-65.
32 Heal (1990), 183.
33 These receipt titles are culled at random from two books: Kenelm Digby, The Closet
[. .. }Opened (1669; reprint, Totnes: Prospect, 1997), 212; A Queens Delight (1655;
facs. reprint, London: Prospect, 1984), 105.
and manuscript collections of receipts contain even more such named items. But in
the eighteenth century French cuisine displaced the banquet course as the vehicle for
a display of luxury, and doctors' prescriptions ousted traditional family remedies,
albeit very much more slowly. By the middle of the century, cookery books were
giving receipts for French made dishes and sauces, and traditional sweetmeats no
longer occupied vast sections of the books; at the same time, cookery writers often
announced that remedies were the province of doctors and they would not meddle
with such matters. 34 These changes cut off two areas of feminine expertise, and
placed both cookery and medicine firmly in the hands of men, simultaneously
contributing to the perception of men's work as being specialized and skilled while
women's work was general and unskilled. (Although women continued to produce
family medicines in the eighteenth century, they now usually sold them to a local
clientele, 35 and the fact of selling rather than giving transformed the honourability
of feminine medicine as it moved away from its connection to hospitality.) Finally,
the movement towards employing women servants rather than men (and most of the
women were employed in the unskilled areas of housework) also depressed the
value placed upon them.
As was noted earlier, exactly when the balance between men and women
servants within the house tipped in favour of women is a contentious point. The
Occupational Census of 1851 showed that the ratio of men to women was 1:8, rising
to 1:11 by 1871, but Gregory King's figures in 1685 show a ratio of 15:13, which
suggests that the balance was already changing at the end of the seventeenth century,
and in 1806 Patrick Colquhoun estimated the ratio as 1:7. From these figures,
Bridget Hill concludes that feminization took place rather earlier than has
sometimes been suggested. 36 Many commentators on domestic service in the past
see the 1780s as an important turning-point, concentrating on the well-documented
consequences of the tax imposed on male servants in 1777 and not repealed until
1937. Employers tried to keep men servants only for the more 'visible' positions,
such as butler or footman, where they would be noticed and thus impress visitors,
with a resulting increase in the number of women servants. 37 But it is probable that
the tax did no more than accelerate an existing trend; what it did do, however, was
to emphasize the prestige gap between men and women within the servant body.
What seems certain is that women were more present, even if they were not as
visible as men: it is often difficult to be sure of the numbers of women employed in
a household because they were invisible. In 1784 Franc;ois de la Rochefoucauld
noted that an English nobleman might have 'thirty or forty menservants', but that
34 The two great best-sellers of the eighteenth century, Hannah Glasse's The Art of
Cookery, Made Plain and Easy (1747), and Elizabeth Raffald's The Experienced
English House-keeper (1769), both make this point about medicine in their addresses to
the reader. They also both give, albeit reluctantly, large numbers of French receipts.
35 One example of this is Elizabeth Shackleton's rabies medicine; see Vickery ( 1998), 154-
155.
36 Hill (1996), 41-43.
37 See Caroline Davidson, A Woman s Work Is Never Done (London: Chatto & Windus,
1982), 180-181.
usually women did the cooking and all the housework, and that 'great numbers of
women' were needed. 38 It is thus reasonably safe to say that women were more
present as servants even in grand houses in the eighteenth century; feminization was
not merely the result of the ever-increasing numbers of maids of all work employed
by single-servant households.
While the increased female presence made housekeepers more prevalent, they
were also more necessary to supervise the enlarged female staff. eighteenth-century
manuals for servants are often very uninformative about the duties of the
housekeeper, preferring to concentrate on moralizing homilies aimed at the lower
servants (Eliza Haywood's Present for a Servant-Maid (1743) is a case in point), but
the books of advice that do mention the housekeeper show that although her job was
much what it had been in the late seventeenth century, her responsibilities were
growing. Anne Barker's description of the housekeeper's work includes
superintending 'all the household affairs', directing the maid-servants, ensuring that
visitors are treated well, purchasing good-quality provisions at reasonable prices,
looking after all the household goods and chattels, recruiting new servants, and
being the first person to rise and the last to go to bed in order to assure herself that
all is safe. With such requirements, it is hardly surprising that the author
recommends a woman 'of age and experience', 'a grave, sober, virtuous person'. 39
What is strikingly different from the manuals of the 1670s is that there is no
indication of the gratifications to be expected by the faithful housekeeper; on the
contrary, she is expected never to leave the house except to go to church, and she is
to have as few visitors as possible. And even with such an exhaustive and exhausting
catalogue, Barker omits some of the duties expected of a housekeeper. Other job
descriptions complete the picture. In 1790 The Ladies' Library states that she should
organize household supplies, recruit servants, deal with tradesmen, plan
entertainments, draw up bills of fare, arrange the dessert, and be familiar with all
aspects of cookery and confectionery; the text also points out that the housekeeper
often combined her job with that of lady's maid or cook, thus increasing the
demands placed upon her. 40 Several cookery books confirm these extras: books
which give advice on forming a bill of fare place the responsibility for this on the
housekeeper;41 books on confectionery say that the housekeeper usually replaced
the confectioner (employed only in the grandest houses), and the instructions in
these books show a new area of expertise, making ices for desserts and
38 A Frenchmans Year in Suffolk, ed. and trans. Norman Scarfe (Suffolk Records Society
30; Woodbridge: Boydell, 1988), 19.
39 Anne Barker, The Complete Servant Maid (London, [c. 1765]) 15-17. In 1773 Anthony
Heasel 's book, The Servants Book of Knowledge, contained much the same
requirements, to judge from the extracts quoted by Hecht. Since these two books were
both printed for J. Cooke, the suspicion must be that they were slightly different
versions of the same book.
40 The Ladies' Library (London, 1790), vol. 2, 61-64.
41 See, for instance, The Modern Method of Regulating and Forming a Table (London,
[c. 1750]) iii; [B. Clermont], The Professed Cook (1767; London, 1769), iv-vi.
entertainments. 42 The nobility and gentry even sent their housekeepers to learn the
latest fashions by watching the experts at work in the famous London firm of Negri
and Gunter. 43 Advertisements for housekeepers show that they were often expected
to supervise the cook, and even to do some of the cooking themselves; an
advertisement in the York Courant in August 1764 stated that although the
housekeeper would have a cook under her, she must 'attend the kitchen' and must
'understand Cookery and making Sweetmeats perfectly well' .44 And all this takes
no account of employers who wanted to combine two jobs: the housekeeper might
well be expected to double up as lady's maid, cook, and even dairy-maid. Finally,
the housekeeper might well be required to show visitors round the house and collect
the admittance fee, 45 an aspect of the commercialization of earlier traditions of
hospitality.
In spite of the vast extent of the skills a housekeeper was expected to possess,
and the responsibilities she was required to assume, her status and her rewards were
not very great. Conventional wisdom sees the housekeeper as one of the upper
servants, since, like the steward, she had her own room and ate at the second table
in houses where such distinctions were made. 46 Swift's satirical Directions to
Servants (1745) links the housekeeper and the steward, and the cook and the butler,
who form pairs to collude in defrauding their employers. 47 In theory, then, she was
on a par with the steward, but her pecuniary rewards do not confirm this, either in
theory or in practice. When John Trusler estimated the wage-bill for a hypothetical
'man of rank and fashion' in 1796, he proposed paying the upper men servants £60
(to the steward) or £50 (and this list includes the butler, two grooms, two footmen,
and the gardener), and the upper women servants £50 (to the cook) or £40 (to the
housekeeper and the lady's maid); the inferior servants, men and women, were to
receive £25. 48 Even in 1796, with rampant inflation, this is very generous: Hecht's
lists show no such lavish payments to women in the 1790s. But generous as
Trusler's salaries are, they place the housekeeper below all the upper men servants
who were such an important part of an employer's display of status. Hecht's table
42 See, for instance, [Borella], The Court and Country Confectioner (London, 1770), 2-3.
43 See Robert Abbot, The Housekeepers Valuable Present (London, [c. 1790]), preface.
44 Quoted in Jane Holmes, 'Domestic Service in Yorkshire 1650-1780', unpublished doc-
toral thesis, University ofYork, 1989, pp. 70-71.
45 See J. J. Hecht, The Domestic Servant Class in Eighteenth-Century England (London:
Routledge, 1956), 171-172.
46 For an example of this practice, see Holmes, thesis, p. 48 (in 1767 at Wentworth
Woodhouse, where the steward, housekeeper, chaplain and clerk of the kitchen ate in
the steward's room, while the other servants ate in the servants' hall); Hecht (1956: 63)
states that the housekeeper was the house-steward's opposite number.
47 [Jonathan] Swift, Directions to Servants in General (London, 1745), 44, 92. Swift pays
very little attention to the housekeeper, but he has a field-day with the cook who, of
course, offers far more opportunities for revolting detail.
48 [John] Trusler, The Way to be Rich and Respectable (1787; London, ed. 7, 1796), 65-
66. The first edition gives a wage-table only for a more modest establishment of two
menservants (at £12 and £9 each) and two maids (at £7 each) plus an unpaid boy. See
pp. 15-20.
of wages gives the salaries of twenty-one housekeepers, the highest-paid receiving

£30 (in 1734), the lowest £6 (in 1768). The average wage in Hecht's table is just
under £13.10s., the median wage being £18. Hecht also found two housekeepers
who combined the job with that oflady's maid, at salaries of 10 or 15 guineas, and
eight cook-housekeepers, whose salaries ranged from £10 to £25. Meanwhile, men
in comparable positions were receiving much higher salaries: for the nine house-
stewards the range was from £40 to £100, and for the four clerks of the kitchen (a
dying breed) from £30 to £100; butlers are closer to the housekeepers, with a range
for the fourteen cases of £6 to £57. 1Os, although these figures are extreme, the more
usual range being £10 to £30. A comparison with other women servants shows that
cooks received anything from £3 to 20 guineas; housemaids £4 to £10. 49 Hecht
attributes the disparities within groups to the level of skill of the employee, the
scope of his or her duties, the scheme of payment adopted and the location of the
place where the servant was hired.
In fact, a comparison of wages within single households for a limited period
suggests that the employer's status was the determining factor. In a very grand
house, the housekeeper would earn less than the male upper servants, but her salary
still placed her well above the run of ordinary maids: in 1734 the duke of Newcastle
was paying his housekeeper, Anne Elliot, £30, while the steward, Robert Burnett,
earned £50, the French cook £50, the French confectioner, Daniel Tiphaine, £60, the
butler £8 (but an earlier list for 1733 gives the more plausible figure of £20) and the
ordinary maids £6. 50 In about 1763 the marquis of Rockingham at Wentworth
Woodhouse paid his housekeeper £20, his house-steward £30, his cook £52.12s., his
confectioner £42 (with salaries like these, it is probable that these last two men were
the Mr Blanche and the Mr Negri identified in earlier lists as the cook and the
confectioner), and ordinary maids £2.10s.51 One exceptionally mean aristocrat was
the fourth duke of Bedford, who paid his housekeeper a mere £12 in the 1750s,
while the butler, the French cook and the confectioner all received between £50 and
£60.52 Lower down the social scale, in 1725 John Meller of Erddig paid £21 to his
cook, £10 to his housekeeper and to his butler, £8 to his coachman, and £2.10s. to
the lowlier maids who were at the bottom of the salary scale; 53 similarly, William
Constable at Burton Constable in Yorkshire paid the same salary, £10, to his butler,
his housekeeper and his woman cook in 1752;54 a new recruit to the gentry, William
Gossip of Thorp Arch, paid his housekeeper a salary that varied from £5 to £9 in the
1750s, while the gardener received 9 guineas, and the butler £6. 55 In houses where
the mistress shared the role of housekeeper with a servant, who was often described
as a cook-housekeeper, the rewards were much lower: in the 1770s Elizabeth
49 Hecht (1956), 142-148.

50 See British Library, Additional MS 33137, ff. 397-398; the 1733 list is f. 374.
51 See Holmes, thesis, 78.
52 See Gladys Scott Thomson, The Russells in Bloomsbury (London: Cape, 1940), 225-230.
53 See Merlin Waterson, The Servants' Hall (London: Routledge, 1980), 26.
54 See Holmes, thesis, 77.
55 See Brett Harrison, 'The Servants of William Gossip', Georgian Group Journal 6
(1996): 137-139.
Shackleton paid her cook-housekeepers £5 while the other maids received 4

guineas; 56 earlier, in the 1740s, Elizabeth Purefoy was offering £3 or £3 I Os. for a
cookmaid (who was also expected to work in the dairy and help with the washing),
and once, in despair at the difficulty of finding a suitable candidate, was prepared to
go as high as £4; a house-maid would be given £2. 57 Clearly, the wages differential
between a housekeeper and the lower women servants was much smaller amongst
the lesser gentry, where the mistress still expected to supervise the servants, than in
the grand houses where the housekeeper might earn five to eight times as much
as the house-maids. Service in a great house was much more desirable, and not only
because of the wages: although of course the needs of a grand house required more
specialized skills than those demanded in a lesser establishment, it should also be
noted that the workload was smaller in the great houses, precisely because of the
existence of specialized departments. Jane Holmes cites the case of one woman who
preferred to take a job as a housekeeper rather than go into business, 'thinking that
she may be easy in it'. 58
Three case-histories, taken in chronological order, will attempt to shed light on
some aspects of the housekeeper's career, and perhaps on how her role and status
evolved. At the very end of the seventeenth century, Sir Thomas Haggerston, a
member of the gentry with an estimated income from rents of £I ,200 a year,
employed a distant cousin as his housekeeper. 59 Cousin Fleetwood Butler headed
the household, with a salary of £8, while the other servants' wages went from £3 for
the butler to£ I for the three maids and £0.10.0 for the 'swine boy'. In all, there were
six men servants and five or six maids. Although the numbers of servants fluctuated
slightly, Cousin Fleetwood was still earning more than the bailiff in 1702. The
accounts show that the housekeeper controlled the household and paid the staff, and
that she was responsible for purchases of food and drink, and of glasses and
crockery. The bald facts taken from account books cannot tell us anything about the
relationship between employer and relative-employee here, but the salary indicates
that Cousin Fleetwood was at least valued as a servant if not as a relative. This is
unusual, perhaps because here the employment of a relative is in a prosperous
household, whereas most eighteenth-century examples are from more modest
establishments, where economy dictated that the poor relation was forced to serve
as an unpaid housekeeper, and was treated as a servant rather than one of the
family. 60 In wealthier households, this was a practice which died out during the
eighteenth century: Francis Grose noted that as a young man he had seen 'a certain
antiquated female, either maiden or widow, commonly an aunt or cousin' acting as
56 See Vickery (1998), 137.

57 See G. Eland (ed.), Purefoy Letters 1735-1753 (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1931),
vol. I, 142-147.
58 Holmes, thesis, 71-72.
59 This case-history is based on Ann M. C. Forster (ed.), 'Selections from the Disbursements
Book (1691-1709) of Sir Thomas Haggerston, Bart', Surtees Society 180 (1965).
60 Bridget Hill documents many cases of this at a level below that of the gentry, in her
chapter on kin as servants; see Hill (1996), 115-127. Jane Holmes (thesis, p. 61) points
out that relatives living in as servants had disappeared from wealthier families by the
eighteenth century.
housekeeper to unmarried or widowed gentlemen, but that now 'this being is no

more seen, and the race is[ ... ] totally extinct' .61 Grose's unflattering portrait of this
character, with her jingling bunch of keys, her cordials and her preserves, is another
reminder that the housewife/housekeeper, an honoured personage in the seventeenth
century, had become a figure of fun.
The case of the housekeeper employed by a new recruit into the gentry is
illustrated by the papers of William Gossip (1705-1772).62 Gossip's father was a
Yorkshire mercer who had made a fortune in trade, and the son set up as a landed
gentleman, buying his country estate at Thorp Arch in 1749. During his early
married life in the 1730s, Gossip lived in York; there, he employed one man servant,
a valet, at a salary of £4 and later £5 a year, and five women servants: a nursemaid
(at £2), a cook (at £3 or 3 guineas), a lady's maid for Anne Gossip, a chambermaid
and a housemaid. There was as yet no housekeeper. This changed when the Gossips
moved to the country, even before the completion of their new house in 1756. A
letter dated 1748 sets out Anne Gossip's requirements for a housekeeper, who 'must
not be too fine a Lady', but must be capable of controlling the other servants and
making sure that they performed their duties, able to tum her hand to any work,
including cooking and washing, and a prudent fmancial manager; Mrs Gossip was
prepared to pay £5 a year. Whether the Gossips found such a candidate is doubtful:
the accounts do not show an identifiable housekeeper who stayed for any length of
time until 1755, when a woman called Agar was paid £8.5.0. She was, however,
unsatisfactory, and the Gossips looked out for a replacement. A friend found them a
suitable forty-year-old, who was prepared to come for £10 a year, but she was a
Methodist, and the Gossips objected on the grounds that she would be forever out
at meetings. Agar was replaced by Wilson, who was clearly more satisfactory, since
in August 1756 she was given 1 guinea over and above her annual wage of £3.19.0.
Her wages rose steadily, to £6 in 1758 and £8 by 1761. She was followed by a Miss
Wildblood and by others, but returned to the Gossips in 1765 at £9 a year. Over the
same period Gossip's postilion-cum-groom was paid £4, his gardener 9 guineas, and
his butler £6 to£ 14. Although Wilson was clearly a valued servant, she received less
for her very extensive duties than the upper men servants. Another interesting
feature of this case is the apprehension expressed by Anne Gossip of an employee
who might be too 'fine', suggesting the potential for rivalry and conflict between the
mistress in a family newly risen into the gentry and a servant who might not be far
below her in terms of social origin. The fact that the duties of the mistress and the
servant overlapped was a supplementary complication in an uneasy relationship.
The best-documented example of the housekeeper who made a successful career
after her years in service is Elizabeth Raffald (1733-81). She was born Elizabeth
Whitaker in Doncaster; little is known of her parents, Joshua and Elizabeth
Whitaker, but she received an adequate education, including a little French, before
leaving home. Elizabeth went into service when she was about 15 years old. Her last
job, which she started in December 1760, was as housekeeper to Sir Peter and Lady
Elizabeth Warburton of Arley Hall in Cheshire, a household with aristocratic
61 Grose, The Olio (London, 1792), 40-41.

62 This case-history is based on the article by Brett Harrison (1996): 134-143.
connections, since Lady Elizabeth was the eldest daughter of the earl of Derby. At
Arley there was a house-steward, Peter Harper, who was responsible for the
fmances, the house and the estate; the new housekeeper was in charge of the female
servants, and of buying most of the everyday food supplies which were purchased
locally (goods from London and the large meat bill were paid by the steward) from
her imprest account; she also did all the preserving and pickling, made country
wines, table decorations and dishes for the dessert course. For all this, she was paid
£16 a year, £4 less than the head gardener, John Raffald. The housekeeper and the
gardener married on 3 March 1763, and on 23 April they left Arley to set up in
business in Manchester, where John Raffald's family owned market gardens and a
nursery. Elizabeth Raffald soon set up a shop in Fennel Street, and put her
experience to immediate use, selling a range of foods from decorative confectionery
and cakes to York hams and Newcastle salmon, and opening a register office for the
supply of servants, for a fee of 1 shilling paid either by the employer or by the
servant seeking a place. Her own experience in service had shown her what would
be profitable. In August 1766 the Raffalds moved to a more central location in
Market Place, where the shop continued to prosper. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Raffald
continued to maintain friendly contact with Arley Hall, supplying the house with
food from her shop and visiting in an expensive post chaise. The climax of her
success came with the publication of her cookery-book, The Experienced English
House-keeper, in 1769: over 800 subscribers bought the book at the pre-publication
price of 5s, and the success of the book is confirmed by the seven editions which
were published in the author's lifetime, with further editions until 1834, not to
mention the innumerable plagiarisms from it. In 1772 she brought out the first
Manchester Directory, and in the same year the Market Place shop was sold and the
Raffalds moved to the King's Head inn in Salford; Elizabeth's unmarried sister
Mary opened a shop opposite which carried on the confectionery trade and the
register office. But from this point the business went downhill, apparently because
of John Raffald's heavy drinking; they were forced to leave the inn, and Elizabeth
made ends meet by taking over the catering when her husband became master of the
Exchange coffee-house and by publishing a third edition of the directory. She died
on 19 April 1781, leaving her sister to profit from her commercial success by
opening a cookery school advertised as being run by the 'Sister to the late Mrs.
Raffald' .63 Raffald's career shows that experience in service could be a way to a
successful business, but of course, a woman's efforts could be in vain if her
husband, who ultimately controlled all her money, was a spendthrift. Financial
uncertainties notwithstanding, Raffald's case demonstrates that a housekeeper could
be regarded with affection by her employers, and could later gain the respect of the
community as a businesswoman putting her experience in service to good use.
63 This account of Elizabeth Raffald is based on two complementary biographies by Roy

Shipperbottom: 'Elizabeth Raffald (1733-1781)' in Harlan Walker (ed.), Cooks and
Other People: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1995
(Totnes: Prospect, 1996), 233-236; the introduction to the reprint of Raffa! d's cookery
book, ed. Ann Bagnall (Lewes: Southover, 1997), vii-xvii.
These case-histories illustrate the diversity one meets when exammmg a

particular servant group, hardly surprisingly, since so many households, from those
of aristocrats to those of tradesmen, now employed servants. Housekeepers were
employed in homes ranging from the very grand to those of the lesser gentry and the
prosperous middle class, but in terms of status and rewards, and in the extent of their
tasks, there was a vast difference between the ends of the spectrum. Paradoxically,
it was where the mistress of the house still played a supervisory role herself that the
housekeeper had to work hardest, and for proportionally the least reward; in houses
where there were enough specialized staff to render the mistress's services
superfluous the housekeeper's job was easier and better rewarded. Unfortunately for
those lower down the social scale, the image of the smooth-running household with
its idle mistress was a powerful one, an ideal to which many aspired, since practical
involvement with the tasks of housekeeping tarnished a mistress's gentility. The
image was no less powerful for being unattainable: very few mistresses were in the
fortunate position of Susanna Whatman, who apparently delegated all supervision
of her servants to her housekeeper, Hester Davis, although not without setting out in
writing detailed instructions to make sure that everything was ordered to her
liking. 64 The result was that most mistresses were constantly tom between leaving
things to the housekeeper and other servants (in pursuit of the genteel ideal of the
lady) and checking up themselves (in pursuit of the genteel ideal of the well-run
house), thus generating conflict with the servants and frustration on both sides. The
confusion between the housekeeper as 'keeper of the house' (i.e. the mistress) and
as a servant, still apparent in the varied meanings of the word even in the 19th
century, meant that the status of the one was in dissociable from that of the other.
Thus the wife was often seen as an unpaid servant, and the housekeeper, even
though paid, had to be inferior to the wife. The reasons why the housekeeper was so
under-valued were more complex than the simple question of her sex.
64 See Christina Hardyment (ed.), The Housekeeping Book ofSusanna Whatman (London:
Century/National Trust, 1987), 4, and Susanna's text, 37-54.
Chapter 2
The Representation of Housework in

the Eighteenth-CenturyWomen's Press
Marie-Claire Rouyer-Daney
It is generally agreed that the notion of gender differences was conceived in the
eighteenth century which confined women to the private sphere. The women's press
which was to develop the domestic ideology appeared at the same time and ought
to give an insight into what was expected of the ideal mistress of the house. If
women's work within the house was indeed a recurrent topic in those periodicals,
the housewife's tasks were rarely described in their concrete reality, whereas
domestic duties were enhanced as the unique vocation of wives and daughters.
The material that I have used spans the whole century, in order to discover to what
extent the domestic ideology was constructed progressively. To that end, I shall
compare the discourse about domestic occupations in the early eighteenth-century
essay papers, such as The Visiter (1723-24) or The Female Spectator (1744-46), which
have received critical attention, namely from Kathryn Shevelow and Claire Boulard, 1
with their treatment in the second generation of women's periodicals, which have been
so far scantily documented: 2 The Lady's Magazine (1759-63), The Lady's Magazine
or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex (1770-1832) and The New Lady's
Kathryn Shevelow, Women and Print Culture: The Construction of Femininity in the
Early Periodical (London: Routledge, 1989); Claire Boulard, Presse et socialisation
feminine en Angle terre de 1690 a 1750: Conversations a l 'heure du the (Paris:
L'Harmattan, 2000).
2 The mid and late eighteenth-century periodicals were first documented in two pionee-
ring studies: Cynthia L. White, Womens Magazines 1693-1968 (London: Michael
Joseph, 1970) and Alison Adburgham, Women in Print: Writing Women and Women s
Magazines from the Restoration to the Accession of Queen Victoria (London: Allen and
Unwin, 1972). They have been briefly examined in critical works on the earlier press
(see note 1) or on the nineteenth and twentieth-century women's press such as Margaret
Beetham, A Afagazine of Her Own? Domesticity and Desire in the Woman s Magazine,
1800-1914 (London, Routledge, 1996) and R. Ballaster, M. Beetham, E. Frazer and S.
Hebron, Women s Worlds: Ideology, Femininity and the Woman s Magazine (London:
Macmillan, 1991 ). Specific studies include: Jean Hunter, 'The Lady's Magazine and the
study of Englishwomen in the eighteenth century', in H. Bond Donovan and W.
Reynolds McLeod eds., Newsletters to Newspapers: Eighteenth Century Journalism
(Morgantown: School of Journalism, West Virginia University, I 979) and Marie-Claire
Rouyer, 'Les Espaces de !a feminite dans les magazines pour dames de !a seconde moi-
tie du XVTIJe sieclc', Bulletin de la Societe d'Etudes Anglo-Americaines des XVJJe et
XVIll" siecles 47 (1998) 169-190.
Magazine or Polite and Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex (1786-95). Their
titles prove that the term 'lady' was preferred precisely at the moment when their
growing readership included the middle-classes. The price of a monthly issue, 6d.,
placed the magazines in the category of the 'popular' periodicals, according to Robert
D. Mayo,3 that is addressed to the new class who, not only could read, but had also
recently acquired reading habits. Moreover the bound yearly volumes were more
easily accessible through the lending libraries. The front page announcements of the
first issues emphasized the wide social spectrum of potential readers. The Lady s
Magazine of 1770 addressed 'the Housewife as well as the Peeress'; The New Ladys
Magazine of 1786 described itself as 'the most agreeable Companion to female
Readers of every Rank and Condition'. In fact the ideal 'lady' to be fashioned was an
idle middle-class woman, carefully differentiated from the artisans' and shopkeepers'
wives who had to divide their time between shop and house.
Although household care featured among the natural assignments of the
wealthier woman, it could not keep her occupied all the time, since the material
chores were performed by servants. So the educational programme of the female
press was meant to supply a new idle class with domestic occupations that would
protect them from the loose manners associated with aristocratic leisure. The
activities suggested in order to fill up time usefully, such as reading-and in the first
place reading the magazine-, were all designed to develop an ideal of femininity
intended to adapt women to the domestic sphere.
Thus the periodicals trod the same ground as the conduct-books which,
according to Nancy Armstrong, 4 had already erased the distinction between labour
and leisure, both construed with reference to the new ethics of domesticity which
defined all female activities as duties. In the conduct-books as in the periodicals,
women's occupations, circumscribed within the home, were named 'employment',
which simply meant 'employing one's time'. Among those occupations, the
domestic chores were designated by the term 'housewifery', endowed with a
derogatory connotation because it referred to the tasks which the women from the
middle ranks would be relieved of. It was eventually replaced by 'domestic
reconomy'. After its first occurrence in 17105 the word was in current usage from
1760, when The Lady s Magazine, in its August issue, devoted an article to the
subject. The term designated a new conception of the qualities required from the
mistress of the household, which the magazines would help her to develop, while
supplying hardly any information on the practical skills involved. Indeed the only
detailed descriptions of some household chores were occasionally to be found in
male readers' letters (usually faked) attributed to shopkeepers who often complained
about the domestic incompetence of their wives or daughters who aped their betters
and forgot the duties of their condition.
3 Robert D. Mayo, The English Novel in the Magazines 1740-1815 (Evanston:

Northwestern University Press, 1962) 80-83.
4 Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) 64-65.
5 See O.E.D. citing its first occurrence in The Tatler (171 0): 'the manner in which a
household or a person's private expenditure is ordered'.
The Representation of Housework 29
Before examining that satirical representation of housework, I will try to show

how the serious discourse defming women's occupations at home hinged upon the
periodicals' educational programme and followed its evolution from the essay-
papers to the magazines.
In order to observe that evolution from its origins, this investigation will start
with an extract from an article by Addison in The Guardian, which did not address
an exclusively female readership, but pursued the task initiated by The Tatler and
The Spectator, namely the education of the fair sex. This scene of female domestic
bliss was printed in the issue no. 155 (1713):
The Excellent Lady, the Lady Lizard in the Space of one Summer fumish'd a Gallery,
with Chairs and Couches of her own and her Daughters' Working and at the same Time
heard all Doctor Tillotson's Sermons twice over. It is always the custom for one of the
young Ladies to read, while the others are at Work: so that the Learning of the Family is
not at all prejudicial to the Manufactures. I was mightily pleased, the other Day, to find
them all busie in preserving several Fruits of the Season, with the Sparkler [the youngest
daughter] in the midst of them, reading over The Plurality of the Worlds. It was very
entertaining to me to see them dividing their Speculations between Jellies and Stars, and
making a sudden Transition from the Sun to an Apricot, or from the Copernican System
to the Figure of a Cheese-cake.
That idyllic picture harmoniously combines a variety of culinary, cultural and

edifying activities, thus enabling some genteel women to synchronize the fulfilment of
their duties. Beneath the humorous tone, the rhetoric eloquently charts the strenuous and
acrobatic itinerary of the female readers of Fontenelle who, after an exalting ascent to
the starry dome, are suddenly brought down to earth, back to a natural order more
consonant with the priority of their duties, 'from the Copernican system to the Figure of
a Cheese-cake'. Addison's patronizing humour introduces a comic deflation of women's
aspirations to scientific knowledge. In attributing the word 'Speculations' to the
astronomic and culinary sciences alike, he devalues the intellectual activity which
women were encouraged to pursue along with their domestic duties. The task that
illustrates housework was not chosen at random. Making fruit preserves and sweetmeats
belonged to the noble section of cookery and fell to the mistress of the household among
the gentry. Indeed the exemplary scene devised by Addison is obviously located in the
country. That setting corroborates Nancy Armstrong's observations about the
contemporary conduct books in which female domestic duties were still defined with
reference to a rural social pattern, even though those manuals, like Addison's essay-
papers, were read by an increasing number of urban dwellers. 6 It seems that the genteel
connotation associated with the particular culinary task mentioned in The Guardian
endowed it with an emblematic value: when Mr Spectator was promoting the beneficial
influence of his paper upon the ladies, to fill up their idle days, he ironically alluded to
their domestic responsibilities thus: 'Their greatest Drudgery [is] the Preparation of
Jellies and Sweetmeats. ' 7 As a matter of fact 'the whole art of Pastry and Preserving'
6 Armstrong 69-70.
7 The Spectator no. 10 (March 12th 1710-11).
was included among the female accomplishments taught in girls' boarding-schools

together with 'the Needle, Dancing and the French tongue'. 8
Needlework was indeed the second commendable manual occupation for idle
women, which received a sarcastic treatment from Mr Spectator in an essay written
by Tickell. 9 In answer to a letter complaining about the loss of favour of embroidery
among the younger generation, Tickell ironically praised the merits of that domestic
art which, unlike painting, required so much concentration that it would prevent
women from chatting and gossiping.
In the first essay-papers written by women (or at least by a female persona),
launched in the wake of The Spectator, the discourse about domestic occupations
assumed a different tone, even occasionally subversive, thus echoing the early
feminist criticisms of women's social status.IO A female reader of The Visiter (no. 35,
6 Dec. 1723) protested against the drudgery of 'Domestic Affairs', considered as the
only employment suitable for women. During the same decade, in The Ladies'
Journal (no. 2, 24 Jan. 1726-27), a male correspondent was urging the female sex to
fight against 'the tyranny of Custom [and] steal a few Minutes from the Needle to
improve their Minds'. Twenty years later, in her Female Spectator, Eliza Haywood
warned her readers against the common ambition to become a 'notable Housewife',
which amounted to mastering the skills of a competent housekeeper, instead of
seeking to improve her mind in order to become 'a Woman of Fine Taste.' 11
If the promotion of study was on the agenda of the essay-papers, it was not
always presented as a more rewarding alternative to household care, but most
frequently as an additional benefit to the fulfilment of domestic duties. In the second
issue of The Visiter (25th June 1723), women's right to knowledge was claimed with
reference to two major female roles, that of hostess for her husband's guest and of
manager of the household economy:
... though I think Household Oeconomy a very great Perfection in a Woman, and what
everyone of them ought to be Mistress of, yet I wou' d not have them sit down with
knowing how to make a Pudding, and pleat their Husbands Neckcloths, as the only
Knowledge that is necessary for them. For my Part I should be full as anxious to have my
Wife capable of entertaining my Company, as getting them an elegant Dinner. [ ... ] It
seems to me the most absurd Notion that Men in all Ages have run into, that a Woman of
superior Understanding is incapable of managing a Family, when certainly no other can
do it as they ought: it is very sure that the greatest Ideot of a Woman may, as far as setting
out a Table goes, know how to direct: but to know how to regulate the Expence of it
between the two dangerous Extremes of Covetousness and Extravagance, requires a very
steady Judgement.
That apparently militant discourse established a hierarchy in women's abilities: the

technical skills were devalued, as in the previous quotations; the intellectual skills were
8 Advertisement in The Spectator no. 5 (March 1st 1712).

9 The Spectator no. 606 (Oct. 13th 1714).
10 See Shevelow 150-151.
11 The Female Spectator (London: 1747) III 125.
appreciated for their ornamental value; the most valuable qualities were moral ones
which ensured a sound fmancial management. 12 The word 'regulate' here applied to
household expenses, took on a paradigmatic value in the contemporary didactic
discourse. What was at stake was the containment of female desire within a double
enclosure: the physical space of the house and the boundaries of prudential ethics.
The mid-century magazines were to develop the idea of the compatibility of
knowledge and domestic duties but were no more forthcoming where practical skills
were concerned. The new format of the magazine, with its miscellaneous structure,
tried to preserve the editorial voice of the essay-paper with regular columns entitled
'The Friend ofthe Fair Sex', 'The Young Lady's Preceptor', or 'The Matron'. The
latter editorial persona, under the name of Mrs Grey, made a monthly appearance in
the second Lady s Magazine, from its birth in 1770 until she transferred her column
to The New Lady s Magazine in 1786. The editorial voice had a normative function
in matters of social manners and moral conduct and continued the exchange
initiated in The Tatter and The Spectator between editor and readers, through a
selection of their correspondence. The debate on women's 'employment' and on the
type of knowledge suitable for their domestic duties was a recurrent topic in that
dialogue. At the same time the periodicals implemented a self-styled educational
programme in a medley of literary reviews, travelogues, edifying fiction, poetry,
extracts from books of history, geography, botany, as well as cooking recipes,
embroidery patterns, fashion prints and music scores.
Cooking recipes did not become a standard feature of the women's press until
the nineteenth century. They first appeared in The Lady s Magazine in April 1763,
in a series of articles entitled 'A System of Cookery' which was continued for over
a year. According to the editor, the introduction of that column was an unexpected
consequence of the end of the Seven Years' War:
As the War is now happily at an end, there will, in all probability, be a dearth of news, or
at least of such news as is worth the notice of our fair readers, we have thought proper to
lessen that department and to add in its room a compleat System of Cookery; which will
be continued from month to month in alphabetical order, till the whole is compleat: to
which will be added proper directions for genteel entertainments for every month in the
year, so contrived as to be of real service to our subscribers.
Thus cookery made a discreet entrance to replace the 'Foreign Intelligence'

column which offered an opening on to the public sphere. The comprehensive and
methodical 'System of Cookery' followed the model of the very popular Art of
Cookery by Hannah Glasse (1743) who had set the trend of a national style of
cooking, breaking away from the court style and the French vocabulary which was
declared obsolete and beyond the understanding of an English family cook. Each
monthly instalment was completed with standard menus adapted to seasonal
produce, and instructions for the laying out of dishes on the table, occasionally
illustrated with prints.
12 See also Shevelow 163 who comments upon that extract from The Visiter with reference
to Steele and Addison's educational programme in The Tatter and The Spectator.
Household pharmacopoeia was also present in The Lady s Magazine, in shorter

series such as some extracts from Isabella Moore's Every Man His Own Physician
printed in four instalments in 1764. The manufacturing of potions, salves and
ointments, traditionally included in cookery books, was a function of the rural
gentlewoman who ministered to the sick of the parish. The Lady s Magazine's
readers could also learn about home-made cosmetics and benefit from advice about
personal and household hygiene which became more frequent in the last decades of
the century together with articles on the care of young children and nursing. The
circulation of the magazines in the provinces 13 accounted for the occasional
occurrence of articles on the duties of the landowner's wife, such as those 'Practical
Directions in the Management of Poultry and Bird. These as far as they relate to the
Table make a considerable Branch of female Oeconomy' (The Ladys Magazine,
May 1773).
No such practical directions were provided for the management of the
household. Articles entitled 'On the proper Treatment of Servants' or 'Of Behaviour
to Servants' (The Lady s Magazine, Feb.l773), read as a string of moralizing
anecdotes on the dangers of indulging in familiarities with one's chambermaid.
When Mrs Grey, in her column, dealt with the proper use of domestics, she merely
expatiated on the necessity to maintain a strict moral surveillance and to set a good
example (The Lady s Magazine, Sept. 1775).
If the representation of household management remained most often abstract and
ideological, the other female occupation, par excellence, needlework, featured both as
the object of an instructive debate on the very notion of middle-class women's work,
and as a selling proposition from the periodicals which offered needlework patterns.
The discussion of the merits of needlework was enframed in the wider debate on girls'
education. Whereas, in The Female Spectator, Eliza Haywood reproved the mothers
who insisted on 'keeping [their daughters] at theN eedle', instead of encouraging them
to keep their minds busy with a book, 14 only a few magazine readers' letters still
supported the acquisition of knowledge as a more rewarding employment than manual
tasks, which could be, and actually were, performed by servants. In the successive
Lady s Magazines, the new fashion for handiworks, such as knotting, netting or paper-
filigree was not criticized for nurturing intellectual vacuity. The controversy revolved
around their moral and economic utility. 15 Those who lashed out against the new-
fangled frivolous occupations were often older readers, female or male, such as
'A Single Man' who sent this contribution in 1778:
13 See Jan Fergus, 'Women, Class, and the Growth of Magazine Readership in the
Provinces, 1746-1780', Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 16 (1986): 41-56.
14 The Female Spectator, III 125.
15 The vogue of paper filigree work in the 1780's gave rise to a debate about its cost in The
New Lady s Magazine which was, at the same time, contributing to its commercial
success with its 'Candid Review [of] the Guiding Assistant to Paper Filigree Work-in
Six Weekly Numbers; Each of Which contains Two Sets of various original Patterns,
executed in real Paper Filigree, by Charles Styart, 5s.3d. each' (July 1786) and its
'Historical Account of the Origin and Progress of Paper Filigree-Work, with an accurate
description of the present Pattern' (Nov. 1786).
In almost every house I enter, I generally find the girls about some trifling piece of work,
such as knotting, netting or twisting purses ... [their] time might certainly be disposed of
in a more advantageous manner in the performance of some work of indisputable
usefulness; among these might be fairly reckoned the cutting out, contriving, and making
of the greatest part of their dress, both necessary and omamental. 16
Those recriminations were judged obsolete, even by Mrs Grey. When other male
correspondents complained that their wife or their daughter refused to take care of
the household linen and to make their shirts, she proclaimed that utilitarian
needlework was an obligation only for those who had to earn a living or to
economize on housekeeping expenses.
The new middle-class woman was, by status, unproductive, but had to be kept
employed in order to avoid the moral and physical devastation caused by idleness.
Hence a hierarchy was established between handiwork for relaxation and
needlework, which was more exacting and therefore morally improving. In
September 1773, 'The Friend of the Fair Sex', an editorial persona of The Lady's
Magazine, issued this prescription against the disastrous effects of inactivity, langor,
vapours, or fitful and futile agitation:
Real and daillabour is necessary: the body ought to be employ'd as well as the mind; to
knot is not greater employment than the flirting of a fan; there is a necessity for
employment which requires care, like needlework of all kinds.
But three or four hours at the needle were sufficient and allowed for an evening
recreation, far Jess harmful than card games, retorted a female correspondent in the
following issue:
How then can an evening be more innocently passed than in knotting and netting, which
is, though not a necessary, yet a very pretty embellishment for fumiture?1 7
In between the disciplinary activity of needlework whose economic value had

become null, because superfluous, and the leisure activities such as netting, knotting
and paper-filigree, authorized for their decorative function, embroidery seemed to
meet all the requisites of ladies' manual work. It required laborious perseverance
and concentration and also ranked as a form of art, and thus improved taste. For
instance, in August 1798, The Lady's Monthly Museum printed an enthusiastic
review of the 'Exhibition of Miss Linwood's Pictures in Needlework'. Those copies
of paintings by Reynolds and Stubbs were held up as models since 'there cannot be
a more excellent school for the study of all ladies, who are desirous of attaining a
proficiency in the wonderful art of needlework'. Lastly, in a less ambitious version,
embroidery could also be economical; it was, at least, the commercial argument put
forward by The Lady's Magazine, when it was launched in August 1770: in each
16 The Lady's Magazine (Feb. 1778), reprinted in The New Lady's Magazine, (March 1794).
17 The Lady's Magazine (March 1778), reprinted in The New Lady's Magazine (June
1794).
monthly issue the periodical was to offer embroidery or lace patterns meant to adorn
handkerchieves, men's shirt fronts and waistcoats, which, in a shop, would cost
twice as much as the magazine issue. Those 'curious sprigs' became so elaborate
that it was feared they might spoil the young ladies' eyesight. An extract from
'Maxims and Reflections recommended to the Consideration of the Ladies', in The
Lady s Magazine of July 1775, summarized all the arguments involved in the debate
about ladies' manual occupations in the sitting-room, from the formative virtues of
embroidery, to the just balance between effort and grace, useful and ornamental
accomplishments, emblematic of middle-class womanhood.
Instead of that minute and laborious kind of work which is often practised by
young ladies, I should think that slighter and freer patterns, would, for the most part,
be greatly preferable. The sight would be in no danger of being strained, much less
time would be required to finish them and, when finished, they would produce a
much better effect. They would give, beyond comparison, more scope to the
imagination: they would exhibit an ease, a gracefulness and a flow that ought to
enter, as much as possible, into all the works of taste, and as they would admit a far
greater multiplicity of ornaments, so likewise the purpose of utility would be
promoted in a far higher degree.
From this survey of the range of occupations suitable for ladies, as described and
discussed in the female press, the most striking feature, common to household care
and decorative handiwork, is the evanescent, almost virtual quality of that work:
'Labour that is not labour', as Nancy Armstrong worded it, 18 was one of the chief
ingredients of the gentility which defmed middle-class womanhood. Genuine
housework, namely the production of services and goods at home, was relegated
below stairs, in the servants' quarter, or to the lower margins of society whose
frontier was neatly drawn by class distinctions. Significantly the few concrete
evocations of domestic chores which occasionally cropped up in the readers'
correspondence always resorted to a humorous or satirical discourse which turned
housework into a joke, or an object of ridicule. Besides, the comic portraits or
anecdotes, supposedly contributed by male correspondents living in the City,
concerned women who were excluded from the sphere of gentility, artisans' and
shopkeepers' wives whom the editor advised to remain active and productive. So did
Mrs Grey, in The Lady s Magazine of March 1784, who made it clear that, for lower-
class women, the shop was a natural extension of the house: 'Let every inferior
tradesman make his wife and daughter serve in his shop, that the latter may not be
too refined to serve in the shops of their husbands'. They should not be permitted to
cultivate 'improper accomplishments', ' ... that they may live reputably and
respectably among their equals and prove useful in their own domestic line'.
Here again the editorial discourse was relaying that of the contemporary treatises
and essays on the education of girls of humble condition. 19 Parallel to the editorial
warnings, the periodicals printed short vignettes, signed by 'Simon Slenderpurse' or
'Christopher Cakeling,' which became set pieces, frequently copied by and from
another magazine. Those humorous portraits, in the tradition of the 'character',
18 Armstrong 75-81.
19 See Bridget Hill, Eighteenth-Century Women (London: Allen and Unwin, 1984) 62-63.
popularized by The Spectator, illustrated various types of deviant or simply

eccentric housewives. First those who practised economy with too much zeal : one
was a sales addict and her house was cluttered with useless bargains;2° another one
had been converted to a new cheaper method of baking bread with potato flour, but
her kitchen proving too small for the special oven required, the chimney had to be
pulled down and the husband was complaining of the cost of the supposedly
economical bread. 21 A third one was bent on producing her own vegetables in the
middle of London and was growing herbs and beans in punch-bowls and chamber
pots on all the window-sills and in the rain pipes. 22 Another letter, entitled 'On the
inconvenience of attending an overcleanly wife' can be credited with the only
technical description of housework, albeit a humorous one. It was printed in The
New Lady's Magazine in January 1794, and in a slightly different version in The
Lady's Magazine of the following August. This extract is from the original article:
... I could very willingly compound to be washed out of my house, with other masters of
families, every Saturday night; but my wife is so very notable that the same cleaning
work must be repeated every day of the week. All the morning long, I am sure to be
entertained with the domestic concert of scrubbing the floors, scouring the irons, and
beating the carpets; and I am constantly hunted from room to room, while one is to be
dusted, and another run over with a dry mop. Thus indeed I may be said to live in
continual dirtiness, that my house may be clean; for during these nice operations, every
appartment is flowed with soap, brickdust, sand, scrubbing brushes, hair-brooms, rag-
mops and dish-clouts.
Such satirical characters are endowed with a realism in sharp contrast with the
ethereal environment assigned to genteel ladies. Moreover they provide an inverted
image of the application of the domestic virtues commended in the adjoining
columns: thrift, prudence, cleanliness. The common point of those calamitous
housewives was an exuberant and disorderly activity expressed within the range
proper to their station. In the upper classes their equivalent could be found in the
'gidding matrons' and 'jigging wives' taken to task for running from assemblies to
parties in pleasure gardens. To be held in check, their desire had to be channelled to
a semblance of work that would keep them at home.23
That strategy of containment was spelled out in a redefinition of the very concept
of work, which took on different forms according to gender and class. The discourse
of the women's press, like that of the conduct-books and other didactic essays, was
characterized by the duplicity of their vocabulary. Just as 'employment' meant 'how
to employ one's time', 'occupation' was understood as pastime. The economic
utility of women's occupations boiled down to the production of superfluities whose
20 Letter from Simon Slenderpurse to Mrs Stanhope, The Lady's Magazine (July 1761).
21 'The Expense of Oeconomy', sent by Christopher Cakeling, The Lady's Magazine
(Supplement for 1795).
22 'The rural Taste of a London Tradesman's Wife humorously exposed', The Lady's
Magazine (Aug. 1794).
23 See Armstrong 81: 'Self-regulation became a form of labor that was superior to labor.'
only value was ornamental, or, in the field of domestic economy, was limited to the
application of moral principles.
Contrary to the monolithic image often established-retrospectively-by
feminist criticism of the nineteenth- and twentieth- century women's press, some
slight differences can be appreciated in that construction of middle-class
womanhood throughout the century.
Firstly, class distinction most often remained implicit in the essay-papers which
addressed a readership of a higher social level than the magazines, in which, on the
contrary, it was enhanced as a result of social mobility. On the one hand, as shown
by Armstrong, the domestic ideal which shaped the concept of femininity enabled
the rising middle-class, in quest of an identity, to smooth out the numerous and
subtle differences between ranks24 which, according to Harold Perkin, characterized
the eighteenth-century social fabric, as well as the opposition between rural and
urban society. 25 The figure of the 'lady' constructed by the magazines corroborates
that analysis. On the other hand, gentility as a class marker increasingly implied
exclusiveness. Indeed, in line with Bourdieu's analysis, 'distinction' becomes all the
more exclusive as it becomes more widespread socially. 26 Hence the striking
division between the lady and her social inferiors enhanced in the 'popular'
magazines.
Secondly, if domestic occupations were defmed throughout the century as
duties, among which intellectual improvement was annexed to the female domestic
vocation, in the latter half of the century, the magazines were more concerned with
women's decorative function, encouraging them to become consumers through
fashion prints and advertisements.
Thus the eighteenth-century women's periodicals built up a domestic ideology,
but in no way guided women in its practical application. They gradually constructed
the confmed space in which the Victorian middle-class woman would develop her
skills in home management and surveillance. A new specialized women's press was
to transform housework into an exact and moral science which would, from 1859 to
1861, reach its zenith with Mrs Beeton's contributions to The English Womans
Domestic Magazine.
24 Armstrong 69: 'In bringing into being a concept of the household on which socially
hostile groups felt they could all agree, the domestic ideal helped create the fiction of
horizontal affiliations that only a century later could be said to have materialized as an
economic reality.'
25 Harold Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society (London: Routledge, 1969) 22-
29.
26 Pierre Bourdieu, La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Editions de
Minuit, 1979) 559-561.
Chapter 3
Needlework and the Rights of Women

in England at the End of the
Eighteenth Century
Chistine Rivet
'I did not like the needle,' Bridgetina declared in Elizabeth Hamilton's! Memoirs of
Modern Philosophers 2 (2: 87). Instead of devoting herself to needlework therefore,
she turns to philosophy: 'she snatched up a book, and reclining her head upon her
hand, while her arm rested on the arm of the chair, she fixed herself in a meditating
attitude, truly becoming the character of a female philosopher' (2: 172-173).
However, Bridgetina is the grotesque 3 anti-heroine of a novel meant to ridicule the
radical philosophers; 4 consequently, her intellectual pursuits are lamentably
superficial. The author's other anti-heroine shows no more enthusiasm for
needlework: Julia's mother had 'endeavoured to initiate her into the mysteries of
cross-stitch, chain-stitch, and gobble-stitch ... the little romp ... did not much relish
the confinement necessary for these employments' (I: 143). Repelled by the
constraints associated with traditional female crafts, Julia, like Bridgetina, turns to
philosophy, but this brings misfortune upon her: the books she reads lead her to a
tragic end which she would have avoided, had she followed her mother's example
and been content with more feminine occupations. Indeed, she would not have been
tempted then to associate with the modem philosophers among whom she met the
man who was to cause her ruin; even if she had met him, without the influence of
radical philosophy, she would certainly have refused to follow him to London and
live with him; she would never have met her downfall which culminated in her
death and almost involved prostitution. Needlework could therefore have performed
a protective role for Julia.
If, as modem women, Bridgetina and Julia reject sewing, the novelist's heroine
adopts a very different attitude towards it, as illustrated by this description of the
young lady at her work:
I Elizabeth Hamilton (1758-1816) wrote essays, poems and novels.

2 Memoirs of Modern Philosophers, (London: G. G. & J. Robinson, 1800).
3 Bridgetina is particularly ugly and badly dressed. See Christine Hi vet, Voi.x de femmes:
roman feminin et condition feminine de Mary Wollstonecraft a Mary Shelley (Paris:
Presses de I'Ecole Normale Superieure, 1997) 230-231.
4 The author's notes refer the reader to Godwin and Political Justice.
It was now past twelve o'clock. Already had the active and judicious Harriet performed
every domestic task, and ... was quietly seated at her work with her aunt and sister,
listening to Hume's History of England, as it was read to them by a little orphan girl she
had herself instructed (I: 107-108).
An exemplary young lady, Harriet is both capable of looking after the household
and of being cultivated; for her, housework comes before the pleasure of the mind,
and the latter does not exclude the former, as she only listens to Hume's work being
read out to her whilst sewing. Elizabeth Hamilton's message seems clear: if the
author does not reject education for women, needlework is better suited to them than
the new fashion of radical philosophy and feminism. 5 Indeed, Bridgetina is never
more than a caricature; she may rebel and reject sewing for philosophy, but she
never rises above the level of a farcical character. As for Julia, she may be more
attractive to the reader, but she too acts as a foil; she comes to a sad end and her fate
acts as a warning. It is Harriet who speaks for Elizabeth Hamilton: 'so far from
feeling any derogation of dignity in domestic employment, I always feel exalted
from the consciousness of being useful,' Harriet says (1: 197). Useful, Harriet
certainly is, as shown by the scene in which the novelist describes her working for
her less fortunate neighbours, 'busily employed in preparing baby linen for the wife
of a poor labourer, who had been brought to bed of twins' (2: 239).
But do Bridgetina and Julia accurately portray the feminists they caricature? Was
needlework really one of the battlegrounds on which the feminists and their
adversaries were fighting at the turn of the century? It may seem so. Thus, in Mary
Hays' 6 Memoirs ofEmma Courtney, 7 the heroine, and not the anti-heroine, declares
hatred for sewing: 'I hated the needle,' says Emma (13) who, by contrast, recounts
how, as a child, she loved books and physical activity. Emma is none other than the
author in this strongly autobiographical novel. If her words seem to echo
Bridgetina's, it is because the latter will be based on the same model. 8 Mary Hays'
Letters and Essays also bear witness to her dislike of needlework. This is how she
portrays Sempronia:
The sole accomplishments which she deemed necessary to constitute a good wife and
mother, were to scold and starve her servants, to oblige her children to say their prayers,
and to go statedly to church, and to make clothes and household furniture from morning
till night. (34)
5 For practical reasons, this word will be used to describe what should really be called
pre-feminism, as there was no organized movement defending the rights of women at
the time.
6 Mary Hays (1760-1843) was the friend both of Godwin and of Mary Wollstonecraft.
'The Rights of Woman, and the name ofWollstonecraft will go down to posterity with
reverence,' she writes in her Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous [1793] (repr.
New York: Garland, 1974) 21.
7 Memoirs of Emma Courtney [ 1796] (London: Pandora Press, 1987).
8 Bridgetina is a caricature of Emma. Like their model, both women pursue a man with
their love, but whereas Emma's passion has tragic consequences, Bridgetina's is merely
grotesque.
Needlework and the Rights of Women 39
There is no doubt that sewing is being rejected: it is indeed linked with the mockery
of a religion and the lack of moral conscience. It looks as though this attack on
needlework is being made in the name of the nascent feminism, as it is sewing
which seems to prevent women from fully developing their physical and intellectual
potential: 9 'I confess I am no advocate for cramping the minds and bodies of young
girls, by keeping them for ever poring over needle-work' (33), we read one page
earlier. Indeed, Mary Wollstonecraft, the advocate ofthe rights ofwoman, 10 rises up
against needlework in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman: 11 'I have already
inveighed against the custom of confming girls to their needle,' she exclaims ( 169),
reminding the reader of her former condemnation of the role performed by
Rousseau:
From [Rousseau' Emile] flows an opinion that young girls ought to dedicate great part of
their time to needle-work; yet this employment contracts their faculties more than any other
that could have been chosen for them, by confining their thoughts to their persons (75).
A conservative who did not hide either her admiration for Hannah More 12 or her
contempt for Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane West 13 on the contrary considers the needle
to be a useful instrument which she greets in her Letters to a Young Lady 14 as 'our
constant preservative from lassitude' (2: 416). As for Richard Polwhele who was
going to attack the author of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman so cruelly in a
poem entitled 'The Unsex'd Females', 15 he gives pride of place to sewing in the
idyllic picture he draws of a traditional family in 'The Family Picture': 16 'And for
my girls-ye fashionists, far hence!!Here shines the needle with peculiar grace' (74).
Is there then some truth in what is suggested by grotesque Bridgetina, tragic
Julia and perfect Harriet in Elizabeth Hamilton's novel? Did one's attitude towards
9 Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) insists on the common nature of man and woman, a
nature based on the reason they share and which sets them apart from mere animals.
Although she acknowledges man's physical superiority, she stresses that education
tends to increase this slight difference made by nature. Thus she ascribes the sexual
characters identified by her contemporaries to culture, not to nature (see chapters 2 and
3 of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman: 'The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual
Character Discussed').
10 The very title of Mary Wollstonecraft's book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(1792), announced her as a rebel against the sexist society of her time: the notion of
women's rights was absurd as women only had duties then.
11 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman [1792] (New York: Norton, 1975).
12 The defender of the monarchy and religion, Hannah More (1745-1833) attacked the
rights of men and the rights of women.
13 Jane West (1758-1852) wrote novels, poems, drama, and also educational works. She
voiced some very conservative opinions on the nature and place of women in society.
14 Letters to a Young Lady in which the duties and character of women are considered,
chiefly with a reference to prevailing opinions (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, &
Orme, 1806).
15 In Poems (London: Rivingtons, 1810) II, 36-44.
16 Op. cit., V 19-83.
needlework go hand in hand with one's attitude towards the nascent feminism?
Although it may be the case in Memoirs of Modern Philosophers, a work of fiction
written with an openly didactic purpose, 17 things were much more complex in
reality. The author's position moreover is not quite so clearcut in the case of Julia as
in that of Bridgetina: indeed, even though Julia would have been better off had she
dedicated herself to sewing instead of mixing with the doubtful characters who were
to lead her to an early grave, the novelist does not draw a very attractive picture of
needlework when she evokes, with some irony, 'the mysteries of cross-stitch, chain-
stitch, and gobble-stitch'. Furthermore, she shows sympathy for Julia as a child: 'the
little romp did not much relish the confinement necessary for these employments'
(1: 145), she explains with affection. Indeed little Julia is not unlike what the
tomboy Elizabeth Hamilton used to be. 'She had a playmate of the other sex, by
whose example she was stimulated to feats of hardihood and enterprise,' her
biographer Miss Benger writes. 18 Thus a strange gap appears between the author's
official attitude and her own behaviour. As for Mrs West, she may defend women's
traditional functions, but this does not prevent her from occasionally wishing things
were different: 'At the commencement of these letters,' she admits in her Letters to
a Young Lady, 'I felt discouraged at the extensiveness of the plan, for the due
execution of which my numerous domestic duties left me little leisure' (3: 426). It
is as though authors such as Elizabeth Hamilton and Mrs West could not be content
with the very advice they were giving their readers.
The feminists' position towards needlework needs to be reexamined as well.
Indeed, although Emma proclains her dislike for sewing in Memoirs of Emma
Courtney just as her caricature, Bridgetina, does in Memoirs of Modern
Philosophers, Mary Hays imagines a very different case in The Victim of
Prejudice,1 9 a novel in which the reader can see the heroine's friend busily making
clothes for the household while being read to by her husband (1: 94), a scene which,
in spite of the very different positions of the novelists on important matters, reminds
us of Harriet sitting at her work, listening to Hume's History of England. As for the
heroine, far from complaining about having to sew, she would like to support herself
by sewing; unfortunately she could not fmd employment in any of the lace, baby
linen or other ready-made garment shops as she could not produce the necessary
references or securities (2: 89-90). Mary Wollstonecraft too places a character in a
similar situation in The Wrongs of Woman: 20 'not having been taught early, and my
hands being rendered clumsy by hard work, I did not sufficiently excel to be
17 A writer for The Anti-Jacobin thus notices the presence in Memoirs of Modern
Philosophers of some characters he describes as 'excellent people strictly performing
the duties of religion and morality' and 'admirably contrasted with the unprincipled dis-
ciples of Godwin and his wife'. The Anti-Jacobin, 7 (180 1): 42.
18 Memoirs ofthe Late Elizabeth Hamilton, with a Selection from her Correspondence and
other unpublished Writings, ed. Elizabeth Benger (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees,
Orme & Brown, 1818) 32.
19 The only available copy of the novel at the British Library is a French translation, La
Victime du pnfjuge (Paris: Lenormand, 1799).
20 In Mary [1788] and The Wrongs of Woman [1798] ed. Gary Kelly (Oxford: O.U.P., 1980).
employed in the ready-made linen shops' (113), Jemima recalls. For Mary
Wollstonecraft and Mary Hays, defending the rights of woman does not therefore
imply the systematic rejection of needlework, as is illustrated by what the author of
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman writes in one of her letters to Godwin: 'You
shall read whilst I mend my stockings.'21 As for Mary Hays, she even wishes men
left sewing to women: 'I never see, without indignation, those trades, which ought
to be appropriated only to women, almost entirely engrossed by men, haberdashery,
millinery, and even mantua-making' (84-85), the author of Letters and Essays
exclaims. The aim pursued by women whilst sewing may well offer a key to the
apparent contradictions of our writers; rather than the nature of needlework itself, it
may therefore be worth examining the context in which women were sewing.
Indeed, Priscilla Wakefield either rejects or recommends needlework, depending
on the class of women she addresses. 22 'It is a very erroneous misapplication of
time, for a woman who fills the honourable and responsible character of a parent, to
waste her days in the frivolous employment of needle-work,' she roundly declares
in the pages devoted to the privileged classes (44). However, when she deals with
the education of the women of the lower ranks of society, she insists on the
importance of the very same occupation, 'useful needle-work in every branch'
(11 0). Priscilla Wakefield considered sewing to be the occupation of the poor
therefore rather than of women. Indeed, needlework did not seem to be a gendered
occupation yet in the less fortunate households at the time: 'In the long winter
evenings, the husband cobbles shoes, mends the family clothes, and attends the
children, while the wife spins' (193), David Davies wrote in 1795 about
Aberdeenshire in The Case of Labourers in Husbandry. 23 Mary Wollstonecraft and
Mary Hays shared Priscilla Wakefield's attitude: like her, they either encourage or
reject needlework, depending on the social rank of the women they are discussing,
as they consider it not as an aim in itself but as a means to an end, a potential source
of work and income. Jemima was after financial independence when, faced with the
fact that her savings were inexorably dwindling, she thought of sewing in The
Wrongs of Woman. So was the heroine of The Victim of Prejudice when, alone and
penniless in London, she vainly tried to support herself by plying the same trade. In
Original Stories from Real Life, 24 Mary Wollstonecraft had portrayed a poor widow
who had managed to support herself through needlework. 25 The simple garments
made by Madame Neville in The Victim of Prejudice may not bring her any money,
as they are to be used by her family, but Mary Hays stresses that Madame Neville
21 Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft ed. Ralph M. Wardle (Ithaca: Cornell U.P.,
1979) 241.
22 Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex [1798] (London: Darton,
Harvey & Darton, 1817).
23 Quoted by Bridget Hill, Women, Work, and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth Century
England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989) ch. 7, 'Housework'.
24 Original Stories from Real Life [1788] (London: Joseph Johnson, 1791).
25 'She came to me to beg some pieces of silk to make some pin-cushions for the boarders
of a neighbouring school' (148-149). Needlework is another matter in the case of the
boarders of the school in question, as it is then an accomplishment.
nevertheless contributes to the financial security and well-being of the household:

the Nevilles may only have enjoyed an income of sixty pounds per annum but
careful management and constant industry meant that they could actually live quite
comfortably (1: 94). Mary Wollstonecraft depicted a similar situation in her
Original Stories from Real Life: '[Mrs Trueman's] husband, a man of taste and
learning, reads to her, while she makes clothes for her children' (47).
Authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Hays do not therefore reject
needlework per se but some of its uses. Sewing is indeed in their eyes a fully
legitimate activity when taken up voluntarily by women as a means to earn a living
or save money; should it however tum into a form of labour arbitrarily imposed on
their sex by society and it becomes the object of their criticism. Consequently, the
author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman rises up against the custom which
consisted in forcing little girls to practice needlework; 26 Mary Hays too condemns
those who would like to make sure that young ladies were forever busy sewing. 27 In
such cases, needlework is not a potential source of liberation but a form of slavery,
an instrument of torture even. Indeed, Rousseau may consider a taste for sewing a
sexual character, 28 but there were women who felt nothing but dislike for
needlework: 'Confined to travel over an unwearied seam a mile long,' Elizabeth
Carter does not hide her distress. 29 'She did some needle-work, often unwillingly
when eager about her letters or Mss.,' we read about Maria Edgeworth in The Black
Book of Edgeworthstown. 30 Sewing was moreover a source of cruel suffering for the
female body and in particular for the female eyes. Mary Hays thus accuses the
traditional occupation imposed on her sex of 'cramping the minds and bodies of
young girls.' 31 As she imagines how the heroine of The Wrongs of Woman works at
her needle in order to help her old nurse, Mary Wollstonecraft explains that Mary was
trying to help the old woman spare her eyes.32 Conservative writers too were very
much aware of the risks run by the eyes of those to whom they nevertheless
recommended needlework as a most suitable employment. 'Shall radiant eyes that all
the world bewitch/Ache with stupour, o'er the tedious stitch?' 'Yes!', Polwhele
answered in 'The Family Picture' (42-43). Obviously worried by this problem,
Dr Fordyce33 suggested that his readers spare their eyes by choosing less complicated
26 'I have already inveighed against the custom of confining girls to their needle' (169).
27 'I confess I am no advocate for ... keeping [young girls] for ever poring over needle-
work' (Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous, 33-34).
28 See A Vindication ofthe Rights of Woman, 80-81: the author quotes Rousseau who talks
of 'primary propensity'; 'chosen for them' (75) are the words Mary Wollstonecraft
chooses for her part to describe what needlework was to her female contemporaries.
29 Taken from a letter addressed to Miss Talbot and quoted by Rosamund Bayne-Powell,
Housekeeping in the Eighteenth Century (London: J. Murray, 1956) 169.
30 The Black Book of Edgeworthstown and other Edgeworth Memories 1585-1817, ed.
Harriet Jessie Butler and Harold Edgeworth Butler (London: Faber & Gwyer, 1927)
241.
31 Letters and Essays Moral and Miscellaneous, 33-34.
32 'I had a great affection for my nurse, old Mary, for whom I used often to work, to spare
her eyes' (130).
33 The Character and Conduct of the Female Sex (London: T. Cadell, 1776).
patterns but still advised young ladies to take up sewing, to the great annoyance of
Mary Wollstonecraft.34
Supposing women actually found some pleasure in this accomplishment chosen
for them by society, the feminists had another reason for disliking needlework which
they indeed also criticize because it was no more than a mere pastime, that is to say
a waste of time. Rejecting the idea Rousseau had contributed to spread and according
to which 'young girls ought to dedicate great part of their time to needle-work' (75),
the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman accused this craft of being no
more than a mere pastime. Women had lots of time to pass indeed, as the doors to
male occupations were being more and more tightly closed upon them. Passing the
time: this is the way in which sewing is useful for Mrs West who describes the needle
as 'that useful implement ... our constant preservative from lassitude' .35 Mrs West
could not be any further from Priscilla Wakefield who calls sewing a 'frivolous
employment' in the case of the ladies of the upper ranks of society and describes it
as 'useful' only in that of the women of the lower social orders. When he
recommends that his readers take an interest in needlework, Dr Gregory explains that
it is a way of filling 'some of the many solitary hours [they] must necessarily pass at
home'. 36 Was not sewing therefore the opium of women? Busily employed at their
work, they were less likely to resent the society which was shutting them up in the
domestic sphere, leaving them both useless and bored. Indeed, some women did take
pleasure in needlework. 37 However, although the moralists preferred to see women
busy sewing rather than rivalling with men in the public sphere, they did not really
want them to fmd a source of actual pleasure in this activity. Dr Gregory thus stresses
that sewing could not be an end in itself. 38 As for Polwhele, he condemns those
whose fingers might be moved by vanity: reminding his readers that their
ancestresses used to make tapestries meant to cover the walls of their manors, he
mourns the fact that his female contemporaries work on their own dresses. 39
Not only had the women who were busy sewing no time for boredom or
discontent, but they had no time either for self-improvement. In Letters and Essays,
Moral and Miscellaneous, Mary Hays therefore criticizes the excessive amount of
time being spent sewing by Sempronia and stresses that it could have been
otherwise employed: Sempronia might have read some books for instance, but 'All
attention to literature, she considered as mere waste of time' (34); there was no
34 'It moves my gall to hear a preacher descanting on dress and needle-work' (A

Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 94).
35 See Addison's Spectator, no. 606: 'If I may ... imagine that any pretty creature is void
of Genius ... I must never-the-less insist. .. upon her working, if it be only to keep her
out of Harm's way.'
36 A Father :S Legacy to his Daughters [1774] (London: Millar, Law & Carter, 1789) 63.
37 Rosamund Bayne-Powell gives the example of Mrs Thackeray: 'Mrs Thackeray of
Cambridge had always a pair of wrist bands or a collar in her pocket ready to be stitched';
she never forgot to take her work along with her when she went out to tea, she adds ( 170).
38 A Father :S Legacy to his Daughters, 63.
39 'At present, whilst we admire the elegant fingers of a young lady busied in working, or
painting her ball-dress, we cannot but think, that her grand stimulus is the idea, "how
well she shall look in it"' (43).
danger that either Sempronia or her daughters might become novelists. By contrast,
once married, the heroine in Memoirs of Emma Courtney makes good use of her
spare time and reads books on anatomy, medicine and surgery instead of dedicating
herself to sewing. Not only did needlework soak up a lot of the precious time which
women might have devoted to more profitable activities, but it also prevented their
intellectual development, thus disqualifying them from really useful tasks. 'This
employment contracts their faculties more than any other' (75), declares the author
of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. By defmition, constraining girls to their
°
needle implies preventing their minds from developing fully. 4 Forbidding women
to use the reason nature had given them as human beings, needlework thus appeared
as a dangerous source of alienation for them, a means for the sexist society of the
time to keep them in a position of so-called natural but in fact artificial inferiority.
However, the advocates of the rights of women did not content themselves with
criticizing sewing as a form offemale accomplishment: they also happened to attack
needlework as a source of independence as they refused to allow it to be the only
way for their female contemporaries to contribute to the fmancial well-being of their
household or to support themselves. Stressing that women might earn a living by
sewing was not very revolutionary indeed: conservative authors themselves were
happy to let women sew for a living, for this so-called feminine occupation had the
further advantage of keeping women safely ensconced in the private sphere. 'By the
employment of her needle, she had procured, during his absence, an honourable and
virtuous subsistence for herself and son,' Elizabeth Hamilton writes about one of the
female characters of her Translation ofthe Letters ofa Hindoo Rajah. 41 By contrast,
useful as it might be, needlework was never more than a poor solution for the
feminists who would have liked to see women employed at more stimulating and
better paid tasks. Mary Wollstonecraft herself experienced the vicissitudes of the life
of a seamstress with the Bloods: having sewn so late into the night as not to be able
to see any more, she knew the physical and spiritual suffering endured by those who
lived off badly paid needlework. 'Few are the modes of earning a subsistence, and
those very humiliating,' she writes in Thoughts on the Education ofDaughters;42 in
her later Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she wonders what women may have
to do in society. She is nevertheless convinced that her sex can perform a part in the
world of business, the professions and even politics. True, sewing did allow women
to do charitable work. Thus, Elizabeth Hamilton's Harriet sews in order to help the
poor. However, because of their faith in women's intellectual powers, the feminists
refused to limit female charity to needlework. Mary Hays therefore shows how
Emma studies medicine: she assists her husband in his profession and she can even
40 'I have already inveighed against the custom of confining girls to their needle and
shutting them from all political and civil employment: for by thus narrowing their
minds, they are rendered unfit to fulfil [their] ... duties' (169).
41 Translation ofthe Letters ofa Hindoo Rajah, written previous to, and during the Period
of his Residence in England, with a Preliminary Dissertation on the History of the
Hindoos (London: G. G. & J. Robinson, 1796) I, 106.
42 Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, with Reflections on Female Conduct in the
More Important Duties of Life (London: Joseph Johnson, 1787) 69.
help the sick on her own, should the need arise. 43 Whereas Elizabeth Hamilton
requires of Harriet that she content herself with the discreet charity traditionally
linked with her sex, Mary Hays makes Emma choose a masculine profession which
makes her useful to society at large. True, before her marriage, the heroine of The
Wrongs of Woman sews in order to help her old nurse, Mrs Mason and her pupils
make garments for the poor in Original Stories from Real Life, 44 and Mary
Wollstonecraft herself sewed during her residence with the Bloods, but the author of
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman soon gave up needlework to become 'the first
of a new genus', 45 that is to say a professional writer.
This is precisely what the moralists wanted to prevent, as shown by the warmth
with which they recommended sewing to women and by the recurring antithesis
between sewing and writing. 'I cannot forbear wishing that several Writers of [the]
Sex had chosen to apply themselves rather to Tapestry than to Rime,'4 6 Addison's
Spectator already declared. The Miniature reacted just as violently in 1804 when
faced with the spectacular success of women's novels in the eighteenth century: this
publication proclaimed loudly that the ladies who pored over the web of their
complicated plots had better work at darning their stockings. 47 Mrs West echoed
such criticism when she imagined that only those who had 'clothed their household
with the labour of [their] own hands' should be allowed 'to dress out fictitious
characters'. Elizabeth Hamilton too echoed The Spectator and The Miniature when
she ironically described the writers of her time in Memoirs ofModern Philosophers
as being 'authors by profession ... milliners at their leisure hours' (1: 43), thus
suggesting that female writers worked against the natural order of things.
Encouraging needlework thus seemed to be a way of censuring female writing.
Faced with the potential threat of female competition, should women not fmd
sewing a satisfactory pastime or an acceptable paid or charitable activity any more, and
should they then wish to work in spheres until then considered as exclusively
masculine, traditionalists could only rejoice when they saw the efforts made by those
who were still happy to realize their ambitions with their needle, such as
Miss Linwood, a lady upon whom The Gentleman sMagazine lavishes praise. Indeed,
such panegyric did not cost anything to the male sex: Miss Linwood may have shone,
but she did not compete in any way with men through her work. This causes such relief
to the author of the account of the exhibition of the lady's works that he forgives her
intrusion on the public sphere and even rejoices that the success enjoyed by her first
exhibition encouraged her to renew the experiment. 48 All of Miss Linwood's
exhibitions met with the same approval in The Gentleman sMagazine whose accounts
never tired of what they called 'the superior powers of the needle'. 49 What may be the
43 See chapter 25.

44 'She requested Caroline to assist her to make some clothes, which a poor woman was
in want of' ( 107).
45 Quoted by Claire Tomalin, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft [1974]
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983) 92.
46 No. 606, p. 722.
47 2 (1804): 16.
48 69.1 (1799): 235.
49 79.1 (1809): 252.
cause of such enthusiasm, especially in a man? Maybe the author was keen to
encourage women to follow Miss Linwood's example in order to curb their threatening
energies. Indeed, if the lady's works had 'all the effect of a most exquisite painting' ,50
they were not paintings. Miss Linwood was not shunning the needle in favour of paint
brushes: 'she had no instrument but her needle,' The Lady s Monthly Museum stresses
in an attempt to discourage its readers from looking for nobler tools, for
Miss Linwood's needle was supposed to be as capable of creating wonders as
Praxiteles' chisel. 51 Instead of entering the male sphere of art, Miss Linwood, a mere
seamstress, thus remained on the margins and the Royal Academy could close its doors
on her with a clear conscience. 52 If male commentators acknowledged the genius
displayed by Miss Linwood, what made the lady's works particularly remarkable in
their eyes was in fact the patience they displayed. 53 Moreover, Miss Linwood
contented herself with copying male artists, which was a way of paying homage to
their creative genius and to hide humbly behind them: her gallery was therefore never
more than 'a gallery of imitative art'. 54 Male artists were on display in her exhibitions,
not Miss Linwood, as illustrated by the full title of her guidebook, 'The Linwood
Gallery of Pictures in Needle-Work; with a biographical sketch of the Painters'.
Mary Wollstonecraft would not have been happy with a career such as
Miss Linwood's, but then nor would have Hannah More or Jane West, as the latter in
fact write expansively, whilst recommending that their female contemporaries should
be content with needlework. Although she rejects the feminism ofA Vindication ofthe
Rights of Woman, Hannah More bitterly resents the inferior status of the woman
writer; 55 as for Jane West, she cannot prevent herself from wishing that her domestic
tasks left her more time for writing.5 6 And so it appears that the feminists and their
adversaries had less divergent positions regarding needlework than it might have
seemed at first sight. Both sides acknowledged that it was a useful activity for the
needy but found it a poor medium for those whose aptitudes were above average.
The exaggerated declarations about sewing may be explained by the context created
by the French Revolution and by the climate of political reaction which followed in
England. Keen to preserve order and religion, the enemies of the feminists were
clinging to the past, and thus, amongst other things, to needlework: as stressed by
Thomas Gisbome, woman had traditionally fulfilled the functions of 'housekeeper
and sempstress'. 57
50 70.1 (1800): 560.

51 The Lady's Monthly Museum, 5 (1800): 2.
52 See The Lady's Monthly Museum, 5 (1800): 1-4.
53 The Lady's Monthly Museum praises 'a monument, not only of uncommon genius, but
of a persevering industry', 5 (1800): 4.
54 The Lady's Monthly Museum, 5 (1800): 4.
55 See Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education (London: T. Cadell and
W. Davies, 1799) II: 12: 'Her highest exertion will probably be received with the
qualified approbation, that it is really extraordinay for a woman. '
56 Letters to a Young Lady, III: 426.
57 See An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex (London: T. Cadell Jun. and
W. Davies, 1801) 18. 'Genius, taste, and learning itself, have appeared in the number of
female endowments and acquisitions,' Gisbome adds (p. 19).
Chapter 4
Governesses of the Royal Family and the

Nobility in Great Britain, 1750-1815
Sophie Loussouarn
The word governess appeared in English in the fifteenth century and referred to a
person in charge of the children of the Royal family or the nobility. It was only at
the beginning of the seventeenth century that the governess became a proper
teacher. In the eighteenth century, numerous learned women who were bachelors or
widows worked as governesses, tutors or schoolmistresses. There was a hierarchy
between those three types of educators. There were also huge differences in their
wages depending on the family for whom they worked. As there was of course no
census of the employment of women in the eighteenth century, we have little
information on their numbers. Joseph Massie or Patrick Colquhoun do not mention
the category of governesses. Nevertheless, if we take into account the number of
noble families, we may suppose there were at least 10,000 governesses.
Governesses were chosen on psychological, moral and pedagogical criteria. Their
knowledge of the topics they taught was rarely taken into account by theoreticians,
moralists or journalists, as the following quotation from a ladies' periodical shows:
Parents should be very careful in the choice of tutors for their children, and such persons
only ought to be encouraged as school-masters and governesses, as are of good repute,
and lead such lives as do no discredit to religion.-It is from such only that precept can
be expected to have a proper effect; it is these only, who, while they teach them the
sciences, will have due care over their morals. 1
Governesses and tutors had to meet a physical, moral and intellectual profile.
Parents recruited women with moral and intellectual qualities. The ideal image of
the governess was that of a reserved, modest and calm person. This triple
characteristic appeared like a guarantee for parents who entrusted their children with
them, so as to hand them down the basic knowledge required according to their
social background. Governesses became members of the family for which they
worked, often developing intimate ties with the children, but they were submitted to
the orders of the parents and to the lifestyle imposed on them. To be employed as a
governess was a respectable, yet unpredictable job, since the parents could dismiss
a governess. The governesses of the Royal family belonged to the aristocracy, unlike
'Essay on Education', The Lady's Magazine (June 13, 1775) VI: 365.
those of aristocratic families. In the Royal family, tutors were subordinated to

governesses. What was the status of the governesses of the Royal family and the
nobility from 1750 to 1815? What were their relationships with the parents and the
children? What were their working conditions, their stipends, their perks and their
living conditions? These are some of the questions raised by the work of governess.
The governesses of the Royal family
In the eighteenth century, the Royal family employed governesses and tutors who
helped the mothers absorbed by their social life. Governors and governesses of the
Royal children belonged to the nobility and the tutors of the princes and princesses
had often taught in aristocratic families previously. 2 Governesses were often
widows who had acquired an experience of education through that of their children.
On the contrary, the younger tutors of the princes and princesses were bachelors,
which made them available, whereas dancing and music masters and language
teachers were usually foreigners.
The governesses of George II and Caroline's children belonged to the
aristocracy, whether it be Baroness von Gemmingen, Lady Portland or Lady
Deloraine. In the 1730s, George II employed Lady Deloraine as the governess of
Princess Mary and Princess Louisa. As a widow, Lady Deloraine had accepted not
to remarry when she became governess to the Royal children. She soon became
George Il's mistress. The Countess of Portland was also the governess of
George II's daughters from 1737 to 1738. Apart from their governess, Princess Mary
and Princess Louisa had a dancing master, Mr Garth, who earned £42 a year, a
music teacher, Mr Palacet, who earned £100 a year, a clavichord master, Mr Ebelin,
who earned £75 a year and a violin teacher, Mr Webber, who earned £75 a year. 3
At the court of George III and Queen Charlotte, the queen was helped by
governesses and teachers. Lady Charlotte Finch was in charge of the education of the
princes at the court of George III, where she was appointed governess to the Royal
children when the Prince of Wales was born in 1762. She was the second daughter of
Thomas, first Earl of Pomfret, and was born on February 14th 1725. When she was
appointed governess she was the widow of the Honourable Finch, a renowned
diplomat and was the mother of five children. As governess of the Prince of Wales,
she had rights, privileges and advantages, as the Duke of Devonshire wrote. 4 From
1762 to 1771, she earned £600 a year as governess of the Prince ofWales.s And from
1771 to 1793, she still earned £600 a year as governess of the young prince and
princesses. 6 Besides, she benefited from other advantages from March 1783:
2 Miss Anne Dorothy Khrome was the governess of Lady Amelia Darcy, the daughter of
the four princes' governor, the earl of Holdernesse, before teaching French to the
princesses.
3 RA Geo Add MSS 21/181
4 Geo Add MSS 15/437.
5 Add. MSS 17870 (5-72)
6 Add. MSS 17871 (4) RA Geo. 36839-36945.
Governesses of the Royal Family and the Nobility 49
She was granted £800 'in lieu of diet and all other necessaries with which she has been
served from the Household, either in Town or Country, and which she was supplied with
by His Majesty's Command from Benevolence to Lady Charlotte Finch personally and
not to her as Governess to the Royal Nursery for as such she was entitled to allowance
from the Household.
The governess of George, his brother and sisters, Charlotte, Augusta and Elizabeth,
Mary, Sophia and Amelia performed her duty seriously and expressed in a letter to
the Queen the high opinion she had of her task, as she was in charge of the
instruction, the conduct and the amusements of the Royal children:
Your majesty must know what an uncommon stock of spirits and cheerfulness is
necessary to go through the growing attendance of so many and such very young people
in their amusements, as well as behaviour and instruction, besides ordering the affairs of
a nursery. Therefore if your majesty will be graciously pleased to signify to me what the
additional attendance is that you require I shall either endeavour faithfully to discharge it,
or humbly and fairly own my incapacity for it, which appears to me the only way of
acting consistant with the duty of a faithful servant, which I hope I have ever approved
myself to your majestyJ
As governess, Lady Finch had a busy timetable so that in 1774 she asked for two
days of rest a week to see her friends, which was accepted by the Queen. 8 The
Queen organized the timetable of the governesses and tutors ofthe children so that
the latter were never alone, but she also took into account the happiness of her
employees who replaced her when she was busy with her numerous duties. The
Queen and Lady Finch wrote to each other when the latter was in charge of the
Royal children during the summer holiday at the seaside at Weymouth in 1780.
The letters of the Royal family reveal the trust and the esteem of the King and
Queen as well as the affection and gratitude of the princesses towards this
outstanding person. Princess Charlotte thus wrote from Windsor on November 11th
1795:
The kindness you express & show me upon the reunion and I may say upon every other
during my life time ... I can find no words to express all I wish to say & how I feel your
goodness to me, but believe me when I assure you I am most grateful. 9
Princess Mary also thanked her governess for her kindness and her motherly
tenderness. 10 Even after she retired, the Queen kept writing to her and sent her a gift
as a testimony of her friendship. 11
7 RA Geo Add MSS 15/8155. Lady Charlotte Finch to the Queen; Oct 31st 1774.
8 RA Geo. Add. MSS 15/8154 (1774).
9 RA GEO Add MSS 15/445. Princess Mary to Lady Charlotte Finch; November lith
1795.
10 GeoAdd MSS 15/8175.
11 Geo Add MSS 15-447. Windsor February 27, 1808.
Lady Charlotte Finch was helped by Mrs Coultsworth, the sub-governess, who
retired in 1772 and was replaced by Miss Martha Caroline Goldsworthy, the
daughter of Burrington Goldsworthy and the sister of the first equerry to the Queen.
They were helped by Miss Jane Gomme, the daughter of William Gomme, who had
been George III's secretary at the British Embassy in the Hague. Miss Frederica
Planta was the English teacher of the princesses from July 1771 until her death in
February 1778 and she earned £100 a year, 12 to which £50 was added in 1773 to
cover her food expenses and her tea, coffee, chocolate and sugar expenses. Her
sister Margaret Peggy Planta was appointed English teacher when her sister died.
She earned £100 a year from 1792 to January 1812, when she retired and got an
annual pension of £150 until October 1816. Mademoiselle Suzanne Moula and
Mademoiselle Krohme, helped by Monsieur de la Guiffardiere, taught French. And
in 1772, Princess Charlotte, Princess Augusta and Princess Elizabeth started
learning French with Miss Anne Dorothee Krohme, who had been the governess of
Lady Amelia Darcy, the daughter of the governor of George III's fourth son.
Mademoiselle Montmollin taught sewing to the princesses. There were fifteen
teachers in the team managed by Lady Finch. Monsieur Denoyer taught drawing.
Mr Roberts taught writing and music was taught by Johann Christian Bach. 13
The governess, Lady Charlotte Finch, was a member of the Royal family. But, the
sub-governess, Mrs Coultsworth, and the English teacher, Miss Planta,were lodged
in the Queen's House, the latter also having apartments in StJames's. The assistants
of the governess were chosen by the King and Queen, who did not relinquish their
powers, as one of Queen Charlotte's letters to Lady Charlotte Finch reveals:
You said that in coming into the family you get some distress in not having appointed the
sub governess. This I believe is a mistake as I find by the king that this place is not to be
disposed of by either Governor or Governess but by us alone... but the choice and
determination solely is in us.l4
Nothing was left to chance in the organization of the teaching of the Royal children,
as Queen Charlotte's recommendations show. The Royal family was a real
pedagogical laboratory for fifteen princes and princesses. The Queen looked after
the organization of the classes taught by the numerous highly qualified teachers who
benefited from a preferential treatment as masters of the Royal children. Their
wages did not compare with the £40 a year Mary Wollstonecraft earned in 1786 as
governess of the children of Lord Kingsborough. Within the Royal family, there was
a clear hierarchy between the tutors and the governesses, the latter being members
of the Royal family and taking part in the tea parties and other functions their young
students attended. After Lady Finch left, Lady Elgin, a widow and mother of four
12 Add. MSS. 17870 (73).

13 Court and Private Life in the Time of Queen Charlotte: Being the Journals of
Mrs Papendick, Assistant Keeper of the Wardrobe and Reader to Her Majesty, ed.
Mrs Vernon Delves Broughton (London: Richard Bentley, 1887) I, 64.
14 RA Geo Add MSS 15/8154. Queen Charlotte to Lady Charlotte Finch (1774).
children who lived in Windsor with the Royal family, became the governess of
George III's granddaughter, Princess Charlotte, who wrote:
Lady Elgin we have her quite alone at Windsor and she is a most valuable person, she has
gone through a great deal but her support and comfort was her true confidence in a most
kind and just Providence. She was left a widow my dearest Augustus with the care of
three infant Boys and with Child and the day fortnight of her husbands death she lay in
of a little girl; she thought that giving herself up entirely to grief would be a most wicked
thing, when Providence had been pleased to grant her so fine a family; she has followed
them ever since that time through all their different studies her girl has never left her &
she now has the pleasure to see them out well Lady Charlotte is a most amiable young
woman.l 5
Her gifts as an attentive mother and the esteem of the princesses towards her
account for her being selected as the governess of the Prince of Wales's daughter.
The governesses of the nobility
The mothers of the nobility who educated their daughters at home expected
numerous skills and a good morality from their governesses. But they could not vie
with the Royal family who employed about twenty governesses and tutors to hand
down the basic knowledge to the heirs to the throne of England. In the second half
of the eighteenth century, the employment of governess became widespread in
aristocratic families whereas institutions for girls lost their renown.
The work of a governess was a full-time job from morning to evening and it left
little spare time. Unlike the governesses of the Royal family who belonged to the
nobility and were usually widows, the governesses of the nobility were less skilled,
younger and bachelors. Governesses were often the daughters of ministers who had
no personal income and worked to meet their needs. Some performed this job all their
life while others stopped when they married. Some were more educated than others.
Nevertheless, the education, the clothes and the manners of a governess showed her
social standing. A governess should behave properly to serve well-born people, but
her situation depended on the good-will of the parents who entrusted their children
to them since she was neither a servant nor a member of the family. Moral qualities
prevailed in the choice of a governess and she was often recommended to the family
by friends. It was the case of the governess of the Duchess of Portland's children,
Elizabeth Elstob, who was recommended by Mrs Pendarves and to whom Elizabeth
had been introduced by Hester Chapone, one of her childhood friends.
From 1739 onwards, the daughters of Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of
Portland, were educated by Elizabeth Elstob (1683-1756), a linguist and a scholar,
who was brought up by her brother. Lady Elizabeth, Lady Harriet and Lady
Margaret were in the care of the governess with her two brothers, William,
Marquess of Tichfields and Lord Edward. But the sons left to attend classes at
15 RA. Geo Add MSS 10/5 Princess Elizabeth to Prince Augustus, May 27th 1791.
Mr A chard at the age of five, before leaving home to go to a public school, at the
age of nine. As for their sisters they were under the aegis of Mrs Elstob who devised
for them a curriculum based on religion, virtue, reading, English grammar and
history. Elizabeth Elstob remained the tutor of the Duchess of Portland's children
from 1739 to 1756, to educate the children, teach them how to speak and understand
English and go out with them. In spite of the status of the family for which she
worked, she only earned thirty pounds a year.I 6
In some families, the governess was a relatively independent person and highly
considered by her masters who had esteem and respect for her. The governess of the
daughters of Georgiana and the fifth Duke of Devonshire was recommended by
their grandmother, Lady Spencer, who meant to have an influence on the education
of Georgiana (1783-1858) and Harriet (1785-1862) through Miss Selina Trimmer,
the daughter of Mrs Sarah Trimmer. Selina Trimmer arrived at Devonshire House at
the end of the year 1788 and stayed there until the children of the Devonshires were
brought up. She had become a member of the Cavendish family. Selina was the ideal
governess: she loved children and wanted to do her duty and teach them moral
principles.J7 Selina gave full satisfaction to Georgiana who was pleased with the
virtue of her children's governess, but was afraid she might be her mother's tool.
Indeed the latter trusted Miss Selina Trimmer more than her own daughter, as
Georgiana wrote to Lady Spencer in a letter of September 9th 1790:
I have, Dst M., a great opinion of Miss T's principles and talents for education, but I see
her so alter' d, thinking herself so independent of me not to suspect her especially by the
hints she is for ever dropping about yr intentions and notions. Now, Dst M., it was my
consolation to think I had such a person about my children, and it is my anxious desire to
retain her, but if I ever can discover that she interferes in anything but the care of their
education, or that she stands between you and me in any way whatsoever, I could not
submit to have a person whom I look'd upon in that light another moment in the house
with me. I hope I am wrong, I feel a real regard for her attentions to my poor child.l 8
The Duchess of Devonshire reproached her children's governess with her

independence but she showed her esteem for Selina whom she held as her children's
guide: 'I respect you as the most virtuous and valuable being I ever knew. I depend
on you as the guide & guardian of my dearest children' 19 Selina Trimmer was in
charge of teaching reading, writing, arithmetic and French to Georgiana's two
daughters. She was helped by an Italian teacher, Nardini.
In other families, the governess was in charge of more children. Agnes Porter
became at the same time the governess of the three daughters of the second Earl of
Ilchester, Henry Thomas Fox and his wife Mary Theresa. Agnes Porter was the
16 Green, 'Elizabeth Elstob: The Saxon Nymph (1683-1756)', in J. R. Brink, Female

Scholars, 153-155.
17 Brian Masters, Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1981)
168.
18 c. 1062.
19 c. 1397.
daughter of an Anglican minister and she started working for the II chester family in
1784, when she was thirty years old. From 1784 to 1793 she lived on their estate at
Redlynch and was in charge of the education of the three daughters, Elisabeth
Theresa, aged eleven, Mary Lucy, aged eight, and Harriet, aged five and a half. Then
from 1796 onwards, she was in charge of the two younger sisters, Charlotte and
Louisa, and of their brother Lord Stavordale, to whom she taught reading, writing
and arithmetic. She also taught them history, geography, French and English
literature. Besides, she gave them moral lessons, made them read the Bible and
recite their catechism. At Redlynch, she earned £105 a year and had a bedroom and
a room to entertain her friends. She also had a room in the London house of the
Ilchesters. One of her letters dating from March 1788 described the day in the life
of a governess of the nobility in London:
Thursday: rose at half past six, past an hour and a half in my chamber, then went to the
harpsichord till nine. A lively breakfast with my three dear friends, after which Lady
Elizabeth and I together prepared for Monsieur Helmand: he was very well pleased with
the lessons practiced. Afterwards I spent two hours with Lady Mary and Harriot at
French, English and music, then 1/2 hour of Numa [J.P. Claris de Florian, The Adventures
of Numa Pompilius, 1788] to our mutual satisfaction. Went in the evening with
Mrs Matthews to the play, intending to see the heroine of the theatre Mrs Siddons. 20
Agnes Porter was a happy governess who was pleased to work for the Ilchester
family and enjoyed the goodness and friendship they showed towards her. She
became the governess of her pupils's children and came to live at Penrice Castle
from 1799 onwards. The teaching of Agnes Porter varied considerably between her
arrival in 1799 when she was in charge of three daughters and her departure in 1806
when the family was made up of eight children. She earned £100 a year between
1799 and 1806; but after she had left Penrice Castle, the Talbots still gave her an
annual pension of £30. The daily life of a governess at the time was more that of a
member of the Talbot family, since she had known the mother of the children since
the age of seven. She spent her free time reading, writing and visiting friends.
The governesses benefited from board and lodging in the family for which she
worked, which was a nice perk, but the annual wage ranged from thirty to fifty
pounds. In October 1786, Mary Wollstonecraft became the governess of Lord
Kingsborough's children, in Dublin and Mitchelstown, County Cork, thanks to the
recommendation of her friend, Mrs Burgh, and earned forty pounds a year. After
some time to adjust, she felt some satisfaction to live in the castle of the
Kings boroughs, for a year, in spite of the terrible relationships with the lady of the
house, Lady Kingsborough, who was more concerned by her dogs than by her
daughters.21 The correspondence of Mary Wollstonecraft and her sister Everina
20 The Journals and Letters ofAgnes Porter, ed. Joanna Martin (London: The Hambledon
Press, 1998).
21 Mary Wollstonecraft, Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. Ralph M. Wardle
(Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979) 120.
describes the feelings of the young governess who had just arrived in an Irish family,
where she was often left to herself as a letter of October 9th 1786 shows:
I shall be more alone in my new situation than I ever supposed, as I shall often be left at
the country seat with the younger children, as they do spend the winters with their mother
in Dublin ... They do reside near Cork-at Mitchelstown-here Lord Kings borough has
established a manufactory.22
She was in charge of the three daughters of the Kings boroughs, the eldest one of
whom was fourteen:
I have committed to my care three girls-the eldest fourteen-by no means handsome-

yet a sweet girl-She has a wonderful capacity but she has a multiplicity of employments
it has not room to expand itself-and in all probability will be lost in a heap of rubbish
miscalled accomplishments. 23
The reader can discover the educationalist in the benevolent governess. Indeed she
criticized the conformist education of girls and the vanity of the accomplishments.
Mary Wollstonecraft criticized the indifference of Lady Kingsborough towards her
children, who were afraid of their mother and took their governess as a substitute
mother:
All her children have been ill-very disagreeable fevers-Her ladyship visited them in a
formal way-though their situation called forth my tenderness-and I endeavored to
amuse them while she lavished awkward fondness on her dogs.
The character of the governess was often a substitute for the mother who frightened
the children:
The children cluster about me-one catches a kiss, another lisps my long name-while a
sweet little boy who is conscious that he is a favourite, calls himself my son-At the sight
of their mother they tremble and run to me for protection-This renders them dear to
me-and I discover the kind of happiness I was formed to enjoy. 24
The governess whose function was to look after the children, to supervise them,
to teach them the basics, became a real friend and made up for the relative solitude
ofLady Kingsborough's daughters whose life was split from that of their parents. She
offered understanding, support and compassion to complaints and sorrows. The
relationship between Mary Wollstonecraft and her pupils was one of intimate
friendship.
Even in noble households the life of governesses was uncertain, depending on
the families' positions and the children's attitudes. This could bring great
22 Wollstonecraft 118.
23 Wollstonecraft, Letter to Eliza W. Bishop, Mitchelstown, November 17th 1786 126.
24 Wollstonecraft, Letter to Everina, Mitchelstown, January 15th 1787 132.
satisfactions when children were gifted but it could also cause numerous
disappointments with difficult children. Governesses were nonetheless more
privileged than schoolmistresses who had to teach a greater number of pupils and
did not enjoy the comfort of aristocratic houses or the esteem due to their skills. The
status of governess gradually improved in the first half of the eighteenth century.
But there was a change in the second half when aristocratic families employed
governesses for their children at home. The work of governess provided a home and
a modest wage to a woman, but this position remained precarious, as she was
entirely submitted to the goodwill of the employer. Moreover, illness or age could
put an end to this employment. Owing to their education, to their working
conditions and to their lifestyle, governesses were different from top servants, but
the wages of governesses ranged from £30 to £100 in the aristocracy whereas it
reached £600 for the governess of George III's children and only a few governesses
benefited from a pension after leaving the family for whom they had worked.
PART II
WOMEN IN
MALE STRONGHOLDS
Chapter 5
The Labour and Servitude of Women

in the Highlands of Scotland
in the Eighteenth Century
Marie-Helene Thevenot-Totems
If the Highlands are nowadays considered to be the undisputed tourist region of

Scotland, such was not the case at the very beginning of the eighteenth century. The
Highlands did not attract many visitors, for they were reputed to be a poor and
inhospitable land, not easily accessible and peopled with 'savages' whose language
was totally incomprehensible to foreigners. The Highlands were then a sort of 'terra
incognita', completely isolated and tragically inward-looking.
But during the eighteenth century several factors contributed to the opening of
the Highlands onto the 'civilized world' and brought the inhabitants out of their
torpor and tragic isolation, namely the construction of bridges and roads undertaken
by the government after the last Jacobite rising of 1745, the improvement of the
means of transport and the progressive development of the region thanks to the
advances made in agriculture and the setting up of new industries.
Yet, before the country of the Gaels drew flocks of tourists fascinated at last by
its wild lochs, its majestic mountains and by the likeable ruggedness of its
inhabitants, the travellers who were daring enough to venture into this remote
country, did not give a very flattering image of it in their travelling accounts. All of
them denounced the hopeless situation of this economically deprived area of Great
Britain, emphasizing the miserable, even primitive living conditions of the
Highlanders, their uncouth manners and their very low intellectual level. Their tribal
organization was also an inexhaustible source of amazement. It was in fact very
difficult for foreigners to understand the Highlanders' instinctive need to assemble
under the protection of one of them acknowledged as their leader because of his
bravery, his warlike qualities and his talent for commanding. This organization in
clans, placed under the uncontested authority of very powerful chiefs, lasted until
1746. After the Jacobites' defeat at Culloden in Aprill746, George II' s government
hastened to start the dismantling of the clans in order to put an end to a latent and
harmful feudal system which was a real hindrance to the economic and social
progress ofNorthem Scotland.
In the clannish communities of that time where men reigned supreme, the lot of
women was not to be envied. If they were not fortunate enough to be weiJ-bom or
married to a rich and powerful laird, they led a very miserable life, if reports of that
period are to be believed. There are in fact very few documents relating to the
condition of women in eighteenth-century Scotland. Rosalind K. Marshall, author

of Virgins and Viragos: A History of Women in Scotlandfrom 1080-1980 (London,
1983), deplores that her book dealing with women's role in Scottish society is
mainly confined to the upper classes, since the amount of available documentary
evidence concerning the lower classes was rather limited:
Any attempt to examine the activies of women in Scotland at a given period is strictly
limited by the amount of written evidence available and, naturally enough, the further
back in time the researcher goes, the fewer are the documents which have survived ...
Even in the seventeenth century, information is largely confined to the upper sections of
society, and if the present book appears in time preoccupied with the lives of the
aristocracy, this is from necessity, not choice. (12)
In 1989, R. A. Houston begins his article entitled 'Women in the Economy and
Society of Scotland, 1500-1800' by the same disappointed observation:
The status of women in sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth-century society remains

obscure. Often omitted entirely from accounts of the period, women are commonly
treated as peripheral and unimportant. Even recent research offers only brief asides about
their place in social and economic life. Attempts to render women more visible have
concentrated on prominent but atypical members of the upper classes ... There are ... no
surviving diaries or autobiographies written by lower-class females. 1
How could it be otherwise? Women of lowly birth in Scotland were mostly

illiterate-at least in the Highlands-and could not aspire to keep a diary or write
their autobiography. There is no choice then but to draw information from other
sources, namely from published or manuscript travelling accounts to examine the
activities of Highland women at that time. Even though these eyewitness accounts
may be somewhat biased, their great merit is that at least they are the fruits of actual
experiences, amply commented and sometimes illustrated with original plates.
In that tribal society particular to the North of Scotland, man dictated his law and
woman was doomed to obey. Man's superiority was humbly accepted, his will was
supreme. Out of duty, respect or perhaps out of fear, woman was submitted to man,
whether he be her husband or her master. In the crofts where staple commodities
were mainly home-produced, there was a great deal of hard, physical toil and a
crofter's wife took no rest during the day, even if she was helped by young servants.
At daybreak she would buckle down to various tasks: preparation of the meals for
the family and the farm workers-milking of the cows, ewes and goats-feeding of
the cattle and poultry-gathering of the eggs-butter and cheese making-beef
salting, ham and bacon smoking at the time of the animals' slaughtering in the
autumn.
Young servants-often poor female relatives having board and lodging in return
for their work-would also tackle their chores at dawn under the watchful eye of
Scottish Society, ed. R. A. Houston and L. D. Whyte (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1989) 118-119.
The Labour and Servitude of Women in the Highlands of Scotland 61
their mistress. The whole domestic drudgery fell to them. They had to wash the
floors, to clean the stable, the cowshed and the pigsty and to do the washing in the
river in any season. The Englishman Edward Burt, sent to the Highlands from 1725
to 1728 as General Wade's inspector to supervise the progress of road-building by
the army in Northern Scotland, was the eyewitness to an amazing sight: young
Scottish women washing linen by the river in the depth of winter. The latter were
standing in tubs filled with icy water and treading linen with their bare feet turned
red with the cold. Burt let his pen linger on that unusual scene in his travelling
account published anonymously in London in 1754 under the title Letters from a
Gentleman in the North of Scotland to His Friend in London and even illustrated it
to enlighten his readers on such an uncommon practice (fig. 1):
Before I leave the Bridge, I shall take Notice of one Thing more, which is commonly to
be seen by the Sides of the River ... that is, Women with their Coats tucked up, stamping
in Tubs, upon Linnen by Way of Washing; and this is not only in Summer, but in the
Hardest frosty Weather, when their Legs and Feet are almost literally as red as blood with
the Cold; and often two of these Wenches stamp in one Tub, supporting themselves by
their Arms thrown over each other's Shoulders. (1: 52)
Travellers were either delighted or scandalized by the spectacle of the Scotch

trampers but did not remain indifferent, for the young lasses were in the habit of
tucking up their skirts and petticoats for fear of wetting them, and of showing their
bare legs unblushingly. A certain William Burrell did not seem to be shocked at all but
rather amused by this Scottish custom, to judge from his manuscript notes of 1758:
'The method of washing Linnen is ... comical. It is usual to see at the side of every river
near a Village, the Women without shoes or stockings, and their Coats tucked up to their
Waists, treading the Dirt out of the Linnen, till the Water is discolored, when they put in
fresh water and so continue trading till the Linnen is quite clean. ' 2
On the other hand, another traveller was both aghast and terribly embarrassed at
the sight of these half-dressed washerwomen. He wrote anonymously in 1704: 'At
first I wondered at the sight, and thought they would have been ashamed, as I have,
and have lett down their cloaths till I were by; but tho' some would let them down
halfe way their thighs, others went round and round without letting down their
cloaths at all, or taking any notice of me.' 3
This very particular method of doing the washing was still widespread in
Scotland during the whole nineteenth century. The English traveller John Bristed,
who set out on foot to discover the Highlands of Scotland in 180 1, relates his
meeting at Blair Athol! (Perthshire) '[with] three women in a tub, rivalling Eve in
simplicity of nakedness from the waist downwards, and washing linen with their
2 William Burrell, 'Description of a Tour Chiefly in Scotland', 1758, National Library of

Scotland Ms. 2911, 21.
3 'North of England and Scotland in 1704'. Blackwood's Magazine 2 (1818): 517.
feet, in all glee and merriment' _4 A photograph taken in the isle of Skye between
1873 and 1884, under the reign of Queen Victoria, shows two hotel servants still
treading a blanket in a tub with their bare feet in the plain Scottish tradition. 5
These wooden tubs were also used at the farm by the servants to clean the
vegetables and to hull barley. Edward Burt was the eyewitness to this special
technique which was not very different from that of the linen washing:
I have seen Women by the River's Side washing Parsnips, Turnips and Herbs in Tubs with
their Feet. .. An English Lieutenant Colonel told me, that about a Mile from the Town
[Inverness], he saw, at some little Distance, a Wench turning and twisting herself about
as she stood in a little Tub, and as he could perceive, being on Horseback, that there was
no Water in it, he rid up close to her, and found she was grinding off the Beards and Hulls
of Barley with her naked Feet, which Barley she said was to make Broth with all: and,
since that, upon Enquiry, I have been told it is a Common Thing. 6
Edward Burt could not fail to feel compassion for these young servants. He knew
their very hard working conditions because he had been able to observe them in his
headquarters at Inverness. In his book he denounced the dire poverty in which they
lived and the starvation wages they received in exchange for their daily toil:
My next Subject is to be the Servants ... my poor Maids, if I may judge of others by what
passes in my own Quarters, have not had the best of Chances, when their Lots fell to be
born in this Country ... Sometimes there are two or three of them in a House of no greater
Number of Rooms, at the Wages of three Half Crowns a Year each, a Peck of Oatmeal for
a Week's Diet, and happy she, that can get the Skimming of a Pot to mix with her Oatmeal
for better Commons. To this Allowance is added a Pair of Shoes or two, for Sundays,
when they go to Kirk ... In larger Families, I suppose, their Standing-Wages is not much
more, because they make no better Appearance than the others. (1: 103)
Indeed, mistress and servant shared the same lot. The tasks of each were well-
defined but equally heavy, and idleness was not acceptable. Their rare leisure hours
were spent in spinning wool or flax with the distaff or with the spinning-wheel in
order that the local weaver might then weave the piece of cloth intended for the
making of clothes at home. Spinning gave rise to very convivial gatherings in all the
villages of the Highlands. Women, young and old, would take their distaff or rock
with them and go to a neighbour's to spin-hence the popular expression 'going a
rocking'. While hands were busy, tongues were hard at work as well, and people
exchanged news in a warm and merry atmosphere.
4 John Bristed, A Pedestrian Tour through Part of the Highlands of Scotland in 1801,
vol. 2 (London: J. Wallis, 1803) 292.
5 See Leah Leneman, Into the Foreground: A Century ofScottish Women in Photographs.
Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland, 1993.
6 Edward Burt, Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland to His Friend in
London (London: S. Birt, 1754) I, 106.
Scotswomen never parted with their distaff and used to carry it everywhere, as
the traveller James Robertson could observe in Sutherland in 1767: '[Women] are
naturally industrious. Wherever they go, they carry their distaff for that is their
method of spinning; and I have frequently seen them spinning on the road, while
they trudged along with a heavy burden. ' 7 So the main preoccupation of these
industrious women was trying not to lose a single minute during the day. It seems
that this bustling activity was still peculiar to Scotswomen in rural communities in
the early 1900s, for a photograph taken about 1905 shows an elderly Skye woman
carrying a huge basket on her back and knitting as she walks. 8
Highland women were expert not only in the art of spinning or weaving
(weavers' wives often gave their husbands a hand) but also in the art of fulling cloth.
Fulling, which consists in shrinking cloth with moisture, heat and pressure to make
it thicker and softer, was still practised with feet or hands in the Highlands of
Scotland in the eighteenth century. There is no reference to the daily use of the
fulling mill in the published or manuscript accounts of that period.
During his second tour in Scotland in the company of the artist Moses Griffith
in 1772, the Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant was much entertained by the sight of
a group of women in Skye very busy fulling cloth outdoors while singing Erse songs
in a loud voice to give rhythm to their work. Pennant reproduced this colourful
scene in his book A Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides, 1772 (1774) and
enriched his description with a plate (fig. 2):
On my return am entertained with a rehearsal of the ... walking of cloth, a substitute for
the fulling mill: twelve or fourteen women, divided into two equal numbers, sit down on
each side of a long board, ribbed lengthways, placing the cloth on it: first they begin to
work it backwards and forwards with their hands, singing at the same time as at the
Quem: when they have tired their hands, every female uses her feet for the same purpose,
and six or seven pair of naked feet are in the most violent agitation, working one against
the other: as by this time they grow very earnest in their labors, the fury of the song rises;
at length it arrives to such a pitch, that without breach of charity you would imagine a
troop of female demoniacs to have been assembled. 9
Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, during their trip to the Hebrides in 1773, also
had the opportunity to witness this ancestral method of fulling cloth, but this time
the operation was performed by hand:
Last night Lady Ramsay shewed [Dr Johnson] the operation of wawking cloth, that is,
thickening it in the same manner as is done by a mill. Here it is performed by women,
who kneel upon the ground, and rub it with both their hands, singing an Erse song all the
7 'Journal of James Robertson', 1767, National Library of Scotland Ms. 2507, 71.
8 See Leah Leneman, Into the Foreground: A Century of Scottish Women in Photographs
(Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland, 1993).
9 Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides [1772], 2nd ed.
(London: Benj. White, 1776) 285-286.
time. [Dr Johnson] was asking questions while they were performing this operation, and,
amidst their loud and wild howl, his voice was heard even in the room above.IO
In addition to the many domestic tasks of the household which naturally fell to
women, the latter were also expected to work in the fields, particularly during the
harvesting season, and to carry out all the chores men did not deign to do. At harvest
time they cut com with the sickle rhythmically and the sound of the bagpipe
accompanied their rapid and steady gesture. Then they collected com and tied it in
sheaves. A certain Jacob Pattison, who set off on a tour to the Highlands in 1780 to
discover Ossian's country, watched Scotswomen working in cornfields in Nairn and
admired their dexterity and zeal: 'The women cut down most of the com, and it is
pleasing to see with how much activity, and spirit, they use the sickle-if there are
any men at work with them the women always take the lead.' 11 At haymaking time
women could be seen busy spreading and tossing hay and piling it up in stacks. A
plate in Edward Burt's book even shows a frail woman carrying home a huge bundle
on her back (fig. 3)
Highland women also took part in the threshing and winnowing of com. Men
used a flail for beating wheat, but women resorted to a very archaic method which
dated back to the 15th century. It was called graddaning and consisted in scorching
the ears of a handful of com over a fire in order to bum the chaff and to extract the
grain from the husk, as is well explained by Martin Martin, a native of the isle of
Skye, in his Description of the Western Islands of Scotland circa 1695 (1703):
The ancient way of dressing com, which is yet used in several isles, is called graddan,
from the Irish word grad, which signifies quick. A woman sitting down takes a handful
of com, and then sets fire to the ears, which are presently in a flame. She has a stick in
her right hand, which she manages very dexterously, beating off the grain at the very
instant when the husk is quite burnt; for if she miss of that she must use the kiln, but
experience has taught them this art to perfection.I2
An anonymous drawing exhibited at the National Museum of Antiquities of

Scotland in Edinburgh is a perfect illustration of this ancient method still used in the
Highlands and Western Islands as well as in the north-east of Scotland in the
eighteenth century (fig. 4). Graddaning was followed by winnowing and grinding.
Winnows were often very rudimentary. In the small isle of Rum, Thomas Pennant saw
one of them made with a sheep's skin stretched round a hoop and perforated with
many holes. Grain was ground with the old stone handmill called quern or quairn
represented on the plate 'Women at the Quem' in Pennant's travelling account (fig. 2).
10 James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides [1785] (London: Penguin
Classics, 1984) 261.
11 Jacob Pattison, 'A Tour through Part of the Highlands of Scotland in 1780', National
Library of Scotland Ms. 6322, II.
12 Martin Martin, A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland circa 1695 [1703]
(Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd., 1994) 243-44.
Other thankless tasks were the lot of Highland women such as removing the stones
from the cultivable fields, hoeing, weeding and manuring the ground. In coastal
villages women with creels on their backs had to collect kelp (used as manure) on
the seashore, then struggling under their heavy burden had to cover great distances
to go and spread it in the fields with their own hands. In the county of Inverness,
Edward Burt also saw poor women doing a nasty job on their knees: 'Not far from
Fort William, I have seen Women with a little Horse-Dung brought upon their
Backs, in Creels or Baskets from that Garrison, and on their Knees, spreading it with
their Hands upon the Land, and even breaking the Balls, that every Part of the little
Spot might have its due Proportion' (2: 145). During his first tour in Scotland in
1769 Thomas Pennant noticed with indignation that women in far Caithness were
treated like real beasts of burden by the farmers who had hired them for the liming
of their piece of land:
Much lime-stone is found in this country, which when burnt is made into a compost with
turf and seaplants. The tender sex (I blush for the Cathnesians) are the only animals of
burden: they turn their patient backs to the dunghills, and receive in their keises, or
baskets, as much as their lords and masters think fit to fling in with their pitchforks, and
then trudge to the fields in droves of sixty or seventy. 13
Women also did their share of peat collecting and transporting at the very
beginning of autumn. In the Highlands of Scotland, which were not abundant in coal
and wood, peat was a cheap sought-after fuel, all the more so since there was a tax
on coal (lifted in 1793). Only rich landowners could afford to have their coal sent
from the Lowlands. The poor Highlanders did not hesitate to cover long distances
to exploit a peat bog. In spring peat was dug out by men, cut into brick-shaped
pieces, then laid out flat to dry in the open air during summer. At the end of summer
women helped to transport peat upon their backs in deep baskets, and loaded like
mules trudged all the way back to the farm. Then they raised the peat bricks into
little heaps against the wall under the roof or stored them in the claig (peat shed) to
protect them from the rain.
Cattle rearing was also one of the Highlanders' main occupations and their
principal source of income. The harsh climate was not particularly favourable to the
growing of crops in the area, but cattle breeding compensated for the shortage of
arable land. Horses, goats, sheep and cows abounded in the glens. Every summer,
whole families used to move with their flocks to the rich pastures on the hilltops.
While men were looking after the cattle, women would transform their shieling into
a dairy and make butter and cheese. The shieling was a temporary hut, roughly made
with branches and sods, and poorly furnished inside. Thomas Pennant was invited
to enter one of these shielings during his visit to Jura in 1772 and he gave a detailed
description of these cone-shaped huts which looked like Indian tepees (fig. 5):
These [shielings] formed a grotesque groupe; some were oblong, many conic, and so low
that entrance is forbidden, without creeping through the little opening, which has no other
13 Thomas Pennant, A Tour of Scotland [1769] 3rd ed. (Warrington: W. Eyres, 1774) 183.
door than a faggot of birch twigs, placed there occasionally; they are constructed of
branches of trees, covered with sods; the furniture a bed of heath, placed on a bank of sod;
two blankets and a rug; some dairy vessels, and above, certain pendent shelves made of
basket work, to hold the cheese, the produce of the Summer. In one of the little conic huts,
I spied a little enfant asleep, under the protection of a faithful dog.l4
When women were not busy preparing their dairy products, they spent their time
spinning, knitting or gathering roots, herbs and lichens for making dye once back in
the glen. Men, after strengthening the shielings often damaged by wind and rain, and
after repairing some dilapidated furniture, contented themselves with tending the
animals in the grazing land. No doubt these months spent there were for them
months of relative idleness!
The obvious indolence of men in the Highlands and the subjection of women
seem to have shocked many travellers, whether they were English, Welsh or even
Lowland Scots. Some of them even regarded the Highlanders as responsible for the
economic backwardness of their region, and overtly criticized them in their books.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Edward Burt declared that fishing might
have been a source of profit not to be sneezed at in Northern Scotland, if the
Highlanders had shown a little more enterprise and enthusiasm for work. A very
original plate (fig. 6), accompanied by Burt's sarcastic comment, sheds light on the
fundamental laziness of some Highland fishermen, who did not feel ashamed of
being carried to the shore on women's backs not to get their feet wet:
The fishermen would not be mentioned, but for their remarkable Laziness; for they might
find a Sale for much more Sea-Fish than they do; but so long as any Money remains of
the last Marketing, and until they are driven out by the last Necessity, they will not
meddle with Salt Water. At low Ebb, when their Boats lie off at a considerable Distance
from the Shore, for Want of Depth of Water, the Women tuck up their Garments to an
indecent Height, and wade to the Vessels, where they receive their Loads of Fish for the
Market; and when the Whole Cargo is brought to Land, they take the Fishermen upon
their Backs, and bring them on Shore in the same Manner. (1: 130)
Women did not complain about being thus exploited-but were they really aware of
their slavish condition?-and they passively accepted to be under the yoke of their
husband or master, as it is shown by this anecdote told by Burt:
An English Lady ... told me lately, that seeing a Highlander basking at the Foot of a Hill
in his full Dress, while his Wife and her Mother were hard at Work in reaping the Oats,
she asked the old Woman how she could be contented to see her Daughter labour in that
Manner, while her Husband was only an idle Spectator? And to this the Woman answered,
that her Son-in-Law was a 'Gentleman', and it would be a disparagement to him to do
any such Work; and that both she and her Daughter too were sufficiently honour'd by the
Alliance. (2: 140-141)
14 Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides [1772], 2nd ed
(London: Benj. White, 1776) 246-247.
This subservience of Scottish countrywomen to men seems to have endured until the
end of the eighteenth century, since in 1797 a certain Patrick Walker, author of three
manuscript notebooks, was really shocked at the sight of Highlanders, 'the laziest
animals alive' ,15 basking in the sun (if there was any ... ) while their wives, sisters or
even mothers were toiling away in the fields:
The men... are remarkably indolent, and all hard laboreous work is performed by the
females. There you may see a poor woman working hard in the field while a great stout,
indolent fellow of a husband, son or brother lies on a big stone before the hut basking in
the sun, and gaping at the clouds which pass above him without one single reflection ...
Were these to work, the country would improve.I6
The near-general illiteracy of women in the north of Scotland also worked

against them and contributed to keeping them in this state of inferiority. Despite the
laudable efforts of the Sociey in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge,
founded in 1709 to increase the insufficient number of schools in the huge territory
of the Highlands, 90% of women were still illiterate in 1750 (against 70% in
the Lowlands) and in 1770 their illiteracy rate had only been reduced by a third.
The number of schools had certainly increased during the eighteenth century, but
the vastness of some Scottish counties like Sutherland, Ross and Cromarty and the
inevitable scattering of the local population in parishes with a large surface area
were hindrances to the government's efforts in the field of school development.
Dr John Walker (1731-1803), professor ofNatural History at the University of
Edinburgh, undertook six journeys in Scotland from 1760 to 1786. In his
Economical History of the Hebrides and Highlands of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1808),
he insisted on the necessity to send girls to school-however far it was-in order to
initiate them from an early age into the art of spinning and weaving, for the textile
industries were in full expansion iri Scotland and promised to be a source of jobs for
women: 'It would, therefore, be of great importance, to have them instructed, when
young, at the public schools, in the different operations relative to the management
of flax, wool, and hemp, and especially in the art of spinning, with which they are
but imperfectly acquainted' (2: 348-349).
Professor Walker was right. With the development of the linen industry from
1760 and that ofthe cotton iridustry from 1780, manufactures were obliged to hire
a local workforce from outside to meet demand. Scotswomen from the Highlands
and Western Islands, renowned for being skilful spinners and knitters, were more
and more sought-after by manufacturers. At the end of the eighteenth century, 80%
of them worked at home to order. This new occupation satisfied them irisofar as it
provided them with regular wages and freed them from the drudgery of agricultural
work, but their daily tasks were not however made lighter, especially at harvest time
when their presence in the fields was still required.
15 Patrick Walker, 'Journals of Tours through Scotland. With Notes Descriptive and
Historical', National Library of Scotland Ms. 20-5-1, 145.
16 Patrick Walker Ms. 20-5-3, 60.
Hardworking, submissive, resigned-such were these Highland women of the

eighteenth century. How else could it have been in so poor a country, in a male-
dominated society still feudal in many ways, and in a century in which women,
even well-born and literate ones, were considered to be inferior beings and were
condemned to obedience and docility?
An anonymous poem, entitled 'Woman's Hard Fate' and written 'By a Lady' in
1733, evokes woman's sad lot in eighteenth-century British society. No doubt the
plaintive notes of this poem might have found an echo in the remote mountains and
glens ofNorthem Scotland:
How wretched is a woman's fate,

No happy change her fortune knows.
Subject to man in every state,
How can she then be free from woes? 17
17 Quoted in Eighteenth-Century Women Poets, ed. Roger Lonsdale (Oxford: Oxford

University Press; 1989) 136.
Fig. 5.1 From: Edward Burt, Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland to his Friend
in London (London: S. Birt, 1754) I, 52
(author's collection)
Fig. 5.2 From: Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides [1772] (London: Benj. White, 1776), 328 (author's collection)
Fig. 5.3 From: Edward Burt, Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland to his Friend in London (London: S. Birt, 1754) I, 85
Fig. 5.4 'Graddaning' (Sketch from the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, Edinburgh)
Fig. 5.5 From: Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides [1772] (London: Benj. White, 1776), 246 (author's collection)
Fig. 5.6 From: Edward Burt, Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland to his Friend in London (London: S. Birt, 1754) I, 130
Chapter 6
Women in the Army

in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Guyonne Leduc
Throughout the early period of modem Europe women issuing from the lower social
classes were part of armies; a masculine institution by essence, the army always
deemed them obstacles but they remained necessary.' Far from the cliched lives of the
Amazons, theirs inspired numerous stories of cross-dressed women warriors, as
numerous in real life as in Anglo-American and European popular literature.2 Thus
they mirror another image of women, particularly in the seventeenth century.
When they are not on the battlefield dressed as soldiers, that is cross-dressed, but
in the world of camp and train carrying out manual tasks in a useful, determined
perspective, an actual 'work', necessary but not recognized as such, hence not
rewarded, they are ignored by historians. It is paradoxical then to note that the
women who actually get wages for their work are not those who work openly as
women but those who, cross-dressed, fight as men.
This study of women in the British army situates itself at the crossroads between
factual history and that of mentalities. It will first analyse the nature of the sources
documenting their presence and roles, then examine their varying statuses or states
(accepted, tolerated or clandestines), their conditions of life, their motivations to
finally focus on the way they were perceived by patriarchal society.
The presence of women in the British army has been proved even if it is not very
well known due to their small numbers and the disparity of their situations. Very few
studies are devoted to them. St. John Williams's book aims at tracing 'the story of the
British Army's women and their changing fortunes from the days of Marlborough
and Wellington' so as to 'give them a recognised place in military history'. 3 Some
See Brian Crim, 'Silent Partners: Women and Warfare in Early Modem Europe', A
Soldier and a Woman: Sexual Integration in the Military, ed. Gerard J. DeGroot and
Corinna Peniston-Bird (Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd, 2000) 18-32.
2 The archetypal woman warrior can be found in the biography of Long Meg of Westminster
(1582) before Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl (1611) describing Mary Frith
(alias Moll Cutpurse). See for instance The Valorous Acts Performed at Gaunt ... by Mary
Ambree (c. 1600), The Female Warrior (1680) and The Gallant She-Souldier (1655).
3 Noel Trevor St. John Williams, Judy 0 'Grady and the Colonels Lady: The Army Wife
and Camp Follower since 1660 (London: Brassey's Defence, 1988) ix, x. See too
Michael Brander, The Scottish Highlanders and Their Regiments (London: Seeley
Service, 1971) ch. 11 and Anthony Brett-James, Life in Wellingtons Army (London:
Allen and Unwin, 1972) ch. 17.
information can also be gleaned from studies published in the 1980s and partly
dedicated to women and the army but not concerning the eighteenth century.4 No
systematic study has been done ofwomen in the navy before Stark's book in 1996. 5
A more original subject-women pirates (with Anne Bonny and Mary Read at that
tirne)-caught Stanley's attention.6 The theme of women warriors and those
transvestied in the army is now sometimes examined thanks to women's history;7 it
is also broached in studies concerned with the construction of femininity in
patriarchal society. But 'very few [historians] indeed have chosen to explore the
pre-twentieth-century military history of women'. 8 Such a situation leads one to
wonder as to the causes of such a lack of interest.
First it is necessary to put into context the reality of the army, its organisation,
that of its support services in particular and the conception of military life itself. As
an object of study, military histories, seen from a didactic perspective such as that
of battles, only appeared in the nineteenth century. The structures of the army were
changing during that period, in particular those of the support services which were
less frequently contracted out and increasingly brought under military control,
triggering the transformation of camp and train life which eventually led to the
disappearance of women's roles.9
Their function in the army was officially recognized only around the middle of
the nineteenth century when the army was reorganized and conceptions of sexual
difference changed. 10 In the eighteenth century the notion of sexual difference had
been rather fluid and gender roles not set; 11 the concept of femininity evolved during
4 See Barton C. Hacker, 'Women and Military Institutions in Early Modem Europe: A
Reconnaissance', Signs 6.4 (1981): 643-671 and Myna Trustram, Women of the
Regiment: Marriage and the Victorian Army (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984); see too
Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel: Womans Lot in the Seventeenth Century, 1984
(London: Arrow Books, 1997) 181-226.
5 Suzanne J. Stark, Female Tars: Women Aboard Ships in the Age of Sail (London:
Pimlico, 1996).
6 Jo Stanley, Bold in Her Breeches: Women Pirates across the Ages (1995; London:
Pandora, 1996).
7 See Vern L. Bullough, and Bonnie Bullough, Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender
(Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1993), RudolfM. Dekker, and Lotte C. van de Pol,
The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe (London: Macmillan,
1989), Lynn Friedli, 'Women Who Dressed as Man', Trouble and Strife 6 (1985): 25-
29, and Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New
York: Routledge, 1992). See too Dianne Dugaw, Warrior Women and Popular Balladry
1650-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989) and Julie Wheelwright, Amazons and
Military Maids: Women Who Dressed as Men in the Pursuit of Lifo, Liberty and
Happiness (London: Pandora, 1989).
8 Hacker 644.
9 See Hacker 645, 655.
10 See Wheelwright 17-18.
11 See Thomas W. Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1990) 8, and Linda Grant De Pauw, Battle Cries and
Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present (Norman: U of Oklahoma P,
1998) 109: 'a society in which biological sex would not predetermine gender identity ... '.
Women in the Army 77
the nineteenth century: sexual identity became a 'biological entity' determining

destiny rather than 'a quality dictated more by society than biology' .12 Histories were
then rewritten; the new army was to exclude women from many of the tasks they had
previously performed. Wheelwright notes that, 'female soldiers and sailors were
erased from the record or reduced to the occasional footnote. The female soldiers
who were hailed as heroines ... became portrayed as amusing freaks ofnature.'l3
From antiquity up to the modem period, the presence of women in European
armies is recognized by historians; they were 'not only normal... [but] vital',
Hacker stresses. 14 If they fought as women, they were recognized as were their
exploits. Several queens are to be found in the line from Boadicea 15 to Elizabeth I
dressed as an amazon at Tilbury, not to mention Anglo-Saxon queens such as queen
Philippa of Hainault who fought the Scots or Margaret of Anjou who fought in the
War of the Roses. 16 During the Civil War, many are worth remembering, Lady Ann
Cunningham, Anne Dymoke and Mary, Oliver Cromwell's daughter. Among those
who supported Parliament, Brilliana Conway, Lady Harley, distinguished herself;
such was also the case of Lady Arundel, along with seven other famous names, on
the side of the royalists,l7 Just as these "'Great Heroick" ladies', 18 women of the
people also illustrated themselves during the siege of Bristol, of Lyme or in the
defence of the fortifications of the City. 19 Anonymous women no longer
remembered by History shared in the great battles of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries; some died at Waterloo, 20 others at sea during the Napoleonic wars. 21
The nature of the sources giving witness to the active presence of women is
manifold. Primary sources include army 'orders and regulations, the reports of
official committees, official publications, contemporary reports and journals, and
document biographies' .22 For the army, camp reports at Blenheim (1704) include
orders telling women to march behind the baggage train. 23 For the navy, musters do
not mention the women who crop up in other documents such as the first regulations
published by the Admiralty in 1731, saying that ' [A Captain] is not to carry any
12 Wheelwright 15.
13 Wheelwright, '"Amazons and Military Maids": An Examination of Female Military
Heroines in British Literature and the Changing Construction of Gender', WSIT l 0.5
(1987): 489-490.
14 Hacker 644.
15 See Fraser, The Warrior Queens: Boadicea's Chariot, 1988 (London: Arrow Books,
1999) 3-106.
16 See David E. Jones, Women Warriors: A History (Washington: Brassey's, 1997) 51-79.
17 Anne Howard, Lucy Apsley Hutchinson, Lady Mary Bankes, Charlotte Countess of
Derby, Honora Marchioness of Winchester, Lady Blanche Arundel, the Countess of
Portland and Lady Mary Winter.
18 Fraser 204.
19 See Fraser 204-207, 219-220.
20 See Sergeant-Major Edward Cotton, A Voice from Waterloo (London, 1849) 55.
21 See Evelyn Berckman, The Hidden Navy (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1973) 10.
22 Williams x.
23 See David Green, Blenheim (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974) 30. For
Wellington's army a century later, see Michael Glover, Wellington's Army: In the
Peninsula, 1808-1814 (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1977) 159-160.
women to sea ... without orders from the Admiralty' .24 At the opposite extreme
official permission was often granted to officers' wives. 25 The court martial of
Lieutenant Berry charged with sodomy revealed the presence of Elizabeth Bowden,
a witness on board (Annual Register [1807]: 496). 'During a period when the press
gangs were very active and able-bodied seamen in short supply,' says Wheelwright,
'such accounts suggest that women's presence aboard may have been tolerated for
expediency. '26 Other private documents are also meaningful: the account of a wreck
(1637) mentions the presence of women on board; 27 Nelson's memorandum stresses
that 'before he sailed he was resolved to rid his ship "of all the women, dogs, and
pigeons"' .28
Iconography makes it possible to corroborate the presence of women in the army
as well as their unchanging activities. 29 The same can be established for the navy.
In the early nineteenth century a picture by Augustus Earle figuring a religious
service on board a British frigate confirms what a chaplain observed in 1675. 30
Women are also portrayed in numerous bawdy scenes aboard ships in harbour. 31
Two other sources provide testimonies of relative reliability. First the more or less
direct testimonies given by narratives written in the first or third person. Authentic
diaries from soldiers such as that of Corporal William Todd are rare; it gives a
glimpse of women in the British army on the continent during the Seven Years War
when 1,666 women followed 16,500 men. 32 Also, on the margin of popular literature,
narratives by cross-dressed women have survived such as those of Christian Davies,
Hannah Snell, and Mary Ann Talbot. 33 Their genuineness and reliability are difficult
to establish as their narratives are most often presented as autobiographies or as
testimonials transmitted by printers; a very careful comparison between Snell's
24 Regulations and Instructions Relating to His Majesty's Service at Sea ( 1731) 31

(art. 38); qtd. in Stark 51.
25 See Michael Lewis, A Social History of the Navy, 1793-1815 (London: Allen & Unwin,
1960) 284.
26 Wheelwright, 'Tars, Tarts and Swashbucklers,' in Stanley, Bold in Her Breeches 193.
27 See Phineas Pett, The Autobiography of Phineas Pett, ed. W. G. Perrin (London: Navy
Records Society, 1918) 163.
28 See Memoirs of Admiral the Right Honourable, the Earl of St. Vincent, ed. Jedidiah
Stephens Tucker, 2 vols. (London, 1844) 2: 120.
29 See Corelli Barnett, The First Churchill: Marlborough, Soldier and Statesman (New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1974) 230-31, John Baskett and Dudley Snelgrave, comps.,
The Drawings of Thomas Rowlandson in the Paul Mellon Collection (New York:
Brandywine, 1978) no. 282, 287, 290.
30 See Peter K. Kemp, ed., History of the Royal Navy (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1969) 100. On Teonge on H.M.S. Assistance (1675), see Charles Napier Robinson, The
British Tar in Fact and Fiction: The Poetry, Pathos, and Humour of the Sailor's Life
(New York: Harper & Sons, 1909) 108-109.
31 See Christopher Lloyd, The British Seaman, 1200-1860: A Social Survey (Rutherford,
NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1970) pis bet. 160 and 161, facing 209.
32 See Colonel Daniel MacKinnon, The Origin and Services of the Coldstream Guards
(London, 1833) I: 427 for Regimental Numbers 1 Jan 1763. Qtd. in Williams 7.
33 Their war names respectively were Christian Ross, James Grey and John Taylor; see too
the Americans Deborah Sampson and Mary Lacey.
relation and military registers has been carried out by Stephens.34 A similar approach
enabled Stark to expose the apocryphal nature of Talbot's narrative published in
1804, long deemed an historical source about female marines. 35 Eighteenth-century
readers were fond of the genre which still retains a sociological value as concerns life
in the army and, more indirectly, readers and their expectations.
All these relations belong to popular literature, just as ballads sold on streets
which are yet another source of indirect testimony; in great favour in the eighteenth
century, they speak of female drummers, warriors and courageous young girls going
off to war in search oflove or glory. Wheelwright asserts that 'more than 100 female
warriors ... surfaced in more than l ,000 variations of Anglo-American ballads' .36 In
the wake of Renaissance literature, more noble literature stages cross-dressed
women in major roles according to the needs of the plot; after Cavendish, Dryden,
Wycherley, and Shadwell, that trend continued on until after the Restoration with
Farquhar for instance. 37 A century later, Jane Austen's Persuasion introduces the
topic of women living on board (1.8).
As is shown by the diversity of the sources, the status of all these women vary
according to their activities, their conditions of life and their situations (accepted as
wives, tolerated as whores or cross-dressed clandestines). Women were
marginalized by regulations concerning marriage. As early as 1585 the Leicester
code gave rules concerning the British army in the Netherlands, deploring the
disorders resulting from the presence of women who were thus ousted except when
they were lawful wives or women 'to tende [sic] the sick and to serve the
launders' .38 After 1650, unable to forbid marriages, the army tried to limit if not
control their numbers by recruiting single men (1689, 1697): 'a soldier had to get
his officer's permission to marry'. 39 In 1663 private soldiers who got mamied were
discharged. 40 On 1 June 1685 that practice was extended to the whole of the army
and was enforced for two centuries. 41 It might also be noted that the pay of a soldier
was far from enough to keep a wife and children.
Yet the very rules that denied women a role also granted one to some: the above-
mentioned restrictions did not apply to officiers' wives who travelled at the expense
of their husbands. Not until 1792 did the army officially recognize a limited number
of wives (about six per company or per hundred men), 42 who formed 'the Army
34 Matthew Stephens, Hannah Snell: The Secret Life of a Female Marine, 1723-1792
(London: Ship Street Press, 1997).
35 See Stark 107-110.
36 Wheelwright, Amazons and Military Maids 8.
37 Cavendish (Bell in Campo [1662]), Dryden (Marriage-a-la-Mode [1671]), Wycherley
(The Plain Dealer [1676]), Shadwell (The Female Captain [1679]) and Farquhar (The
Recruiting Officer [1679]).
38 For the text of Leicester's code, see Charles G. Cruickshank, Elizabeth sArmy (Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1966) 298.
39 Wheelwright, '"Amazons and Military Maids"', 493.
40 Articles for His Majesty's Guards in 1663 in Colburn's United Services Magazine, Aug
1867 pt 2, 506-509; qtd. in Williams 4.
41 See MacKinnon 2: 261.
42 See Hacker 659.
Women'; 43 in exchange, they had to perform domestic chores. Hence they drew
rations and were integrated based on a system ofreciprocity. 44
An active participation in military life was expected of women that, Dugaw
asserts, 'did not conform at all to our twentiethth-century demarcation between the
civilian and the military, and between the domestic and the public spheres' .4 5 Here
too, the army and the navy must be distinguished. In the army, female tasks were
very close to those of civilian life: 'foraging for food, selling meats and wines,
laundering, nursing or looting as well as working as prostitutes'; 46 sewing, washing,
and mending clothes also enabled them to increase their husbands' pay. Most sutlers
were soldiers' wives or widows. Davies, for instance, was in turn a housekeeper, a
sutler, a prostitute, a nurse, a laundress, a cook and even ... a soldier.
Other wives were nurses given that women were considered fit for that task as
is emphasized by General Robert Venables who advocated their presence in the
West Indies campaign of 1656. 47 When military hospitals were authorized by
Parliament (1652), all the nurses were to be chosen among soldiers' widows; 48 and
their work was to be paid. 49 In the navy too there were nurses in spite of a ban dating
back to the early eighteenth century when 'their predilection for drink led to their
replacement by male nurses for the next two hundred years.' 5°
The place for women was in camp and in port but they were also found, willingly
or not, on battlefields, even in the colonies, at the side of soldiers, exposed to the same
dangers. In the navy, their responsibilities were important, equivalent to those on the
front; some carried powder from magazines to guns, as asserted by John Nicol who
served on the Goliath in Nelson's fleet, during the battle of the Nile (1798). 5 1 Others
fought, even though it was 'tolerated but not officially recognized by the Admiralty'. 52
43 Williams 3.
44 See E. W. Sheppard ed., Red Coat: An Anthology of the British Soldier during the Last
Three Hundred Years (London: Batchworth, 1952) 48-49.
45 Dugaw 127.
47 See Charles H. Firth, Cromwell's Army: A History of the English Soldier during the
Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and the Protectorate (London: Methuen, 1902) 264.
That was general Braddock's opinion in 1755 in Northern America; see Walter Hart
Blumenthal, Women Camp Followers of the American Revolution (1952; New York:
Arno P, 1974) 22, 57-58 and Scott N. Hendrix, 'In the Army: Women, Camp Followers
and Gender Roles in the British Army in the French and Indian Wars, 1755-1765,'
A Soldier and a Woman 33.
48 See Gregory Robinson, 'Wounded Sailors and Soldiers in London during the First
Dutch War (1652-1654)', History Today 16 (1966): 38-44.
49 See Paul E. Kopperman, 'Medical Services in the British Army, 1742-1783 ',Journal of
the History ofMedicine and Allied Sciences 34 (1979): 436.
50 Christopher Lloyd, The British Seaman, 1200-1860: A Social Survey (Rutherford, NJ:
Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1970) 246.
51 John Nicol, The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner (Edinburgh: W.
Blackwood, 1822) 193-94.
52 Geoffrey Bennett, Nelson the Commander (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972)
71; see too Elizabeth Ewing, Women in Uniform: Through the Ages (Totowa, NJ:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1975) 32-34.
At least one woman participated in the battle of Trafalgar and in 1847 claimed the
General Service Medal. Though Queen Victoria agreed, the Admiralty refused, fearing
to create a dangerous precedent, 53 with the implicit recognition of women's efficiency
in battle.
If, in practice, their role was very useful, officially it was little admitted; the
name 'campfollower' was a 'pejorative label' 54 designating their place behind the
baggage train. Those women aroused an ambivalent attitude in the army, stresses
Trustram; even if they were deemed useful, they were often despised and perceived
as a threat to discipline and moral order. As Hacker puts it: 'Whatever their motives,
the work women did was crucial to the political economy of early modem armies.' 55
Across the Atlantic, their role was recognized with the Act of Congress of March 16,
1802. 56 As noted, depending on the circumstances, their work could be paid or not;
however, in the army as in the navy, their conditions of life were very harsh in time
of war as in time of peace: meagre rations, an itinerant life, military discipline,
widowhood. Davies's relation constitutes a deterrent picture of army life.
As is recalled by the historian Treadwell, the army was not a place for a
'reputable woman in view of the danger of confusion with the more numerous camp
followers, whose ill repute was apt to attach itself to any female employee';57 as to
single women, sometimes widows, they were often considered as prostitutes. In the
1860s the Contagious Diseases Acts equated camp followers with whores aiming to
control those diseases and thereby safeguard the soldiers' health; as a result, women,
if not officially admitted, were deemed more harmful than useless.
In reality the occasional presence of prostitutes was tolerated as a necessary evil
since marriage was discouraged, but commanders regularly ordered that they be
expelled from camps under pain of penalties and/or punishments. Lest the seaman
desert, shore leaves were rarely granted; therefore, to avoid mutinies, prostitutes
were allowed on board; this practice is illustrated in a picture by W. Elms
('Exporting Cattle, Not Insurable') and corroborated by a pamphlet anonymously
published in 1821, although in fact written by admiral Hawker, depicting a scene of
debauchery on the lower deck of a ship after the Napoleonic Wars involving '500
men and probably 300 or 400 women•.58
Enlisting in male apparel was a widespread means for women to evade the law.
To remedy licentiousness in the army Charles I issued a proclamation in July 1643
concerning women counterfeiting their sex: transvestites were threatened with
severe punishment. 59 Cross-dressed women are another category of women present
in the army this time as clandestines.
53 Jane Townshend; see Lewis 283.

54 Trustram 12.
55 Hacker 664.
56 See Blumenthal 22, 57-58.
57 Mattie E. Treadwell, The Women s Army Corps (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief
of Military History, 1954) 4.
58 Edward Hawker, Statement Respecting the Prevalence of Certain Immoral Practices in
His Majestys Navy (1821) 5; qtd. in Stark 7-8.
59 'Let no woman presume to Counterfeit Her Sex by wearing mans apparell under pain
of the Severest punishment which Law and our displeasure shall inflict' (13 July 1643)
(BL Harleian MSS, 66804, fo. 75/6).
By defmition it is difficult to know their number, all the more so as some women
adopted soldiers' attire as a simple commodity. Dekker and Van de Pol, who found
199 'women living as men' between 1550 and 1839 in the Netherlands, 60 traced
'fifty authentic cases of female transvestism in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries in Great Britain'. 61 One can only identify those who were detected when
they were wounded or after their death or in case of pregnancy (in which case they
had already been detected-and this is the case most widely conjured up in ballads
and chapbooks), or if involved in legal proceedings when they would reveal their
identity so as not to be imprisoned (Annual Register [1761 ]: 170) or whipped for
desertion (Annual Register [1769]: 148 and [1771]: 71). Many cases are reported in
newspapers without comment (Gentleman's Journal [13 April1692]: 22 and Annual
Register [1782]: 221).
In the navy they were as members of the crew, according to records on women
seamen between 1550 and 1830. Once detected, they fell back into minor roles
linked to their sex; such was the case of Davies who was allowed to remain in the
army from 1705 to 1712 as a soldier's wife.
Several individual cases are remembered. In the army, Davies fought under
several names and her identity was only revealed when she was wounded in 1705;
she was granted a pension and ended her days as an out-patient of the Royal Chelsea
Hospital. Phoebe Hessel served in the infantry during the War of Austrian
Succession and was wounded at the battle of Fontenoy (1745). 62 During the same
battle the Scot Mary Ralphson won renown. 63 Her fellow countrywoman Flora
Macdonald helped Bonnie Prince Charlie flee to France in 1745.64 After sixteen
years as a private soldier, Mary Dixon was one of the numerous women who died
at Waterloo. 65 Hannah Snell was far more famous given the success she met with in
the two versions of her life;66 she was the only other woman to get a pension and be
admitted at the Royal Chelsea Hospital. A volunteer, she looked for her husband,
was sent to Carlisle, was in India in November 1747 and is said to have taken part
in the siege ofPondicherry.67 Back in June 1750, she appeared on the London stage,
then fell into oblivion and died in Bedlam. Many other cross-dressed women fought
in the Napoleonic wars (William Brown, Tom Bowling, Anne Johnson, Hanah
Witney, Ann Mills). 68 In the navy one of the earliest examples is that of Anne
60 Peter Burke, 'Foreword', xi, in Dekker and van de Pol.

61 Dekker and van de Pol 1.
62 See Gentleman's Magazine (December 1817): 550 and The Soldier's Companion, or,
Martial Recorder I (1824): 21.
63 See Jones 75.
64 See Jones 76.
65 See Jones 77.
66 See Dugaw, 'Women and Popular Culture: Gender, Cultural Dynamics, and Popular
Prints', Women and Literature in Britain 1700-1800, ed. Vivien Jones (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2000) 278-279.
67 On Snell's two narratives, see Leduc, 'L'Aventure du travestissement: Hannah Snell
(1723-1792), femme soldat', L 'Aventure en Grande-Bretagne au XVIII• siecle, ed. Paul-
Gabriel Bouce (to be published).
68 See Jones 76-77 and Stark 85-88.
Chamberlyne, a gentlewoman who joined her brother's ship in 1690.69 In the early
1700s, Anne Keith [Lady Methven] served on a battleship for several years before
fighting to defend her husband's estate at the head of sixty knights.7°
Managing to hide one's identity required physical strength to counter suspicion
when 'involved with frontline infantry warfare and hand-to-hand combat' 71 or
fulfilling the usual tasks of a seaman; such physical strength was not very surprising
in the lowest social classes where women had to be healthy and vigorous to face a
harsh existence with very little cultivated delicacy. Davies's autobiography confirms
that she was used to accomplishing all sorts of manly employments such as handling
a 'rake, flail, or pitchfork', and riding horses 'barebacked' .n
So as to be taken for men, cross-dressed women often said they were very young
to account for their want of a 'rough beard' _73 Many must have imitated Davies who
merely cut her hair and had 'the precaution to quilt the Waistcoat, to preserve [her]
Breasts from hurt which were not large enough to betray [her] Sex .... ' 74 Snell's
explanation is identical in accounting for the way she managed to conceal her
female body when she was whipped twice.7 5
How could they hide female physiological signs on a ship? Most women
soldiers' narratives remain discreet as concerns the stratagems used to avoid being
betrayed by intimate problems such as urination and menstruation. The minutes of
the trial of the German Catharina Lincken provide the most detailed information;
she used 'a leather-covered hom through which she urinated and [which she kept]
fastened against her nude body. ' 76 Given the very bad hygiene conditions and
numerous illnesses, menstrual periods could pass for the manifestation of venereal
disease, when psychological constraints and a bad diet did not result in amenorrhea.
Among women wounded on the battlefield, many showed exceptional courage
lest their sex be revealed. That is the case of Snell who managed to conceal twelve
wounds.7 7 Her legs were taken care of but, she says, she herself extracted a bullet
planted in her groin. 78 Such exploits led to 'a legend' of 'exceptional heroism'
Wheelwright says, 79 so that those women easily entered popular literature.
69 See Stark 83-84.

70 See Robert Scot Fittis, Heroines ofScotland (London: Alexander Gardener, 1889) 278-289.
71 Jones 77.
72 Christian Davies, The Life and Adventures of Mrs Christian Davies Commonly Called
Mother Ross (London, 1740), Women Adventurers: The Lives of Madame Velazquez,
Hannah Snell, Mary Anne Talbot and Mrs Christian Davies, ed. Menie Muriel Dowie
(London, 1893) 204.
73 Hannah Snell, The Female Soldier; or, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah
Snell, 1750, ed. Dugaw, The Augustan Reprint Society, no. 257 (Los Angeles: William
Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1989) 19 [vide infra: short version] and in the British
Library (Microfilm shelfmark: Mic.B.896/4056) 95 [vide infra: long version].
74 Davies 221.
75 Short version 10, 17, 34; long version 65, 141-41.
76 Brigitte Eriksson, 'A Lesbian Execution in Germany, 1721: The Trial Records', Journal
of Homosexuality 6 (1980-81): 33.
77 Short version 15; long version 58.
78 Short version 16; long version 59.
What could motivate women to join the army or the navy? A distinction straight
away appears between cross-dressed women and the others. Unlike men, women
were never enlisted against their will or forced on board by press gangs; economic
hardships could however be as pressing for them as for men. Thousands of women
preferred to accompany their husbands rather than fall into poverty or crime. 80 Their
husbands' pay at least enabled them to survive. The historian Roy Palmer suggests
that women may have preferred camp life to the destitution and hunger which
threatened them in the countryside or in town slums. 81 The economic incentive
seems to have been far more powerful than the appeal of a new type of life or of
apparent freedom.
Among women who disguised themselves as soldiers, the wish to fight and live
a military life does not seem to have been the main incentive either. 82 Those who
were actually attracted by a soldier's life or by a longing for adventure corresponded
to what Grant DePauw refers to as 'mere curiosities'. 83 Here too self-preservation
(economic difficulties or the lack of safety) prevailed. A widow, deprived of
resources or family, could take her husband's identity and enlist, as was the case of
Anne Dymoke/John Evison in 1657. 84 In a similar way, the transcript of the 1720
trial before the High Court of Admiralty in Jamaica of the pirates Anne Bonny and
Mary Read tells that the latter was brought up as a boy and was obliged, to survive,
to join the army; taken prisoner by pirates, 85 she then enlisted 'with an outfit of
privateers ... cruising against the Spaniards' and met Bonny. 86 In the nineteenth
century, women seamen, says Wheelwright, 'often cited economic needs as their
primary motive for signing aboard ... ' .87 As to autobiographical narratives and
ballads, they hinge, beyond patriotism, on a recurring element: to follow or look for
one's husband or one's lover, a motive that is attested in newspapers (Annual
Register [1769]: 148 and [1771]: 71). No prefeminist claim has as yet been traced.
Quite ironically, European military science in the early modem period is tied to
women since the one long authoritative work was written in 1410 by the frrst
woman to earn her living writing, that is Livre des fais d'armes et de chevalerie by
Christine de Pizan. Commissioned by John the Fearless, the duke of Burgundy, it
80 Patricia Branca, 'Women at Work: Beasts of Burden', Women in Europe since 1750
(New York: StMartin's P, 1978) 17-23.
81 See Roy Palmer, The Rambling Soldier: Military Life through Soldiers' Songs and
Writings (New York: Penguin, 1977) 156.
82 See Trustram 13.
83 DePauw, 'Commentary', Military History of the American Revolution, ed. Stanley
J. Underal (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1976) 175.
84 See Fraser 225, 528.
85 See Wheelwright, 'Tars, Tarts and Swashbucklers', 181; the first relation of the trial (A
General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates) was
published in 1724 by Charles Johnson. Its later attribution to Defoe was denied by Peter
N. Furbank and W. R. Owens in The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe (New Haven: Yale
UP, 1988) I 02.
86 Wheelwright, 'Tars, Tarts and Swashbucklers', 186; see too Stanley, 'Criminals,
Communards or Crumpet?', Bold in Her Breeches 147.
was ordered to instruct the dauphin, Louis, the duke of Guyenne, his son-in-law.
Caxton's English translation was published in 1489. In 1445, that book was to
complement a compilation of narratives and treatises in French, offered by John
Talbot to Margaret of Anjou for her marriage to Henry VI of England. 88
As is stressed by Verrier in an article on sixteenth-century Italy:
The notion of women's military aptitude and/or instruction is certainly more interesting
in its implications than in its possible realization. Such a notion threatens the old
Aristotelian distribution of tasks and spaces between the sexes. The warrior-woman
represents a formidable challenge since she trespasses on a territory nature and culture
seem to have assigned to men. 89 [ ... ] The issue of female military instruction, far from
being marginal, is at the confluence of some major interrogations in Renaissance society
and culture. 90
Verrier adds:
As the art of warfare in the age of humanism modifies the relative importance of physical
and intellectual abilities in favour of the latter, it makes the identification of female
weapons with modem weapons possible ... The incompatibility between women and war
becomes less obvious in proportion as physical force loses ground before intellectual
force ... In politics as in the science of war sinew becomes irrelevant; 'the strength and
skill of Reason' now serve to govern States and to lead armies, 91 as Pierre LeMoyne
wrote in La Gal/erie des femmes fortes (1647).
Verrier concludes: 'Women's supposed lack of military capacities seems then to be

neither a physiological reality nor even a universal socio-cultural norm' ,92 since
travel literature mentions armed women in the New World.
These arguments are not foreign to those developed by 'Sophia' in her pamphlet
Woman Not Inferior to Man, encapsulating all the prefeminist claims voiced in the
first half of the eighteenth century; the fmal chapter before her conclusion is entitled
'Whether Women Are Naturally Qualified for Military Offices, or Not.' The order
of her different chapters mirrors the hierarchy of her preoccupations: women's
presence in the military comes last. 'Sophia' underlines the relative uselessness of
physical strength in the command of an army; moreover she states, women can be
educated as men so as to become fearless. There follows a list of women, praising
88 Michel-Andre Bossy, 'Arms and the Bride: Christine de Pizan's Military Treatise as a
Wedding Gift for Margaret of Anjou', Christine de Pizan and the Categories of
Difference, ed. Marilyn Desmond (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1998) 236-56.
89 Frederique Verrier, 'Considerations sur !'aptitude feminine aux armes et sur !'instruc-
tion guerriere dans Ia trattatistica italienne philogyne du XVI• siecle', L 'Education des
femmes en Europe et en Amerique du Nord, de Ia Renaissance a 1848: Realites et
representations, ed. Leduc (Paris: L'Harmattan, 'Des idees et des femmes', 1997) 55.
90 Verrier 66.
91 Verrier 59, 61.
92 Verrier 61.
the courage or even the intrepidity of some of them, ranging from the Amazons to
Boadicea and Joan of Arc. After such an eloquent defence of the equality of male
and female warlike capacities, her chapter ends on this note: 'With regard however
to warlike employments, it seems to be a disposition of Providence that custom has
exempted us from them ... it is but fit that the Men shou'd be exposed to the dangers
and hardships of war, while we remain in safety at home. •93
The only justification given for such a sexist disparity is Providence. Does
[Sophia] think that women are rightly kept apart from military affairs or that they
would be able to be officers but not soldiers? The answer seems to be in the clause:
'while we remain in safety at home'. Her prefeminism seems very limited when
compared with the claims expressed in Italian Renaissance treatises.
Yet there were women who demanded for the opportunity to fight. The example
given by the aristocrats who fought during the Civil War94 probably encouraged
Margaret Cavendish to demand for women a greater role in the workings of society.
In Bell in Campo (1662), her most famous play, Lady Victoria, the general's wife,
is elected 'female general' 95 at the head of an army of 5,000 to 6,000 women who
refuse to stay in the garrison town; she exhorts them to fight to equal men.96 They
train, help the defeated army and overcome the enemy, all of which leads men to
recognize them as equals. 97 If they were educated as men, the heroine says, women
would be 'as good Souldiers and Privy Counsellers, Rulers and Commanders,
Navigators and Architectors ... as Men are' .98 Some of her heroines play masculine
roles and dispel objections to a government by women. 99 Thus the playwright brings
her demonstration to completion.
Women of the people who took part in the Civil War claimed the right to do
battle; 100 some were probably prone to fighting such as Read or Snell, who was
inclined to a military career by her background and her 'martial Disposition'
appearing when she was a child.1°I
If in a patriarchal society, women soldiers arouse curiosity or embody the
potential subversion of gender boundaries, female cross-dressing is not a marginal
problem. Women warriors and seamen are not 'textual anomal[ies]': '[they
93 [Sophia], Woman Not Inferior to Man; or, A Short and Modest Vindication of the
Natural Rights of the FAIR-SEX to a Perfect Equality of Power, Dignity, and Esteem,
with the Men, 1739 (London: Bentham P, 1975) 55-56.
94 Countess of Derby, Lady Brilliana Harley.
95 Cavendish, Bell in Campo, Playes Written by the Thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excellent
Princess, the Lady Marchioness ofNewcastle (London, 1662) 'Generaless' (Pl.2.9.589,
3.11.590), 'lnstructeress' and 'Commanderess' (P1.2.9.589).
96 Cavendish P2.1.3.609.
97 Cavendish, 'Female Army' (Pl.3.15.595) are also called 'the Heroickesses' (Pl.2.9.589)
and the 'Amazonian Army' (Pl.3.15.595).
98 Cavendish Pl.2.9.588.
99 Lady Contemplation, Lady Sanspareille (Youths Glory) and Lady Orphant (Loves
Adventures).
100 See Philip Ziegler, Addington: A Life of Henry Addington, First Viscount Sidmouth
(London: Collins, 1965) 114 for the women of Neath in 1803.
101 Long version 63; see too 'this martial Spirit' ( 17).
represent] one subcategory of the early modem era's larger preoccupation with the
figure of a woman in male attire,' which Dugaw calls '[the] genotype Hie-
Mulier' 102 referring to a controversy that took place in the 1620s when three
pamphlets formulated the debate on question of woman in terms of dress 103 and saw
in cross-dressing a source of instability. That genotype clarifies the woman question,
transvestism (not linked to sexual perversion) and the codes of sexual
differentiation, that underlies the question of women soldiers who are a popular
version of Hie-Mulier. 104
As such they embody a reality belonging to a larger philosophical debate where
some crucial features of their genotype need be taken into account, such as sexual
identity and its link to virtue and heroic conduct. However that may be, their claim
is contrary to the secondary role and to the submissive status imposed on women by
society.
Nevertheless the question of women belonging to the army was settled by a
political struggle. The posthumous fame of women warriors resurfaced in the 1870s;
in the nineteenth century, collections of their narratives were reprinted and some
passages cut to obey Victorian morals. This climaxed in the 1890s, probably due to
a rising feminism and the development of the suffragette movement that reactivated
interest in women soldiers. lOS
Thus they are mentioned in the suffagette Ellen Clayton's history of the
Amazons, Female Warriors, where she recalls that women have always been
involved in military conflicts, that they could fight, and should therefore be granted
the right to take part in political life. Two centuries earlier Cavendish's works
vindicated the same claim but for aristocrats only.
After Wheelwright, it might be tempting to read cross-dressing as the will to
defy notions connected with gender. Are these women the predecessors of
feminists? The stories of their lives and the way they were represented raise
questions which must be understood in their historical context. In transvestism
Wheelwright sees 'a process of imitation' more than the nascent claim to male
privileges for all women. I 06
By the way the small number of women soldiers did not threaten the established
order, which their relations confirm, they 'appear largely unconcerned about
102 Dugaw, Warrior Women 163.

103 Voir Hie Mulier; or, The Man-Woman: Being a Medicine to Cure a Coltish Disease of
the Staggers in the Masculine-Feminines of Our Times, Expressed in a Brief
Declamation: Non Omnes Possumus Omnes (1620); Haec Vir; or, The Womanish Man
( 1620) and Mulled Sack; or, The Apology ofHie Mulier to the Late Declamation against
Her (1620).
104 See Dugaw, Warrior Women 171: 'The Female Warrior of balladry, then, is a lower-class
permutation of the viraginous Hie-Mulier ... '
105 See Eccentric Biography; or, Memoirs of Remarkable Female Characters (1804),
English Eccentrics and Eccentricities (1875), Female Warriors (1879), Eighteenth-
Century Waifs (1887), Women Adventurers (1893) ... Davies's and Snell's stories can be
found in The Wonderful and Scientific Museum ( 1804); Dickens tells Snell's story in an
article devoted to 'British Amazons' in the periodical All the Year Round (1872).
I 06 Wheelwright, Amazons and Military Maids 11.
changing the society that produced the inequity which they felt most keenly in their
own lives' .1°7 If there was a tentative of self-liberation, it was only a limited one, 108
directed toward their usual domestic constraints without making any explicitly
prefeminist claim.
In the nineteenth century, as the army is reorganized without the presence of
women and as supply services are militarized with the increase in the scale of
warfare, changing the relationship between the military and the civilian, British
industrialization opens up new jobs for lower class women. Yet, in the late
nineteenth century, there were still women among camp followers, in India for
instance.109 What was for women a means of leading a different life or the
beginning of a social protest against feminine roles became, in the nineteenth
century, the symbol of unbearable sexual disorder. Popular taste and imagination
shifted and fictional representations reflected it; 110 female soldiers no longer were
the subject of ballads, information being conveyed from then on by newspapers.
These courageous pioneers were followed by other women, most often issued
from the upper classes, wanting to play a role in the army quite different from that
played by their predecessors. Florence Nightingale, famous in the Crimean War,
epitomizes this new category of women. She was deemed 'acceptable' because she
did not try 'to transcend the limitations of her sex' .1 11 Her imitator, Flora Sandes
(1876-1955), was in Serbia between September and the end of 1914, in
February 1915 and again in late 1915 when she abandoned her Red Cross armband
and joined the Serbian army. Back in Britain after 1945, she wrote: 'I wonder whether
it was really myself, or only something I dreamed ... I return to the prosaic drawing-
room and the realisation that I am a "lady" now and not "a soldier and a man"' .1 12

108 See Stanley, 'The Women among the Boys', Bold in Her Breeches 41.
109 See Hacker 667.
110 See Dugaw, Warrior Women 64.
111 Francis Gribble, Women in War (London: Sampson, Low and Co, 1916) 322.
112 Qtd. in George Forty, and Anne Forty, Women War Heroines (London: Arms and
Armour P, 1997) 128.
Chapter 7
Hospital Nurses in Eighteenth-Century

Britain: Service without Responsibility
Jacques Carre
Although nursing history has considerably developed in the past few decades, the
condition of British nurses in the eighteenth century has remained little studied.
General accounts of the history of nursing tend to start from the early Victorian age,
after a cursory and often derogatory look at Georgian hospital nursing. 1 Until
recently pre-Victorian nurses were often described almost in the terms used by
Florence Nightingale when she referred to workhouse nurses: 'those who were too
old, too weak, too drunken, too dirty, too stolid, or too bad to do anything else.'2 It
seems now likely that Nightingale overemphasized the contrast between old-style
nurses and her ideal nurse in order to attract an entirely different social category of
applicants to the job. What I intend to do in this chapter is to contribute to eliminate
the simplistic stereotype of the pre-Nightinghale British nurse by a study of their
working and living conditions in the Georgian 'infirmaries' between approximately
1730 and 1830.
What is clear is that the perceived status of hospital nurses in the eighteenth
century was akin to that of domestic servants. They were indeed ostensibly
employed to clean the beds and the wards, feed the patients and hand out medicines,
under the general supervision of a matron. The domestic life of the Georgian
hospitals, as several historians have noted, was organized like that of any school,
college, or indeed country-house, with a hierarchy of 'servants' (the name was
sometimes used instead of 'nurses') and a set of rules. But as we shall see it would
be wrong to consider that domestic servants and hospital nurses were perfectly
interchangeable. I intend to show, for example, that there were specific tasks that
were more or less explicitly required of nurses in addition to menial work, such as
those that pertained to the behaviour and morality of the patients.
One difficulty is the classic scarcity of sources concerning ordinary working
people. Georgian nurses were often illiterate and have left no record of their
working lives. Of course one can consult the printed infirmary rules describing the
daily 'duties' of nurses, although they were very standardized and repetitive. There
are also the numerous surviving hospital account-books mentioning the quarterly
salaries of nurses and matrons (see appendix). There are also, more rarely, the useful
See for example Brian Abel-Smith, A History of the Nursing Profession (London:
Heinemann, 1960).
2 'A Letter to Sir Thomas Watson Bart' (1867), quoted by Abel-Smith, 5.
registers in which the 'Visitors' designated by the board of directors recorded their
(often critical) impressions of daily life in the infirmaries. There are occasional
glimpses in travel accounts and private correspondences, but these scattered
references are extremely difficult to collect in any systematic way. As for evidence
from the medical professions, it is only from the late eighteenth century that it
emerges from occasional essays and articles, but they once again reflect the elites'
point of view on the subject.
The starting-point of any study of nurses must be the particular constraints of
hospital life. In the eighteenth century British hospitals knew a remarkable
development, and by the 1770s, in most cities from Exeter to Aberdeen there could
be found a new voluntary hospital or 'infirmary' .3 What was really new about them
was first that they were under the control of the urban elites that financed them
through yearly subscribtions; and secondly that they were exclusively devoted to
caring for the sick, unlike many continental establishments that also accommodated
indigents. 4 This meant that although the nurses were under the direct supervision of
the matron, they were in fact ultimately submitted to two authorities rather than one:
firstly that of the subscribers, represented by the weekly board, and secondly that of
the physician and surgeon who visited the wards several times a week. At the same
time, nurses were confronted with patients of their own social class, since
infirmaries admitted mostly shopkeepers, labourers, servants, as well any poor
wage-earner, all being duly recommended by a subscriber. They were therefore in
an uncomfortable position, having to obey those above them as well as to make
socially humble patients accept the infirmary rules and regime. I propose to show
that hospital authorities made nurses conform to the same system of obligations and
control as the patients themselves. The minute codification of their duties aimed at
ensuring their own obedience of their 'betters' as well as that of patients.
I will first examine the function of the hierarchy among nurses, which seems to
have resulted in controlling their initiative and autonomy within the institution and
in firmly prevention any promotion. Then I will study the daily routine of nurses,
their insertion in a pseudo-domestic sphere that was akin to but also distinct from
domestic life. In fact the infirmary regime, involving both charitable and medical
requirements, made demands on the nurses that went far beyond servicing a
household. Indeed I will attempt to show that infirmaries made them play a part in
the moralization of masses which was one of the ambitions of the Georgian
charitable movement. At the same time a medically faultless service was required of
nurses, in spite of their total lack of training. The heavy and contradictory demands
made on nurses put them in a difficult, almost untenable situation, which however
continued throughout our period.
3 For a brief account of the rise of infirmaries, see J. Woodward, To Do the Sick No Harm
(London: Routledge, 1974).
4 A good example for comparing hospitals in Protestant countries is the Hopital General
at Geneva, which took in both medical cases and paupers, and employed lay nurses. See
the recent detailed study by Micheline Louis-Courvoisier, Soigner et consoler: Ia vie
quotidienne dans un h6pital a lafin de !'Ancien Regime (Geneve 1750-1820) (Geneve:
Georg Editeur, 2000).
Hospital Nurses in Eighteenth-Century Britain 91
The nursing hierarchy
There was no single type of nurse in Georgian hospitals. One has to take into account
the previous existence and continuing operation of' sisters' in the few older hospitals,
as well as the multiplication of sub-categories of nurses in the new infirmaries. In the
seventeenth century nurses were still designated as 'sisters' in the two larger
medieval hospitals of London, St Bart's and StThomas's. This word reminds one of
the pre-Reformation connection between the Church and hospital charity. The term
survived the Reformation in those institutions, and was even adopted as late as 1720
when Guy's Hospital was opened. The 'sisters' of these three London hospitals were
in charge of a ward and supervised its day nurses, its night-watches and other
'helpers'. The sisters, however, were not mere supervisors, but still had tasks very
similar to those of nurses in other infirmaries, as we can see from mid-century rules
at St. Thomas's. 5 Yet from later similar documents it is possible to trace an increased
share of organizational rather than domestic work in the sisters' duties. But of course
the endowed London hospitals had considerable resources, as compared with the new
subscription infirmaries, and could probably afford to employ supervisory staff better
than others. The sisters' superior status is reflected in their salaries: throughout the
century they earned about half as much as the nurses of the newer infirmaries, as is
clear from the hospitals' account-books. When in 1752 the authorities at St. Thomas's
wanted to change their name to that of'nurse' (and to downgrade nurses as 'helpers')
there was successful resistance of the sisters. Gradually their social origin too seems
to have become higher than that of nurses. In 1772 at Guy's nine sisters out of twelve
were able to sign their names, against four nurses out of eight. 6 According to G. Yeo,
London, most hospital sisters in the early nineteenth century had had some education
and rarely came from the ranks of nurses.?
In the newer 'infirmaries', the name 'sisters' was not used but only the word
'nurses'. It is only from the early eighteenth century that this word was used in the
context of hospitals. Before that we read of 'assistant sisters' and 'helpers' in the
archives of London hospitals. The older appellations, more clearly than the new one,
point to the humble status of these women who were clearly perceived as domestic
servants throughout the Georgian period. Indeed, in the printed rules of infirmaries,
the specification of their duties was often to be found under the heading 'Servants'.
These duties were largely related to the cleaning of the beds and wards, and to the
handing out of medicines and the feeding and general comfort of patients. Every
nurse at St. Thomas's was thus expected to do the following tasks in 1752:
V. She is to make all the beds on one Side of the Ward, and to scour and make clean the
Beds and Floors of the whole Ward, with the Tables and Forms, the Passage and Stairs,
5 Broadsheet c.1752, St Thomas's Hospital Records, London Metropolitan Archives,

Hl/ST/A25.
6 Receipts for Payments 1772, Guy's Hospital Records, London Metropolitan Archives,
H9/GY/D23/4.
7 Geoffrey Yeo, Nursing At Barts (London: St Bartholomew and Princess Alexandra and
Newham College of Nursing and Midwifery, 1995).
and Garrets; to assist her, she may take such Patients as the Sister shall think fit and able
to help her.
VI. She must keep clean scoured the Cans for Beer, the Broth Pails, Pans, Platter and
Plates, &c. foul'd at Dinner. 8
The rules also clearly specified what should be their relation to the various other
persons working in the infirmary. One reads for example in the rules for Nottingham
Infirmary in 1781 :
II. The Nurses and Servants shall obey the House Apothecary as their Master, and the
Matron as their Mistress, and shall behave with Tenderness to the Patients, and with
Civility and Respect to Strangers. ' 9
This rule suggests how delicate the nurses' position must have been. They were
daily confronted with three different sets of people with sometimes contradictory
demands, and were constantly between the hammer and the anvil.
First they had a 'master' (here, the apothecary) and a 'mistress' (always the
matron), as in a private house. But here master and mistress had different
preoccupations, the first being concerned with treatment, the second with order, and
the demands of medical science and of domestic management did not necessarily
follow the same logic. The kind of obedience required was not the same: the
apothecary wanted intelligent nurses able to administer prescriptions faithfully,
while the matron wanted hard-working persons liable to keep the wards clean and
orderly. These were very different kinds of responsibilities, which they must have
found it hard to cope with. The second group, that of patients, was no easier to deal
with. Again, nurses must have been tom between the demands of simple humanity
(what the rules call 'tenderness') and the medical men's orders which may have
required what sometimes seemed to be inhumane treatment. The third group, that of
'strangers', was expected to be treated with 'civility'. But we must remember that
there were two very different kinds of visitors in hospitals: first, the official
'visitors' apppointed by the weekly board of directors, and belonging to the middle
or upper classes. Here marks of deference were expected. And secondly, there were
the relatives or friends of the patients, who were socially close to nurses, and often
tried to circumvent hospital rules concerning food, drink, tobacco, money, etc. by
persuasion or bribery. Here nurses were again in the difficult position of having to
enforce rules of which they did not necessarily approve. As we shall suggest later, a
task of social control was in fact foisted onto nurses who were not prepared for it
socially and culturally.
For all these varied, sometimes contradictory tasks, hospital nurses were paid at
the same rate as domestic servants of inferior rank, i.e. between £5 and £8 per year,
at least in the county infirmaries and in the smaller London ones. A comparative
8 Broadsheet c. 1752, St Thomas's Hospital Records, London Metropolitan Archives,

H1/ST/A25.
9 Statutes and Rules for the Government of the General Hospital near Nottingham Open
to the Sick and Lame Poor, ofAny County (Nottingham, 1781) 27.
table at the end of this chapter provides more detailed information, enhancing in
particular the higher wages offered in the older London hospitals. At StThomas's,
for example, nurses earned between £16 and £30 a year in 1731. However we have
to consider that these salaries (generally paid every quarter) were only a small part
of the nurses' payment, as they were provided with bed and board all the year round
as well. It was required of all nurses to be resident in the hospital, and applicants had
to be single or widowed.
Night-watches (or 'watches', 'watchers, or 'night nurses') were a second
category of the hospital staff that was in charge of patients. Their task was to make
rounds of the wards every hour during the night, to hand out medicines at
the appointed hour, and occasionally to call the matron or apothecary in case of
emergency. They were generally older women on the verge of poverty, living in
their own homes, and happy to supplement their scanty incomes with the modest
wages offered by hospitals. By 1744 the London Hospital paid its night-watches £5
a year (against £7 to nurses). In a few cases, however, night-watches were younger
women who might hope to be promoted to the rank of day nurses. This was the case
in London at the Westminster Infirmary in the 1740s, as the rules suggest:
That for the future all day nurses shall be chosen out of the night nurses Provided they
are duly qualified for their encouragement in discharge of their duty. 10
At the top of the hierarchy of female employees was the matron (or, very rarely,
'head nurse'). She was in charge of generally supervising the domestic management of
the infirmary, organizing the nurses and night-watches' work, looking after the linen
and the ward furniture. She also selected (and could suggest the firing of) the servants
and the nurses, dealt with any confict between them, and liaised with the board of
directors. In most cases the social origins of matrons were higher than those of nurses
and even of the London 'sisters'. They were always elderly women, sometimes the
widows of craftsmen, surgeons, or the daughters of clergymen. They were expected to
be present in the infirmary night and day, and to live alone, except when they were
married to a man working in the infirmary. This seems to have happened quite often in
London, as we can gather from such examples: about 1750 the matron at StThomas's
was Mrs Anne Pearce, the apothecary's wife. At the Foundling the matron,
Mrs Tomkyns, was probably the spouse of the surgeon of the same name.
The position of matron implied a certain social prestige, as the first historian of St
Thomas's Hospital, Benjamin Golding, noted in 1819:
[The Matron] is the superior female of the establishment; she superintends those
departments which could not be so well regulated by a person of the other sex. To her
belongs the direction of all the female domestics; she engages them for the service of the
charity, and dismisses them, according to her pleasure. She presides over their morals and
10 'Resolutions Orders &c. of the Westminstr: Hospital so far as they relate to the
Constitution or present Practice thereof extracted from the minute books and digested
as near as may be under proper heads', Westminster Hospital Records, 18th manuscript
book, 23 October 1741, London Metropolitan Archives, H02 WH A 01 64.
good behaviour, and sees that they execute the several duties of their stations with
propriety. This gives her considerable weight in the domestic ceconomy of the
establishment, and renders the appointment which she fills one of great respectability. II
As a consequence, the matron's salary was much higher than the nurses,
although there were wide discrepancies between the endowed London hospitals and
the provincial infirmaries. Guy's offered £50 a year to its matron as early as 1725,
while Westminster, a subscription infirmary, gave only £12 in 1732. The London
gave 17 guineas in 1744 and the Foundling £25 in 1759. As late as 1782 Salisbury
offered only £15, and Canterbury 15 guineas in 1793. At St Bart's in London, by
contrast an already lavish salary of £80 in 1771 rose to £200 in 1803. Of course the
responsibilities must have been greater in this large establishment, especially in
terms of administration. Thus Mrs Susannah Robinson, matron at St Bart's in 1771,
reminded the board of directors that she supervised the work of more than one
hundred persons (sisters, nurses and night-watches) and spent most of her time
trying to look after her staff. 12 Golding's reference to her control of 'good
behaviour' also reminds us of the continuing insistence of charitable hospital
authorities on raising the moral tone of patients. This could not be effected by the
matron alone, and required the participation of nurses. Thus, as we are going to
show, the nurses' duties far exceeded those of domestic servants.
Cleaners or carers?
As we have already noted, nurses were often seen as just another sort of domestic
servant. Yet we shall argue that although some of their work was undoubtedly of the
menial sort, they had in fact a more demanding life than ordinary servants, in so far
as a complete dedication to their work was expected of them. This conception of
their job must be related to the medieval sisters' religious perception of their task.
But it may also be related to the eighteenth-century emphasis on feminine 'nature'.
The perfect domestication of nurses was first ensured by the obligation of full-time
residence. They were employed on condition that they had no family 'burden'. We
read for example in the rules of the Westminster Infirmary in 1759:
The Nurses are to be unmarried, without the Burthen of Children, free from any
Distemper and under the Age of Forty-five at her admission. 13
In some cases nurses were practically cut off from the outside world. Even visits were
regulated, as we discover in the rules of 1781 at the British Lying-in Hospital in
II Benjamin Golding, Historical Account of the Origin, Progress, and Present State of St.
Thomas s Hospital, Southwark (London, 1819) 204.
12 Yeo 13.
13 'Resolutions Orders &c. of the Westminstr: Hospital so far as they relate to the
Constitution or present Practice thereof extracted from the minute books and digested
as near as may be under proper heads', Westminster Hospital Records, 18th manuscript
book, 4 May 1759, London Metropolitan Archives, H02 WH A 01 64.
London:
That the Nurses be not permitted to have Visitors come after them to stay above an Hour
at a Time; and that such Visitors be not permitted with them in any other Part ofthe House
but the Hall or the Kitchen; and that no Visitor be treated with the Hospital Provisions, or
any Linen washed in the House, but what belongs to the Officers, Servants, or Patients in
the Hospital.
That no Persons, who have been Patients in the Hospital, be permitted to visit the Nurses;
and that the Porter do not presume to call any of the Nurses from their Wards to speak to
such Persons.I4
To take up a job as a nurse meant giving up any kind of private life, in order to
concentrate on the smooth running of the establishment.
We can identify three major constraints in nurses' daily routine: they are related
to the use oftime, of space, and the nature of patient care. Nursing work in hospitals
was submitted to a time-discipline that was fairly unusual in pre-industrial Britain.
The rules of the London Hospital in 1759 give a fair idea of it:
III. They shall clean their Wards, Pewter, and Utensils, every Day by Seven in the
Morning, from the First Day of March to the First Day of October, and before Nine from
the First of October to the First of March.
IV. They shall enter upon the Care of the Patients every Morning at Six in Summer and
Seven in Winter, sup at Ten, and be in Bed by Eleven every Night. 15
As for the use of space, it was also rigidly defmed, especially as many of the new
infirmaries were opened in purpose-built edifices 16 . Nurses were required to stay in
or close to their allotted ward. Often they had to sleep in a cubicle in a comer of the
ward itself. In some cases, they became so closely identified with 'their' ward that
its name was given to them. Thus there was a succession of 'Sister Lukes' at
St Bart's, whose identity remained in the background.
The nursing of patients was an even more difficult task, in so far as they did not
really have the means of performing what was required of them. Apart from the
standardized recommendations on the necessary 'tenderness towards the patients',
it was clear that they were essentially required to obey the physicians' and doctors'
prescriptions. Yet some experienced nurses took upon themselves to disregard some
or all of these prescriptions, probably judging them inappropriate. Thus in 1749 the
matron at Worcester overstepped her prerogatives to such an extent that she was
eventually fired:
It appearing to this committee that Mrs White the Matron did presume to countermand
the Orders and prescriptions of all the Physicians, it is therefore Orderd that she be
14 The Laws, Orders, and Regulations, of the British Lying-In Hospital, for the Reception
of Lying-In Married Women (London, 1781) 34.
15 Charter and By Laws of the London Hospital (1759), London Hospital Archives
LH/A/112, p. 22.
16 For a comprehensive account of Georgian hospital architecture, see Christine
Stevenson's Medicine and Magnificence (London & New Haven: Yale U.P., 2000).
discharged from her Office on the 5th day of November next, her years service ending
at that time. 17
At the other extreme, some nurses signalled themselves by their frequent

absence from their wards (and even, at the London Hospital, by their visits to local
taverns). Such failings were also followed by punishment and, if repeated, by
dismissal. One such incident comes out vividly from Dr Blizard's outraged
comment in the Visiting book at the London Hospital in 1786:
W. Blizard was at the Hospital the 14 ofNovr., at 112 past Six in the Evening and went
into Richmond Ward, where he had a Patient in a very dangerous Condition requiring
constant Attention, & on whose account the most particular Directions were given in the
Morning-Notwithstanding these urgent Considerations, contrary to the Rules of the
Hospital & to every Idea of what ought to be the Conduct of Nurses &c at an Hospital,
the Nurse was out, and had been away the whole Afternoon; and the Watcher came in on
the instant of his going into the Ward. The poor Fellow his Patt had not had anything
given to him for a considerable Time: His Life depends on the Attention of
Nurse &c-The Watcher seemed to be drunk to add to the Evil. 18
It is clear from this quotation that there was considerable discrepancy between
doctors' and nurses' notions of 'what ought to be the conduct of nurses &c. at an
hospital'. While the nurses could understand the logic of domestic order, they were
too ignorant to understand the logic of medical treatment. They could hardly feel
responsible for the health of patients, in so far as they were treated like mere
domestic servants, and left in ignorance. The notion that they might receive some
form of medical education or training was not even envisaged before the early
nineteenth century, and then with considerable misgivings. The sheer ignorance of
nurses must have made their position difficult, and could lead to different attitudes:
while some blindly obeyed the apothecary's orders, others felt they knew better, and
tampered with the prescriptions. In other words they were given a task for which
they were not fit. We have here the central paradox of the job of hospital nurse,
which must have made life difficult for the more devoted nurses.
Agents of moral order?
Another non-domestic task which hospital nurses were more or less explicitly
expected to perform was equally problematic to them: the religious and moral
edification of patients. It is well-known that one of the aims of the charitable
movement of the early eighteenth century was to moralize the very poor who, at
least in towns, were suspected of being increasingly irreligious and immoral. It was
17 Worcester Infirmary, 'Order Book A' (12 April 1749), Worcester Record Office, 010: 6
BA 516111.
18 London Hospital Archives, LH/A/16/3, 'Visiting Book' (November 1786). Underlining
by Dr Blizard.
felt that a stay at the infirmary was the ideal time for such moral rearmament. This
was for Rev Alured Clarke one ofthe capital advantages of the new infirmaries, as
he explained to the subscribers at Winchester in 1737:
The most certain method of recovering Men from their evil Courses, is to remove them
out of the way of bad examples for so long a time as is necessary to beget contrary habits.
And it may be reasonably presumed that great numbers of the Poor will be insensibly
reclaimed by the exact regularity of Manners, which is maintained in an Hospital as well
as by the frequency of such Reflections as are naturally suggested in the House of
Mouming. 19
This argument about the moral benefits of hospital treatment was often repeated
by clergymen and even medical men throughout the eighteenth century. 20 It is not
clear who, in Clarke's opinion, was suppposed to enforce this 'exact regularity of
manners'. But as clergymen did not make daily visits to the wards, we can only
assume that the matron and the nurses themselves were to be the principal agents of
religious and moral rearmament.
As soon as the new infirmaries multiplied, from the 1730s, the Church of
England assisted them through public events such as anniversary sermons given in
order to attract new subscriptions. And although infirmaries were lay institutions,
religion was present in their daily routine in many ways. Often one could read
sentences from Scripture on printed notices stuck to the walls in the wards. 21 The
reading of daily prayers was recommended by the rules, either by patients or nurses
able to read. The larger hospitals had a chaplain whose assiduity in visiting the sick
was variable. Services were often held twice a week in the infirmaries (although
they were rarely provided with a proper chapel). In some hospitals, the visitors kept
an eye on the number of patients who attended them. Thus at the London Hospital
in 1775 they deplored that too many were absent:
The No of Patients is 202, of whom only 56 were reported to be able, tho' 'tis hoped that
none of them are unwilling, to attend Divine Service in the Chapel, as their most
important Duty & interest require.22
One imagines that nurses would not be too willing to extract patients out of their
beds, if they were unwilling, or if it required too much exertion on their part. Again
the nurses would not feel responsible for the religious welfare of patients since this
was not their primary duty.
19 'An Account of the Establishment of the County-Hospital at Winchester', (1737) in

Woodward 152.
20 See for example W. Blizard, Suggestions for the Improvement of Hospitals, and other
Charitable Institutions (London, 1796) 34: 'And, rightly conducted, they mend the
morals, as well as restore the health and preserve the lives, of the objects for whose sake
they were founded.'
21 For example at Exeter and Winchester, probably at Dr Clarke's request.
22 London Hospital Archives, LH/A/16/2, 'Visiting Book' (29 June 1775).
On the chapter of morality, mles were more explicit. Nurses were asked to be living
examples of virtue and pmdence. Golding thus mentions one of the mles at St
Thomas's in 1819:
You shall at all times be so circumspect in your general conduct, that it may be a
profitable example to the patients committed to your care; and if you shall discover any
thing done by any officer or servant in this house, or any other person, that shall cause
disorder, or be the occasion of slander thereto, you shall then declare the same to the
Treasurer, and no further meddle therein. 23
Beside being a pattern of good behaviour, matron and nurses were required by the
rules of most hospitals to exercise some control over the behaviour of patients. The
separation of sexes was of course to be absolute, no male patients being allowed into
the women's wards, and vice-versa. Also nurses had specific instructions on the
chapter of gambling, which was explicitly forbidden. For example the sisters at St
Thomas were asked to obey the following rule:
II. That they be careful there be no playing at Cards, Dice, or any other Games in this
House, to give Notice to the Treasurer or Steward, if any offend therein. 24
The control of spirits drinking was another task allotted to nurses. Only those
spirits such as port which were felt to have some curative effect and were prescribed
by the physicians were authorized. Still it is clear from visitors' books that much
smuggling of spirits went on in infirmaries, as many nurses actually condoned
drinking. On this chapter, which really belongs to the study of popular culture, we
have to face the difficult question of assessing what appeared as legitimate or not to
nurses.
As we have mentioned earlier, nurses basically belonged to the same social
milieu as their patients, probably best described as the labouring classes. Hospital
authorities were quite conscious of this, and wished to avoid all possible forms of
connivence between nurses and patients. The drafting and publicization of specific
rules for nurses, for servants and for patients was partly aimed at preventing it.
Nurses were required to keep their distance, not to accept or ask any favour
whatsoever from patients. Rules forbade any exchange of money, any purchase of
goods for patients, any witnessing of a will, during or after a patient's stay at
hospital. For example we can read in the London Hospital rules for 1759:
IX. Neither Nurses nor Watches shall receive any Present, Acknowledgement, or Gratuity,
either in Money, Treats, or any Thing whatsoever, from any of the Patients or their Friends,
either during their being under the Care of the Charity, or after their Discharge.2 5
23 B. Golding, 1819.
24 Broadsheet c.1752, St Thomas's Hospital Records, London Metropolitan Archives,
Hl/ST/A 25.
25 Charter and By Laws of the London Hospital (1759), London Hospital Archives,
LH/NJ/2: 17.
In spite of the rules, it is clear from the allusions to nurses in visitors' books that
nurses' infringements on the rules were not rare, although only the more serious
ones were recorded in detail. These official visitors, appointed by the board of
directors, and changing every week, toured the wards two or three times a week
(sometimes carrying a white wand to identity them). Nurses and matrons were
required to leave the room, so that patients might be questioned more freely on the
management of the infirmary and the attitude of the staff. 26 In case of serious trouble
visitors could report to the board of directors, that would then cross-examine
matron, nurses and patients. On can easily realize how difficult must have been the
situation of nurses in such cases. It is likely that even when they were wrongly
charged with misdemeanour, it must have been difficult for them to persuade the
directors they had behaved properly. The patients, who, we must remember, were
always recommended by one subscriber, must have been listened to more
benevolently than the nurses. Although information is too scarce for any safe
generalization, it seems that the outcome of serious conflicts was more likely to be
the dismissal of the nurse rather than that of the patient.
This short survey of the condition of eighteenth-century British nurses has
enhanced the not often recognized differences between hospital nurses and ordinary
domestic servants. The specific context of the charitable and medicalized infirmary
submitted them to contradictory pressures. The economic limitations as well as the
social conservatism of these voluntary institutions tended to keep the level of
qualification of nurses very low. On the other hand nurses were required to be both
medically efficient and morally outstanding. This was clearly too much to ask, in so
far as they were not motivated either by any recognized professional status, or by
any attractive wage-level. Only the matrons of the larger hospitals, who seemed to
have enjoyed some social consideration as well as better salaries, could really feel
responsible for the physical and moral welfare of the patients. The uneasy position
of hospital nurses, however, continued throughout the Georgian age and beyond,
and may have accounted for their high turnover. Only the conjunction of the demand
for better qualified nurses by part of the medical profession and the offer of
dedicated work by middle-class single women in the Victorian age could begin to
alter the conditions of recruitment of nurses.
26 A list of standard questions was often provided to visitors in the printed rules.
APPENDIX
WOMEN'S ANNUAL WAGES IN GEORGIAN HOSPITALS

(Sources: Hospital records)
Hospital Date Matron Assistant Sister Day Night

matron Nurse Nurse
Westminster 1724 £9 £6
Guy's 1725 £50 £25 £16
StThomas 1731 £25-40 £16-20
Westminster 1732 £12+1gn £6+5s.
London Hospital 1744 15gns £7 £5
Foundling 1759 £25 £20
Plymouth 1763 £25
London Hospital 1768 £20 8gns 6gns
Oxford 1770 £5
Bartholomew 1771 £80+20
British Lying-in 1781 £25+15 £15
Salisbury 1782 £15+5 £5+1
Plymouth 1787 25gns £9
Guy's 1787 £25 £10
Westminster
Lying-in 1793 £25 10gns+2
Canterbury 1793 15gns+5 5gns+2
Foundling 1796 £42 £5-£8
St. Thomas 1800 £32-45 £20-22
Bartholomew 1803 £200 £16+fees £10+fees
Westminster
Lying-in 1804 15gns
Bartholomew 1821 £36-70 £18
StThomas 1837 £105+105 £37-50 £25-27
Chapter 8
Claiming their Place in the Corporate

Community: Women's Identity in
Eighteenth-Century Towns
Deborah Simonton
She gae'd as fait as a new Prin,

And kept her Housie snod and been;
Her Peuther glanc'd upo' your Een
Like Siller Plate;
She was a donsie Wife and clean,
Without Debate.
It did ane good to see her Stools,

Her Boord, Fire-side, and facing Tools;
Rax, Chandlers, Tangs, and Fire-Schools,
Basket wi' Bread.
Poor Facers now may chew Pea-hools,
Since Lucky's dead.
She n' er gae in a Law in fa use,

Nor Stoups a Froth aboon the Hause,
Nor kept dow'd Tip within her Waw's,
But reaming Swats;
She never ran sour Jute, because
It gee's the Batts.
The Writer Lads fow well may mind her,

Furthy was she, her Luck design'd her
Their common Mither, sure nane kinder
Ever brake Bread;
She has na left her Make behind her,
But now she's dead.
(Elegy on Lucky Wood in the Cannon gate, May 1717 by Allan Ramsay I)
Lucky Wood kept an alehouse in the Cannongate in eighteenth-century Edinburgh,

where she was much respected for her hospitality, honesty and the neatness both of
Alexander Manson Kinghorn and Alexander Law eds, Poems by Allan Ramsay and
Robert Ferguson (Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press, 1985), 1012. As this poem is
written in vernacular Scots, a 'translation' is provided:
her person and her Inn. In this extract from the poem, Elegy on Lucky Wood in the
Cannongate, May 1717, by Allan Ramsay, we get a fme picture of an honest ale-
seller. Natalie Davis has argued that independent female traders could gain and
maintain a sense of craft and status through the esteem in which they were held by
husbands, kin, neighbours, clients, and other women in the trade. Credit for their
work and ability remained largely within 'their street, their commerage, their tavern,
their kin-unpublished and unsung' .2 I have been exploring ideas of status and
standing in the European working community, and the ways in which status itself is
a gendered concept. I am interested in how women created an identity within a
culture and community, how they fit in the economy and society, how much agency
and independence they had. Numerous women ran their own businesses, both single
and married, working independently or in female partnerships. This chapter will
examine the issue of the independent woman and her creation of identity in the
corporate society of eighteenth-century urban Europe.
It is set against the backdrop of the growth in commercial activity and consumer
trades which characterized the period. Many towns and cities of eighteenth-century
Europe experienced significant, often rapid, growth. At the same time towns were
at the centre of commercial developments which meant that more goods and
services were available to support the urban community. The middle-classes were
developing an identity and an awareness of their position, and the commercial
middling orders asserted themselves in this situation both economically and
politically. The same commercial tendencies which enriched the middle orders have
been credited with a perceived tendency to more frequently identify the women of
these families with the home and domestic pursuits. Ideological trends underpinned
such redefmitions of woman's place. However, large numbers of women maintained
a role in commercial activities as proprietors working independently or in
partnership with both other women and with husbands or sons. But even as the
concept of worker was being less frequently attached to females, numerous women
made their way in the corporate community of eighteenth-century Europe, claiming
a place and establishing an identity in that community.
Though the urban economy could be a minefield with the risk of destitution
leading to prostitution amongst other dangers, it also represented opportunity for
married and unmarried women. Although precarious, furnished rooms, lodging-
houses, and networks of women, not to mention shops and taverns with prepared food
meant that women could live alone and survive. The notion that women's work was
She dressed as neat as a new pin./And kept her house tidy and wealthy;/Her pewter
struck your eyes/Like silver plate;/She was a trim wife and clean/Without debate.//It
did one good to see her stools,/Her board, fireside, and facing tools,/Hooks, candles,
tongs, and fire shovels/Baskets with bread./Poor locals now may chew pea-pods,/Since
Lucky's dead.//She never gave a crooked bill,/Nor gave her clients extra ale,/Nor kept
cheap booze within her walls,/But the finest beer;/She never sold sour liquor, because/It
gave folk the colic .... //The Poet lads may well remember her/Forward was she, but
Lucky made her/Their common mother, sure none kinder/That ever broke bread;/She
hasn't left her match behind her,/But now she's dead.
2 Natalie Zemon Davis, 'Women in the Crafts', in Barbara Hanawalt ed., Women and
Work in Preindustrial Europe ( 1986) 183-184.
Claiming Their Place in The Corporate Community 103
necessarily home-based undervalues the extent to which they operated outside the
household, and in the cities, the extent to which commerce was their milieu. Their role
in trading networks was important as was their financial role in keeping household and
workshop accounts, and in managing the sale of workshop products. Similarly, the
proportion of single and widowed women trading, sometimes temporarily, sometimes
permanently, has to be reckoned with. Significantly, towns were 'multi-layered'. This
is not only about what we might call social class, but about the ways people fit into
the structures of the town. In a fairly brief search of three groups of Aberdeen records:
the Council, Baillie and Guild Registers, the Apprenticeship Registers, and the
Aberdeen Journal (now Aberdeen Press and Journal) begun in 1747, I have found a
wide range of women who can be mapped onto the physical, economic and social
landscape of Aberdeen and its environs. It is certainly not true that women are missing
from the record-it's what you can make of it that is the issue.
Representative List of Women found in the Aberdeen Journal
Thieves Servants
Prostitutes Child Murderers
Tenants Suicides
School teachers Property owners
Sewing School Mistresses Music School teacher
Milliners Housekeepers of Institutions
Pub landladies Shopkeepers
Witnesses Rioters
Ladies Bountiful Widows
Wives Mothers
Author Vintners
Bakers Staymaker
Merchants Mistresses taking apprentices
High Constable of Scotland Printers, including Printer of the Aberdeen
and Chief of the family Hay Journal
It can be argued that the status which attaches to work roles is an essentially male
concept, particularly in a corporate community where craft status was closely linked to
political power and standing. Towns tended to be built on a foundation of corporatism
and eighteenth-century society stressed corporate identity and organization. Guilds
derived their character and influence from their roles as organizers of the town
economy, and they deliberately kept organizations incompatible with guild
organization outside the town. 3 Women in Kingston-upon Thames who operated in
regulated trades such as chandlery were required to take tolerations to be allowed to
trade, in the same way as men who had not served an apprenticeship.
Apprenticeship offers an example of how the system operated. Indentures
usually refer to the 'mysteries' and 'practices' of trades, not to skills. The language
3 Mack Walker, German Home Towns, Community, State and General Estate (1971) 98.
of apprenticeship suggests that training meant passing on the practices and

behavioural patterns expected of one who carried out the trade. In other words, the
training had less to do with expertise and rather more to do with the status carried
by the trade. Within this construction were the seeds of a regulated method of social
advancement. In an age which made fine social distinctions between artisan and
labourer, between master and journeyman, access to apprenticeship, particularly in
a 'good' trade was seen as enhancing a child's opportunities. 4 During
apprenticeship, according to Defoe, children were to be instructed 'in such things as
may qualify them best to enter upon the world, and act for themselves when they are
so enter' d'. 5 Thus the system specifically served as an initiation to the heavy
responsibility of citizenship and adulthood.
Within the corporate community, apprenticeship for boys frequently led to
becoming a freeman with civic rights and responsibilities. Thus throughout Europe,
guild members appear on town councils, and the system 'with all its ways penetrated
[ ... ] political institutions through and through'. 6 This was the case in eighteenth-
century Aberdeen where the link between burgesses and the 'Companies' is clear in
the records: the Dean of Guild, Merchant-councillors and Trades-councillors were
elected City positions. 7 The Provost, Dean of Guild and Magistrates were recruited
exclusively from the merchant elite, a group of about 27 men. The only way to enter
the Guildry Court was to be worth £150 of free stock and produce a certificate
signed by two creditable Burgesses. 8 The main town records indicate the vast range
of their influence and authority in the Corporation, covering poverty, trade,
shipping, appeals to Parliament, providing teachers for the town-you name it, they
did it. Not the picture of non-intervention we might have expected. Thus corporate
identity had a number of important implications for control of community and
maintenance of custom. Corporate regulation helped protect trades, maintain quality
and regulate the workplace and through it the community.
While female guilds existed, mainly in continental Europe, and women gained
admission to some male guilds, they were essentially masculine organizations that
paralleled the male life cycle. Their structure and rules reflected male rites of
passage. And girls had far less chance of a formal apprenticeship. Political power
was not available to females in the same way as it was for males, even when they
had served apprenticeships or became established in business. The effect was to link
economic, social and political roles in explicit and implicit ways which had
important ramifications for rank and status. But they also had particular meaning for
women's role in urban society. So, how did women create an identity in this
community which was largely based on male success and male polity? We can argue
4 See John Rule, Experience ofLabour in Eighteenth-Century England (1981) 33. A use-
ful discussion of social distinctions in London trades is in Dorothy George, London Lifo
in the Eighteenth Century (1925; 1979) 159-166.
5 Daniel Defoe, The Complete English Tradesman (1726) I, 6.
6 Walker, German Home Towns 100.
7 Aberdeen Journal, 3 October 1758.
8 Tom Devine, 'Social Composition ofthe Merchant Class', in George Gordon and Brian
Dicks, eds, Scottish Urban History (1983) 99-100.
that for many women like men, economic role and social role were closely linked,
either as a way of creating a position in the corporate community, or as a way of
creating an 'independent' identity for themselves. Women were rarely given, or
gained, an identity in the words of trade law and thus were rarely able to claim rights
of their own. Where they did obtain their own corporate identity, as in Paris or
Rouen, their corporations enjoyed privileges which were comparable to those of
male masters. Female guilds were limited to a small number of largely 'feminine'
trades, and the women were relatively prosperous minor entrepreneurs, and in Paris,
virtually all worked without male support in the trade. 9
Economic partnerships of husband and wife dominated in urban areas. Marriage
also frequently went with the trade-indeed one author has suggested that wedlock
°
was often the point of conception for potential commercial activity. 1 Complex
networks of family connections also fostered business, and many brides had gained
experience in a trade or business before marriage, entering the marital partnership
with skills and experience. For example, in the French book-trade several husbands
and wives were charged jointly by police for their trading activities. Wives appear
regularly with husbands in legal documents such as apprenticeship indentures, often
when a girl was involved. Almost all legal documents consulted by Abensour for
Paris and the Ile-de-France were signed by merchants and countersigned by their
wives. Port books of late seventeenth-century Scotland also contain a sprinkling of
wives signing for consignments instead of their husbands.ll A wife's role in a
business partnership depended on her abilities. For example, a woman who could
not read could hardly act as a proofreader. Nevertheless, coding of tasks as 'skilled'
or as men's work, such as pulling the press, could keep women from undertaking
them. Within the patriarchal household and workshop, the principle of male head of
household and control of the workshop fundamentally underpinned the premise that
men's work was high status, and female work was supplementary and supportive.
Throughout much of Europe, law merged a married woman's legal identity with her
husband's, and as a feme coverte, she could be restrained from independent trading.
Thus most women found access to business through husbands and fathers, and even
that could be constrained by custom.
In many respects the master's wife was the most important figure in the shop,
'when necessary giving orders to the workers in the workshops, filling in for
husbands in their absence, and taking care ofthe accounting side ofthe business'. 12
Such was Madame Tribout who kept accounts for the family lace-making enterprise
in Valenciennes between 1748 and 1775, or women handling sales in the boutiques
9 Michael Sonenscher, Work and Wages (1989) 66.

10 Alistair J. Mann, 'Embroidery to Enterprise: the Role of Women in the Book Trade of
Early Modern Scotland', in Elizabeth Ewan and Maureen Meikle, Women in Scotland,
c.1100-c.1750 (1999) 139.
11 Geraldine Sheridan, 'Women in the Booktrade in Eighteenth-Century France', British
Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 15: 1, (1992) 53-55; Leon Abensour, La
Femme et le Feminisme en France avant la Revolution (1923) 168, 200-204; Rab
Houston, 'Women in the Economy and Society of Scotland', in R. A. Houston and I. A.
Whyte, eds, Scottish Society, 1500-1800 (1989) 122.
12 James McMillan, France and Women, 1789-1914, Gender Politics and Society (2000) 70.
of Lyon. In France, 'working behind the counter of the bookshop was clearly the
woman's accepted place', despite virtual 'official' exclusion from the printing trade.
Pinchbeck saw such a woman as so well acquainted with her husband's business as
to be 'mistress of the managing part of it' .13 Guild regulations often recognized her
contribution by specifying that masters had to be married. Robert Campbell, in his
guide for parents, draws an uncomplimentary picture, but one which indicates her
potential power in the workshop:
If Domestic Harmony is not to be met with in the Family, the Youth has but a poor Chance
of prospering; & if the Woman rules her husband, it is generally remarked, the Master is
incapable to teach his Apprentice; ... the Boy lives a tiresome Life and must have the
patience of Job to be capable to spin out seven Years under the Dominion of a Female
Tyrant. 14
Note the tension between a feminine 'ideal' and the potentially strong woman. The
position of such a woman was 'utterly ambiguous', but it had the effect of making
her a more important person with her wide range of duties and responsibilities. She
worked in close parallel with her husband, had a powerful influence over day-to-day
matters and exercised considerable authority over workers. The character of her
work could mean she was present in the shop more than he was. Indeed, her
prominence and power also was her vulnerability, since it rested on convention and
marriage, and exposed her to grievance, as implied in the passage above. 15
Through marriage most women gained strength, position and status. Eighteenth-
century Europe was a patriarchal society in which men held overt political power
and in which law and custom recognized the subordination of women to men.
Society expected the male to be the authority in the family. Of course, most women
are not all women, and a substantial population of single and widowed females
worked in their own right. With average marriage ages in the mid-twenties and a
high level of 'never married' women, there were many single women. In northern
Europe, between 10 and 14 per cent of women remained unmarried at the end of the
century. Eleven per cent was a nominal European norm for the proportion of widows
in the female population, while estimates suggest that women headed between 9 and
14 per cent of households. 16 This is an important reminder that not all households
were the typical family.
13 William Reddy, The Rise ofMarket Culture, the Textile Trade and French Society, 1750-
1900 ( 1984) 22; Wendy Gibson, Women in Seventeenth-Century France ( 1989) 105;
Sheridan, 'Women in the Booktrade in Eighteenth-Century France', 51-65; Hannah
Barker, 'Women, Work and the Industrial Revolution: Female Involvement in the
English Printing Trades, c.1700-1840', in Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus, eds,
Gender in Eighteenth-Century England, Roles, Representations and Responsibilities
(1997) 88-100; Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750-
1850 (1930) 282.
14 Robert Campbell, The London Tradesman (1747) 22-23.
15 Arlette Farge, Fragile Lives: Violence, Power and Solidarity in Eighteenth-Century
Paris (1993) 114-115.
16 E. A Wrigley and R. S Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541-1871. A
Reconstruction (1981) 263; Olwen Hufton, 'Women Without Men: Widows and
A woman might be a single independent worker for a part of her life, while an
independent artisan might be married but operating her own trade. In both cases, her
independent identity has tended to be subsumed within the idea of a family
economy, obscuring her activities. In this way the concept of family economy, often
seen as enhancing women's position, ignored the contribution of a significant
number of women, but also eliminated agency in determining their own life style.
Their decision-making process comprised complex considerations which included
emotional and moral values as well as economic considerations. To argue that these
women sought independence, or that they were forced into it only through
instrumental concerns, is oversimplification. A woman might be a single
independent worker for a part of her life, while an independent artisan might be
married but operating her own trade. However, many 'women alone' were at a
specific life cycle stage, a stage that may have lasted most of their lives, but for
many covering the years between childhood and marriage; others as widows.
Steady employment in domestic industries sometimes allowed women to create
independent living arrangements, although earnings were usually so low that this
was difficult. They frequently operated independently in spinning, lace-making and
similar trades because of weak regulation, because they were identified as women's
crafts or because level of demand permitted them access to trade. Clusters of women
in separate households allowed production to be divided and they could gain some
control over markets and income. So could women working directly for a merchant.
Wages were dependent on economic conditions, but the existence of numerous
merchants in an area competing for women's labour was to their advantage. In
Rouen, with a short supply of yarn, there were so many dealers that workers had a
choice of offers or could look for an improved rate at the weekly market. Reddy
quotes such an example:
If she has enough money to pay for three pounds of raw cotton, she buys no more. She
works with this small amount, and works with care. When the cotton is spun she sells it
that much more advantageously as her work is perfect. From the proceeds, she subtracts
enough for her subsistence, and if her small capital has now increased, she buys a larger
amount of raw materiaJ.l7
Such practices led to a royal injunction against unauthorized peddlers in

Aprill752, leading to a spinners' protest. Not only were they operating in their own
right, they were prepared to assert their right to do so on terms that benefited them.
Spinsters in Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century', Journal of Family History,
9 (1984) 357; Richard Wall, 'Woman Alone in English Society', Annates de
Demographie Historique (1981) 303-307; Gay Gullickson, 'Love and Power in the
Proto-industrial Family', in Maxine Berg, ed., Markets and Manufactures in Early
Industrial Europe (1991) 216 and 'The Sexual Division of Labor in Cottage Industry
and Agriculture in the Pays de Caux 1750-1850', French Historical Studies, 12 (1981)
187; Robert W. Malcolmson, Life and Labour in England, 1700-1800 (1981) 176.
17 Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture, 24-27, 31; see also Gullickson, 'Love and Power in
the Proto-industrial Family', 212.
Such households were common in north-west Ireland where the premium on female
labour for spinning linen enhanced their position. In the Pays de Caux, some single
and widowed women supported themselves by spinning; in the lace-making districts
of Le Puy marchandes could make comfortable profits employing four or five
servantes or their own daughters. In Colyton, the structure of poor-relief encouraged
poor women to live together as spinners, backed up by relief and charity when times
were especially hard. This supports Gullickson's view that spinning wages were not
high enough to encourage women to establish independent households, but were
high enough to permit it. On balance, in domestic industries, income did not
necessarily provide the incentive for women to establish separate households, but
women-only households were a strategy for coping with economic necessity.l 8
Many became involved through marriage, worked in partnership with husbands
and continued the business after his death. In Aberdeen, a number of women
advertised that they were continuing husbands' businesses, often in what would
have been considered non-female trades. In 1755 and 1757, Christian Aberdein
advertised that she would continue her staymaker husband's business, and in 1764
Margaret Craig gave notice that she would carry on her merchant husband's trade:
Advertisement placed by Margaret Craig
Margaret Craig, Relict of the deceast John McKenzie Merchant in Aberdeen, having
purchased of his Executors, the whole Stock of Goods on hand at the Time of his Death;
she carries on the Trade, as formerly at her shop in the narrow Wynd of Aberdeen, and
hopes those who favoured Mr. McKenzie with their Custom, will be so kind as continue
the same with her, and they may depend on being well and readily served.
N .B. There is at said Shop, several Articles of Goods fit for Chapmen, which will be
sold low for ready Money.
+Commissions from the Country carefully obeyed.l9
In placing this advert, Margaret Craig gave us several clues. She purchased the
stock, implying that she did not inherit it, and by doing so, the executors could pay
off any debts McKenzie might have had. 20 She could have started with a clean
18 Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture, 31-33; Gullickson, 'Love and Power in the Proto-
industrial Family', 212,215 and 'The Sexual Division of Labor', 187; Olwen Hufton,
'Women and the Family Economy of Eighteenth-Century France', French Historical
Studies, 9 (1975) 14-15; Ian Whyte, 'Protoindustrialisation in Scotland', in Pat Hudson,
ed., Regions and Industries: A Perspective on the Industrial Revolution in Britain
(1989) 240; Brenda Collins, 'Sewing Outwork in Ulster', in Berg, ed., Markets and
Manufacture (1982) 133; Pam Sharpe, 'Literally Spinsters: A New Interpretation of the
Local Economy and Demography in Colyton in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries', Economic History Review, 46, 1 (1991) 58-60.
19 Aberdeen Journal, 11 June 1764. For Christian Aberdein see Aberdeen Journal, 24 June
1755 and 26April1757.
20 In general, on marriage, Scots women kept their own names. However, see the excep-
tions discussed below.
financial slate. However, her note suggests that she needed ready money. The other
clue, in common with many of the records, is that she claimed her place as a business
woman. She said that business 'will be carried on as formerly' and suggested
goodwill amongst her husband's customers. She also said that 'they may depend on
being well and readily served' and that she would 'carefully obey' commissions from
the country. As the main trading centre for the region, the hinterland was important.
She was literally setting out her stall as a competent and reliable business woman.
The wording is also typical of adverts placed by men, and it is significant that she
used the same language to establish her place in the commercial community. She was
not using a 'feminine' discourse, nor was she trading on femininity.
She certainly was not unique in this. For three weeks in August 1764,
Mrs Kennedy of Montrose announced that she intended to continue the Ship's
Tavern, 'where travellers and others may depend on the best Usage and Proper
Accommodation' .2 1 Over the next few years adverts regularly appeared for roups
[auctions] held there, until her death in July 1767. A similar case can be made for
Mrs Forbes, Vintner, of Peterhead, who also appeared regularly during the last half
century. Keeping inns and alehouses was considered a very proper and suitable
business for women, and provided a good opportunity to make a living. Thus
Mrs Warrand of Forres moved from the edge of town to the centre, and laid claim
to the prestige of the location, the previous possessor, and the elegance with which
she had fitted out the premises. She also traded on her previous connections and 'the
discretion and civility which has all along been the characteristic of her House.'
Advertisement placed by Mrs Warrand
That Mrs WARRAND, vintner in Forres, has removed from the west end of said
town, to the large tenement in the middle of it, lately possessed by the laird of
Macleod (now the sign of the British arms) and has neatly fitted it up in a most
commodious and elegant manner, as an inn and tavern, proper to receive and entertain
company of all ranks. Mrs Warrand returns her most grateful acknowledgements for
former favours, and hopes to merit continuance of them, by that discretion and
civility which she flatters herself, has all along, with universal suffrage, been the
characteristick of her house. 22
The New Inn in Aberdeen was held by Mrs Robertson in 1758, when adverts
appeared for roups [auctions] held there, often under her name. At the same time,
John McGhie ran a coffee-house in the town, and then in June of 1763 he announced
a move to the New Inn. He conducted the usual business of an inn, including
providing a venue for recruitment officers for the army. But his reputation was a bit
more chequered than the women described, when in September 1765 he appealed
against sentence on a complaint for his lack of hospitality in not receiving strangers
to lodge, although he had accommodation for them. The complaint was upheld and
21 Aberdeen Journal, 6, 13, 20 August 1764.

22 Aberdeen Journal, 1 August 1758.
he was fmed and had to pay costs. 23 When he died, and Mrs McGhie took over the
business, it was regularly described in the Aberdeen Journal, as 'Mrs McGhie's
House'. This was a well-established concern, as she not only hosted auctions, and
conducted the normal activities of an inn, but sold tickets for Assemblies. It is clear
that the property was associated with the Masons and the Masonic lodge formed part
of the tenement. These activities continued unabated under her management, and
indeed it appears to have been an even more active place of commerce during her
sole tenure. In fact, on 24 May 1773, four separate adverts appeared for events at
her House. In this respect she had gained and retained an identity with a portion of
the community, the House was identified as hers, and clearly it was a very active
business. The centrality and importance of her venue suggests a standing in the
community. The adverts appear to have been placed by the persons in charge of the
roups, which suggests they were responsible for deciding where to hold them. They
were frequently advocates in the town, often using the same inn over a period of
time, suggesting a recognition of a competent business partnership with the women
concemed. 24
A number of women acquired some sort of name for themselves through 'official
appointment'. Patronage played an important role in the corporate community, and
commerce differed little from politics in this respect. Places were obtained through
an informal but powerful network of clientage, connection and recommendation. 25
Retaining such appointments within the family were also important to the families
involved, as witnessed by two cases from Aberdeen. In 1705 Margaret Cuthbert was
admitted as 'Printer to the Town' by the Council as successor to her husband. Later
that year their daughter, Margaret Forbes and her husband James Nicoll, a Merchant
Burgess, were admitted to the position in the place of her mother, who had also
died. 26 In 1764 Susan Traill, widow of Nicholl's successor and her son, James
Chalmers, gained the position. 27 All three women were probably active partners and
gained the position to some extent on their own merit. The announcement of the
partnership of Traill and her son tends to confirm this. 28 The Aberdeen Journal
stated that Chalmers intended to carry on the business in 'conjunction with his
mother' and clearly referred to the joint venture, writing 'their employers' and 'they
intend to stand candidates, at the next general election, for the place of printer to the
county'. The tone is of a joint operation, and suggests that Susan had worked with
her husband. At the least, her son was trading on that fact, at best he would rely on
her as an active partner. This is consistent with women in the French and English
booktrades studied by Sheridan and Barker, where wives and widows had a working
23 Aberdeen Journal, 23 September 1765.

24 Aberdeen Journal, 17 October 1758, December 1758, 30 January, 4 July, 15 August,
21 November 1763, 13 June and 31 December 1764, 5 April, 24 May, 28 June 1773.
25 Devine, 'Social Composition of the Merchant Class', 103.
26 Mann says that Cuthbert ran the business until 1710 when her daughter and husband
were ready to take over, 'Embroidery to Enterprise', 139.
27 Council, Baillie and Guild Registers, City of Aberdeen Archives, the Town House,
LVIII, 3, 215; LX, 428; LXIII, 20.
28 Aberdeen Journal, 15 October 1764.
Claiming Their Place in The Corporate Community Ill
involvement. 29 The appointment clearly represented publicly recognised standing,

having been granted by an elite group of men, who ran the city from a position of
wealth, power and prestige. This was no mean position to grant to a woman.
Alistair Mann argues that the book-trade was more open to women in Scotland
than England, mainly because there was no equivalent to the Stationers' Company
of London to restrict entry, and that there was a small band of skilled book women
with the requisite management and technical abilities. Most were associated by
marriage to the trade, but continued for some time as proprietors in their own right
as widows, Agnes Campbell (in business 1676 to 1716, 40 years) was one such.
Hers is the story of a vigorous and determined business woman. She utilized legal
process to protect her patents and restrict the trade of others, mixed in legal circles,
renting property to lawyers. She was the wealthiest Scottish bookseller in the early
modem period, though her husband left her in debt to the tune of nearly £8000. She
was the largest printer in Edinburgh of her time with a trading area far beyond the
town. She succeeded to and retained the appointment as King's printer in Scotland,
and after a long battle became printer to the Church in 1712.30 Her appointments,
and those of Forbes and Traill, clearly represented publicly recognized standing,
having been granted by an elite group of men, who ran their cities from a position
of wealth, power and prestige. This was no mean position to grant to a woman.
Women trading on their own behalf appear regularly in archival materials. The
Aberdeen baker, Margaret Morice was one of these. She styled herself Margaret
Morice & Co. until 1794 when she reverted briefly to her own name of Kennedy.
Notably she retained the name Morice under which she and her husband had built
an identity with the business. Since Scottish women usually traded under their own
name, Morice appears to have deliberately utilized the company name, and was
concerned to hold on to the prestige and commercial identity associated with her
'business' name. 31 Morice was always described as 'baker in Aberdeen' and the
apprenticeship registers did not name a male partner. Indeed her husband John
appears to have died, probably in about 1780, perhaps earlier, because he never
appears in the records as having taken any apprentices. Indeed, I suspect she had no
son in the trade and may have needed to take apprentices to assist with the work.
Whilst John was alive the partnership may have coped admirably, but as Campbell
wrote, referring to the fact that bakers' apprentices were usually a little older than
average, 'the great Burthens they are obliged to carry out in serving their Customers
requires more strength than is normally to be met with in younger Years' .32
From apprenticeship records, we can draw some idea of her standing in the
community. 33 She appears to have operated on her own for about 20 years, and if
29 Sheridan, 'Women in the Booktrade in Eighteenth-Century France', 51-65; Barker,

'Women, Work and the Industrial Revolution', 88-100.
30 Mann, 'Embroidery to Enterprise', 142-145.
31 On Mary Say, see Barker, 'Women, Work and the Industrial Revolution', 91-92.
32 Campbell, The London Tradesman, 276. John Morice appeared as a deponent against
adulteration of meal in August 1763, but no other mention of him has yet been found,
Aberdeen Journal, 22 August 1763.
33 Enactment Books. 5. Register of Indentures, 1622-1878, City of Aberdeen Archives, the
Town House, 164-219.
apprentices served their full term, she had up to 4 apprentices at any one time, the
relatively large number giving some indication of the size of the operation. The
premium paid to her compares well with the average paid for boys apprenticed to
male bakers in Aberdeen, Essex, Birmingham and Staffordshire (£ 11 ). The term of
apprenticeship is also comparable. 34 The fact that William Low paid no premium
and his sons' terms were shorter suggests professional courtesy, since he was
described as a baker and a merchant (and probably the founder of the William Low's
grocery stores in Scotland). 35 The regularity of her taking apprentices tends to
suggest an orderly, well-run business, and parents must have felt happy about
placing their children with her; the fathers and cautioners were all of middling
status. The premiums and number fall off a little towards the end of the record, and
it is probable that she was elderly by this time, perhaps with a smaller business. It
is also possible that William Low put his sons with her as a favour-notably it is
only in these two indentures that she uses her own name, and does not refer to the
company. Bakers themselves were not necessarily esteemed, because of suspicions
that they gave short measure, and because of the hold they had on the community
due to the necessity of bread. Thus towns, as was the case in Aberdeen, regulated
the meal supplies and monitored the activities of bakers vigilantly. This does not
diminish her position within the trade, nor her role as a business woman of some
repute.
Mantuamakers made clothes for all classes, while milliners catered for
prosperous customers, providing hats, caps and accessories. Both trades, but
especially the milliner benefited from the growth in luxury trades and the demand
for decoration and changing fashions. Indeed, they were often at the forefront of
setting fashion. Millinery was recommended to girls of good family, as 'a most
genteel Business for Young Maidens that are proficient at their needle' .36 They paid
high premiums of £25 to £75 for training. It was skilled and a good business
enterprise for an able well-capitalized employer, attracting those with capital and
some social standing. Contemporaries thought women could begin business with
capital ranging from £100-£1000, presumably because of the luxury stock they
carried. At the same time, parents were warned that in spite of 'vast profits' made
by mistresses, they 'yet give but poor, mean Wages to every Person they employ
under them'. Mantuamakers also paid poorly. The variation in premiums of £2 to
£31, illustrates the range within the trade. Three milliners appeared in adverts in the
Aberdeen Journal, Misses Ramsay and McKenzie who worked in a partnership
upstairs from Miss Forbes, also a milliner. The adverts indicate the range of goods
and the influence of luxury and fashion:
34 Deborah Simonton, 'The Education and Training of Eighteenth-Century English Girls,

with special reference to the working classes', PhD Thesis, University of Essex, 1988,
341, 352; see also Joan Lane, Apprenticeship in England, 1600-1914 (1996) 117.
35 Enactment Books, 5. Register of Indentures, 1622-1878,211, 219.
36 A General Description of the Trades, Digested in Alphabetical Order (1747) 149.
Advertisement of Ramsay and McKenzie
Misses RAMSAY and McKENZIE,

In the first Floor above Miss Forbes's,
Milliner in the Nethergate, Aberdeen, fronting the Well,
Sell at the most reasonable Rates the following Articles, viz. Sampler Gauzes and
English Worsteds of all Kinds. Balladine Silks of all Kinds.-Fluss, Scarf and Tram
ditto--Tassles for Beds and Window-Curtains, and Fringes of all Kinds.--Gold and
Silver Garters and Hatbands, and Worsted ditto.--Giass-Strings for Coaches and
Chaises.-Hecking ofBeds.-Fringes and Tassles for Saddles, and Mortcloth Fringes
and Frogs.-Shoulder Knots of different kinds.-Watch-Strings, and Jump Straps,-
Garland Trimmings.-Masons Aprons and Sashes, &c. &c.
They also perform Mantua-making in all its Branches, and Grave Cloaths, &c. Those
who are pleased to favour them with their Orders and Employment, may depend on
being served with the utmost Punctuality.
Commissions from the Country will be carefully obeyed. 37
Three firms of mantuamakers and milliners, all run by women, took apprentices in
Colchester, Essex, between 1750 and 1800 (see Appendix 2). 38 Mary Gibbon took
apprentices from 1753 to 1761, one of whom was Elizabeth Reeves. From 1761,
Lucia Reeve took apprentices, at times with Hannah and later Sarah Reeve,
sometimes styled Lucia Reeves & Co, and fmally Clara Reeve & Co in 1775. 39 Ann
and Hannah Prior began taking registered apprentices in 1786. These businesses
demonstrated a regular pattern of apprenticing new girls, keeping at least two on the
premises. They appear conscientiously run, successful enough to be employing at
least two women and two apprentices. There was also continuity from one firm to
another. These cases also emphasize the overwhelming female character of the
trades, certainly by mid century and after. Campbell called millinery 'no Male
Trade' and commented that 'the Fair Sex ... are generally bound to this Business',
while the mantuamaker was 'Sister to the Taylor' .40
In Geneva between 1741-51, 50 of206licensed enterprises belonged to women,
including 21 female partnerships, and a further 26 partnerships of men and
women. 41 In Edinburgh, at least 140 single women managed a concern, often in
female partnerships.42 Ramsay and McKenzie, in Aberdeen, worked in partnership,
and in a sort of cluster with Forbes. The Gibbons, Priors and Reeves, described
37 Aberdeen Journal, 22 June 1767 and 25 January 1773.

38 Simonton, 'Education and Training', 353-355.
39 Notably she may have been the author of a frequently quoted tract on female education
and of a number of gothic novels. Clara Reeve, Plans ofEducation, with remarks on the
system of other writers (1792); also The Old English Baron (1777), several other nov-
els, poetry, and a memoir of Walter Scott, published between 1769 and 1799.
40 Simonton, 'Education and Training', 353-355; Campbell, The London Tradesman, 206,
208, 227, 336.
41 E. Monter, 'Women in Calvinist Geneva, 1500-1800', Signs, 6 (1980) 201.
42 Elizabeth C. Sanderson, Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh (1996)
184-194.
above, similarly show the significance of partnerships to women in running a

business. Many partnerships thrived. No doubt mutual dependence and reliance on
the business, for subsistence helped to cement them over time. The arrangement
halved the cost of rent, servants and other outlays connected with setting up and
managing a concern. Relatives especially lived together and shared expenses. For
example, in the ninety-one partnerships Sanderson identified, the majority were
sisters or other relatives. Similarly, Sharpe's study of Hester Pinney demonstrates
the role of family networks, especially sisters. Not all partnerships were formally
drawn up, but the recurrence of de facto associations in such numbers suggests that
many women saw them as an aid in the world of survival. The Colchester and
Aberdeen firms also show the existence of networks of women in the same or
related trades, where girls of the same family were apprenticed, or where an
apprentice reappeared in her own shop. Only once was Christopher Gibbon
mentioned, and though the indenture implied that he shared the trade, he did not
appear again. Similarly, Phoebe Moreton, a milliner from Wolverhampton, was
frequently identified as the wife of John, but only once did he share the indenture.
Indeed, given the gendered association of the female milliner to the male tailor,
these men may have been tailors. The records suggest that these women operated
independently or in a roughly equal partnership with the men concerned.
What this data does not tell us, of course, is why and how they were in these
positions, how permanent they were, and especially how they felt about it. However,
we have glimpses. Cissy Murray, after marrying, looked back on her partnership
with Janet Muschet, shopkeeper in Edinburgh: 'I am sartin never was 2 more happy
than we were, and tho I have reason to be thankful for the way I now am yet I never
think on the years we spent thegether but with regrate.' 43 It is certain that some
women strove for and valued independence. Ann Buchanan, from a landed family,
wrote to Janet Muschet in 1758 asking to go into partnership in millinery with her
and her cousin Cicely (Cissy, above). Her letter reveals her view of the potential of
the arrangement:
Dear Jannie,
I am glad business is going on well with you [ ... ] my most sincere thanks for your ready
Agreeing in taking me in partners with you and your beloved Spouse [Cicely Murray];
Oh how happy will I be with you both[ ... ] Mama and Grandpapa is very well pleased
with the proposal and is willing to give as much credit as needed;[ ... ] they were told att
home that it was Lady Polmaise that first made the proposal of taking me in with you; So
in case they be writing any thing of it to Cicy Dont say Anything that it was myself, I long
for the time when I shall be with you.44
The fact that she suggested joining the partnership was itself an indication of her
intentions. She later objected to Janet Muschet treating her like a servant, and her
43 Quoted in Sanderson (Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh 107). Murray

of Polmaise Muniments (Central Region Archives): GD 189/2/344 (former SRO refer-
ence).
44 Op. cit., 95. Murray ofPolmaise Muniments: GD 189/2/340 (former SRO reference).
tone clearly indicated that she saw herself as setting up in business with a partner on
an equal basis. While the expectations of the two cousins were different-Cicely
needed a subsistence while Ann was secure in a landed family-they both used the
partnership for their own ends, and valued the experience.
Yet around this obvious female activity in commerce there was developing a
discourse which was clearly antipathetic to women as business women. Some of it,
like the descriptions of women and women's commercial activities in Campbell's
London Tradesman, were overtly misogynist. This is not the place to analyse specific
texts, but clearly there was a juxtaposition of the public and private with a sexual
connotation labelling every woman who was in business. As Campbell wrote:
The vast Resort of young Beaus and Rakes to Milliners' Shops exposes young creatures
to many Temptations, and insensibly debauches their morals before they are capable of
vice ... Nine out of ten young creatures that are obligated to serve in these Shops are
ruined and undone.45
He warned that pay was frequently so low as to make prostitution the alternative.
Certainly women in seasonal urban trades were vulnerable since they were subject
to periods of slack employment and low wages. But the issue here is the extension
of the idea that women who had something to sell would also be prepared to sell
themselves. Moralists long propounded a connection between prostitution and
commerce, and the compromised position of women with something to sell. Critics
mixed sexual and commercial language-Campbell using intercourse for business,
for example-accusing milliners and other tradeswomen of seducing customers into
buying. James Grantham Turner argues that there is a link between perception and
reality in that 'Shop assistants were regarded as fair game by cruising male
customers' .46 He says of Campbell, 'Here the serious conduct book merges and
colludes with the scandalous pamphlet, both forms of a male discourse enforcing the
sexual interpretation of luxury and its "new exchange'". 47
Kowaleski-Wallace also argues that the process at work in the eighteenth century
was writing business as a male concern, as a masculine process entailing supreme
self-mastery. It was decisively reconstructing the world of business and business
practice as a masculine realm, where men, disciplined in habit, passionless in affect,
controlled the flow of commerce.48 Looking back at some of the adverts placed by
women conducting business in Aberdeen, I argued that the language was not a
feminine discourse, but akin to that of men, claiming their place in the world of
business. To do so, they used the same language as men, and portrayed their realm
of business in the same terms. It may have been necessary to disassociate
themselves from the feminine, in fact.
45 Campbell, The London Tradesman, 208.

46 James Grantham Turner, "'News from the New Exchange". Commodity, erotic Fancy,
and the Female Entrepreneur', in Ann Bermingham and John Brewer, eds., The
Consumption of Culture 1600-1800, Image, Object, Text (1995) 427.
47 Ibid., 428.
48 Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in
the Eighteenth Century (1997) 82, 87, 112.
Within this context, female reputation was an important commodity. Polly

Morris, working on defamation cases in Bristol, suggested that 'whore' was a
metaphor for the loss of femininity that accompanied women's exercise of authority
over men. The focus on female adultery and marital relations in defamation cases
carried with it comment on a husband's inability to control his wife. The most
common case was male defamation of a married female, and involved the power
relations between men and women. It was the women whose lives most closely
approximated those of their men and were furthest from the purely domestic role
who found themselves in court defending their reputations. Thus defamation cases
say far more about the contested areas than the separate spheres of men and women,
more about conflicts over power than sexual division of labour.49
The position of women in the corporate community held a number of tensions
and always at risk was their 'good name'. Women of property with a good family
name could be protected by their inherent position and by their association with the
men of the family. But women of the middling orders could be caught both by their
position in a growing and surging commercial world and by their sex. They were
rarely perceived as 'independent' and married women and widows often relied on
their marital association, however obliquely, to bolster their claims in the corporate
world. Single women were even more vulnerable. Women in commerce not only
had to obtain credit, but to stay in credit, they had to retain their reputation as
someone who could be trusted and whose character was seen to be above
reproach. 50 Reputation is both a private and a public attribute. It is effectively a
political commodity, which is not only worth owning and demonstrating, but worth
protecting and publicizing. Women who operated in the corporate world had to
establish, maintain and use their reputation to gain and stay in business. They
required both personal and financial credit. In the cases I have discussed, women
gained an identity in the community by utilizing the language of the corporate
world, and by claiming a place in that world. They built reputations which they
could then use and protect to maintain a place in the community. They also used
family connections, networks and patronage to further their standing. In this I would
agree with Natalie Davis that through the esteem in which independent female
traders could build up, women could gain and maintain a name in the corporate
community.
49 Polly Morris, 'Defamation and Female Sexual Reputation', seminar presentation,

University of Essex, 27 June 1983. See the critique ofthese sources in Rab Houston and
Richard Smith, 'A New Approach to Family History?' History Workshop Journal 14
(Autumn 1982), 126.
50 Sanderson, Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh, 22.
Chapter 9
Women Barred from Masonic 'Work':

A British Phenomenon
Cecile Revauger
Discussing women and freemasonry, work and freemasonry, let alone women's
work in freemasonry in eighteenth-century England may appear as a real challenge.
What is indeed meant by masonic work? Is it not preposterous to deal with women
in the lodges, places which have always been male strongholds?
Indeed the very phrase 'masonic work' is somewhat puzzling. Yet freemasons
constantly use this metaphor to refer to what takes place within the lodge.
Freemasonry is referred to as 'the Craft', which suggests working skills. The lodge
is said to be 'at work'. Although the concept should be taken in the figurative sense,
and involves a symbolic dimension, the notion of work was occasionally understood
in the literal sense. Historians of freemasonry tend to make a distinction between
'operative' and 'speculative' freemasonry, i.e. the lodges in existence in the
fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the modem lodges, those which
appeared after the creation of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717. Yet how far
speculative freemasonry is the heir of operative freemasonry is still a controversial
issue among historians. What is at stake is the exact link between the lodges
composed of masons by trade, the seventeenth-century guilds, the builders of
cathedrals on the one hand and on the other hand the lodges which emerged in the
eighteenth century, and which essentially attracted aristocrats who were not
particularly familiar with rough stone. It would be tedious to discuss the ins and outs
of the debate. It may be contended however that there was real continuity between
the lodges erected by the Scots in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, contrary
to what happened in England at the same time.
The distinction between 'operative' and 'speculative' freemasonry happens to be
relevant for the issue at stake here, namely the admission of women within the
lodges. Not until the birth of speculative freemasonry, i.e. modem freemasonry,
were women explicitly banned from the lodges. Anderson irrevocably excluded
women from masonic work in 1723, in the third article of his Constitutions:
The Persons admitted members of a Lodge must be good and true Men, free-born, and of
mature and discreet Age, no Bondmen, no Women, no immoral or scandalous Men, but
of good Report. 1
Anderson, Constitutions, ed. Daniel Ligou (Paris: Lauzeray International, 1978) 180.
Far from denying such a sexist assertion, the United Grand Lodge of England has
subsequently considered this as a 'landmark', which means that the Grand Lodge still
regards the non admission of women as a matter of principle, as a criterion for the
official recognition of all the other Grand Lodges throughout the world. 2
With the exception of Mrs Aldworth, an Irish lady who became quite famous as
a result, and an exception which confirms the rule, no woman has ever been allowed
to work side by side with the British freemasons. Yet there appeared at the same
period, in France and several other European countries, 'lodges of adoption', which,
although in a specific way, made women feel welcome. Nothing similar took place
in Britain before the end of the nineteenth century and yet British women were still
considered as profane, uninitiated outsiders, no matter how much they helped their
dear husbands with their masonic work.
Producing a satisfactory answer to the reason for the ban on women's admission
in the lodges is not easy. Should one look for internal or external factors, in other
words, does such a ban stem from the ritual itself or from the social context?
Listening to the arguments developed for or against the admission of women on the
two sides of the Channel, exploring the role assigned to British women by the
masons, and fmally making a comparative study with France may prove fruitful and
provide a few clues.
The arguments developed, or hushed, for or against the admission of women
The masons who were most determined to exclude women from their work have
used roughly the same language on both sides of the Channel. Two kinds of
arguments were developed.
The first type involves the traditional secret which masons pledged themselves
to keep. The lodges being secret societies, or at least societies retaining a certain
number of secrets, they could not possibly accept women as it was a well-known
fact that women were naturally indiscreet and could by no means be entrusted with
any secret. As the story goes, an Irish lady, Mrs Elizabeth Saint-Leger Aldworth was
caught eavesdropping near the library of the castle where the 'brethren' of the lodge
of Cork were holding their meeting, some time in the years 1710-1711. The
gentlemen reluctantly decided to initiate her to the secrets of masonry, in order to
avoid a worse evil, to make sure that she would not chat indiscriminately. 3 The
masons saw to it that such an unfortunate incident should never happen again and
should not create a precedent. Yet the initiation of Mrs Aldworth was never denied
2 The United Grand Lodge of England claims to be the 'Mother Grand Lodge', the first
Grand Lodge erected in the world, as the Grand Lodge of England was founded in 1717.
Therefore it entitles itself to examine the regularity of each Grand Lodge in the world.
Only one Grand Lodge is officially recognized in each country by the United Grand
Lodge of England. The French Grand-Orient for instance is considered as 'clandestine'
because two 'landmarks' are not respected, the obligation to believe in 'the Grand
Architect of the Universe' and the impossibility to initiate women. Although the Grand-
Orient does not initiate women, it accepts women visitors.
3 Daniel Ligou, Dictionnaire de la Franc-Ma9onnerie (Paris: P.U.F., 1974, rpt 1987) 25-26.
Women Barred from Masonic 'Work' 119
and even seems to have been officialized by a dedication made by Fifield D' Assigny
in an official masonic document in 1744. 4 In a way the Aldworth episode reinforced
the case against the inititation of women, since masons took this as a perfect
counter-example of the behaviour to be adopted. The author of an article published
in The Plain Dealer, who claims to be a mason about to give up masonry, presents
his readers with a sophism when he suggests that lodges would take few risks by
initiating women given the state of decrepitude the lodges have reached and since
the secrets have not been kept well at all anyway:
And I have heard it asked, why don't we admit women, as well as tailors, into our lodges?
I profess I have met with as sufficient heads among the Fair Sex, as I have found in the
Brotherhood: and I have some reasons to fear, that our secrets are in danger of being
exposed. 5
The anonymous author of Franc-Mac;on dans Ia Republique, ou reflexions

apologiques sur les persecutions des Francs-mac;ons written in 1746 claims that the
masons in Vienna were persecuted due to the indiscretion of a few ladies from the
Court, who acted purely out of spite after being refused admittance in the lodges,
and who then urged the Austrian queen to take steps against the masons. John Entick
and Scott reprinted this anonymous work in The Pocket Companion and History of
Freemasonry, in 1754 and 1759. 6 This tends to confirm that the argument focusing
on female indiscretion was a favourite one on both sides of the Channel.
Freemasons being so fond of symbolism, one might have expected to find some
example of an important professional secret violated in the lodges of yore, some hint
to the ban on the admission of women in the prestigious building of cathedrals, or
several references to operative masonry and the sundry guilds and masons
companies. Yet there was absolutely no matter there which could in the least justify
the misogyny of modem freemasons, far from it.
The Old Charges, i.e. the old regulations of the operative lodges, neither
mention any restriction concerning women, nor recommend their admission. On the
contrary a manuscript dating back to 1693 and bearing the signatures of several
officers of the lodge ofYork stipulates:
The one of the Elders taking the Book and that he or she that is to be made a mason shall
lay their hands thereon and the Charge shall be given.?
Not surprisingly, the use of the feminine pronoun has been questioned and it has even
been argued that it was a mere spelling mistake. However Cyril Batham quotes
4 Hugan claims to have found a dedication made by Fifield d'Assigny to four hundred
Irish masons including Mrs Aldworth, in Memorials of the Masonic Union [1813]
(London, 1874).
5 Anonymous article published in The Plain Dealer, 14 Sept 1724, printed for 1. Roberts,
in Warwick Lane (British Library.)
6 See Gisele et Yves Hivert-Messeca, Comment Ia Franc-Mar;onnerie vint aux femmes,
Deux siecles defranc-mar;onnerie d'adoptionfeminine et mixte en France, 1740-1940
(Paris: Dervy, 1997) 24; and Scott's Pocket Companion (London, 1759) 271.
7 Hivert-Messeca, 448.
another instance of female presence among the ancestors of the modem masons, the
case of an old guild presided by a woman. 8 Besides, Andree Buisine consulted the
minutes of the London Worshipful Company of Masons and discovered that Mary
Banister was accepted by the company as an apprentice on February 12th, 1714. 9
These three examples clearly point at the fact that the eighteenth-century
freemasons could on no account whatsoever refer to the history of guilds and
operative masons, whose heirs they yet claimed to be, to justify the exclusion of
women. We can thus reach the conclusion that women were considered as capable
of keeping professional secrets, the secrets of a trade, but not the symbolical secrets
of the modem lodges, which were far less essential. .. As John Locke might have
said: 'Even if this were its whole secret, namely that it has no secret, yet it is no
small feat to keep that a secret ... ' I o
The second argument put forward to ban women from the lodges is twofold. It
deals with the sexual attraction (although understatments were generally preferred)
which women could exert on the brethren however dedicated to their work, and
therefore the ill reputation which could ensue for freemasonry as a whole.
Besides, some eighteenth-century masons seemed intent to curb the attacks
against the Craft, coming essentially from Catholic writers. 11 Freemasonry was even
called the 'Mother of Harlots' by the anonymous author of Freemasonry, The
Highway to Hell, published in 1768.
Yet the antimasonic writings of the time also used the opposite argument,
namely that masons could have the time of their lives in the lodges because they
could hide away from their wives who were excluded from their supposedly
working activities. The author of The Highway to Hell adds that the masons neglect
their homes and thus carelessly leave their wives to themselves. Another Catholic
writer, John Robison, who attacked English and Scottish freemasonry in a very
violent way, and like Barruel claimed the French Revolution was a masonic plot,
stigmatized the frivolity of masons. In a rather amusing passage for modem readers,
he described the contents of a strange strong box detained by the Illuminati, a
Bavarian sect which he rather hastily associated to the freemasons:
Several receipts for procuring abortion. A composition which blinds or kills when spurted
in the face. A sheet, containing a receipt for sympathetic ink-tea for procuring abortion, a
receipt ad excitendum furorem uterinum .. . 12
8 Cyril. N. Batham, 'La Compagnie des Ma<;:ons de Londres', in La Franc-Mar;onnerie:

documents fondateurs (Paris: Cahiers de l 'Herne, 1992) 112.
9 Andree Buisine, La Franc-Mar;onnerie anglo-saxonne et les femmes (Paris: Guy
Tredaniel, 1995) 30.
10 Gorrony Owen, attributing these words to Locke, inArs Quatuor Coronatorum (1965)
LXXVIII, 168.
11 'And upon her forehead was a name written Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of
Harlots, and abominations of the earth', in Freemasonry, the Highway to Hell, a Sermon
(London, 1768).
12 John Robison, ProofS of a Conspiracy (Edinburgh: T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1797) 106.
It seems that in France some societies had a very peculiar ritual of their own, in
keeping with the libertine literature of the day. Among those so-called 'societes
androgynes ',the Order of the Mopses or '/'Ordre des Fendeurs' had a ritual of their
own, which could vaguely recall freemasonry. Although such societies were not
acknowledged by any French Grand Lodge, they were considered as masonic by
anti-masonic writers who took the opportunity to rail at the dissolute morality of
French masons in general. The equivalent of such societies did not exist in England.
Clubs such as the Order of the Leeches, to which John Wilkes belonged, and which
had a predilection for frivolous entertainments, flourished. Yet they were not in any
way related to the official Grand Lodges, although composed of men only, and they
were never associated with masonry, not even by anti-masonic writers. Therefore
the English masons could not base their case against women on the existence of any
society composed of male and female members. Yet this did not prevent them from
warning their members against the obnoxious influence of women on any form of
'ritual work'. Quite significantly, neither the French masons nor the English ones
dared ostracize women on account of their mental faculties.
Poles apart from such misogynists, a few members advocated the admission of
women into English lodges. They were very few indeed but they did try to counter
the arguments to ban women. George Smith, better known as Captain Smith, the
Provincial Grand Master of Kent, wrote a very controversial book, Use and Abuse
ofFreemasonry, 13 in which he advocated the initiation of women by specific lodges,
thus adopting the French pattern of the lodges of adoption. Better to convince his
brothers, he contended that if women started working in the lodges, they would be
as dedicated as ever to their domestic duties but would also improve their intellect.
A clever woman would be all the more beautiful: 'It is well known that internal
beauty contributes much to perfect external grace,'l4
Smith mentions Reverend Dodd, the former Chaplain of the Grand Lodge of
England, who also supported women's cause. Unfortunately Dodd was a bad
sponsor, as this clergyman became notorious for having forged a bond and ended on
the scaffold. 15 As to Smith, he was eventually expelled from the Grand Lodge,
although for other motives.
In France however, many more voices advocated the admission of women. For
one thing many brothers were utterly sorry for the absence of women in their lodges,
although not necessarily for principled reasons. They were generally much more
prompted by the legendary French gallantry than by the urge to promote the
emancipation of women.
Suffice it to listen to the talk given by Choderlos de Laclos when the Loge des
Dames, the lodge of Adoption attached to the male lodge L 'Union Parfaite at Salins,
was inaugurated on May 15th 1777:
13 George Smith, Use and Abuse of Freemasonry [1783] (Rpt New York: Macoy, 1914).
14 Smith, 173.
15 See Paul Baines, The House of Forgery in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 1999) 125-150; and Cecile Revauger, Le Fa it Mat;onnique au XVIIJe siecle en
Grande-Bretagne et aux Etats-Unis (Paris: EDIMAF, 1990) 139.
Men are looking for. .. charms they aspire to but are unable to produce: therefore they
enthusiastically describe the other sex, the enchanting sex, their better half. They beg the
ladies to endow their work in the lodge with this peculiar flavour they alone can bestow,
and which alone makes it precious. Such a feeling, my dear brothers, is no delusion,
because when the Grand Architect created the Universe, he made man to admire it and
woman to embellish it.I6
Concerning English women however, silence has largely prevailed, with the
exception of the arguments against and very marginally for their admission, which
we have quoted. Neither Anderson, nor Laurence Dermott, nor William Preston, to
quote the most prolific masonic writers of the day, have mentioned the subject. They
did not even allude to the French lodges of adoption, not even to criticize them.
From all this can be inferred that the real motives for the exclusion of women could
not be admitted openly and were not rational. In that respect, freemasonry, like the
major institutions of its time, had reasons of its own, unknown to reason. Hogarth's
engraving, Night, may allow us to gain some insight: could the master of this lodge
have wandered in that pitiful state in the streets of London after leaving the inn
where the meeting was held, if 'sisters' had worked side by side with himself and
his brothers? Similarly would the English clubs and the gambling which very often
took place there have been quite so successful if wives had been convened?
Women's work outside the English lodges
English freemasons were very careful not to hurt the feelings of their spouses.
Although the latter were excluded from the ritual work inside the lodges, yet they
were encouraged to carry out several activities outside, that is to say as profanes.
This became increasingly true towards the end of the eighteenth century. English
women were welcome in all the social and cultural activities encouraged in the wake
of masonry. Indeed women's sphere was precisely delineated. 'Brothers' were
generous enough to welcome their spouses once a year, after a special meeting of
the lodge. The invitations were worded very carefully. According to Bernard E.
Jones, who made a minute study of those 'ladies' nights', the lodge of Kent for
instance kindly invited 'wives' to supper in 1797, but 'sisters' (in 1798) and 'wives
or sweethearts' in 1799. As the practice was left to the discretion of the lodges, some
of them preferred to ignore it. Some of them chose to convene the women not only
after the lodge meeting but after the meal, to reduce the cost of their reception ... In
1815 a lodge in Cornwall took drastic measures and decided unanimously that no
more wine and fruit should be provided for the ladies in the future:
... the same should be dispensed with at future lodges, the Mover and Seconder being
pretty sensible that the gratifications of the Ladies consisted not in eating and drinking,
16 'Intallation de Ia loge d'adoption de !'Union Parfaite a!'Orient de Salins, 15 mai 1777',

speech by Choderlos de Laclos, quoted by Hivert-Messeca, 41.
but in beholding their Husbands, Sons and Brothers met together for charitable purposes
in Love and Harmony.17
And yet, as Bernard E. Jones notes, the ladies' wine and fruit had cost two pounds
out of the £77 l9s. 6d spent by the sixty-three brothers on the night the decision was
made! 18
Admittedly, not all lodges were as stingy as the lodge in Cornwall. In many cases
ladies were actually entertained by the 'brothers' once a year and were consequently
expected to be happy with their lot.
The practice seems to have been typically British and totally unknown to the
French. Yet, in France as in England, the masons were offered two pairs of gloves
when they entered the lodge for the first time, one for themselves and one for the
woman of their choice. Such chilvalric gallantry was intended to pacify the women,
who were for ever banned from masonic work. Yet, although English women could
not take part in the serious work, they were more than welcome to boost the image
of the masons in the public sphere and in particular to help them act as patrons in
cultural life. Masons were known to promote plays, by attending the performances,
but also by contributing to their funding and in return they asked their lady friends
to read the prologues or epilogues written to the glory of freemasonry. Among the
plays supported by the masons, may be quoted for instance Henry IV, part 2,
performed at Drury Lane Theatre in 1728, and a play written by Chetwood, The
Generous Freemason or the Constant Lady ... , patronized by St Paul's Lodge. The
prologues were panegyrics of freemasonry, while epilogues were more specifically
addressed to the masons' wives, and voiced by one of them. The epilogue of King
Henry IV, Part II, spoken out by a mason's wife on December the 30th, 1728, ran
thus:
Ye marrie'd ladies, 'tis a happy life,

Believe me, that of a Free Mason's Wife,
Tho' they conceal the secrets of their friends,
In love and truth they make us full amends.' 9
The epilogues confirmed the masons' patronage of drama while rehabilitating

the role of women who were entrusted with the mission of glorifying freemasonry,
although paradoxically they were excluded from all the serious work in the lodges.
The contribution of women was of course an aesthetic asset for the masons while it
pleased the offended wives. The device was extremely clever.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century another activity was provided for their
wives, which tended to increase the aura of masonry in the educational field. The
17 Bernard E. Jones, Freemasons' Guide and Compendium (London: Harrap, 1950; rpt
1980) 484-485.
18 Jones, 485.
19 'Epilogue, spoken by a Mason's Wife', Drury Lane Theatre, 30 Dec. 1728, in Cole's
Constitutions, quoted by Knoop & Jones, Genesis of Freemasonry (London: Quatuor
Coronati Correspondence Circle Ltd, 1978) 303.
Royal Cumberland Freemasons' School, inaugurated in 1788, under the patronage

of the Duchess of Cumberland, the King's sister-in-law and the Grand Master's
wife, was intended for the daughters of freemasons and meant to provide them with
a very practical sort of education aimed at training future domestic servants. The
wives of freemasons were encouraged to apply for teaching positions in the new
institution.20 The school was intended for the poor, but for the exclusive use of the
daughters of poor freemasons. Such an approach may be contrasted with the
Parisian Loge des Neuf Soeurs, which promoted the education of girls, bu not
specifically of poor girls. The Lycee, set up by the famous French lodge, welcomed
both boys and girls and was not intended for the exclusive use of the children of
masons. 21 Such a difference between the French and the English approaches of
masonry is not casual. The British lodges acted out of philanthropy, were more
pragmatic, whereas the French ones were prompted by educational principles and
were more philosophically minded.
Why were English women banned from lodge work, contrary to their French
and European counterparts?
Although English masons kept very quiet about women and never seriously
considered the possibility of admitting them within their lodges, the situation which
prevailed in France and other European countries was totally different. Moreover
when English women, just like American women, were eventually associated with the
work of their husbands, they remained on the threshold, never actually entering the
lodges and their activities were confmed to very specific areas. The differences
between Anglo-American and French freemasonry are therefore well worth
examining.
Voices in favour of the admission of women into freemasonry were raised in
France much earlier than in England. However, with the exception of the 'societes
androgynes ', which were more libertine than masonic, only in the second half of the
eighteenth century did the 'lodges of adoption' emerge, in Paris and a few other
provincial towns. Gisele and Yves Hivert-Messeca made a fairly exhaustive study of
those lodges in Comment Ia Franc-mm;onnerie vint aux femmes. 22 Some forty
lodges of adoption existed in provincial France and four or five in Paris in the
second half of the eighteenth century. Admittedly, women were only allowed to
meet under the supervision of the 'brothers', yet the lodges were presided jointly
20 'The purpose of the Institution was, therefore, to preserve the female offspring of indigent
Freemasons from the dangers and misfortunes to which a distressed situation must expose
them': 'Royal Cumberland Freemasons' school', in The Freemason's Magazine, July 1793,
241. The example of this school, which was founded by the Grand Lodge of Modems, was
soon followed by the Grand Lodge of Ancients which set up a similar school for the sons
of freemasons, placed under the patronage of the Duke of Athol. Yet the Grand Lodge of
Antients does not seem to have called for the services of fteemasons' wives.
21 About the creation of the Lycee, see Louis Amiable, Une Loge mac;onnique d'avant
1789, La Loge des NeufSoeurs, ed. Charles Porset (Paris: EDIMAF, 1989).
22 Hivert-Messeca (see above note 5).
both by a 'brother' and a 'sister', and at least women were admitted inside the lodge
and entitled to practice a ritual of their own, on a par with men. They were not
confined to charity work for the sake of their husbands, as was always the case in
Britain and the United States. This is not to say that the lodges of adoption were
immune from sexual discrimination. The ritual enforced in those lodges was
different from the ritual carried out in the traditional lodges, composed of men only.
It generally revolved about the myth of the original sin, and funnily enough the
'sisters' were not allowed to eat the pips of apples, not to be guilty of the same crime
as Eve. Of course the lodges of adoption were far from democratic. The male lodges
were not known for recruiting among the poor, but the lodges of adoption were
almost exclusively turned towards the aristocracy, just as the famous literary salons.
One may wonder why the English freemasons did not adopt a similar pattern.
The recipe seemed a good one as the 'brethren' did not lose any influence in the
process and could easily keep themselves to themselves as nothing prevented them
from holding seperate meetings, while supervising women's doings. Indeed the idea
appealed to the Scots who created The Order of the Eastern Star, in 1874.23 Yet the
initiative was not very successful as no more than seven chapters were erected
between 1874 and 1889. 24 The rigid rules which governed those organizations may
account for this lack of success. The Scottish lodges, which were jointly chaired by
a man and a woman, were a family affair since they only accepted the wives,
daughters and sisters of freemasons, thus giving the 'brothers' the entire
responsibility for the recruitment of the female members.
In England the Eastern Star also existed at some point but was even less
significant. In fact English women really entered the masonic scene only at the turn
of the twentieth century, with figures such as Annie Besant, and the support of
the Theosophical Society who contributed to launch co-masonry, the Order of the
Human Right, known as the Droit Humain in France.
Such reluctance to admit women is hard to explain on the part of the English
masons from a purely ritual point of view. True, freeemasonry was born in England,
and Anderson, the Scottish presbyterian, was the instigator of the ban on women.
Admittedly the English freemasons never departed from the indomitable landmarks
they chose to abide by, one of which explicitly stipulates that women are not fit for
initiation. However the reluctance they felt to let women work side by side with
them is not basically very different from the feeling of the French freemasons in that
respect. In both cases, but a century later in England, a specific ritual was elaborated
so that women's work remained different from the men's 'real' masonic work ...
The roots of this misogynic attitude therefore are not to be found in freemasonry
as such but in the social, political and philosophical contexts since the differences
seem on the whole to have been essentially cultural. The first difference is linked to
the origins of the Grand Lodge. When it was founded in 1717, exclusively male and
very elitist clubs were flourishing. Clubs accepting women would have seemed
23 This was due to the inititative of Henry John Shields. This type of freemasonry only
seriously developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, essentially with the
American Eastern Star. See Buisine, 56.
24 Buisine, 56 and 310.
beyond the pale, let alone because gambling was frequent and women were totally
excluded from the world of fmance and not entitled to property of their own. The
new lodges did not try to compete with those clubs but on the contrary drew
inspiration from their mode of organization, while bringing in a new ingredient,
religious tolerance. In the wake of the Glorious Revolution dissenters were no
longer considered as outlaws, no longer persecuted on account of their worship,
although they were barred from public offices and political life. Therefore they were
welcomed by the lodges. Far from trying to challenge governments, freemasonry
was always law-abiding, pledged its allegiance to the authorities, and was mainly
conservative, both socially and politically. As English women were ostracized from
the British public sphere, the masonic lodges also excluded them from force of
habit. Conversely in France, when the first lodges emerged, some ladies, of course
all aristocrats, had a real aura in the salons and acted as patrons for the fme arts.
Quite naturally then the French lodges paid some attention to these women. Two
aristocratic ladies in particular were involved in masonic activities, both related to
the Loge des Neuf Soeurs, the lodge which initiated Voltaire a month before his
death: first Madame Helvetius, who ran a salon for two decades and helped with the
foundation of the famous Parisian lodge, and in the nineteenth century the Marquise
de Villette who presided at the lodge of adoption entitled 'Belle et Bonne' .25
The second major difference is linked to the evolutions of the English and
French Grand Lodges in their respective political contexts, before, during and after
the French Revolution. As more members of the Royal Family entered the Grand
Lodge of England (Modems),26 the Grand Lodges, and in particular the Grand
Lodge of Modems, identified themselves more closely to the monarchy and to the
Establishment. The Grand Lodge of Modems provided itself with a 'Grand
Chaplain', who was a member of the Church of England, entrusted the Royal
Princes with the office of Grand Master, and even neglected to keep silent on
political and religious issues, an obligation written in Anderson's Constitutions, in
order to condemn the French Revolution and all its English admirers.
Henceforward, English freemasonry has always supported the British institutions
and never allowed any real debate among its members, not even a philosophical one.
The lodges remained true to the Christian tradition and promoted charity, especially
at the end of the eighteenth century when philanthropic activities were encouraged
while the claims of the radicals in favour of reform were frowned upon. The wives
of the freemasons were expected to help them implement charity and were more
than welcome to do the work of their husbands in that respect. There was no need
to admit them into the lodges for that sort of work. Inviting them to the 'ladies'
25 See Charles Porset's revised edition of the work Louis Amiable devoted to this famous
Parisian lodge, Une Loge mar;onnique d'avant 1789, La Loge des NeufSoeurs. Amiable
made a certain number of mistakes which Porset pinpoints in the notes.
26 Until about 1751 only one Grand Lodge prevailed, the Grand Lodge of England, found-
ed in 1717. After 1751 however a second Grand Lodge emerged, in opposition to the
Grand Lodge ofEngland and named itself Grand Lodge of Ancients, paradoxically call-
ing the first Grand Lodge the Grand Lodge of Modems. The Grand Lodge of Ancients,
composed of many Irish immigrants, claimed to have retained the oldest and therefore,
the most genuine ritual. Hence the title of 'Antient' or 'Ancient'.
nights' seemed generous enough. Under such circumstances, many English women
looked down on the activities of the Eastern Star and preferred to bide their time
and await the emergence of a new type of masonry, based on equal rights and duties
for men and women, such as the co-masonry promoted by Annie Besant in the early
twentieth century. Yet again the political context had changed. Married women were
now entitled to property and the suffragettes were not long to enter the scene.
Although French masonry also avoided antagonizing the authorities, it was
never as closely related to the monarchy as its English counterpart. The argument
developed by Abbe Barruel concerning the masonic plot during the French
Revolution no longer carries conviction. Yet, although the French masons did not
take part in the Revolution as such, the lodges of the Ancien Regime undeniably
contributed to the philosophical debate. No English lodge would ever have urged
Voltaire to join and no doubt he would have been stigmatized as a dangerous radical.
As women of the upper layer of society were part of the cultural elite they were
naturally associated to the philosophical work carried out in the French lodges. The
lodges of adoption did not survive the French Revolution any more than the male
lodges, whith very few exceptions. Ladies' lodges reappeared at the same time as
the male lodges and throve under the French Empire, when they were more
aristocratic than ever. French masonry as a whole relished the pageantry of the
Empire.
Attitudes towards women were not specifically masonic but tended to reflect the
place granted to them by English and French societies. In both countries,
freemasonry espoused the general view on women. In this field as in all the others,
Grand Lodges adapted perfectly well to society and endeavoured to promote its
welfare as long as this did not challenge the established order.
Whereas the French made a compromise by setting up specific lodges to allow
the careful admission of women, under their close supervision, English masons
stubbornly refused to allow women inside. They were more than happy however to
let them do the charity work for them, outside. English and French masons simply
adopted the general attitude concerning women's role which prevailed in the society
of their time. Besides, as English freemasons devoted most of their energy to
promoting charity, women could easily be associated to what was considered as the
essential work, while the ritual and all the masonic secrets were the additional
flavour, for the exclusive taste of the brothers.
The history of freemasonry is closely related to the history of mentalities.
Nurture, not nature, accounts for the major differences between English and French
freemasonry. The Grand Lodges were not born different, they became different as
their ideas evolved in different crucibles.
PART III
WOMEN AND THE
CULTURAL SCENE
Chapter 10
The Actress and Eighteenth-Century

Ideals ofFemininity
Severine Lancia
British actresses had been corralled with disreputable women on the outskirts of
'respectable' society ever since they appeared on the professional stage in 1660. The
greatest obstacle to respectability for any female performer lay in the parallel drawn
between acting and prostitution. The similarity between these two 'professions'
arose from the fact of the actress consenting to be hired for amusement. As the
prostitute is 'hired' and paid in return for her favours, the actress was hired and paid
for entertaining, and giving satisfaction to, her audience. The theatre was
traditionally considered as a place of amusement and performers as instruments of
amusement. The public came to the playhouse, and bought their tickets, with the
purpose of being amused, and therefore they expected players to discharge their
duty faithfully, i.e. to entertain them. Players were servants of the audience, and
primarily of higher-class spectators who often patronized them. British aristocrats
had always behaved as though they owned the theatres and their audiences, and this
dominant-dominated relationship was very much detrimental to the actress's image
as it carried a sexual connotation. Aristocratic males regarded actresses as a
commodity. Precarious careers placed female performers at the mercy of these
dissolute rich. Since acting was an overcrowded and underpaid profession, actresses
were often in need of wealthy protectors. The latter knew they could thereby easily
buy their favours in exchange for some fmancial and professional support.
Contemporary audiences would not take into account that precariousness which
made actresses dependent on well-to-do lovers, but charged them with using their
lovers for financial and professional rewards, and more generally, with using the
stage to climb the social scale. The actress was criticized for exploiting the stage as
a self-advertising vehicle for physical attraction and sexual availability. The stage,
on which actresses displayed themselves, was indeed often compared to a window
through which they could be seen and purchased. The accusation was strengthened
by the practice of allowing gentlemen spectators to go behind the scenes. Beaux
used to flock to the greenroom to pay court to their favourite actresses, and this
practice was once again prejudicial to the image of female performers. Many
considered that the actress on stage invited sexual intercourse, trying to catch the
eyes of wealthy spectators and thus inviting them to meet her, after the play, behind
the scenes. Many love affairs did commence in the greenroom, but flatterers did not
need any invitation to force their own way backstage. Whenever a spectator was
charmed by an actress on stage, he would go in the greenroom and flirt with her. In
the greenroom, pretty actresses were the prey of those dissolute rich who had the
privilege of the entree. A satirical print, titled 'Florizel and Perdita' and published
on November lOth, 1780, shows 'Florizel', the Prince of Wales, in the green room
at Drury Lane Theatre with 'Perdita', the actress Mary Robinson, looking at her
with admiration, both hands raised as if dazzled by her beauty. While playing
Perdita in Garrick's adaptation of the Winters Tale, Mrs Robinson had attracted the
admiration of the Prince of Wales, and their first meeting in the greenroom led to an
association that was the occasion of many squibs and other caricatures. Though the
Prince was a notorious seducer and the greenroom a trap for young actresses' sexual
virtue, 'Perdita' was held responsible for the outrageous connection: she had
encouraged the Prince's courtship through the display of her charms on the stage.
The many satires that associated her and the Prince of Wales blasted her aspiration
for respectability while undermining her blooming career.
The rejection of the stage as a mere vehicle for sexual availability and of the
actress as a whore stemmed, in the first place, from the way female performers were
engaged. Recruitment of female players largely depended on sexual attractiveness
rather than on stage skills. Many unscrupulous managers, such as Richard Daly in
Dublin, used their position to force their new recruits into their beds; they engaged
actresses according to their own interests, expecting an exchange of favours.
Moreover, theatrical managers used and exploited their actresses' beauty to attract
an audience that often came to the playhouse to enjoy their voyeuristic pleasures,
and to gratify their curiosity rather than their love of the dramatic art.
Tell this people that there is a new actress to appear upon the stage such a night, the first
question they ask is, Is she handsome? And 'tis ten to one, they forget to enquire at all
whether she has any merit in the profession. 1
And, indeed, many suspected that any handsome woman would inevitably gain
great applause, had she absolutely little or no merit in her profession. Sexual virtue
could therefore not be expected in a woman who used her beauty at presenting
herself publicly for fmancial reward. Actresses were victims of rakes who
considered them as sexual objects, of unscrupulous managers who objectified and
sexualized them, and of an overcrowded and underpaid profession. Paradoxically, it
was neither managers' casting couch nor the public's habit of treating the actress as
fair game that were questioned, but invariably actresses' own morals. Suspected of
displaying an actively voracious sexuality, actresses challenged contemporary views
on morality and sexuality, and were therefore regarded as subversive. Deemed as
immodest, dishonest, women and associated with prostitutes, they could be easily
identified from other 'respectable' women, and thereby could not easily present a
threat to contemporary views. With the eighteenth-century growing dominance of
the ideology of separate spheres for men and women, based on a so-called universal
feminine nature, both subservient and private, female performers became even more
dangerous as they not only broke the moral and sexual codes, but also the social and
political codes. Didactic literature, providing women with rules for their behaviour
John Hill, The Actor, a Treatise on the Art ofPlaying (London, 1750) 52.
The Actress and Eighteenth-Century Ideals of Femininity 133
in every area of life, proliferated in the eighteenth century. Although little changed
in terms of general feminine behaviour-there was a long tradition of women being
told to be chaste, silent and obedient-didactic literature of this period justified
these prescriptions through an appeal to a universal feminine nature rather than to
biblical injunction or social needs. Eighteenth-century didactic writers insisted that
female subordination was natural, and, of course, any form of independence in a
woman questioned this assumption dangerously. Actresses resisted the assumptions
that women were naturally submissive and that feminine sexuality was naturally
private. They had penetrated the forbidden public sphere and dared to meet men on
their own terms. The virulence with which actresses were attacked as corrupting
women is telling evidence of their disruptive potential. These women lived a public
and professional life that was thought to be inconsistent with femininity, thus
demonstrating that women had the same capacities and qualities as men. Actresses'
way of life was inconsistent with femininity in the sense that they spent more time
outside than inside the private sphere that was increasingly considered as women's
proper sphere. An actress spent a great part of her day at the theatre, attending
rehearsals in the morning and performing in the evening. The way of life of
provincial actresses was even more problematic as travelling was an essential part
of their lives. These women spent most of their time on the road, walking round the
country, from one place to another, from one bam to another, from one inn to
another, and undergoing all the vicissitudes attendant on that mode of life. They
travelled with their husbands and children, some of them already performing, and in
consequence could not live a stable, 'respectable', family life. Contemporaries
criticized this wandering life and wondered how a woman spending her life on the
road might pay true attention to maternal duties. Unlike their provincial colleagues,
London actresses enjoyed a relatively stable way of life as they did not have to
travel from place to place. They did not, however, escape criticisms as they also
toured the provinces during the summer. In mid-June when the theatrical season
ended in London, they set out for the provincial theatres, either leaving their family
behind or bringing along their children. They were criticized for giving up a
'normative' family life for a self-indulgent desire for work.
Not only did actresses live outside the respectable realm of domesticity, but they
also lived a professional life that was thought of as inherently masculine. The
pursuit of a theatrical career required a high degree of courage and determination,
an indomitable will and a consuming ambition-qualities commonly accepted as
masculine, and therefore opposed to the so-called feminine nature. The playhouse
world was a hostile and competitive world, full of treason, secret plots and
machinations, in which each new actress was seen as a rival to the others'
supremacy and was faced with attempts to ruin her hope of success. Actresses often
hated each other, especially when they were in the zenith of their glory. Time,
energy, industry and perseverance were not only needed to rise to fame, but also to
remain at the top. First-rate actresses were few, and they could never rest on their
laurels as their fortunes lay at the mercy of powerful theatrical managers, tyrannical
audiences and rival colleagues. Audiences had the power to drive an actress from
the stage, managers, who cast plays according to their own interests, did not hesitate
to give an established actress's favourite part to one of their new protegees and
established actresses' position was always threatened by the arrival of new upstarts
within their company. The stiff competition between first-line actresses within the
same company or of rival theatres gave form to battles that were both constant
physical and professional tests. This competition was well underlined in a satirical
engraving titled The Rival Queens of Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres, at
Gymnastic Rehearsal, published in October 1782. This engraving depicts a
pugilistic encounter between Mrs Siddons (Drury Lane) and her rival, Mrs Yates
(Covent Garden), who face each other with outstretched arms and clenched fists.
Behind Mrs Siddons stands her backer, her husband, holding a lemon with an
anxious expression, and behind her opponent stands her backer, also her husband,
smiling. Mrs Siddons's husband says 'Sweet wife! you have seen cruel proof of this
woman's strength, I beg you for your sake to embrace your own safety and give over
the attempt'; Mrs Siddons replied 'Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou';
her opponent says 'I will fight with her upon this throne until my eyelids will no
longer wag'. Her husband says 'Keep it up Nan! Devil bury me but the Goddess will
soon do her over!'. Actresses were living evidence that women were not the frail
creatures didactic writers claimed them to be. Moreover, actresses had a freedom of
expression available to them which was not available to other 'respectable' women.
In the playhouse, they had the ascendance over their audience. They had the power
to make them experience any emotion they wished, and this power was once again
difficult to reconcile with the so-called passive and silent nature of women.
Actresses transgressed the limits of femininity and threatened the growing sex-
gender ideology. By formulating them as 'unnatural', as naturally different from
other 'respectable' women, men aimed at neutralizing the counter model they
presented while exalting the virtuous private woman. Seen as a deformation of true
femininity, the actress could not present a threat to men and society at large. As the
eighteenth century went on, a more flattering discourse about the actress,
nevertheless, emerged. The end of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century
was, indeed, the beginning of the process which made the theatre a respectable
institution-with the winning back of the middle classes-and female players
worthy members of society-with the emergence of first-rate actresses who were
neither courtesans nor social pariahs, but affluent and respected professionals.
As the new middle-classes grew larger among the theatrical public, there was a
growing need to recuperate actresses and the whole profession as respectable. The
middle-classes did not tolerate the indecency of the contemporary stage and wished
performers to present moral virtue on stage. Unlike Restoration comedies and other
smutty plays, the sentimental comedies of the eighteenth century adhered to this
audience's sense of decorum. They exalted sentiments, romantic marriage
partnerships and women's care in domestic concerns, excluding erotic episodes. By
the end of the eighteenth century, these highly moral comedies had replaced the
bawdy Restoration comedies, which had been, as part of the anti-vice campaign,
either banned from the contemporary theatrical repertory or rewritten with their
coarse jokes removed. The new decorum of contemporary plays helped to confer on
the theatre and its performers an unusual respectability. The playhouse had moved
from a place of enjoyment and relaxation, to a place dedicated to moral uplift, and
performers had become dispensers of moral instruction. Actresses, who had
traditionally been seen as subversive women, were offered the opportunity to
portray true feminine virtues on stage, to no longer challenge the moral and social
codes but, on the contrary, to convey them. They could henceforth justify their
livelihood as a commitment to the moral welfare of the community, since they had,
as working women, a moralizing role to play in contemporary society. They hence
moved from the outskirts to the heart of'respectable' society. Actresses, who had an
unusual freedom of expression available to them, could have initiated a radical
change, but so as to bear a good character, these women had to continue conveying
traditional images of women. That was precisely this function that awarded them an
unprecedented dignity and respectability. But actresses had still to acquire the moral
weight that would make them plausible spokeswomen for English virtue. The public
would not have admitted that a woman, who advocated moral values on stage, had
not regard for morality in her private life. The eighteenth-century audience, indeed,
demanded proper and decorous behaviour from actresses both on and off the stage.
Consequently, actresses became increasingly preoccupied with their reputation as
private women. They increasingly endeavoured to control and influence this
reputation, so as to establish themselves as respectable members of society and
overcome the perceptions that they de-classed themselves by acting. They had first
to defend themselves against scurrilous biographies and scandalous paragraphs in
newspapers that mocked their personal lives and portrayed them as loose women.
And actresses of the late eighteenth century were, indeed, the first to use the press
in order to silence the attacks on them in the press. When Dora Jordan, mistress of
the Duke of Clarence, was attacked in the Bon Ton Magazine for abandoning her
children, she asked Richard Ford, the father of her children, to write a letter stating
that she had not done so and sent this statement to the press. Actresses also
denounced newspapers' 'invasion of [their] privacy', like Mrs Baddeley in a letter
to the Morning Post-a paper which had gained a name for its scandalous gossip--
in August 1774, or again, like Mrs Jordan who, while being attacked for not
appearing at the Haymarket Theatre, wrote a letter that was published in the
Morning Post on December 1st, 1791, making the point that the public had no right
to concern itself with anything outside her professional life.
The proliferation of autobiographies in the second half of the eighteenth century
further evidences actresses' growing preoccupation with their reputation and their
attempts to defend themselves against scandalous stories in the periodical prints and
other publications. Actresses began writing autobiographical memoirs in order to
clear themselves from 'the imputations with which [they] ha[d] been undeservedly
loaded' .2 This vindicative spirit is made clear by all the memoirists of the late
eighteenth century. In her Memoirs Mrs Robinson, whose sexual life had been much
talked about and satirized in prints, writes:
The world has mistaken the character of my mind; I have ever been the reverse of volatile
and dissipated. I mean not to write my own eulogy; though, with the candid and sensitive
mind, I shall I trust succeed in my vindication 3 .
2 George Ann Bellamy, An Apology for the Life of George Ann Bellamy (London, 1785)
II, 184.
3 Mary Robinson, Memoirs of the Late Mrs. Robinson (London, 1801) I, 78-79.
Actresses, whose sexual lives had become so notorious as to eclipse their stage
careers, did not actually deny the many scandalous stories concerning their private
lives, they rather made excuses for their faults, presenting themselves as the
innocent victims of unscrupulous lovers. The memoirs of Mrs Wells open with the
following words:
Whoever peruses these volumes will have the most tender emotions of the heart excited
at the tissue of distresses which the fair subject of them ha[s] endured [ ... ] and their
indignation will be proportionately aroused to find that much of this misery ha[s] been
attributable to some ingrates, who have the semblance of men without [their]
accompanying attributes of gratitude and honour.4
Here memoirs served for a justification of some errors in their authors' conduct,
in order to allay the too severe opinion the public had formed of them. Erring
actresses appealed to their readers' sympathy, to their power of forgiveness,
exhorting them to take into account the causes of their deviation from rectitude.
Composing memoirs enabled these actresses to display the purity of their intentions,
to demonstrate that they had never intended to offend against the sacred laws of
chastity, but that they had been led into dissipation by rakes who had taken advantage
of their innocence. These women had been censured for not keeping up with the
contemporary ideals of femininity, and ironically they relied on, and used, these
ideals in their self-presentations to defend themselves, explaining that it was
precisely their weak, frail, and innocent, female nature that had rendered them unable
to resist the many temptations attendant on a stage life and the powerful assaults of
their admirers. Actresses tended to concentrate on their sexual lives-as their object
was to explain how they had erred from the path of virtue-and so as to counteract
criticisms about the indecency of making a public spectacle of what should have been
kept secret, they legitimized their works by presenting them as morally instructive,
as beneficial both to those who have committed errors in conduct and those who have
not. Throughout their memoirs, they caution their female readers against the dangers
of vice, presenting it not as attractive but as productive only of dissatisfaction and
misery. They thus embraced the same moral discourse as their contemporaries,
exalting and recommending virtue while lecturing on the consequences of
immorality. And actually in presenting themselves as objects lessons on the
consequences of immorality, these actresses partook of a general movement in
different kinds of publications which, instead of only gossiping on morally dubious
actresses, used these subjects as a way to instruct their readers. Miss Ambrose, in her
Life and Memoirs of the late Miss Ann Catley, made the subject of her book a public
example of the dangers of seduction, hoping that 'the perusal of her life will operate
as a cautionary example to warn others of her sex from vice, and prove that true
happiness can only be found in the exercise ofvirtue'. 5 And though the public, who
4 Leah Sumbel, Memoirs of the Lifo of Mrs. S., Late Wells ... Written by Herself(London,
1811) I, vii.
5 Miss Ambrose, The Lifo and Memoirs of the late Miss Ann Catley, the Celebrated
Actress (London, 1797?) 5.
had a voracious appetite for biographical information about actresses, often read
these works for their scandalous content rather than for the morally upright images
actresses tried to present, the erring actresses/memoirists succeeded in demonstrating
that they were not fundamentally disreputable, that they were not naturally different
from other 'respectable' women as they were suspected to be, but that their natural
female innocence had been injured by the contrivance of rakes. The victim-figure
they present in their memoirs helped to break down the association between the
actress and the whore, and some very respectable observers did take publicly pity on
these loose actresses. Other actresses, who had managed to keep an unblemished
character throughout the most part of their career, but who suddenly came under
criticism for some incident in their lives, published their autobiographies not with a
vindictive spirit but with a spirit of appraisal. Here memoirs served not to make
excuses and claim pity, but to confute the charges on which they had been indicted.
In 1797, 'Petronius Arbiter' published a slanderous biography of Miss Farren, late
Countess of Derby, in which he charged her with arrogant vanity and ungratefulness,
and blamed her for giving encouragement to Lord Derby's courtship though she knew
he was a married man. The actress, who had kept an unsullied reputation until that
date, published her own memoirs, The Testimony of Truth to Exalted Merit; or, a
Biographical Sketch of the Right Honourable the Countess of Derby, in order to
contradict this infamous slander and resume her decorous image. Her memoirs are
embedded with words such as 'highly exemplary', 'deep-rooted principles of virtues',
'firmness of principle', 'excellent moral character', 'propriety of conduct', and unlike
those of promiscuous actresses such as Mrs Bellamy's and Mrs Robinson's, they tell
the story of a woman who has always resisted temptations and vice, preserving the
dignity of her sex. The Countess of Derby refutes Petronius Arbiter's allegations as
mere falsehoods invented by an envious man to depreciate her exalted virtue and
ridicule her. Such works that dwell on their subjects' dignity and decorum helped to
bridge the divide between actresses and other 'respectable' women.
Actresses' attempts to control and influence their public image were accompanied
by an evolution in the way they were talked about and featured in the press and other
publications. The different kinds of publications that attacked actresses' private lives
continued in the second half of the eighteenth century, but by the end of the century,
a more flattering image had emerged. As newspapers and magazines grew in critical
authority, they tended to concentrate more on actresses' skills on stage than on their
sexual reputation, and they increasingly acclaimed contemporary actresses'
professional capabilities and personal qualities. The emergence of works devoted to
the art of playing also helped to distance the images of actress and whore as actresses
were no longer talked about only as prostitutes, as heroines of scandalous stories, but
also as professionals. Actresses, who had traditionally been the subjects of scurrilous
works, became for the first time the subjects of serious and 'academic' works. Works
such as John Hill's The Actor: a Treatise on the Art of Playing or Aaron Hill's The
Art ofPlaying made the public aware that acting was a true profession requiring rules
and that performers were talented professionals, who had not become famous
overnight but had worked hard to assimilate the many rules inherent in their
profession. In Sexual Suspects, Eighteenth-Century Players and Sexual Ideology,
Kristina Straub argues that the discourse on professionalism was prejudicial to the
actress's image as 'it intensified the contradiction between femininity as a public
spectacle and emergent defmitions of the middle-class woman as domestic and

private' .6 The gradual professionalization of acting, nevertheless, contributed to the
actress's rise to respectability in the sense that the public became increasingly aware
that female players were not only those pretty women that came on the stage to
display their personal charms, but also talented professionals that came on stage to
display the result of their work. The discourse on professionalism actually helped the
public to operate a differenciation between the woman they saw on stage and the
actress as a private woman. The woman the public saw on the stage was not the
private woman exhibiting her physical attractiveness but the result of a whole process
through which the private woman had worked to become another woman, a fictional
character. The actress as a public woman was no longer to be confounded with the
actress as a private woman. There was on the one side the public woman, who might
be criticized for penetrating the forbidden public stage, and on the other side the
private woman who had nothing to do with the public woman, and therefore could
not be criticized for the actions of the public woman and could be as respectable as
other private women.
By the end of the eighteenth century, actresses had broken free from their
confinement within rhetorical structures of prostitution and deformation. Though
their profession was still regarded as highly incompatible with domesticity, a bridge
had been thrown between the actress and 'respectable' society.
6 Kristina Straub, Sexual Suspects, Eighteenth-Century Players and Sexual Ideology

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) 89.
Chapter 11
Women in Action: Elizabeth Inchbald,

Heroines and Serving Maids in British
Comedies of the 1780s and 1790s
Angela J. Smallwood
Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821) was widowed in 1779 at the age of twenty-six. She
then set herself to escape an unfulfilling existence as an actress of only modest
talent, and to achieve fmancial independence and professional status through
writing full-time for a living. For this she required, amongst other things, education
(she read very widely and learnt French), an impeccable personal life (distancing
herself from any breath of scandal) and acceptance in society-she mixed both in
the orbit of titled friends around tragedian John Philip Kemble and his sister Sarah
Siddons and also, once she was established, in the radical circle of Thomas Holcroft
and William Godwin, although she disassociated herself from Godwin after he
married Mary Wollstonecraft. lnchbald first created and then went on consolidating
the financial base of her independence by writing over twenty plays and investing
her exceptional earnings in the public funds. Among her most successful theatre
pieces, her ten or so translations and adaptations (mostly from French) provided
crucial bread-and-butter work and were commissioned by theatre managers seeking
to transfer the box office successes of Paris to their own theatres in London. In
Getting Into The Act, a study of the working conditions of eighteenth-century female
dramatists in and after Garrick's time, Ellen Donkin explains that lnchbald achieved
a relative independence in the sense that she escaped the dominating paternalism
which both helped and hindered some of her predecessors under the direct
supervision of the theatre managers. 1 However, as a writer glad of regular
commissions for adaptations for the patent theatres, both before and after she gave
up her acting contract, lnchbald must have been very aware of the place this
situation forced her to continue to occupy on the sliding scale between dependence
and independence. Given her background and her position, this essay explores some
of the ways in which lnchbald handles the representation of female autonomy on the
Ellen Donkin, Getting Into the Act: Women Playwrights in London 1776-1829 (London
and New York: Routledge, 1995) 110-131. The standard biography is James Boaden's
Memoirs of Mrs lnchbald, 2 vols (London: Bentley, 1833). For a reading of lnchbald's
career as a playwright, see my 'Introduction', Elizabeth lnchbald, ed. Angela J.
Smallwood, in Derek Hughes, gen. ed., Eighteenth-Century Women Playwrights, 6 vols
(London: Pickering & Chatto, 2001), 6: ix-xxviii.
comic stage in the period which saw the publication in 1792 of Wollstonecraft's
Vindication ofthe Rights of Woman.
'Let the woman work!' These are the words of a lively comic heroine, as she sets
herself to change the course of events, in a play by Susannah Centlivre called The
Stolen Heiress, first performed in London in 1702. For the world of eighteenth-
century comic drama, I wish to interpret the theme of 'women and work' in this
same sense of 'women in action'. I am thinking of the proactive, transgressive
maidservants who take control of the stage action in witty comedies and develop
well-intentioned tricks and intrigues, manipulate their superiors, wrong-foot others,
engineer deceptions and pull off ruses. I am also thinking of the refmed heroines,
and the fact that, increasingly as the century went on, they were played by
upwardly-mobile stars who required roles that were at one and the same time both
theatrically dynamic and ladylike. 2 The note of boldness and independence in that
quotation from Centlivre reflects the sense of conflict in eighteenth-century culture
between femininity and autonomous public activity (or indeed any form of
extroversion); the conflict, quite specifically, between femininity and theatricality.
Plays involving intriguing maidservants build some of their effects directly upon
this sense of conflict, and I will illustrate this from one of Inchbald's early farces,
The Widow :S Vow. I will then go on to explore her complex treatment of female
action in a later play, Wives as they Were and Maids as they Are, a satiric social
comedy of the politically-charged 1790s, which debates the definition of a good
wife as merely the best of submissive female servants.
Eighty or so years after Centlivre's Stolen Heiress, we fmd Elizabeth lnchbald
creating a whole team of active female characters for The Widow :S Vow ( 1786), a farce
adapted from a French source, L 'Heureuse erreur by Patrat, and one which shows
clearly the inverse relation between female action and femininity. The heroine,
Isabella, a little like Shakespeare's Rosalind, sets up a desirable love-match for her
brother, aided and abetted by two resourceful maidservants. While mistress and
servants are close and mutually supporting, they are strongly differentiated in terms of
the class connotations of their stage action. Eighteenth-century conduct writers are
helpful here, for their reflections convey both employers' fears of transgressive
behaviour in servants and employers' aspirations that their servants should prove 'the
genteel personages, we think proper should attend us'. 3 Conduct writers warn of the
dangers of servants displaying impertinence or getting ideas above their station, and
of the likelihood that maidservants who leave their places will tum to prostitution. But
these lower class associations are balanced by higher ones. For we also fmd Thomas
Broughton, in his Serious Advice and Warning to Servants (1746), seeking to preempt
2 See Kimberly Crouch, 'The public life of actresses: prostitutes or ladies?' in Hannah Barker
and Elaine Chalus, eds, Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations
and Responsibilities (London and New York: Longman, 1997) 58-78. For a discussion of
some of the implications of the changing role of the actress for the portrayal of women by
some eighteenth-century women playwrights before lnchbald, see Angela J. Smallwood,
'Women and the Theatre' in Vivien Jones, ed., Women and Literature in Britain 1700-1800
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 238-262.
3 C. N. Cole ed., The Works ofSoame Jenyns, 4 vols (London, 1790), 2: 116.
Elizabeth lnchbald 141
such problems by extending to the female servant the requirements of genteel

femininity: he recommends 'modesty and virtue, which are the chief honour of a
Woman', simplicity and decency in dress, temperance, purity of language and
'reserve' in the company ofmen. 4 What the farce of The Widows Vow shows is that
the theatrical impact of the pro-active maidservant in stage comedy owes a good deal
to her subversion of this last set of qualities, this formulation of contemporary
culture's feminine ideal, or, to put it another way, her celebration of the negative
associations which cluster round its opposite, the self-assertive servant-impudence,
impertinence, active sexuality. This is illustrated by a brief episode from The Widows
Vow in which the widow's elderly uncle, Don Antonio (invented by Inchbald), meets
the maid, Flora, for the first time. Their exchanges illustrate the comic energy that is
released when a female servant sheds passivity and subordination:
Enter Don Antonio--She courtesys

ANTONIO. Hah! ... what have we here? ... a very pretty girl indeed!-My niece's new
maid, I suppose ... (Going up to Flora) My dear, come this way-I think your's is a new
face-
FLORA. Yes, Sir-and I think your's is an old one.
ANTONIO. Hem-hem.-Pray what is your name?
FLORA. A very good name-and I intend never to change it for a bad one.-
ANTONIO. Look in my face-What do you blush for?
FLORA. For you.
ANTONIO. Come, come, no pertness-but let me bid you welcome to the castle. Offers to
salute her
FLORA. No, indeed you shan't.
ANTONIO. I will bid you welcome to the castle .... After a struggle he salutes her
FLORA. Upon my word, Sir, you are very rude-How would you like I should serve you so?
ANTONIO. Do--Do--serve me so--you are very welcome. 5
Flora's conduct here invokes the feminine imperative of chastity in so far as she
resists the advances of Don Antonio, but she does this for the wrong reasons (she
finds him repulsive) and in gloriously unfeminine (one might think almost feminist)
style. Her quick-witted, direct, outspoken remarks win her a chiding for 'pertness',
but this same impudence and audacity make her an essential source of the farce's
camivalesque entertainment. 6 Another maidservant, Inis, helps to invert the
feminine ideal further by turning actress, faking a clever performance to deceive the
Countess. And the slur of sexual availability is directed at their mistress, Isabel
4 Thomas Broughton, Serious Advice and Warning to Servants (1746), 4th ed. (London:
J. Rivington, 1763), 20-22. A subsequent reference to this work is incorporated in the
text.
5 Elizabeth Inchbald, The Widows Vow, Act I, Scene i; in Eighteenth-Century Women
Playwrights, 6: 12-13. Subsequent references to this volume are included in the text.
6 For a feminist reading of the eighteenth-century camivalesque see Terry Castle,
Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English
Culture (London: Methuen, 1986).
herself, who has led the Countess and her uncle to believe that she will appear
dressed up in men's clothes-'Impudent hussey', Don Antonio mutters aside (II, ii;
p. 21 ). However, Inchbald keeps her heroine uncompromised. As in the French
source, she does not flaunt herself in her brother's clothes; her brother appears in his
own person instead. And at the end of Inchbald's version, when Isabel enters to join
the denouement, she is wearing a veil; this is necessary for the plot but also
reemphasizes her feminine modesty. Inchbald in fact uses the maidservants, like the
veil, to insulate Isabel from contamination by unfeminine acts, for they carry out her
designs and do her work for her. In theatrical terms, the dignity of the heroine is
preserved, while her active spirit is expressed through more lowly characters who
get their hands dirty doing the work of the comic plot.
On one level this is all very familiar-maid and mistress work in partnership,
even exchange identities, but cannot exchange qualities-a staple plot device of
eighteenth-century comedy which reinforces the message of the anti-feminine
nature of theatrical action. The classic exemplification of this, perhaps, is
Marivaux's Le Jeu de !'amour et du hasard (1730), where, crucially, the exchange
of identities between Silvia and Lisette is incomplete, and thus only underlines for
the audience the deep class differentiation between the two, in terms of education,
grace, language, courtesy, emotional and physical reserve. The Widows Vow is
almost a parody of the form in fact. In terms of the hierarchy of theatrical genres,
Inchbald's play is a low-status afterpiece whose players would have stood lower in
the hierarchy of the theatre company than those who played in five-act comedies.
The differentiation of Isabel from Flora in The Widows Vow wittily mimics, at a
lower level, the class distinctions in play in a mainpiece comedy like Goldsmith's
She Stoops to Conquer (1773), for instance. For Mrs Riley (the actress who was cast
as Isabel in the 1786 production oflnchbald's farce), although she had once played
Shakespeare's Rosalind, had much more recently played the intriguing maidservant,
Bloom, in I'll Tell You What (1785), a five-act comedy, also by Inchbald and at the
same theatre. 7 So the farce might well have had the effect of a comic fantasy, ajeu
d'esprit, seasoning the light-hearted reinforcement of social hierarchy with an in-
joke about theatrical hierarchy.
Inchbald's later five-act comedy, Wives as they Were and Maids as they Are,
adopts the mode of satire rather than fantasy. It is set in England, not Spain, and the
issues it raises impend more obviously on the lives of the fashionable patrons of the
Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, where it was staged in 1797. In a period when
women writers were increasing rapidly in numbers and confidence, 8 it is especially
interesting to explore how Inchbald handles contemporary social comedy, and how
she mediates for her audience the conflicts between theatricality and the ideology of
femininity, between extroversion and reserve, immorality and chastity.
7 Details of players' repertoires come from Philip H. Highfill Jr, Kalman A. Burnim and
Edward A. Langhans, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians,
Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London 1660-1800, 16 vols.
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973-93).
8 See Judith Phillips Stanton, 'Statistical Profile of Women Writing in English from 1660-
1800' in Frederick M. Keener and Susan E. Lorsch, eds., Eighteenth-Century Women
and the Arts (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988) 247-254.
Elizabeth Inchbald 143
By contrast to The Widows Vow and its conventions of witty comedy, the most
obvious reference to female servants in Wives as they Were is to what we might call
the sentimental, or 'Pamela', model, referring to the heroine of Richardson's novel
who rises from serving maid to mistress not by subverting femininity, but by
embracing subordination, perpetuating humility from the moral high-ground.
Richardson's Pamela could almost be the model of genteel conduct presented to
servants by Thomas Broughton in 1746:
Let me then earnestly beg of you to think no pains and care too much to preserve your
modesty and virtue, which are the chief honour of a Woman. In order to do this, do not
trust in your own strength, but beg of GOD to bestow on you the gift of chastity. Avoid
Idleness. Apply yourselves diligently to the duties of your Service ... Appear always as
neat and clean as possible, but avoid the use of gawdy or fantastical ornaments; or putting
on your clothes, which are made for a decent covering, in such a manner as to expose
your person; for this will be wearing the attire of an Harlot, and all sober people will
suppose you do it with a design to allure and entrap the men ... Shew not yourselves over-
fond of the company of Men, and always behave before them with a proper reserve.
Never listen to any of their flattering speeches. Be cautious in accepting from them either
Presents or Treats, lest in return they should expect you to indulge them in greater
freedoms, and such liberties, which, tho' they call them innocent, may in the end lead to
the overthrow of your Virtue. And above all things, be not prevailed upon, by promises
of Marriage, to do what you may for ever repent of... (20-22)
Broughton here sets out the pathway to moral invulnerability for women,
safeguarded by a strict reticence-ladylike but untheatrical. This is what Inchbald
sets herself to stage in 1797 in Wives as they Were, where, although there are no
servants as such in the play, the concept of the female domestic servant is
powerfully present as a metaphor for female subordination.
This is embodied in the person of Lady Priory, who is explicitly trained as the ideal
servant, a wife 'as they were', by her husband. As if following the servant's conduct
book to the letter, Lady Priory is not idle. She rises at six in the morning, to begin her
household duties, and retires exhausted at ten in the evening, going nowhere in between
without her needlework. Although she describes herself as 'his female slave' (V, iv;
p. 215), she makes no objection to living exactly as her lord and master requires,
because, in her words, 'He is myself (IV, ii; p. 199). But how does lnchbald contrive
for this untransgressing servant, this feminine ideal, this 'angel' as Lord Priory calls her,
to make any impact in stage terms? How can she make Lady Priory an assertive stage
presence without compromising the meaning of her perfect femininity?
By one strategy, lnchbald makes Lady Priory's static moral position dynamic.
She contrasts it with the ethos of the fashionable set in the play and uses it as a
source of satiric comedy:
LADY MARY (In amaze) . ... And were you up at six this morning?
LADY PRIORY. Yes
MISS DORILLON. At six in the month of January!
LADY MARY. It is not light till eight: and what good, now, could you possibly be doing for
two hours by candle-light?
LADY PRIORY. Pray, Lady Mary, at what time did you go to bed?
LADY MARY. About three this morning.
LADY PRIORY. And what good could you possibly be doing for eleven hours by candle-
light? (II, i; p. 183)
Another strategy involves making Lady Priory a driver of the plot, virtually an
intriguer, without her stepping beyond the limits of her role for a moment. At key
points, the plot turns dramatically (a seducer is incriminated, an abductor disarmed)
by what appear to be the pure reflexes of Lady Priory's good housekeeping; she
reaches for her needlework scissors on one occasion, and takes out some knitting on
another. However, the effect of these behaviours is equated by Bronzely, the would-
be seducer, and even (approvingly) by her husband, with deception, even with
trickery. Almost ludicrously innocent on the surface, Lady Priory's actions bring off
as much success and entertainment as those of any intriguing chambermaid.
The metaphor of the servant offers clues in relation to a further female character
in this play. For if Lady Priory has, in spite of appearances, the stage maidservant's
flair for manipulating other people, and more than a touch of her satiric wit,
Miss Maria Dorrillon has the female servant's impertinence, her defiant speech and
a touch of her immorality. Miss Dorrillon, a figure in the fashionable set and a
gambler with serious debts, is an example of 'maids as they are'. Sir William
Dorrillon, Maria's father, has returned from India disguised as a merchant,
Mr Mandred, in order to discover the true character of his daughter. Instead of
keeping a low profile, however, he cannot conceal his outrage at her behaviour.
Strikingly, the tone which Maria Dorrillon adopts towards Mr Mandred compares
for impertinence with that of Flora to Don Antonio in The Widows Vow, quoted
earlier. When her deserving suitor, Sir George Evelyn, joins a scene including
Mr Mandred, Miss Dorrillon and her guardian, Mr Norberry, she turns to him to ask:
Miss DoRRILLON. [H]ave you provided tickets for the fete on Thursday?
SIR GEORGE. I have; provided you have obtained Mr Norberry's leave to go.
NORBERRY. That I cannot grant.
MISS DORRILLON. Nay, my dear Sir, do not force me to go without it.
SIR WILLIAM. (With violence) Would you dare?
MISS DORRILLON. (Looking with surprise) 'Would I dare', Mr Mandred!- and what have
you to say ifl do?
SIR WILLIAM. (Recollecting himself) I was only going to say, that if you did, and I were
Mr Norberry-
MISS DORRILLON. And if you were Mr. Norberry, and treated me in the manner you now
do, depend upon it I should not think your approbation or disapprobation, your pleasure
or displeasure, of the slightest consequence.
SIR WILLIAM. (Greatly agitated) I dare say not-1 dare say not. Good morning,
Sir George--! dare say not.-Good morning, Mr. Norberry. Going
NORBERRY. Stop a moment-Maria, you have offended Mr. Mandred.
MISS DORRILLON. He has offended me. (1, i; p. 179)
In the fmal exchange here, Maria, instead of being chastened, casts a man's words
straight back in his face, like Flora defying Don Antonio, almost as if she were a
Elizabeth Inchbald 145
servant maid dressed up as a fme lady while, inevitably, continuing to betray a low-
class insolence. In such a moment she is a dynamic stage presence, not purely for
the carnivalesque effect of unwittingly overturning the father-daughter hierarchy,
but for the controversial image she presents in 1797 as a woman of quality arguing
with men for equal rights ('You have offended Mr Mandred' /'He has offended
me.'). Maria Dorrillon, as modem maid, is a 'new woman' of the 1790s. Her
outspokenness and her lack of self-control (presented in the form of gambling,
however, not sexual excess), both give her theatrical energy and call into question
her respectability as a woman.
With the figures of Lady Priory and Miss Dorrillon, it is as if Inchbald has taken
the key qualities of the stageworthy female servant of comic tradition and
redistributed them to make these upper class characters much more performative.
And, interestingly, if Miss Dorrillon's femininity is compromised by independence
of spirit in this way, so too, upon closer inspection, is Lady Priory's. Her dutiful
words and actions are wittily and resourcefully deployed, and, despite her angelic
life of service, Lady Priory is not, in moral terms, either subordinate to, or
dependent upon, her husband. Challenged by the seducer, Bronzely, to reject the
'tyranny' of her husband, she comments:
LADY PRIORY. [T]o the best of my observation and understanding, your sex, in respect to
us, are all tyrants. I was born to be the slave of some ofyou-1 make the choice to obey
my husband.
LoRD PRIORY. Yes, Mr. Bronzely; and I believe it is more for her happiness to be my slave,
than your friend-to live in fear of me, than in love with you.-Lady Priory, leave the
room. Exit Lady PRIORY (IV, ii; p. 199)
For all her compliance and apparent passivity, Lady Priory has her own active
moral perception of the world in which she lives. She actively chooses her tyrant
and consciously resigns herself to a wife's life of subordination and obedience.
Whereas Lady Priory has already chosen to suppress her capacity for independence
before the play begins, Inchbald has Miss Dorrillon renounce hers at its end. Finally
reconciled with her father and accepting Sir George Evelyn, she promises in the last
speech that 'A maid of the present day shall become a wife like those-of former
times' (V, iv; p. 216). But, as with so many eighteenth-century comedies, the
conventional ending barely matches with what has gone before. Inchbald places
Miss Dorrillon in a relatively attractive light for much of the play. She is contrasted
favourably with her companion, the dreadful Lady Mary, and repeatedly strikes a
radical note, which is nowhere contradicted, in favour of friendship as the model
relationship (symbolized by her repeated efforts to get people to shake hands) and
of equality rather than hierarchy. The play prepares for Miss Dorrillon's conversion
by showing at several points that nature-or feeling-is ultimately what governs
her. Ironically, just in the moment when the hitherto obstinate Mr Mandred fmally
acknowledges Miss Dorrillon's right to independence and hands over a large sum of
money to clear her debts without any conditions or constraints, saying at last 'be
your own mistress' (V, ii; p. 21 0), daughterly love for her father overwhelms her and
she hands the money back, willing to sacrifice her chance of liberation from the
debtors' prison in which she is confmed, in case her father, somewhere in India (she
believes) should have need of it. This testimony of the power of the filial love within
her sets aside all her father's doubts about her character and outweighs all her proud
assertions of independent selfhood.
On the basis of the text alone, one could argue that Inchbald has produced a very
balanced discussion of female dependence and independence in Wives as they Were
and Maids as they Are. Moreover, the stagecraft embodied in the text indicates that
she attempted to draw upon the best-tried conventions of stage comedy, albeit
somewhat in disguise, to give theatrical weight to the role of the model wife and to
sustain parallel theatrical interest between Miss Dorrillon and Lady Priory, before
making Maria bow to Lady Priory's example at the end of the play. However, from
the cast of the first production, it looks as if the staging of the play would have
heightened the potential conflict between the content of the play and its closure.
Pride of place was given to the actress playing Miss Dorrillon to step forward and
speak an epilogue which opens by virtually inviting the fashionable audience to
disassociate itself from the play's censure of modem female manners. Thus
theatrical hierarchies must have undermined the discursive equilibrium of
Inchbald's text. When illness made the highly respected Mrs Pope unavailable for
the part, Charlotte Jane Chapman, an actress of only medium rank was brought in
to play Lady Priory. Miss Chapman most regularly played secondary roles, like
Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice, Celia in As you Like It, Hero in Much Ado, and
was thought too tall and too sombre of voice to be fashionable. The actress who
played Miss Dorrillon, however, Tryphosa Jane Wallis, was highly paid: handsome,
elegant, genteel and graceful, capable of tragedy and highly praised in comedy. In
the same season as Wives as they Were opened, she also played both Catherine in
Catherine and Petruchio (Garrick's adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew) and
Cordelia in King Lear-a fascinating context within which her audience could have
contemplated the curious mixture of female defiance (Catherine) and filial devotion
(Cordelia) which is Miss Dorrillon. 9 The audience did not baulk at the
unfashionable message, probably assented to it, and still continued to flock to the
play-approving the correctness of the outcome, but beguiled by the contraries
portrayed with such comic energy within it, those glimpses of the comic
maidservant within the mistress.
9 Information about the content of theatre seasons is drawn from Charles Beecher Hogan,
ed., The London Stage 1660-1800: A Calendar of Plays ... Part 5: 1776-1800, 3 vols.
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968).
Chapter 12
Profession:
Siren-The Ambiguous Status of
Professional Women Musicians
in Eighteenth-Century England
Pierre Dubois
In eighteenth-century England, while music was one of the necessary

accomplishments of young women in genteel society, a few female musicians
(mainly singers and keyboard players) did practise music in a professional capacity,
that is, by deriving an income (and sometimes a very hefty one), as well as a
particular status, from their art. The question of this status and of the contemporary
representation of female musicians falls therefore naturally within the scope of a
study of women's work in eighteenth-century Britain.
Interestingly enough, primary sources are rather sparing of precise
information concerning the practical reality of the work of professional female
musicians. It is a little as if, precisely, that work was obliterated or almost denied
in favour of the construction of a stereotyped image from which there emerges
an eminently gendered representation of the female musician. A female musician
is not a professional artist in the same way as a male musician may be. It is her
very femininity, rather than the fruit of her talent or her work, which is
highlighted in her artistic practice.
This chapter endeavours therefore to study the representation of professional
female musicians in England in the eighteenth century. The recurring insistence
upon their natural gifts reveals a fascination that does not exclude a latent moral
criticism. The fact of singing on a public stage was more or less likened to a form
of prostitution. The fate of these artists-who were adulated one day, and the
following one rejected into poverty or forced to renounce all public activity after
getting married-testifies to the difficulty for women to reach a true professional
status in a certain social milieu in the eighteenth century.
Typology
Music was essentially an activity in the private sphere for women in England in the
eighteenth century. It was one of the necessary accomplishments of any young lady
belonging to polite society. Once married, a young woman would often give up the
practice of the instrument she had spent so many hours learning, to Hannah More's
great indignation. 1 Thus music was considered less an important activity in itself
than the visible evidence of some social respectability, the belonging to a certain
social class, and good morality. The fact that certain instruments-wind
instruments, notably, because of the obvious sexual suggestion-were proscribed to
women indicates that what was at stake in the social practice of music was to exert
a certain degree of control over womankind. 2 It was thought that a woman's bearing
must not be impaired by the practice of an instrument that required contortions or
inelegant positions. As a consequence of this, there were no professional female
musicians in orchestras during the eighteenth century and things only started
changing in this respect in the 1850s after genuine protest campaigns, while half the
members of the Royal Academy of Music founded in 1822 were women.
There were however renowned female musicians in the eighteenth century. The
theatre companies had few professional actors-cum-singers, 3 so the rise of female
musical professionals is linked to that of public concerts. Thomas Britton, the coal-
merchant who organized music concerts above his London shop as from 1678
welcomed female musicians. 4 Female professional musicians were mainly singers and
soloists playing especially keyboard instruments. Dr Burney mentions Mrs. Sarah
Ottey who 'frequently perform[ed] solos at concerts on three several instruments:
harpsichord, base-viol, and violin' in 1721-22. 5 Also well-known is Maria Theresa
von Paradis (1759-1834), a blind pianist and composer, who toured Europe between
1784 and 1786. 6 Such artists did not fail to astonish or even disturb their audiences,
because they actually transferred an essentially private activity into the public sphere,
and, as their position as soloists--clearly visible in their relation to the orchestra-
testified to their independence, they appeared as a threat to the social order. 7 A
characteristic reaction in front of such a threat was that ofAnn Ford's father. Ann Ford,
Philip Thicknesse's third wife, was an accomplished violist, yet her father compelled
her to give up playing in public at the age of 23. 8 Could this fear of female
independence be the reason for the scarcity of famous composers among women in
England at the time, compared to such continental artists as Elisabeth Jacquet de la
Guerre, Antonia Bembo, Maria Theresa von Paradis or Marianne von Martinez?9
1 Hannah More, Strictures on the modern System of Female Education (Bath, 1799) 55.
2 Pierre Dubois, '"Le sexe de Ia musique" dans Ies discours theoriques en Angleterre au
xvm• siecle', L 'un(e) miroir de !'autre (Clermont-Ferrand: CRMLC, 1998) 91-115.
3 Robert Hoslins, 'Theatre Music II', Music in Britain: the Eighteenth Century, ed. H.
Diack Johnstone and Roger Fiske (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990) 262.
4 Carol Neul-Bates, ed., Women in Music (Boston: North-Eastern U.P., 1996) 57.
5 Charles Burney, A General History of Music from the Earliest Ages to the Present
Period [London, 1776-89], (New-York: Dover Publications, 1957) II, 995.
6 Neul-Bates, 85.
7 Simon McVeigh, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge:
Cambridge U.P., 1993) 86.
8 Richard Leppert, Music and Image (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1988) 40. R. Leppert
proposes an interesting analysis, in terms of repression, of Gainsborough's portrait of
Ann Ford (c.1760).
9 Barbara Garvey Jackson, 'Musical Women of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries',
Women & Music (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991) 55.
Profession: Siren-The Ambiguous Status of Professional Women Musicians I49
Simon McVeigh mentions as exceptional a few cases of keyboard compositions (for

instance Mrs Billington's sonata in 1792) and a couple of concerts during which some
odes by Elisabetta Chazal and an oratorio by Harriet Wainwright (who, incidentally,
was not a professional musician) were performed in 1764 and 1792 respectively. I o
There were however a few professional female organists in London in the second
half of the eighteenth century. II In 1753, Mary Worgan, the daughter of a City
carpenter, whose brothers James and John were organists themselves, was appointed
organist of St Dunstan. She was however to renounce her position when she got
married. 12 Can one in this instance speak of professionalism? According to Donovan
Dawe, another ten years elapsed before another such appointment was made-that of
a 'Miss Hardin' at St. Peter-le-Poer in 1764. But she probably was Elizabeth Hardin
who was only 14 at the time! One then finds traces of applications by Hannah Benson
for posts at three churches in the City, and those of Frances Paxton and Elizabeth
Smith at two churches each. Then Ann Kitchingham was appointed as organist at St.
Mildred Poultry in 1778, though once she had become Mrs. Beverley she 'neglected
playing', did not ask for her wages and relinquished the post in 1792. She was
replaced by Catherine Linton who remained in post for 45 years. The appointment of
Mary Hudson, the third City organist, at St Olave, Haart Street, in 1781 marked the
real beginning of a series of appointments of female organists, since another six
positions were henceforth given to women between then and 1790. Mary Hudson
was a true 'professional' who had two positions in London. 13 Other known
professional organists were Eliza and Thomasine Wesley, the Mounsey sisters, Esther
Fleet, Mary Horth, Maria Naish, Ann Blewitt, Eliza Silverlock. Most of them were
either the daughters or wives of the local parish clerk. Some of them were blind. In
his diary, John Marsh mentions that a Mr Smith presented the parish church of St.
Martin's in Salisbury with an organ under the condition that his blind daughter were
appointed organist thereof, and, as such, remunerated. 14
All this remains relatively marginal and one had better take a look at women
singers to fmds clues of female professionalism in music. Numerous professional
singers were the daughters of music professors who had been able to teach them the
basis of the art from their early childhood. It was the case, notably, of Anna Storace,
the famous first Suzanna in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro in 1786, who was able to
play several musical instruments (the piano, the guitar and, probably, the harp) and
sight-read music, and even had some inklings of musical composition. 15 Her father
was a double-bass player of repute who played at Marylebone Gardens. Elizabeth
Linley, one of the most adulated singers of the second half of the eighteenth century,
had also been trained from early childhood by her father who was a musician.
10 McVeigh, 93.
II As well as in France-for instance Elisabeth Lechanterie at Saint-Jacques de Ia
Boucherie in Paris).
I2 Donovan Dawe, Organists ofthe City of London 1666-1850 (Padstow: Dawe, I983).3.
13 Dawe, 3-4.
I4 The John Marsh Journals: the Life and Times of a Georgian Gentleman Composer
(1752-1828), ed. Brian Robins (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, I998) I78.
IS Geoffrey Brace, Anna ... Susanna (London: Thames Publishing, I99I) 13.
However, the profession could also seem attractive for a young girl from a relatively
modest background, even though she might not have had any initial musical
training, provided she were endowed with a beautiful voice. 16 John Marsh reported
the case of Caroline Barclay, the daughter of a father of a large family, who, not
being very wealthy, chose to make a professional singer of one of his daughters.'7
The girl's father intended to organize a subscription concert to raise the money
necessary for the girl's tuition fees.
There existed a hierarchy between the different singers according to the kind of
venues where they sang. Marsh underlined how vulgar he personally found a
pleasure-garden singer who had been hired at Canterbury for a few weeks in 1784.' 8
Pleasure-gardens singers did not enjoy the same reputation as opera or oratorio
singers. Apart from the difference in their respective talent, what was at stake was
the question of the moral connotation of each particular place. Besides, the
distinction between actress and singer was not always clear-cut. Thus Sarah
Kemble, later Mrs Siddons, began her career as a singer before veering towards
tragedy. 19 The musical training of these singers was not always very thorough.
Marsh explains for instance that the young Caroline Barclay already mentioned
above was not able to read music and could memorize the airs she sang only by
listening to her teacher play them on his violin. 20 Male and female singers would
often learn their art, not from other singers, but from the composers themselves. The
training would last for four to five years, during which span of time almost the
entirety of the pupil's incomes would accrue to the teacher. It was in the latter's
interest, therefore, to let his pupil sing in public as early as possible 21 and little care
was taken to spare a young singer's voice. Anna Storace sang a leading part at the
Scala in Milan only aged 14. 22 A Miss Leake was given the part of Rosetta in
Thomas Arne's Love in a Village from the age of 14, but her voice did not bear the
brunt of such treatment and her career soon came to an end. 23
Consequently, the beginnings of a career were often as vertiginous as the latter
was likely to be short. For the most famous singers, the profession could quickly
16 Richard Edgcumbe, 3rd Earl of .. , Musical Reminiscences of an old Amateur, chiefly

respecting the Italian Opera in England for Fifty Years from 1773 to 1823 (London,
1827, 2nd ed.) passim.
17 Marsh, 418.
18 'Miss White, a vulgar garden singer from London whom they had engaged for a few
weeks.' Marsh, 308.
19 'When Miss SARAH KEMBLE, (now Mrs. SIDDONS) first attempted the Stage, her
juvenile efforts, particularly as a Singer, were regarded with some hope of success; but
she very early abandoned that line, and attended in particular to tragedy.' Anon.
[J. Hastlewood], The Secret History of the green Rooms, containing authentic and
entertaining Memoirs of the Actors and Actresses in the three Theatres Royal (London
1790) I, 4.
20 Marsh, 420.
21 Roger Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford U.P.,
1986) 268-269.
22 Brace, 8.
23 Fiske, 269.
Profession: Siren-The Ambiguous Status of Professional Women Musicians 151
prove extremely lucrative. Elizabeth Linley had such a reputation at the age of 17
that she was offered a fee of£ 100 to sing at the Three Choirs Festival in 1770. The
concerts organized by her father in Bath were all fully booked out and brought so
much money in that it enabled the family to move into the Royal Crescent, that is,
a very respectable social environment.24 Eliza brought in some £1,000 a year.25 In
1773, the owners of the Pantheon in Oxford Street declared they were ready to pay
her a fortune provided she would agree to sing during the season: 1,200 guineas for
twelve nights at the Pantheon, 1,000 guineas for the oratorios, and as much for the
concerts run by Giardini, that is a total of3,200 guineas for each season, the original
contract being initially intended for seven successive seasons. 26 Marsh reported that
Miss Harrop, Joah Bates' wife (Bates was the 'amateur' organist responsible for the
great Handel Commemoration at Westminster in 1784) refused to sing in the
provinces for less than 100 guineas. 27 As for Italian opera singers, they could easily
make a fortune in England. Catalini asked for, and got, 5,000 guineas for one
season. 28 John Hawkins reported that the cost of those artists was such that the
audience then expected to have their money's worth, so to say, which led to a
general preference for vocal music. 29 Such huge incomes enabled those singers to
position themselves on the border-line between two social classes. As Alan Chedzoy
has remarked, the Linleys finally found themselves rather isolated because they
would mix with the gentry, yet could not claim that they really belonged to their
social sphere, while on the other hand they refused to mix with the members of the
mercantile middle-class. 30
In old age, once the full glory of youth had vanished, the life of a professional
singer often proved very hard. Richard Edgcumbe mentioned the case of Cecilia
Davis who found herself destitute and in very poor health at the age of 70, with a
paltry income of £20 a year, while she had been extremely famous in her youth.
Edgcumbe went as far as to propose a charity subscription for her. 31 John Hawkins
described the pathetic end of the famous Cuzzoni, who died in poverty after having
been imprisoned for debts.32 Such a change of circumstances from greatness to
misery shows how fragile the career of a professional female musician was. This
24 Alan Chedzoy, Sheridan s Nightingale, The Story of Elizabeth Linley (London: Allison
and Busby Ltd., 1997) 15-16.
25 Chedzoy, 20.
26 Chedzoy, 127.
27 Marsh, 196.
28 Edgcumbe, 175.
29 'The singing of Senesino, Cuzzoni, and Faustina had captivated the hearers of them to
such a degree, that they forgot the advantages which the human voice derives from its
association with instruments, so that they could have been well content with mere vocal
performance during the whole of the evening's entertainment. The cry was that these
persons were very liberally paid, and that the public had not singing enough for their
money[ ... ].' John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music
[1776] (London: Novello, 1875) II, 874.
30 Chedzoy, 17.
31 Edgcumbe, 182.
32 Hawkins, II, 874.
was linked to the moral reservations towards this profession, as Adam Smith clearly
explained in The Wealth ofNations:
There are some very agreeable and beautiful talents of which the possession commands
a certain sort of admiration; but of which the exercise for the sake of gain is considered,
whether from reason or prejudice, as a sort of public prostitution. The pecuniary
recompense, therefore, of those who exercise them in this manner must be sufficient, not
only to pay for the time, labour, and expense of acquiring the talents, but for the discredit
which attends the employment of them as the means of subsistence. The exorbitant
rewards of players, opera-singers, opera-dancers, &c., are founded upon those two
principles; the rarity and beauty of the talents, and the discredit of employing them in this
manner. It seems absurd at first sight that we should despise their persons and yet reward
their talents with the most profuse liberality. While we do the one, however, we must of
necessity do the other. 33
The 'discredit which attend[ed] the employment' of a singer was such that it
might justify the high fees she enjoyed, but it also accounted for her sudden loss of
reputation and support. The question of the link between the social status and the
moral status of the female professional musician in eighteenth-century England
must therefore be studied. Although they were generally paid quite liberally, female
musicians were scarcely considered better than prostitutes, which ought to have
precluded their moving up into the higher social spheres. However, this too
remained rather ambiguous.
Moral and social status
Socially speaking, the profession of singer was not accepted any better than that of
actress. The reformers of manners denounced the lack of morality of the stage, both
at the play-house, and at the opera. 34 No respectable woman could sing or act on a
stage without taking the risk of damaging her reputation, which explains why there
were so many instances of women who were obliged to renounce their musical
career once they got married, notwithstanding the fame they had henceforth
managed to obtain. The case of Elizabeth Linley is particularly striking in this
respect. After her wedding to Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the latter forbade her to
sing in public although she was then (at 19) at the top of her profession, as
Edgcumbe remarked.35 The fabulous contract of3,200 guineas offered to her by the
owners of the Pantheon, as we have seen, would have granted the young couple the
33 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations [1776] (London: Everyman's Library, 1991) I, x,
95.
34 See for instance Cf. Jeremy Collier, 'Of Musick', Essays upon Several Subjects
(London, 1703); John Dennis, An Essay on the Operas after the Italian Manner
(London, 1706); Arthur Bedford, The Great Abuse of Musick (London, 1711); Rvd.
David Simpson, A Discourse on Stage Entertainments (London, 1788).
35 Edgcumbe, 145.
affluence they needed at a time when Sheridan was still broke. Nevertheless,
Sheridan had his wife tum it down and only let Elizabeth honour a few engagements
she had contracted before their getting married, also allowing her to sing
occasionally for select audiences, in particular at Croome, the home of the 6th Earl
of Coventry, or for the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester. 36 The most important for
him was that the social rise of which he dreamt should not be impaired by a blot on
his wife's reputation. It is interesting to see that, according to James Boswell,
Samuel Johnson approved of Sheridan's decision.3 7
Sometimes, a husband forbade any public musical activity whatsoever to his
wife, even though it might not be on a stage. Upon her marriage, a Henrietta Lockhart
was forced to renounce her position as church-organist because her husband did not
want her to be seen 'playing in public' .38 Towards the end of the century however, it
seems that the professionalisation of female singers was more generally accepted, if
one is to take one's cue from the comments made by J. Hastlewood (in 1790) about
the fact that to refuse so sing in public was 'a very false pride':
The present popularity of Music opens so many sources of emolument and reputation to
Singers of ability, that it may be justly asserted, there is not so profitable a line in the
Theatre. A vocal Performer carries strong recommendations into company, and though
some profess a pride above singing in private, yet it is a very false pride; for where is the
difference between entertaining a circle of friends, and thereby promoting benefit interest,
and officiating in public avowedly for a salary.39
Yet to illustrate his point Hastlewood gave the example of a young singer from
a modest background, Miss Hagley, whose decision to embark on a professional
career he seemed to condone, though not without taking rhetorical precautions. He
insisted upon her parents' care to protect the girl and endeavoured to negotiate a
compromise between contradictory values: the girl's professional status must be
shown to be acceptable; her talent was natural and therefore her devoting herself to
the art was inevitable; her parents were shown to be aware of the risks implied by
the choice of that profession ('a profession so dangerous to female rectitude'); and,
finally, only her parents' difficult financial circumstances could explain why they
had envisaged such a career for their daughter:
Miss HAGLEY was early introduced to Public Life, and therefore we presume she is not
unwilling to display her talents in private. Her father kept an Ale-house at the top of
Sackville-Street, where she was remarked for her vivacity and a pretty voice, which
36 Chedzoy, 131, 139.

37 'Johnson, with all the high spirit of a Roman senator, exclaimed: "He resolved wisely
and nobly to be sure. He is a brave man. Would not a gentleman be disgraced by hav-
ing his wife singing publicly for hire? No, Sir, there can be no doubt here. I know not
if I should not prepare myself for a public singer, as readily as let my wife be one".'
James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (London, 1791).
38 Dawe, 3.
39 Hastlewood, I, 203.
!54 The Invisible Woman
induced several friends to point out the Stage as the proper place for exerting those powers
which Nature had bestowed upon her. Her parents, however, declined initiating her in a
profession so dangerous to female rectitude; nor was it until their circumstances were
considerably deranged, that they consented to her being apprenticed to Mr. LINLEY.
[... ] Her voice, though not strong, is plaintive and agreeable; her person neat and genteel;
her stile evidently copied from Mrs. CROUCH, to whom she has proved a very good
substitute, and with a little more practice she will, no doubt, become a favourite with the
Public. 40
In other words, such a profession would not have been acceptable for a girl
belonging to a different social milieu; and, even in a modest family, being a singer
was acceptable only provided the girl was morally perfect and her parents extremely
careful.
There remains nonetheless that, alongside those reservations concerning the
morality of the singers, some of them did exert a deep fascination upon their
audiences. Elizabeth Linley's father seems to have realized all the benefit that could
accrue from the charm evinced by his daughter, linked to her vocal talent. And
paradoxically, while for a young man aspiring to rise into good society, being married
to a professional singer could be a real social drawback, singers were often courted
by admirers belonging to the aristocracy. There are several documented cases of
singers who were 'abducted' from the stage, so to say, to become the mistress of a
wealthy aristocrat, such as Mrs Davis, after the Restoration, who was Charles II's
mistress and had a child with him, or Miss Campion who was the mistress of the
Duke of Devonshire. 41 Actress Sarah Kemble (Mrs Siddons) is reported to have
benefited from the munificence of rich noble families towards her. 42 Mrs Robinson
secretly married the earl of Peterborough and left the stage soon afterwards. 43 Before
her marriage to Sheridan, Elizabeth Linley had been courted by Walter Long, an
elderly bachelor who was one of the wealthiest men in Wiltshire. Long offered
£1,000 to Thomas Linley, the singer's father, to make up for the loss that would
inevitably result from her giving up her career when they married. 44
What was taking place through this fascination exerted by young and beautiful
professional singers on members of the upper classes was in fact a modification, or
transfer, of roles. The singer was not perceived principally as an artist, but first and
foremost as an object of desire. The wealthy aristocrats who courted these singers
and hoped to seduce them and shower gifts and riches upon them, lent credence to
the stereotype of a morally suspect profession since they actually transformed some
of these singers into kept mistresses. This is what explains the doubtful pun about
an Italian singer, Signora POZ.I, to be found in a book entitled A.B.C.Dario Musico
(1780): 'One of the Buffa's at the Opera. She has a very fme voice, and is a very
40 Hastlewood, I, 203-205.
4I ' [... ] a young woman of low extraction, unhappy in a beautiful person and a fine voice.'
Hawkins, II, n. 754.
43 Fiske, 64.
44 Chedzoy, 45.
Profession: Siren-The Ambiguous Status of Professional Women Musicians !55
fine woman. Though she has been under a great many men of ability, she still wants
instruction. ' 45
A gift for stage-performance, sprightliness, charm and beauty, all linked to a
beautiful voice, were therefore qualities in a singer that were prized almost above
the vocal technique, even if, of course, the greatest artists were those whose vocal
talent was real. In Hastlewood 's portrait of Miss Crouch, it is interesting to see that
her beauty and charm were set almost on a par with the qualities of her voice and
her talent as a performer. The author suggested that those professional qualities of
hers would not have been valued so much if the listener had not been predisposed
into admiring her by her charm and beauty:
We now introduce a Lady, who is universally allowed to be the most beautiful that ever
graced the English Stage. The symmetry of her countenance and person, the soft
fascination of her smile, and the unaffected sweetness of her manner, excite the
admiration even of females. But when those personal accomplishments have the addition
of a melodious refined pipe, with great talents as an Actress to recommend them, they
become irresistible;-hence the sudden bursts of applause that so often follow the
exertions of Mrs. CROUCH.46
Conversely, Hastlewood did not hesitate to cntlctze Anna Storace for her
coarseness and lack of beauty. 47 He insisted upon the importance of a singer's
physical beauty to succeed in her career, provided she knew how to use it well, and,
as Adam Smith, he did not refrain from using the word 'prostitution':
To a woman in London who is inclined to make the most of it, a pretty face is indisputably
a fortune. By that alone, we see females advanced from the most abject situations to the
most affluent and splendid. If examined minutely, the Cyprian Dames of this city will be
found to be in general of very humble extraction. Beauty, in whatever garb, tempts the
one sex, and riches seldom fails to prevail with the other. The drudgery of servitude is
readily deserted by those young women whose minds are uncultivated by education; who
dread not the resentment of relations; and who delight more in the tawdry dress of
prostitution than the bread of virtuous industry. 48
Writing about Miss Tidswell, Hastlewood was careful to distinguish between the
woman and the actress:
We frequently see her in parts the most obnoxious to human nature; such as Courtezans,
and those of the most sanguinary kind, as Leonora in the Inconstant, and Louisa, in Love
Makes a Man, &c. &c. Though we must hold in abhorrence those characters, however
45 Anon, A.B.C.Dario Musico (Bath, 1780) 39. The italics are the original author's.
47 'Her person is short and lusty, her complexion very dark. If she inspired amorous sen-
timent it must be more by her vivacity than her appearance, as her voice, manner and
tout ensemble are very coarse.' Hastlewood, I, 129.
chaste the person who represents them, yet as they certainly must be represented by
somebody, and when we consider that the Manager is absolute, we should separate the
Actress from the woman, and applaud her discretion for not displaying those wanton
gestures which naturally distinguish that description of women, and would prove
extremely offensive to female delicacy.49
However, in the portrait he drew of Mrs Edwards, both a singer and a woman of
easy virtue, he linked the actress's moral qualities and the parts she played. Through
an insidious shift, he thus erased the actual border-line between the part and the
person, the character and the artist enacting it, or morality on the stage and morality
in real life:
An eagerness to rise in one's profession is greatly to be commended, and Mrs. Edwards

spares no artifice to accelerate her advancement that a pretty woman can avail herself of.
Mr. Kelly is an excellent musician, and she an agreeable woman, therefore he has taken
some pains to improve her. She personated several characters with ability last Winter, in
particular Lucy, in The Beggars Opera, for which her figure and manner are peculiarly
adapted.
Her person is rather short, and very lusty; her face pretty, though her eyes are very
small. For Singing, in any other parts than Chambermaids, her voice wants compass, but
in parts of low Comedy, she proves very usefuJ.5°
The intimation is that, being of low birth and morally dubious, Mrs Edwards
naturally excelled in the parts of women of easy virtue. Most singers came from
modest backgrounds and only chose this profession out of necessity. Hastlewood
thought that the profession could be a stopgap solution for well-educated young
ladies and prevent them from prostituting themselves:
The few laudable employments to which indigent females can turn, accounts in a great
measure for the numbers we see parading the streets for the purpose of prostitution, with
chearfulness in their looks, but generally melancholy in their hearts. The Stage affords an
honourable subsistence to those young women who have been genteely educated: and
from necessity only did Miss TIDSWELL embrace the profession. 5 1
The difference between the two stations was therefore not very great. It was
more a question of degree than nature. In both cases, such women made a living by
using their charm. It was therefore essential for a singer who intended to protect her
good name to give visible signs of very high moral standards. Failing this, her career
itself might suffer from it, as was the case for the Mrs Wilson mentioned by
Hastlewood, about whom it is difficult to know exactly whether it was her morals,
or her lack of work or talent, which was the true cause of the dwindling ofher fame:
Mrs. Wilson might undoubtedly have risen in her profession, had her industry been equal
to her natural ability. Her person, countenance, and voice, are excellently calculated for
the Stage; but negligence has brought her into disrepute; and whether from a supposed
deficiency in point of talent, or that morality is attended to by the Managerical Priest, she
does not now appear to so much advantage as formerly. 52
One of the ways to preserve her reputation was for the singer to sing nothing but
oratorios. In this way, the religious character of the works performed, the very
setting of the performance, and the supposed refinement and social distinction of the
audience, all reflected on the performers themselves. Alan Chedzoy has remarked
that Elizabeth Linley's repertoire almost exclusively consisted of passages from
Handel's oratorios, as well as a few poems by Shakespeare set to music by Thomas
Augustine Arne, and that she never sang anything light or frivolous. 53
As can be gathered from all this, the status of female singers was therefore quite
ambiguous. Adulated, courted and showered in presents as they were, they were
nonetheless also considered with suspicion and even accused of low morals or vice.
Born in modest circumstances, they fascinated the members of the higher classes
and some of them even managed to make their way up into their ranks. In all cases,
their femininity was a cause both for strong attraction, and for mistrust. The
professional female singer was thus not fully recognised as such, that is, as a fully-
fledged professional. Significantly, the general mode of representation of these
artists reveals that their talent was almost always attributed to a natural gift rather
than to their work, as we shall now see.
The siren's nature
The practice of any profession requires some trammg. Now, although one can
occasionally learn as one is reading that such a singer had been apprenticed to such or
such master-Miss Hagley to Linley, 54 Mrs Anastasia Robinson to Dr Croft, 55 Miss
Harrop to Joah Bates, or Miss Kennedy to Dr Arne, 56 for instance--one is generally
surprised to notice how little interested the contemporary chroniclers were in the
musical training of professional female musicians. Nor is there much mention of
work, rehearsals, effort, tiredness, while there is no doubt that the practice of such a
profession required a lot of exertion and sacrifices. 57 Conversely, most authors
insisted upon the natural gifts of the artists considered. OfFrancesca Cuzzoni, Burney
53 Chedzoy, 11.
56 A.B.C.Dario Musico, 26.
57 Roger Fiske notes that Miss Leake sang in My Grandmother at Drury Lane the day
before she was due to sing in The Children in the Wood in Birmingham. Considering the
travelling conditions at the time, this gives a good idea of the hardships of the profes-
sion. Fiske, 273.
!58 The Invisible Woman
wrote that she had been endowed by nature with a 'clear, sweet and flexible' voice. He
stresses that she had been instructed by an eminent professor, Lanzi, but he explains
her ability to execute divisions easily, not by her technique, but by what he calls 'a
native warble' .58 Similarly, Hawkins insisted upon the natural gifts of the great singers
of the Restoration. 59 The anonymous author of A.B.C.Dario Musico also contrasted
Miss Kennedy's natural qualities with the teaching she had received from Dr Arne:
K.NN.DY. An English woman, apprenticed to the late Doctor Arne. She has the finest
contr'alto voice that has been heard for many years. Nature has been so bountiful to her,
that, on her account, we hardly have occasion to lament the loss of her able master, so
well qualified to teach her to sing and speak articulately. 60
In order to draw the portrait of Faustina Bordoni, Burney underlines the beauty
of her face and figure, without really insisting upon her musical qualities
themselves, those 'professional perfections' which remain undefined:
[ ... ]her professional perfections were enhanced by a beautiful face, a symmetric figure,
though of small stature, and a countenance and gesture on the stage, which indicated an
entire intelligence and possession of the several parts she had to represent. 61
Similarly, Mrs Cibber captivated her audiences, Burney wrote, thanks to 'her
native sweetness of voice and powers of expression' and the fact she was a 'truly
interesting person' .62 One was moved by Anna de Amicis's elegance and 'natural
charm' .63 According to Hawkins, in the rivalry between Cuzzoni and Faustina, the
men were generally on the latter's side simply because she was 'a more agreeable
woman than Cuzzoni' .64 Such remarks also applied to actresses, and Hastlewood
remarked that it was nature which had endowed Mrs Siddons with her talent. And
Fanny Burney, although she was a woman herself, called Elizabeth Linley a siren or
a nymph and did not fail to highlight the importance of her physical beauty: '[She]
engrossed all eyes, ears, and hearts.' 65 Indeed, the very term 'siren' often came under
the pen of numerous authors when they endeavoured to praise a female singer. 66
58 Burney, II, 736.

60 A.B.C.Dario Musico, 26.
61 Burney, II, 738.
62 Burney, II, I 003.
65 Frances Burney, The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney [1773], ed. Lars E.
Troide (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) I, 248.
66 'The Faustina and Cuzzoni, two sirens gifted with different enchanting powers, which
they exercised afterwards in England to the destruction of theatrical tranquillity, and,
indeed, of good neighbourhood among the adherents of the contending parties.' Burney,
II, 907. Elizabeth Linley was nicknamed 'the syren of Bath'. The Westminster
Magazine, March 1773, quoted in The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, n.
249. Hastlewood called Mrs. Crouch 'Our fair Syren' and Mrs. Billington '[a] Syren of
the Stage'. Hastlewood, I, 274; II, 195. &c.
An anonymous poem written when Mrs. Crouch left the stage and quoted by
Hastlewood resorts to the divine metaphor and stresses the beauty of her angel-like
face and the total absence of sophistication in her (' unadom' d) art:
And CROUCH, endued with every genteel grace,

A voice celestial, and an angel face:
Sweet harrnonist! whose silver tone impart
The soothing melody that charms the heart;
No more shall I, with th'admiring throng,
Enraptur'd listen to thy magic song
Nor shall I, but by Fancy's powerful aid,
Behold thee as the gentle Adelaide,
Or as Ophelia, claim the tender tear,
While, unadom'd, thy voice shall sooth the ear;
But the prophetic Muse with joy reveals
What merit, ever diffident, conceals:
Delight, sees thee join the tragic train
And in soft numbers pensively complain.
Thine is the skill, and thine the happy art,
With sacred sounds to elevate the heart:
When HANDEL's harmony divinely flows,
With holy rapture every bosom glows;
Aided by thee, we feel th'angelic strain,
And find, well pleas'd, a new CECILIA reign. 67
And it was indeed as Saint Cecilia that Reynolds chose to paint the portrait of
Elizabeth Linley/Mrs. Sheridan, in a painting that was exhibited at the Royal
Academy in 1775.68 Some six years previously, Elizabeth Sheridan had sung
Dryden's Ode to Saint Cecilia set to music by Henry Purceli.69 The painting
contributed to a process of idealization of the musician (against the backdrop of the
canonization of a certain repertoire and of the glorification of great British artists)
and left the 'professional' aspect of Elizabeth Linley's achievement in the
background. Thus sanctified, the singer became nothing less than the allegorical and
almost abstract embodiment of music, from which all notion of work and
mechanical effort had been discarded.
Thus the female professional musician or actress was worth something for her
person ('her truly interesting person', to use Burney's phrase again) 70 and not so
much for her art. She was able to acquire respectability provided she were well-
educated and had natural charm. Her professionalism was implicitly negated since
68 Joshua Reynolds, Mrs. Sheridan as St. Cecilia, 1775-The National Trust, Waddesdon
Manor and the Courtauld Institute.
69 Chedzoy, 156.
70 See note 62 above.
one considered that it was owing to her natural gifts, not to a painstaking acquisition
of a know-how, that she could move the listener. The singer's respectability was
down to her intrinsic feminine nature, and not to her 'science', but only under the
condition that that feminine nature remained controlled by the social norms of
decency and propriety. A female musician could not therefore become a
'professional' artist in the same way as a male musician. It was her femininity which
was presented on the stage and which mattered primarily.
The study of the work of professional female musicians in England in the
eighteenth century comes up against the difficulty of having a clear picture of the
concrete reality of this work. One is soon led to tackle the question in terms of
representations, as most primary sources tend to obliterate the practical details
which might enable one to build up a clearer idea, or draw a better picture, of the
material, practical and technical aspects of the profession, beyond the common
stereotypes of the period. This undoubtedly reveals that the women who exerted this
profession were on the border-line between two social classes. Though they
generally came from the middling orders, professional musicians practised an art
that was also cultivated, in the private sphere, by young ladies belonging to polite
society, while the latter were excluded from the world of work. This ambiguity
tended to blur the distinctions and led to a feeling of mistrust.
The study of the representation of female professional musicians reveals that
there existed some unconscious desire to de-professionalize their work. The status
of professional musician was more or less explicitly denied, or subsumed under all
the 'natural' feminine qualities, such as corporeal beauty, sensibility, or
sprightliness. Like the castrati who sang at the Italian opera at the beginning of the
century, professional women musicians were the objects both of attraction and
repulsion and they were seen as occupying a strange social locus, half-way between
prostitution and a genuine highly-paid professionalism based upon skills and
abilities that were difficult to acquire. Neither the commercialization of female
music-making, nor that of femininity itself, seemed compatible with the roles
normally devolved to women in polite society, hence the attempt to reconstruct the
legitimacy of the professional group of female singers through idealization.
Chapter 13
The Lee Sisters: Eighteenth-Century

Commercial Heroines
Marion Marceau
The story of the Lee sisters is one of supreme practicality, broad-ranging talents,
strength of character, and not least great entrepreneurial skills. Here were two
shrewd pragmatists who used their abilities to take advantage of changing social
conditions. They provided themselves with a life-style not merely reliant upon
wealth, but an enjoyment of wide popularity and social position, simultaneously
leading the way for the actions of a whole new generation of enterprising women.
Sophia and Harriet Lee were two among seven children I born to professional
actors John and Anna-Sophia Lee. Their mother was of Scottish stock, born in Porto,
Portugal. Her family worked in the wine trade (a fact which may throw a little light
on a source of the sisters' commercial flair, but none on any previous link to their
mother's chosen profession). John Lee, alongside whom his wife so often
performed, was far more accomplished on stage than she, but somewhat highly
controversial off it. Born in 1725, he enjoyed a good education at Merchant Taylors'
school in London. Before treading the boards professionally, he was a law clerk in
an eminent London solicitor's office. According to the Annals of the Edinburgh
Stage by Dibdin, he appeared at Goodman's Fields Theatre in October 1745, as
Conde in The Massacre at Paris, the first of numerous performances there. In 1747,
having regularly appeared in many established London venues, Lee started work in
Garrick's company at Drury Lane. He was considered by some as almost Garrick's
equal. This was to be the cause of many problems. The rivalry-from personal
ambition and financial aspiration-was on both sides and prompted numerous
disputes. The Thespian Dictionary remarks:
This actor was not without considerable pretentious, but they were greatly allayed by his
vanity. He had a good person, a good voice, and a more than ordinary knowledge in his
This number does not correspond with other documentation. It is derived from the
following. In The Annals of the Edinburgh Stage with an Account of the Rise and
Progress of Dramatic Writing in Scotland, ed. James C. Dibdin(Edinburgh, 1888)
80, John Lee himself states that at the time of his bankruptcy in 1755, he had 'two
children destitute in Edinburgh' and 'two more waiting in London' with his wife.
Three more children (Harriet, George Augustus and Ann) are known to have been
born well after this date.
profession, which he shewed without exaggeration; but he wanted to be placed in the

chair of Garrick, and, in attempting to reach this, he often deranged his natural abilities. 2
In a move that upset Garrick, Lee deserted Drury Lane for the rival Covent
Garden, with money and professional opportunity thought sure to be behind the
change. Although very successful here, he was forced back to Drury Lane by
Garrick when it was proved he had breached his articles. In April 1752, Lee
completed this stormy contract and went to join his wife at Smock Alley Theatre,
Dublin. But having played just one performance (Romeo to Anna-Sophia's Juliet),
he took off for Edinburgh to accept a position as manager of Canongate Concert
Hall, charged with raising it from 'decay' .3 There is no doubt that John Lee was
pretentious and egotistical. There is little argument too he was very creative and
forward thinking. He set about reforming theatrical practices in his new capacity,
including the elimination of audience seats on the stage and the licentious practice
of visits by gentlemen to actresses behind the scenes. He made improvements in
stage settings, introduced new ideas in stage direction, and broke new ground in
actors' conditions with annual wages and tours. Dibdin credits him with 'having
been the first to raise the status and morale of the theatre in Edinburgh' .4
Nevertheless, his success in the Scottish capital was undermined once again by
eccentricity and a 'peculiar oddity of temper' .s Worse, he was unreliable,
particularly with regard to money. The first of at least three bankruptcies occurred
in February 1755. Accompanied by a two month spell in jail, 'his furniture was sold
off and his children turned out into the street'. 6
Lee remained a controversial figure throughout a life that involved moving from
post to post (both Dublin and Edinburgh again, then London), in a mix of jobs.
These positions included playwright and adaptor, 7 theatrical producer, manager,
plain actor and even teacher of elocution late in his life. He fmally settled in Bath in
1778 as director of Orchard Street Theatre. Lee seems to have been at his best when
in charge, as he was in Bath and Canongate. Leadership applied itself well to the
egotism he so often displayed in the theatrical world. When not in command, it
seems he was even more easily embroiled in disputes about money than otherwise.
These caused him to write argumentative tracts to various figures and authorities,
few of which afforded him much benefit.
From this parental background the sisters acquired two major assets. Firstly
there was culture and education, insisted on by their eccentric father. Secondly came
worldy experience that gave rise to a pragmatic wisdom, a necessity forced by the
2 James Cundie, The Thespian Dictionary, or Dramatic Biography of the Present Age
(London, 1805).
3 Philip H. Highfill, Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses... 1660-1800
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1973) 203.
4 Dibdin 72.
5 Highfill 203.
6 Dibdin 80.
7 He was charged with having committed 'four Literary Murders'. See Highfill 203.
The Lee Sisters 163
often harsh consequences of his actions. For the most part the children would seem
to have been well schooled: 'his [John Lee's] daughters highly educated, had mixed
much with the best society' .8 Nevertheless, they had to endure the ups and downs
pressed upon them by the inconsistencies of their father's personality. On the
positive side, there seems no likelihood they were detrimentally dragged around
from one theatre location to another, whereas they did benefit from mixing in theatre
society through acting in some plays, and became well travelled. Sophia, for
example, visited Winchester from where she got the idea for her first published
novel, The Recess. On the down side, a family of seven children was quite a task of
care in these volatile circumstances, and at least four were made destitute (albeit
perhaps temporarily) by John Lee's 1755 bankruptcy. The family had also to suffer
the loss of two of their junior number, both early in the lives of Sophia and Harriet.
Sophia's strengths were soon to be tested. Before reaching the age of twenty
(and when writing her first novel), her mother was taken badly ill. Sophia was
obliged to nurse her, and did so until the day Anna-Sophia died at Craven Hall in
September 1770. This was an abrupt end to Sophia's childhood. She had become
leader and guide for the rest of the family, a second 'mother' .9 But crisis was about
to strike from another yet familiar source. The imprudent financial dealings of her
father saw Sophia thrown into jail less than two years after her mother's death.
Typical of her, she responded positively to this latest trauma. From inside her cell
she conceived a first play, The Chapter of Accidents which was to become not
merely a huge on-stage success 10 but a best-seller in book form too. There were at
least fourteen editions published between 1780 and 1883. Its achievements were to
set the base from which all other activities could be spawned.
It was not until eight years after its conception in 1779 that the now completed
work was sent to the stage director of Covent Garden, a man called Harris. At first,
Harris found great favour, although suggesting a number of changes. These
amounted to adapting the play into an opera format and suppressing particular
passages. Then Harris seems to have had a change of mind. Apparently, he had been
presented with a play similar to Sophia's by another author. She, unhappy with the
procrastination that followed, took her work directly to Covent Garden's great rival,
Coleman of the Haymarket. Coleman was immediately impressed. He saw the
play's literary worth and commercial potential, but in its original form. He had
Sophia revert it back, and put on the production. It received immediate acclaim. The
first performance on August 5th 1780, to a packed theatre, won 'very warm and
general applause' .ll Some critics did look for faults. There were parallels drawn
with Diderot's ?ere de Famille (1760) which may have raised eyebrows. In the
Biographia Dramatica in 1782 one can read: 'Sorry are we to observe from the
8 Susan Sibbald, The Memoirs of Susan Sibbald. 1783-1812 (London: John Lane, the
Bodley Head Ltd, 1926) 34-35.
9 Harriet and Sophia Lee, The Canterbury Tales, preface by Harriet Lee (London:
Pandora Press, 1989) XVIII.
10 Bath Chronicles (30 May 1782): 'Miss Lee's Chapter of Accidents continues to be
received in London with the most universal applause.'
11 Bath Journal (14 August 1780).
spirit that discovers itself in the preface of her only dramatic performance that she
seems to possess much of her father's petulance and irascibility'. 12
But Sophia drove onwards. Instead of plunging headlong behind this new-found
success, she used the income to release her father from prison, then set up a
provision of financial security for the younger family members. Rather than
investing in a full-time writing career, she purchased a boarding-school in Bath.
This choice was to produce a comprehensive range of benefits for the Lees.
Together with Harriet, Charlotte and the younger Ann, all of whom could be
employed as teachers, Sophia led the construction of a way of life that gave stability,
independence and status. The school started in a small way, with just twenty-three
pupils in mediocre surroundings. It finished twenty-two years later triple the size,
located in the most prestigious part of the town, and having outgrown itself twice.
Yet, the school was not so unlike others in Bath, an area which had established
itself as a prime centre for the private school market at that period. As Boaden puts
it, 'they did not profess to teach what could be taught no where else' .1 3 What was
the secret of this new success by the Lees in such a competitive marketplace? To
begin with it was a question of research. Charlotte, the eldest, tested the ground by
taking a post at the prominent Rosco's school (which incidentally did not survive
the test of time itself, falling into liquidation in 1782). She then opened her own day-
school at Fountain Buildings in July 1780. Sophia meanwhile, was teaching too, but
privately. When all was set, the Lees placed advertisements for their new venture in
the Bath Chronicle. One such, in December 1780, reads:
Miss Lee, and sisters, respectfully address their terms to Parents inclined to entrust them
with the important care of educating their Daughters.-For boarding and instructing
young ladies in English and French grammatically, Writing, Arithmetic, and fine Works.
The school opened at 9, Vineyards on 16th January 1781. Follow-up adverts

continued through February with one of these somewhat bizarrely coinciding with
the publication of the obituary of John Lee, who had died at his house in New King
Street that same month. School fees of £25 per annum plus a two-guinea entrance,
were set at a price that deliberately undercut Rosco's at £35 per annum with a five-
guinea entrance. Within little over a year the school, immediately successful, was
being forced a move to larger premises (7, Belmont). Almost at once the Lees were
able to enlist a full quota of twenty-four boarders at the new location. Sound
marketing had always to be backed by teaching quality and organization. The sisters
were endowed with these skills in some abundance. In an interwoven partnership,
each sister undertook appropriate roles within a balanced timetable. Sophia, the
natural leader, was headmistress. She was known amongst pupils for her qualities of
courage, energy and strong personality, and respected almost to the point of fear.
Harriet, on the other hand, was spontaneous and hearty, closer to the girls. Charlotte,
12 David Erskine Baker, Biographia Dramatica, or a Companion to the Playhouse

(London, 1782) I.
13 Boaden, Memoirs of Mrs Siddons, with Anecdotes of Authors and Actors (London,
1831) I, 211.
The Lee Sisters 165
already an experienced teacher, and Ann, reserved and perhaps not as active as the
others in school life, made up the initial compliment.
The regime took on a sage mix of firmness and fairness. There was a close
teacher/pupil relationship, strict but just discipline. A carrot-and-stick approach
rewarded deserving pupils but did not shy from exacting punishment when required,
although never corporal. Whatever the commercial and pupil rivalries with similar
establishments like Colbourne and Rosco, the Lees continued to march forward. The
sisters were proving themselves practical women, gifted with a sense of prudent
management. The school expanded again. After 7, Belmont it was on to Belvedere
House in 1786. By the 90s this grand location was housing some fifty-two boarders
alongside twenty-two day pupils. It required an expansion of staffing. Three more
full-time teachers were recruited together with some specialists, such as a dance
teacher considered the best in the area. As for Charlotte, she was to leave in 1792 to
marry in Bristol, although sadly said to be to a man 'of mean station' .14
Yet for Sophia and Harriet the school's burgeoning prosperity was still only one
part of their activities and achievements. They were not to be confined to a single
string in the bow. Simultaneous to running the school's curriculum, Sophia at least,
continued to teach privately in pupils' houses. More impressive still, both Sophia
and Harriet wrote prolifically-twelve works in total, but some running to six
extensive volumes. These included plays, poems, translations and novels. With the
exception of The Assignation (an unpublished play by Sophia put on just once in
1807) and The Three Strangers (an adaptation of Harriet's Kruitzner played just four
times in 1825), all were published 1780-1805, a period virtually simultaneous to that
of their school-teaching enterprises. Using a judicious mixture of historical, gothic
and sentimental tradition, again they triumphed, becoming widely read and
acknowledged even beyond Britain. They used their cultural heritage and market
insight to meet the expectations of a new fast-rising readership eager to experience
greater levels of literary sensation. Among their writings, two works stand out
particularly: Sophia's The Recess (1783-85), which went on to be translated into
French, German, Spanish and Portuguese, and the jointly co-authored Canterbury
Tales (1797-1805).15 But the pattern for all their literary work was the same:
understand the market, play to the market, move with the market.
And the market had certainly been moving fast, driven by several factors. Firstly
there was a change in the publishing world. Patrons had been replaced by
commercial publishers, the likes of Cadell and Robinson. This new breed saw their
primary function as providing books that public sentiment requested, in other words
those the public would buy. Another development was that of lending libraries. This
innovation was responsible for tapping into a new readership who could not buy or
14 Hester Lynch Thrale, Thraliana, The Diary of Mrs Hester Lynch Thrale, ed. K. C.
Balderston, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951) 695 (note).
15 Montague Summers, The Gothic Quest. A History of the Gothic Novel (London: The
Fortune Press, 1938) 164: 'The Recess is one of the landmarks of English literature and
it is difficult to understand how those who have not read at least The Recess and the
Canterbury Tales can claim any right to be heard when they discourse upon and trace
the history of English fiction.'
did not always wish to. The scene had set about a revolution. The Lees exploited the
situation. They targetted new, young, middle-class female readers who wanted more
than tears and the over-moralization of Richardson's sentimental novels. To them,
the Lees offered excitement, adventure and a way to withdraw from everyday life,
but through characters with whom they could identify. In The Recess, Sophia
explored the concepts of madness and death, and wove them into spectacular events.
She chose Mary Stuart as an illustrious figure, but gave her a human and tragical
dimension. Likewise, she mirrored the conditions of eighteenth-century women
through the novel's central topic of imprisonment and the beginning of liberation.
Romantic popular literature was taken to new levels of enrichment.1 6
The promotion of middle-class ideals was a further method of attracting this
readership's approval. In The Errors of Innocence (1786), virtue was not to be
considered a birthright, but one derived from education. Further challenges to
traditional thinking were provoked by setting some tales during the American and
French Revolutions when there was implicit criticism of monarchies and aristocracy.
The sisters galvanized their public in other ways too. They adapted to changes
in fashions and taste as they happened. They responded to a revival of sentiment for
the nation's past together with feelings of nationalism. The glorious Elizabethan
period was selected as the background for The Recess. It had high-profile figures
like Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Norfolk, as well as impressive settings such
as old castles and ruined abbeys. Protestant Anglicanism also was favoured above
Catholicism to reinforce nationalist feeling. In addition to using a mosaic of
different fashionable literary trends, 17 Sophia and Harriet sprinkled the frameworks
of past history with trappings of contemporary aesthetics and innovations. The
grounds of sixteenth-century Kenilworth Castle were given the elements of a
Capability Brown landscape whilst the castle itself became a factory.
The Lees even utilized the concept of public suspense to help promote their
work. They resorted to a familiar ploy: market testing. Only the first of The Recess's
three volumes was published in 1783, the second and third not until two years later.
By this time the public's appetite for the full story was well and truly whetted.
Sophia's obituary notes that 'the success of this work far surpassed her expectations:
its interest was increased by her publishing only the first volume, in order to feel the
ground' . 18 The process was repeated for the Canterbury Tales, published in five
separate volumes over eight years.
To achieve their literary aims, the sisters did not entirely sacrifice themselves
to originality. They allowed themselves clever use of the work of others. They
16 J. M.S. Tompkins, foreword, The Recess by Sophia Lee (New York: Arno Press, 1972)
III-V: 'The modem reader, who turns the pages of this best-seller of his great-great-
grandmother's day, will find in them some of the permanent attractions of popular
romantic literature ... The Recess holds a worthy place in the library of strong imagina-
tion ... In its own day, the book was widely read and praised.'
17 Harriet Lee, preface to the Canterbury Tales, XVIII: 'The first English romance that
blended interesting fiction with historical events and characters, embellishing both by
picturesque description.'
18 Gentleman's Magazine XCIV, 1824. Obituary. Sophia Lee.
The Lee Sisters 167
borrowed materials and adapted, rearranged and trimmed fellow writers' works.
Both English and French sources were used in this pursuit. The Lees were
commercialists rather than purists. From English literature there are the influences
of Chaucer, Clara Reeve, Thomas Leland and Horace Walpole; from the French
something of the plot and topics of Prevot's Cleveland (1731-39). Elsewhere are
parallels to Baculard d'Amaud and Diderot. This element of their work bears
some hallmarks of their father's 'Literary Murders', but the sisters were more
talented writers than he, and the finished products far more subtle. Yet it would
entirely be wrong to think of the Lees as mere plagiarists. Sophia and Harriet were
bold and creative in their own right. They experimented with new ideas and were
responsible for the introduction of new literary devices such as the 'triple-decker'
and the concept of' in medias res beginning'. They advanced what later became
known as 'pathetic fallacy' as well as the technique of the twin plot. They also
conferred a psychological dimension on the gothic novel and elaborated the
characterization of their protagonists. After them, the gothic novel became
associated with unfortunate love, and the doomed romantic hero became an
accepted figure. Indeed it would be no over-statement to say they greatly
influenced two major writers, Ann Radcliffe and later Lord Byron, together with
a whole generation of popular female writers.
The Lees were as comfortable writing experimentally as they were re-working
the material of others. They simply applied themselves to the market with the
fullest range of tools possible. Unlike their father, they seemed to be
unpretentious. They were able to admit natural weaknesses and thus avoid over-
exposing them. Areas of shortcoming were perhaps mawkishness, heaviness and
a certain disregard for historical accuracy. Sophia and Harriet however, always
worked on their strengths and played hard to them. They concentrated on novels
which adapted well to their way of life. Although they did not excel in poetry and
drama (except with The Chapter ofAccidents), they retained a wide knowledge of
these genres, and used them in their novels. Novels could also draw on fine
individual strengths and style. Harriet's wit and insight were used in her tales to
draw concise and striking portrayals. She also preferred lighter touches and liked
to interweave brief letters into epistolary novels. Clara Lennox ( 1797), a series of
seventy-nine such letters, is a good illustration of this. In contrast, Sophia's work
was strong and powerful. She pressed the literary boundaries by intensifying
effects. There was a greater gloom to her novels, a greater audacity to her social
criticism and a greater boldness to her literary experiments. She was more prolific
than Harriet too. The Recess, with its three volumes of more than three hundred
pages each, was doubled in size by The Life of a Lover (1804) at six volumes,
whilst The Two Emilys occupied the whole of one six-hundred page volume of the
Canterbury Tales.
But for all those individual talents the Lee sisters had one further great strength:
unity. The Canterbury Tales is a perfect example. Written in joint names, the
respective authorship remained hidden until after Sophia's death when Harriet wrote
a new preface in 1832. In it, she admitted Sophia had withdrawn after The Two
Emilys, allowing Harriet to be proeminent:
... she declined taking any future share in the work, and left the additional volumes,
whatever their number might prove, to me, 'in whose mind', as she smilingly observed,
'thick-coming fancies allowed no room for further co-partnership' .19
The concession appears to have been for greater good rather than the result of any
spat between them. Either way, it heralded a sparkling result for the project. Harriet's
references to 'co-partnership', 'coalition' and 'share' suggest that the great regard the
sisters had for each other extended right through their lives into their literary work.
Whatever the intricacies of the sisters' relationship, they both had become cutting
edges of new literary achievements despite some academic criticism.
Notwithstanding their literary and scholastic work, the Lees enjoyed a rich social
life, becoming pillars of a prestigious circle of friends. Along with soirees and visits
to the theatre, the circle provided a way to climb to the highest levels in society and
there gain full recognition. Perhaps more than anything else, this was the sisters'
greatest self-reward for the total of their endeavours. It was proof of their self-
reliance, and they were well-known for their sense of etiquette and religion, so
commensurate with the public standing they had achieved.
The group was composed of figures from the worlds of art, literature and
politics. It even reached beyond England's shores for its number. There were the
Sheridans, Sarah Siddons, and Ann Radcliffe. Sir Thomas Lawrence was another.
He had become a close friend of Sophia's whose genius he first discovered. Then,
alongside local dignitaries like Mrs Piozzi and Mrs Palmer (the wife of the Mayor)
came international flavouring. There were politicians in exile, Italian Count Melzi
D'Eril and Corsican leader General Paoli, together with another Italian, poet
Hippolyte Pindemonte. It seems probable such gatherings were at least sometimes
at Belvedere House. The pride of inmates and their parents might have been swelled
by that connection. There is even a suggestion that the eldest girls would have been
permitted to sit in such company on some evenings.
For the sisters, all these extensive activities required comprehensive
organization. In an efficient rota system, they alternated their writing, socializing
and teaching duties, additionally utilizing each of these to promote the other two. It
worked spectacularly. The three facets blended to form a self-perpetuating whole.
Books sold, social standing reached ever new heights, and Belvedere House became
one of the most renowned and sought-after schools in the country. Its owners held
celebrity status. Even the school's location was to be envied. It stood proudly at the
top of the town with terraces overlooking the beautiful Hedgemead Park, the town
itself and its valley. Its curriculum included a three-yearly held ball in the Bath
Assembly Rooms attended by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of York. Its
pupils (such as Susan Sibbald) belonged to the best families in the land. Belvedere
House was never less than full to capacity as the two previous schools had been. A
waiting list gave vent to the view that numbers of boarders could have doubled if
only space had allowed. The Lees had built a life success that did not merely end
with them. With respect to Belvedere House, it continued at least four decades after
their retirement:
19 Harriet Lee, preface to the Canterbury Tales, XVII.

The Lee Sisters 169
The school had considerable repute, both in their own time and while it was conducted,
after their removal, by Mrs. Broadhurst whose husband, the Rev. Thomas Broadhurst,
was well-known in literary and musical circles in Bath.20
But there was a price to pay. First was a certain diversity of effort, which led to
Harriet remarking that her sister had sacrificed her literary propensity.21 It is hard to
imagine the sisters, interrupted in their writing by the smothered laughters of little
girls at night, take a candle, re-establish order, only to then plunge back into the plot
of their latest written work. Second, and perhaps more critical for Ann, was a denial
of sentimental attachments. Whilst Sophia remained a staunch spinster and Harriet,
attractive with her sharpness and spontaneity, resisted several pressing suitors, Ann
seemed unable to live likewise.
The first of at least two serious attempts to gain the hand of Harriet was made
by a rich young Italian, Marquis Trotti, in 1791-92. The barriers of social position,
religion and nationality proved insurmountable despite the marquis' insistence. The
connection collapsed on both sides. Some six years later it was the tum of William
Godwin, a radical philosopher and reformer (and father of Mary Shelley). The pair
met in Bath in March 1798 during a ten-day stay by Godwin. It was love at first
sight for him. He was fascinated by Harriet's intelligence and wit. In a letter written
in April 1798, he confessed: 'There are so few persons in the world that have excited
that degree of interest in my mind which you have excited .... •22 More
correspondence followed. But although Harriet seemed to him to remain available
according to her letters, her own written note to herself on one of his
communications was somewhat cutting. 'The tone of this letter appears to me to
betray vanity disappointed by the scantiness of the homage it has received, rather
than mortified by any apprehension of discouragement.' 23 She then adds that his
entitlement to be received by her, even simply as an aquaintance, 'has been lost by
his forwardness to employ the privileges, and claim the rights of a more endeared
position'. The doomed Godwin continued to persist and is even known to have
proposed. But in August, Sophia stepped in. Amidst concerns which included
Godwin's atheism, Harriet was persuaded to call a final halt. Any deeper reasons for
the collapse of both Trotti's and Godwin's attempts may never be known. Devotion
20 Jerom Murch, Mrs Barbauld and her Contemporaries (London: Longman, MDCC-
CLXXVII) 134.
21 Harriet Lee, preface to the Canterbury Tales XVIII: 'An interval. .. still elapsed between
the publication of each succeeding volume; not from lack either of inclination or mate-
rials to proceed upon, but "that carking cares", and necessary occupations, engaged the
hours of both sisters; the eldest of whom had, from a very early age, supplied the place
of a mother to the younger branches of her father's family, and became their after-guide
in such duties as left little leisure for the indulgence of a literary propensity. Nor was
this a trifling sacrifice on her part; since her first works enjoyed such popularity as
might have engaged a less affectionate character in a very different career ... '
22 C. Kegan Paul, William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, vol 1, (London,
1876) 299.
23 Paul 301.
to school, social and literary life combined with Harriet's strong self-dependent
personality, and even her feelings for her younger sister Ann's fragility may well
have been decisive. There seemed no great regrets.
But for the over-sensitive Ann, it was different. After a winter of fever and
depression, she made an attempt on her life. While walking with two aquaintances,
she deliberately fell into a river and did not seem bothered to receive help. It was
thought that this episode was brought on by a broken heart, although the object of
her love remained nameless. She survived this first attempt, but tragically not the
second on 23rd September 1805. That morning, she decided to remain in bed while
her sisters went to town. They returned to fmd her suspended from a rope attached
to the top railing of her bed. The verdict was suicide through lunacy.
Ann's actions may have been a turning point in the elder sisters' lives. Having
retired very comfortably from school life and now living in South Lyncombe Gust
south of Bath), they decided to move right away from the area. The choice of
Manchester was linked to the presence there of their surviving brother, George
Augustus. He had become partner in the Manchester cotton-spinning firm of
Phillips and Lee, and was one of a new generation of industrial revolution managers.
The family traits of pragmatism and commercial creativity were shining through
again. George Augustus adopted new inventions for manufacturing, was the first to
employ cast-iron beams to render his mills fire-proof, and became a leader of large
employers in the introduction of gas in workshops. He counted Boulton and Watt
amongst his friends. He was also responsible for many working reforms, and
induced his thousand-strong workforce to raise and administer a fund for mutual
relief in sickness.
But after so many years in the more genteel setting of the West Country, it does
not seem totally surprising that the industrial bustle of a large city such as Manchester
would not suit the sisters for long. They moved back to the South-West, this time to
Monmouthside (a village near Tintern Abbey) before a fmal change to Clifton,
Bristol, for reasons of health and convenience, in 1811. The peace and quiet of the
country was a more suitable setting to the contrasting glamour and fashion of urban
social life. They remained socially active, through for example mixing with the
Porter sisters, but completed no further literary works. In 1823, Sophia contracted a
lung illness. In March of the next year she died in Harriet's arms, aged 74.
Harriet however carried on, showing something of her own individual strengths
and resilience, and that she was not totally dependent on Sophia. As she had herself
remarked earlier, she was 'independent in mind' .24 Harriet kept her social life to the
end. She continued to be busy for an amazing twenty-seven more years before
fmally passing away at Clifton in 1851, aged 94. The 'old lady' had been 'a brilliant
conversationalist to the last, with a fund of interesting anecdotes concerning the
sister whom she so greatly loved and admired' according to Montague Summers. 25
Were the Lee sisters really commercial heroines? Critics may deny it, claiming
plagiarism and short-lived fashion as verification of lack of value and quality in
their literary work. But aside from the fact their writing was only one aspect of their
24 Paul308.
25 Summers 167.
The Lee Sisters 171
commercial life, in many ways these facets help prove the point. The Lees
deliberately attempted to be fashionable and more importantly, saleable. Adapting
good ideas into modem trends as they moved was precisely the game-plan. A purely
classical literary legacy was not foremost in the mind. There was a deliberate
sacrifice of critical acclaim in favour of popular success and fmancial reward. To
make the plan work, they utilized what they had. The heritage of their father's
creative artistry allied to the commercial heritage of both parents was a starting
point. To this they added other qualities. Determination was one. Sophia doggedly
persisted with the commercialization of The Chapter of Accidents and throughout
her career, 'did not bend implicitly before the daily stagyrites [who] armoyed her
with criticism, affecting an extreme morality' .26 Then there was organisation. This
was revealed most clearly in their teaching life. There was nothing which ruled out
use of others' good ideas or demanded a defmitive level of literary quality, other
than the requirements of the book-buying public. The Lees were without doubt
commercially astute. Their pragmatism and entrepreneurial skills, tied to the
movements of the times (these reflected in their writings) enabled them to achieve
their considerable commercial successes.
Just how critical the cultural movements were is another question. Could the Lee
sisters, as women, even with all their skills, have succeeded to the same extent one
hundred years before? Although we can only speculate, one thing is certain: their
actions did represent a lead role in the breaking down of a predominant stereotype,
that of a woman's function being greatly restricted to one of domesticity.
What is more, there are two other factors to be taken into account when judging
the Lees' worth. For these we must look at the emotional drives underlying the
efforts. First there is self-dependence. It was the sisters' drive for self-determination
that was at the heart of their actions. It may have partly come about through the
volatility of family life and the need for security. Nevertheless, this overriding desire
may say more about them than any defiance of British social structure current at the
time. The cause of radical feminism was certainly not paramount. In the 1804
preface of The Life of a Lover, Sophia declares:
The rights and characters of woman have been placed in lights by which the delicacy of
the sex has often been wholly sacrificed to the assertion of a hardy equality with man,
that, even if it assured to us an increase of esteem, would cause an equal deduction of
tenderness: a bad exchange for the sex upon the great scale.27
Yet within the concept of self-dependence there is a paradox, since the sisters
maintained a certain reliance on each other. But this seems to be a wish rather than
a need. They chose to benefit from the mixing together of their complementary
temperaments and styles, whilst each one still retained a fierce autonomy. Sophia
displayed her individual strengths very early in life. Harriet's were to show much
later when she survived her sister by such a long period.
26 Boaden 209.
27 Sophia Lee, preface to The Life of a Lover (London: Robinson, 1804) VIII-IX.
At a deeper level than self-dependence, we may find an even grander quality with
the Lees: that of duty of care. Once again the start might be seen to be within the
circumstances of their father's unreliability and their mother's illness. But perhaps it
begins in earnest after Anna-Sophia's death. This quality was not only Sophia's. In
Harriet we are shown something of it in the protection and support (fully shared by
Sophia) afforded to the unfortunate Ann, and the devotion to Sophia herself. It can
even be seen in their brother. The factory reforms of George Augustus are a simple
case of duty of care to those for whom he was responsible. Within it was a strict
loyalty and a moral fairness. Sophia promised Dr John Elliott, the man tending Anna-
Sophia as she lay dying, that she would dedicate one of her books to him; a promise
she upheld no less than thirteen years later when The Recess was published in 1783.
The Lees carried these principles through into all facets of their lives.
Perhaps self-dependence and duty of care were indeed the critical factors. If so,
by the results of Sophia and Harriet's actions we can observe, both these drives were
truly fulfilled. Then we could ask the literary critic the following question: who can
justify the claim it was not possible for Sophia to have successfully concentrated her
writing on so-called classics, should she have single-mindedly followed a literary
career alone? The motivations that would have stopped her surely were the more
noble: self-determination, and above all an active concern for the welfare of those
she loved most. Yes, the Lee sisters were commercial heroines without doubt, but
always with a humane touch.
Chapter 14
Eighteenth-Century Images
of Working Women
Isabelle Baudino
This chapter explores various pictorial representations of eighteenth-century

working women in Britain. It is focused on genre paintings and engravings since the
strict definition of genres, which guided painters' practice, excluded images of
industrious people from history paintings or idealized landscapes, and even from
portraits. The representation of reality was codified as tight aesthetic rules provided
guidelines to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate subjects. William
Hogarth (1697-1764) was questioning these rules when he painted pictures such as
Heads of Servants or The Shrimp Girl in the 1750s. These compositions stand as
mere exceptions since work was not considered as an artistic subject and it was
never represented per se but appeared rather in the setting of everyday life scenes.
Hence the two engraved series dedicated to London's street criers by Marcellus
Laroon (1679-1772) and Francis Wheatley (17 47-1801) are worth attention and
study. Given the scarcity of sources documenting this question, analysing these
engravings allows a comparison between representations of the same social reality
and an inquiry into their evolution over one hundred years. In addition to drawing
up a disciplined image of the Metropolis' industrious crowd, Laroon offered in his
Cryes of the City ofLondon, published in 1687, a typology of women at work in the
streets. The variations in costume were used by the artist to introduce a hierarchy
among female street sellers which tended to value those who were most in
accordance with the contemporary feminine ideal. One century later, Wheatley, in
his Cries of London exhibited to the public between 1792 and 1795, turned this
typology into a stereotype, that of the young and beautiful street-seller. He thus
obliterated even further the laborious character of women's occupations while
emphasizing their natural roles as mothers.
To understand this euphemization of women's labour better, the analysis of
Laroon 's and Wheatley's Cries has been complemented by a study of contemporary
urban conversation pieces. Despite their small format these compositions presented
an abundance of doll-like characters involved in social interaction. These
representations of street traders or domestic servants, by various artists, illustrate
their common denial of the practical reality of women's work. Even if evidence
suggests the permanence of women's work in practise, it was obviously concealed
and ignored in pictorial discourse. This chapter ultimately aims at understanding
how and why such images were constructed and appreciated in eighteenth-century
Britain.
Women in Marcellus Laroon's Cryes of The City of London
Approaching Marcellus Laroon's engraved series from the point of view of numbers
is telling enough since men outnumber women. One third of the 'Cryes' only is
dedicated to women and this may lead the spectator to believe that there were fewer
women than men pacing up and down London streets in search of means of
livelihood. Indeed in the title to the volume of seventy-two engravings published in
1687, Laroon indicated that his cries had been 'Drawne after the Life,' a mention
that promoted his practice to that of a portrait painter but also encouraged the reader
to view his 'Cryes' as a realistic depiction of the activity in London's streets rather
than as the artist's invention. Laroon included many realistic elements in his
engravings-even the portraits of well-known London figures-that all contribute
to achieve an effet de reel. Yet, despite the reference to London in the title, this
collective portrait is situated in unidentified settings since no precise reference to
any of the capital's monuments or features can be found. Relief is given to this
depiction of anonymous characters walking anonymous streets by the casting of
their shade which adds depth to each engraving. Despite lacking geographical
context, the series is not devoid of temporality. Women, since we are mainly
concerned with them, appear to be working outdoors all year round crying whatever
seasonal good they can fmd while they are dressed accordingly. As a consequence,
the hot pears seller wears pattens and a cape whereas the cherry girl goes about in a
low-cut dress, with her sleeves rolled up. Not only do these images refer to the cycle
of the seasons but also to the various ages of a woman: some street sellers are young,
others pregnant, mature and even very old. This cyclical approach of time, added to
the lack of landmarks, tends to confer an emblematic quality to these characters
despite Laroon's claims to realism.
Nevertheless the fact that activities are strictly distributed among men and
women in the series is also revealing. Crafts are the privilege of men whereas
women have unqualified occupations which require no training and no particular
skill. Their outdoors activities are a constant reminder of the tasks they are used to
carrying out inside their homes since they revolve around food, housekeeping or
hygiene. In the same way, all women wear an apron over their skirt, in which they
carry goods sometimes, but which definitely refers to their domestic chores. This
item of clothing also reveals their belonging to the respectable though laborious
crowd of street sellers and helps differentiate them from the prostitute, the latter
being represented by Laroon as an elegant young woman wrapped in lace and fancy
garments.
Contrary to her, street sellers go about with their heads covered with a headscarf
or a flap over which they are wearing broad-brimmed hats-straw hats in summer
or felt hats in winter-to protect them from the sun or cold. But throughout the
series all these articles of clothing do not appear in the same condition and dress
variations introduce a hierarchy among women sellers. While some of them appear
tidily or elegantly dressed, others wear patched-up and even tattered clothes.
Obviously dress was used by Laroon as a social symbol and although all women
represented in the series belong to the lowest classes, we can deduce from their attire
that some earn a better living than others. As a general rule, the younger they are,
the better-dressed and better-off they appear. Young girls dealing with fresh fruit or
Eighteenth-Century Images of Working Women 175
fish seem to be engaged in the most lucrative activities. This may reflect one of the
main difficulties of street vending: to be rewarding, it required carrying great
quantities of heavy goods and only the youngest were healthy enough and had the
necessary energy to do so. But in the organization of the engraved series itself, since
women's occupations cannot be differentiated from the point of view of skill or
qualification, goods are used by the artists to introduce a hierarchy in this crowd of
unqualified street hawkers. The sale of fresh fish, fruit and milk is presented as the
most profitable and so is the petty trade of essentials such as baskets, socks etc.
Women who sold fresh foodstuffs or necessities were undoubtedly guaranteed a
regular income since those were indispensable and relatively expensive goods. This
explains their being impeccably dressed despite working in the dirty streets, unless
their dress can be interpreted as a metaphor of the quality of the product. Thus it
could indicate the freshness of edible goods or the cleanliness of various domestic
items or articles of clothing. On the contrary it is difficult to distinguish women who
sold the least expensive and least noble products-such as matches or tallow-from
mere beggars.
The lack of specialization and qualification of women's trades is at the root of
this identification between the hawker and her goods. Indeed since she is deprived
of any specific skill and since her activity doesn't require the handling of any
particular tool, she appears consubstantial with the wares she cries. Through this
process of identification between a woman, her dress and her goods, Laroon worked
out a typology of women criers. With the succession of individual portraits, the
series, in its very principle, implies the idea of individual specialization. The layout
of each engraving adds to this impression since to each good corresponds a woman
and her cry. These sentences-supposedly the actual words uttered by each
character-are in fact limited to an injunction to buy. All the cries are restricted to
the repetition of the name of the product, sometimes with the verb 'buy'. But this
transcription of women's cries fails to render their cheek. Instead of capturing the
lively atmosphere of London's street, Marcellus Laroon categorizes street sellers
neatly and gives a polished image of women's trades.
The euphemization of women's activity is all the more manifest when one seeks
physical signs betraying the hardness of their work. None of them seems to bend
beneath the weight of their goods and yet, to be viable their job involved carrying
heavy quantities. On the contrary most women depicted in the series stand erect,
holding their heads very nicely with a few exceptions. Among the youngest, the wax
seller stands out as being the only character Laroon chose to draw in profile-
perhaps to underline her pregnancy. Her state may explain her awkward gait but she
appears numbed with fatigue, tired and destitute, far removed from any idealized
representation. Similarly the oldest have become stooped with age and need the help
of walking sticks. In this category the image of the old mackerel seller in rags could
be seen as realistic. Yet her mouth wide open fits in the traditional representation of
grotesque figures and despite her swollen face, her closed eye gives a rather
sarcastic expression to her face. The gap between the reference to four mackerels in
her cry and the single fish she holds in her right hand adds to the general impression
and endows the engraving with a comical rather than tragical tone. The other elderly
woman in the series, the fork and fire shovel seller, has an allegorical dimension:
With her beautifully lined face, her tools calling to mind the image of a fire
crackling in the hearth, she could symbolize winter as well as old age. In addition
she strikes the same pose as her younger counterparts, standing with one foot
forward, walking towards the spectator. The youngest street sellers are so graceful
that they seem to be having a quick dance with their arms in symmetrical opposition
to their feet. To add even more to the general euphemization of their labour, they are
never presented holding their goods at arm's length.
Despite claiming to produce a realistic representation of London's street
hawkers, Marcellus Laroon worked out a reassuring though picturesque vision of
the capital's lower classes. Through the serialization and typologization of popular
street activities, he drew rather polite portraits of men and women alike. In the
depiction of women, he laid greater emphasis on aesthetic criteria, euphemizing
their toil to the point of describing women's labour as if it wasn't labour proper.
Women in Francis Wheatley's Cries of London
Idealization is even more widespread in the series published by Francis Wheatley on

the same theme one century later. Contrary to his predecessor, Wheatley gave more
importance to women, numerically speaking, since out of thirteen engravings he
devoted six exclusively to women. But rags, lines, fatigue have disappeared from
Wheatley's representations in which women are impeccably and elegantly dressed,
their hair set according to the latest fashion enhancing their flawless complexions.
Those street sellers of the end of the eighteenth century are still wearing aprons but
these are superbly draped over their skirts in truly neo-classical style; their head-
dresses are lace-trimmed and their hats decked out with ribbons. The contrast could
not be more striking between Laroon's grotesque old mackerel seller and her young
and winsome counterpart. Under Wheatley's hand, there is hardly any difference
between the dress and manners of the fish seller and her clients'. Their dresses seem
to have been cut in the same material and clothes are not used to differentiate the
three women from a social point of view. The inferiority of the fish seller is rendered
in the spatial arrangement of the composition: Whereas her clients are standing on
the threshold, one of them handing out money to her, she is two steps down from
them, presenting her goods to their judgement in all humility. Yet all references to
the poverty and destitution of street sellers have been erased from this series which
doesn't include any portrait of beggar or prostitute. Even if two young beggars
appear besides the milkmaid in a moving scene, their presence actually underlines
the generosity of the young woman who gives them a jug of milk. Despite their
damaged clothes, the holes in their shoes, they look up towards their benefactress
with beautiful and fresh faces, shining with gratefulness. Their rags contrast with
her elegant dress and the whole scene, though sentimental in tone, constitutes a
reversal of the traditional vision of street sellers as it had been enacted in Laroon 's
series. Indeed instead of indefatigably pacing up and down the streets to avoid
sinking into poverty, the milkmaid here relieves the suffering of those who are
worse-off than her, while asserting her feminine identity through an all too obvious
reference to her motherly role.
No hierarchy is introduced among street sellers who share a uniformly
respectable social status. The idealization of their activity in Wheatley's
representations is also visible in the lack of seasonal differentiation. Yet the artist
has added one realistic element and contextualized his scenes through an accurate
depiction of Georgian architecture. In the background of all his engravings, brick
and mortar buildings can be seen; everywhere flush far;:ades with regularly spaced
windows, doors decorated with restrained ornamentation and neo-Palladian
porticoes evoke the capital's recent improvements. Not only did Wheatley refer to
the urban classicism of Georgian cities but he also alluded to the modernity of
London which had become the admiration of foreigners. Well-lit streets are paved,
spacious and lead to fashionable squares; smoking chimneys remind the spectator
that coal is burnt to provide more comfort in houses. Despite mirroring those
obvious material improvements achieved in eighteenth-century Britain, Wheatley's
engravings bear no sign of any evolution in the gender division of labour. As it was
the case with Laroon's series, most women depicted in those modem cityscapes,
dressed in the 1790s style, prove to be unqualified sellers of foodstuffs or domestic
wares. Their belonging to the domestic sphere is underlined through the presence
of children emphasizing their motherly identity. With the addition of children, the
artist encourages spectators to view them as women venturing outdoors to feed
their family rather than as daring female fending for themselves. Their alleged
motherhood adds to the beauty of the representation as is exemplified with the
flower-seller: surrounded by a bunch of children, she appears as ornamental as the
goods she is selling.
Generally speaking Wheatley left no room for grotesque allusions in his series
and all his street sellers are slender, slim-waisted and graceful. Not only are they
pleasant-looking but their physical delicacy symbolizes their politeness. Indeed
their cries, which are transcribed at the bottom of each engraving, are uttered in
faultless English. This correctness adds to the general impression of sophistication
conveyed by these portraits devoid of vulgarity. The strawberry girl is perhaps the
most accomplished of all: standing erect despite the impressive basket, filled with
pounds of strawberries, balanced on her head, she doesn't seem in the least engaged
in any tiresome activity. The drape of her apron underlines the ascending movement
of her left arm and the folds visually alleviate the weight she is carrying. Her bearing
would be better suited to some elegant portrait or even to a more noble subject.
Francis Wheatley, who was an academician, and who exhibited his Cries at the
Royal Academy, undoubtedly composed his series with some history paintings in
mind. His young and beautiful strawberry girl ogled by two hoary male servants,
lurking in the background, is reminiscent of the classical representation of Susanna
and the Elders. Her impeccably white blouse echoed by the snow-white linen-used
to wrap the strawberries-crowning her head, connotes her purity whereas her
basket casts a modest shadow over her eyes. Thus depicted, she could well stand for
the Biblical heroine with the two old men covetously looking at her lithe figure
behind her back. Wheatley also chose to ennoble the popular character of the
milkmaid whom he transformed into an allegorical figure. Indeed the young and
beautiful woman who gives milk to one child, while another expresses his gratitude
to her, corresponds to Cesare Ripa's definition of the allegory of charity.
Such ennoblements were not to be found in Marcellus Laroon's Cryes of the City
ofLondon. The artist, born from Huguenot parents, had been educated in Holland and
accordingly his vivid series has more in common with Dutch genre pictures of
everyday life than with classical history painting. He had also probably drawn some
inspiration-if not the initial idea-from the Bonnart brothers' Cris de Paris
published in 1670. Yet to suit the English public, Laroon had expurgated most saucy
situations and allusions from his London version and thus provided a popular
counterpart to the court series Peter Lely (1618-80) had painted. When Francis
Wheatley took up this popular theme, he was a fashionable portrait painter who,
being an academician, belonged to the artistic elite of his day. No wonder that his
handling of the cries is more sophisticated from both a technical and a narrative point
of views. Like Laroon he may have been subjected to French influence and may have
seen Franr;:ois Boucher's version of the Cris, all the more so since they had been
engraved by Simon Franr;:ois Ravenet, well-known in London. In addition to having
been polished by the rococo style, Wheatley's representations of London street
sellers also bear many features in common with Greuze's sentimental painting. But
the reason why Wheatley thought that his aristocratic clients might appreciate his
Cries ofLondon lay more surely in the nostalgic atmosphere he chose to convey. His
idealised street sellers appear as relic from the past, contrasting with his detailed
description of the modem Georgian capital. Those 'polite and commercial' figures
seem quite anachronistic when set in the streets of a Metropolis coming to an
industrial age. In all engravings, the sky is clouded over by pollution and the view
blocked by traffic. In the midst of chimneys belching out smoke and besides coaches
going pass them, Wheatley's street sellers keep still, as if rooted to the pavement.
Despite being motionless, frozen in a halo of light, they provide a radiant and
colourful counterpoint to the dull and grey cityscape, thus foreshadowing the
nostalgia later associated to the Cries of London in the nineteenth century.
Working women in genre painting
As mentioned above, the works of genre painters engaged in the depiction of

ordinary life was undoubtedly a source of inspiration for Marcellus Laroon. But it
is also possible to envisage that certain interactions between characters in
Wheatley's engravings were suggested by former genre compositions. Indeed in the
first decades of the eighteenth century, several artists from foreign origins, and
among them Marcellus Laroon, contributed to the introduction and the development
of genre painting in Britain. This minor pictorial genre became very fashionable and
gave birth to a British variant in the form of conversation pieces. Those small format
pictures became a favourite medium to portray groups of British people engaged in
customary day-to-day activities. Because these paintings were primarily dedicated
to the depiction of everyday life, it is logical to expect to find portraits of working
women in them. In the corpus of urban conversation pieces by Peter Angelis (1685-
1734), Joseph VanAken (1709-49) and Balthasar Nebot (c.1730-c.1765) examined
here, it is interesting to notice that women street sellers are very numerous. They
outnumber by far the few representations of female servants and despite the
abundance of characters, one cannot find any portrait of women involved in more
specialized or qualified activities.
Those lively street scenes, depicting Covent Garden market or other markets in
the City, are crowded with doll-like figures of men and women street sellers.
Women fruit and vegetable sellers are in the foreground, behind their stalls or
besides baskets overflowing with goods like horns of plenty. In addition to being
ornamental, those masses of fruit and vegetables connote the prosperity of the
capital and its key role in the development of commerce. Such positive depiction of
the commercial activity of the lower classes can also be found in William Hogarth's
Beer Street in which fish girls and vegetable sellers are presented as examples for
all women. Of course it is not surprising to find such flattering images of lower-class
people at work in Britain. Such industrious men and women embodied paramount
protestant values, therefore symbolizing the refusal of idleness and the participation
of all classes to the country's economic expansion.
In those urban conversation pieces women street sellers wear the same clothes
as those depicted in the engraved series. Whereas aprons seem optional and can be
worn by servants as well, hats on the contrary remain attributes of their activity.
While their clients usually wear light head-dresses, street sellers, spending all their
time outdoors, do not part with this protective accessory which most of them wear
over a flap or scarf. A dress code is also implemented to distinguish the purchasers
from the sellers. Whereas clients are elegant, street sellers wear darker colours and
coarser materials. But apart from this social distinction and the depiction of
identifiable London sights and monuments, those conversation pieces do not
provide a more realistic vision of laborious women than Laroon's or Wheatley's
engravings. Furthermore despite being extremely lively, those group portraits are
less accurate than individual representations, and more silent as well.
In addition to silencing the cries, conversation pieces also took part in the
general process of euphemization of women's labour. The case of the milkmaid is
particularly interesting to study since she appears in cries series and in conversation
pieces alike, having inspired numerous artists throughout the eighteenth century
such as Laroon, Hogarth, Hayman or Wheatley.
Young and elegant, Laroon's 'Merry Milk Maid' has no difficulty moving about
despite the heavy garland over her head. Her perfect bearing, lithe figure and even
her pose were obvious inspirations for Francis Wheatley when he later composed
the portrait of the beautiful strawberry girl. Long before the 1790s, milkmaids
inspired British artists and were the most frequently represented of all street sellers.
Easily recognizable from their garland of silver jugs and utensils tied together with
ribbons, they had become a landmark of the capital in representations of street
scenes. As early as 1687, the Dutch-born painter, Jan Griffier (1652/56-1718) had
introduced a milkmaid as a ray of sunshine illuminating his view of London.
William Hogarth also found her attractive but gave different representations of this
feminine character. The neatly dressed milkmaid appears under the guise of a young
and vindictive woman, demanding payment of her account in his engraving The
Distrest Poet. Instead of carrying her garland, she wears a simple straw hat adorned
with a few daisies, thus embodying pastoral freshness despite her anger. In this
engraving's narrative, her loud irruption introduces the reality of hard work in the
dream world of a Grub Street poet whose unrealistic aspirations have brought ruin
and distress to his family. This representation of a rather realistic milkmaid, wearing
a device on her back for carrying pails, is not usual. Indeed Hogarth later chose to
depict her as a comely dancer in The Enraged Musician. Placed at the centre of the
composition, she is towering above the noisy crowd with her slender figure
stretched out by the heavy pail she is carrying over her head. Even if in reality,
milkmaids undoubtedly added to the roar in London streets with their cries, this
Hogarthian character doesn't seem to belong to the London populace; she gracefully
lifts her apron as if she was having a dance. Looking straight into the spectator's
eyes, she invites him to follow her into a world of peace and harmony.
One had better consider this lovely heroine, engaged in a traditionally feminine
activity, as an illustration of a male fantasy rather than as a realistic depiction of the
demanding job of London's milkmaids. They used to get up at crack of dawn to go
and milk the cows grazing in St James's Park and after their morning sale, they
would go back to the park in order to be able to sell milk in the evening as well. Yet,
the many 'merry' representations of milkmaids are rooted in a tradition illustrated
by Francis Hayman (I 708-76) in his painting May Day or the Milkmaid's Garland
and explained in a Spectator essay:
It is likewise on the first Day of the Month that we see the ruddy Milk-Maid exerting her
self in a most sprightly manner under a Pyramid of Silver Tankards, and like the virgin
Tarpeia oppress'd by the costly Ornaments which her benefactors lay upon her. These
decorations of silver cups, tankards, and salvers, were borrowed for the purpose, and
hung round the milk pails, with the addition of flowers and rib bands, which the maidens
carried upon their heads when they went to the houses of their customers, and danced in
order to obtain a small gratuity from each of them. 1
While she was openly likened to a mythological virgin in the periodical press, she
appeared like a spirit of the countryside in Hayman's composition. At the beginning
of the I 740s, Francis Hayman had taken part, alongside his friend William Hogarth,
in the decorations of the supper lodges at Vauxhall. To entertain middle-class
Londoners, who were attending concerts and plays in the fashionable urban pleasure
gardens, he had chosen to provide a series of paintings united around the theme of
pastoral leisure and children's games. Among others, he dedicated this particular
composition to the farandoles organized by London's milkmaids in the first days of
May. Having left their heavy garlands aside, two girls are dancing with a spring in
their step. Other street workers are taking advantage of this festive interlude to take
a break: three young chimney sweeps are having a wash in a fountain on the left
while on the right, a one-legged musician accompanies the dancers. As it would be
impossible to identify them as milkmaids without their jugs and utensils, their
ornamental garland is put in a conspicuous position, at the top of the composition.
Held by another street seller, it is adorned with a few bunches of flowers and so is
the hat of the milkmaid facing him. The decor adds to this pastoral atmosphere in
which milkmaids symbolize a gentle way of life. Brian Allen has underlined the
similarities in structure between this painting and an illustration of Shakespeare's
Winter's Tale previously made by Hayman. 2 The stereotype of the young and
beautiful street seller is here reminiscent of the character of Perdita, the exalted
embodiment of feminine purity and gracefulness. Such a stereotype had already
1 The Spectator n° 365, April 29th, 1712.

2 Brian Allen, Francis Hayman (New Haven: Yale UP, 1987) 110.
made way for the depiction of hard-working women in the guise of sylph-like
creatures. But in addition to being unrealistic, Hayman's painting is a contradiction
in terms since it portrays working women in order to symbolize leisure.
The dangers threatening working women
The idealized portraits of female workers and the euphemization of women's hard
work are frequent in the representations analysed above. In addition to denying
women the status of working people, some pictures also insist on the dangers
threatening them abroad. For instance, the conversation pieces illustrating London's
markets logically include many interactions between sellers and purchasers.
Whether standing or seated, women sellers are often described in a situation of
exchange: leaning forward towards their clients, stretching their arms to offer their
goods or holding out their hands to receive payment for them. In these situations,
they frequently interact with other women or even with children but rarely with
men. When women earning their living outdoors are presented in interaction with
men, they are often in a perilous situation. William Hogarth also chose Covent
Garden market as the setting for the first painting, entitled Morning, in the series
The Four Times of Day. In his realistic depiction of an early winter morning scene,
he alludes to the cold endured by street workers and also shows a large woman
carting vegetables to the amazement of two young boys. On the right of the
engraving two late night owls are fondling two young and pretty street sellers,
helping themselves freely as they would do with fruit and vegetables. Here Hogarth
illustrates the general confusion made between women and their goods, as betrayed
in expressions such as 'showing off' or 'making the most of their wares'. Even if
they were trying to earn their living in a respectable manner, women selling wares
outdoors were always regarded as potential prostitutes. Hogarth drew heavily on
such sexual innuendoes: In Beer Street for example, in which working women are
generally depicted in a positive light, he shows a paver caressing a responsive young
vegetable seller contemplating an oversized key ... In the second painting of the
series The Four Times of Day, entitled Noon, Hogarth illustrates the dangers
threatening female servants venturing outside.
Even if most images of humble working women tend to underline the dangers
which awaited them outside, in the public sphere, historians have pointed out that
women servants were often most in danger inside the house. 3 The bias is obvious
since no illustration of their precarious situation inside households can be found.
Hence representations of working women in the eighteenth century appear to be
redolent of the dominant male ideology which favoured women's seclusion and her
identification with the private sphere. Tellingly enough the only positive
representation of a working woman is to be found in the character of the seamstress.
3 For a detailed analysis of this situation see more particularly Tim Meldrum, 'London
Domestic Servants from Depositional Evidence 1660-1750: Servant-Employer
Sexuality in the Patriarchal Household', in Tim Hitchcock, Peter King and Pamela
Sharpe, eds., Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies ofthe English Poor, 1640-
1840 (London: Macmillan, 1997) 47-69.
Indeed in Hogarth's satirical creations, the seamstress seems to escape all criticisms
to embody a paragon of virtue and selfless love. The unhappy Sarah Young, abused
by Tom Rakewell at the beginning of the series The Rake's Progress, symbolizes
honesty and generosity. The story tells how, thanks to her quiet occupation, she
manages to earn a respectable living for both herself and her daughter whom Tom
refused to recognize legally. Ironically it is also thanks to her modest wages that she
saves Tom from being imprisoned for debts. In the wake of Dutch seventeenth-
century painting and in agreement with the moralists of his times, Hogarth presents
sewing as an ideal activity for women. As it was practised indoors, women could
devote all their time to it without threatening the social order. Moreover, since it
required visual concentration, needlework stopped women from even looking
outside, let alone behave as independent beings.
Throughout the eighteenth century, day after day, work was a most common
experience for all women as the chapters in this volume exemplify. Even if it was a
gendered experience, there remained a marked class gradient in the way it affected
their lives. Yet, from the point of view of representation, working women from all
classes were equally absent, their very existence being denied by artists for both
aesthetic and social reasons.
Members of the 'Fair Sex' had to be modest and women fending for themselves
in the open did not abide by these social rules. Because they lacked modesty, their
virtue was questioned and women who earned a living independently often incurred
prejudices and ill-repute. Once again the absence of images of professional women
or of women carrying out their own businesses distorts the reality of their
involvement in such activities. However, when images of working women exist,
they tend to idealize or ridicule their situation. One can easily figure out that
drudging servants or sellers carrying very heavy quantities of goods were far from
delicate. Because these working women lacked one of the essential qualities of their
sex, they were either ridiculed or idealized by artists. These two modes of
representation betray the uneasiness and disapproval of eighteenth-century British
society towards such an oxymoronic object. A working woman was a contradiction
in terms since it implied that a helpless being was capable of earning her livelihood.
Index
Abensour, Uon, 105 Boadicea, Queen, 77, 86

Aberdein, Christian, 108 Bonnart, Family, 178
Achard, Mr, 52 Bonny, Anne, 76,84
Addison, Joseph, 29, 45 Bordoni, Faustina, 158
Agar, Mrs, 23 Boswell, James, 63, 153
Aldworth, Elizabeth Saint-Leger, 116, Boucher, Fran~ois, 178
119 Boulard, Claire, 27
Allen, Brian, 180 Boulton, Matthew, 170
Ambrose, Miss, 136 Bourdieu, Pierre, 36
Amelia, Princess, 49 Bowden, Elizabeth, 78
Amicis, Anna de, 158 Bowling, Tom, 82
Anderson, James, 117, 122, 125, 126 Bristed, John, 61
Angelis, Peter, 178 Britton, Thomas, 148
Anjou, Margaret of, 77, 85 Broadhurst, Mrs, 169
Arc, Joan of, 86 Broadhurst, Thomas, 169
Armstrong, Nancy, 28, 29, 34, 36 Broughton, Thomas, 140, 143
Arnaud, Baculard d', 167 Brown, Lancelot, 166
Arne, Thomas, 150, 157, 158 Brown, William, 82
Arundel, Lady, 77 Buchanan, Ann, 114
Augusta, Princess, 49, 50 Buisine, Andree, 120
Austen, Jane, 79 Burgh, Mrs, 53
Burnett, Robert, 21
Bach, Johann Christian, 50 Burney, Charles, 148, 157, 158, 159
Baddeley, Sophia, 135 Burney, Fanny, 158
Banister, Mary, 120 Burrell William, 61
Barclay, Caroline, 150 Burt, Edward, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66
Barker, Anne, 19 Byron, Lord George Gordon, 167
Barker, Hannah, 4, 110
Barruel, Abbe, 120, 127 Cadell, Thomas, 165
Bates, Joah, 151, 157 Campbell, Agnes, Ill, 113
Batham, Cyril, 119 Campbell, Robert, 106, 115
Bedford, 4th Duke of, 21 Campion, Miss, 154
Beeton, Mrs, 36 Caroline, Queen, 48
Bellamy, George Anne, 137 Carter, Elizabeth, 42
Bembo, Antonia, 148 Catalini, Signora, 151
Benger, Elizabeth, 40 Catley, Ann, 136
Benson, Hannah, 149 Cavendish, Margaret, 79, 86, 87
Berry, Lieutenant, 78 Caxton, William, 85
Besant, Annie, 125, 127 Centlivre, Susannah, 140
Billington, Mrs, 149 Chalmers, James, 110
Blanche, Mr, 21 Chamberlyne, Anne, 83
Blewitt, Ann, 149 Chapman, Charlotte, 146
Blizard, William, 96 Chapone, Hester, 51
Boaden, James, 164 Charles I, King, 81
Charles II, King, 154 Dixon, Mary, 82

Charlotte, Queen, 48, 49, 50 Dodd, William, 121
Charlotte, Princess, 49, 50, 51 Donkin, Ellen, 139
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 167 Dryden, John, 79,159
Chazal, Elisabetta, 149 Dugaw, Dianne, 80, 87
Chedzoy, Alan, 151, 157 Dymoke, Anne, 77, 84
Chetwood, William, 123
Cibber, Mrs, 158 Earle, Augustus, 78
Clarence, Duke of, 135 Earle, Peter, 16
Clark, Alice, 1 Ebelin, Mr, 48
Clarke, Alured, 97 Edgcumbe, Richard, 151
Clayton, Ellen, 87 Edgeworth, Maria, 42
Clifford, Lady Anne, 11 Edwards, Mrs, 156
Coleman, Mr, 163 Elgin, Lady, 50, 51
Colquhoun, Patrick, 18, 47 Elizabeth I, Queen, 77, 166
Constable, William, 21 Elizabeth, Princess, 49, 50
Conway, Brilliana, 77 Elliot, Anne, 21
Coultsworth, Mrs, 50 Elliot, John, 172
Coventry, 6th Earl of, 153 Elms, W., 81
Craig, Margaret, 108 Elstob, Elizabeth, 51, 52
Croft, Dr., 157 Entick, John, 119
Cromwell, Mary, 77 Evison, John, 84
Cromwell, Oliver, 77
Crouch, Anna Maria, 154, 155, 159 Farquhar, George, 79
Cumberland, Duchess of, 124 Farren, Elizabeth, 137
Cunningham, Lady Anne, 77 Finch, Honourable, 48
Cuthbert, Margaret, 110 Finch, Lady Charlotte, 48, 49, 50, 51
Cuzzoni, Francesca, 151, 157, 158 Fleet, Esther, 149
Fleetwood Butler, Mr, 22
Daly, Richard, 132 Florian, J.P. Claris de, 53
Darcy, Lady Amelia, 50 Fontenelle, Bernard de, 29
D' Assigny, Fifield, 119 Forbes, Margaret, 110, 111
Davidson, Caroline, 16 Forbes, Miss, 112, 113
Davies, Christian, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83 Forbes, Mrs, 109
Davies, David, 41 Ford, Ann, 148
Davis, Cecilia, 151 Ford, Richard, 135
Davis, Hester, 25 Fordyce, Dr, 42
Davis, Natalie, 102, 116 Fox, Elizabeth, 53
Davis, Mrs, 154 Fox, Henrietta, 53
Dawe, Donovan, 149 Fox, Mary, 53
Defoe, Daniel, 104 France, Annie, 13
Dekker, Rudolf, 82
Deloraine, Lady, 48 Garrick, David, 132, 139, 146, 161, 162
Denoyer, Monsieur, 50 Garth, Mr, 48
DePauw, Grant, 84 Gemmingen, Baroness, 48
Derby, Earl of, 24, 137 George II, King, 48, 59
Dermott, Laurence, 122 George Ill, King, 48, 50, 51, 55
Devonshire, Duchess of, 52 George, Prince ofWales, 58, 61, 132
Devonshire, 5th Duke of, 48, 52, 154 Giardini, Signor, 151
Dibdin, James, 161, 162 Gibbon, Christopher, 114
Diderot, Denis, 163, 167 Gibbon, Mary, 113
Index 185
Gisbome, Thomas, 46 Hill, Bridget, 18, 28

Glasse, Hannah, 31 Hill, John, 137
Godwin, William, 41, 139, 169 Hivert-Messeca, Gisele, 124
Golding, Benjamin, 93, 94, 98 Hivert-Messeca, Yves, 124
Goldsmith, Oliver, 142 Hoby, Lady Margaret, 12, 13
Goldsworthy, Burrington, 50 Hogarth, William, 5, 6, 122, 173, 179,
Goldsworthy, Martha, 50 180, 181, 182
Gomme, Jane, 50 Holcroft, Thomas, 139
Gomme, William, 50 Holmes, Jane, 22
Gossip, Anne, 23 Horth, Mary, 149
Gossip, William, 21, 23 Houston, R.A., 60
Grace, Mary, 5 Hudson, Mary, 149
Gregory, Dr John, 43 Hume, David, 38, 40
Greuze, Jean-Baptiste, 178 Huntingdon, Countess of, 12
Grey, Mrs, 32, 33, 34
Griffier, Jan, 179 llchester, 2nd Earl of, 52
Griffith, Moses, 63 llchester, Countess of, 52
Grose, Francis, 22, 23 Inchbald, Elizabeth, 5, 139, 140, 141,
Guiffardiere, M. de la, 50 142, 143, 145, 146
Guyenne, Duke of, 85
Jacquet de laGuerre, Elizabeth, 148
Hacker, Barton, 77, 81 John the Fearless, 84
Haggerston, Thomas, 22 Johnson, Anne, 82
Hagley, Miss, 153, 157 Johnson, Samuel, 63, 64, 153
Hainault, Philippa de, 77 Jones, Bernard, 122, 123
Hamilton, Elizabeth, 37, 38, 39, 40, 44, Jordan, Dora, 135
45
Handel, Georg Friedrich, 151, 157, 159 Kauffmann, Angelica, 5
Hardin, Elizabeth, 149 Keith, Anne, 83
Harley, Elizabeth, 51 Kelly, Mr, 156
Harley, Henrietta, 51 Kemble, John, 139
Harley, Lady, 77 Kennedy, Mrs, 109
Harley, Margaret, 51 Kennedy, Miss, 157, 158
Harley, William, 51 Kent, D.A., 9
Harley, Edward, 51 King, Gregory, 18
Harper, Peter, 24 Kingsborough, Lady, 53, 54
Harris, Mr, 163 Kingsborough,Lord,50,53,54
Harrop, Miss, 151, 157 Kitchingham, Ann, 149
Hastlewood, J., 153, 155, 156, 158 Kowalewski-Wallace, Elizabeth, 115
Hawker, Admiral, 81 Krohme,Anne, 50
Hawkins, John, 151, 158
Hayman, Francis, 179, 180, 181 Laclos, Choderlos de, 121
Hays,Mary,38,40,41,42,43,44,45 Lanzi, Signor, 158
Haywood, Eliza, 16, 19, 30, 32 Laroon, Marcellus, 173, 174, 175, 176,
Heal, Felicity, 17 177, 179
Hecht, Jean, 9, 20, 21 Lawrence, Thomas, 168
Helmand, Monsieur, 53 Le Moyne, Pierre, 85
Helvetius, Madame, 126 Leake, Miss, 150
Henry VI, King, 85 Lee,Ann,5, 164,165,169,170,172
Hessel, Phoebe, 82 Lee, Anna-Sophia, 161, 172
Hill, Aaron, 137 Lee, Charlotte, 164, 165
Lee, George Augustus, 170, 172 Murray, Cicely, 114, 115

Lee, Harriet, 5, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, Muschet, Janet, 114
167, 169, 170, 172
Lee, John, 161, 162, 163, 164 Naish, Maria, 149
Lee, Sophia, 5, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, Nardini, Signor, 52
167, 169, 170, 171, 172 Nebot, Balthasar, 178
Leland, Thomas, 167 Negri, Mr, 21
Lely, Peter, 178 Nelson, Admiral, 78, 80
Lincken, Catharina, 83 Newcastle, 1st Duke of, 21
Linley, Elizabeth, 5, 149, 151, 152, 153, Nicol, John, 80
154, 157, 158, 159 Nicoll, James, 110
Linley, Thomas, 154, 157 Nightingale, Florence, 88, 89
Linton, Catherine, 149 Norfolk, Duke of, 166
Linwood, Miss, 33, 45, 46
Locke, John, 120 Ossian, 64
Lockhart, Henrietta, 153 Ottey, Sarah, 148
Long, Walter, 154
Louisa, Princess, 48 Palacet, Mr, 48
Low, William, 112 Palmer, Mrs, 168
Palmer, Roy, 84
MacDonald, Flora, 82 Paoli, Pascal, 168
MacGhie, John, 109 Paradis, Maria Theresa von, 148
MacGhie, Mrs, 110 Pate, Frances, 11
MacKenzie, John, 108 Patrat, 140
MacKenzie, Miss, 112, 113 Pattison, Jacob, 64
MacLeod, Laird of, 109 Paxton, Frances, 149
Mac Veigh, Simon, 148 Pearce, Anne, 93
Marivaux, 142 Pendarves, Mrs, 51
Marlborough, Duke of, 75 Pennant, Thomas, 63, 64, 65
Marsh, John, 149, 150, 151 Pennington, Lady, 6
Marshall, Rosalind K., 60 Percy, Mrs, 12
Martin, Martin, 64 Perkin, Harold, 36
Martinez, Marianne von, 148 Peterborough, Earl of, 154
Mary, Princess, 48, 49 Petre, William, 12
Massie, Joseph, 47 'Petroni us Arbiter', 137
Mayo, Robert D., 28 Pindemonte, Hippolyte, 168
Meller, John, 21 Pinney, Hester, 114
Melzi d'Eril, Count, 168 Piozzi, Hester, 168
Mildmay, Lady Grace, 11 Pizan, Christine de, 84
Mills, Ann, 82 Planta, Frederica, 50
Montmollin, Mademoiselle, 50 Planta, Margaret, 50
Moore, Isabella, 32 Polwhele, Richard, 42, 43
More, Hannah, 39, 46, 148 Pope, Mrs, 146
Moreton, John, 114 Pomfret, 1st Earl of, 48
Moreton, Phoebe, 114 Porter, Agnes, 52, 53
Morice, John, Ill Portland, Duchess of, 48, 51, 52
Morice, Margaret, 111 Pozzi, signora, 154
Morris, Polly, 116 Preston, William, 122
Moser, Mary, 5 Prevot, abbe, 167
Moula, Suzanne, 50 Prior, Ann, 113
Mounsey, family, 149 Prior, Hannah, 113
Index 187
Purcell, Henry, 159 Smith, Captain George, 121

Purefoy, Elizabeth, 22 Smith, Elizabeth, 149
Smith, Mr, 149
Radcliffe, Ann, 167, 168 Smollett, Tobias, 16
Raffald, Elizabeth, 23, 24 Snell, Hannah, 78, 82, 83, 86
Raffald John, 24 Sophia, Princess, 49, 85, 86
Ralphson, Mary, 82 Spencer, Lady, 52
Ramsay, Allan, 101, 102 Spencer, Henrietta, 52
Ramsay, Lady, 63 St. John Williams, 75
Ramsay, Miss, 112, 113 Stanley, Jo, 76
Ravenet, Simon, 178 Stark, Suzanne, 76, 79
Read, Mary, 76, 84, 86 Stavordale, Lord, 53
Reddy, William, 107 Stephens, Matthew, 79
Reeve, Clara, 113, 167 Storace, Anna, 149, 150, 155
Reeve, Hannah, 113 Straub, Kristina, 137
Reeve, Lucia, 113 Stuart, Mary, 166
Reeve, Sarah, 113 Stuart, Prince Charles, 82
Reeves, Elizabeth, 113 Stubbs, George, 33
Reynolds, Joshua, 5, 33, 159 Summers, Montague, 170
Richardson, Samuel, 16, 143, 166 Swift, Jonathan, 20
Riley, Mrs, 142
Ripa, Cesare, 177 Talbot, John, 85
Roberts, Mr, 50 Talbot, Mary, 78, 79
Robertson, James, 63 Thicknesse, Philip, 148
Robertson, Mrs, 109 Tickell, Thomas, 30
Robinson, Anastasia, 154, 157 Tidswell, Miss, 155, 156
Robinson, George, 165 Tiphaine, Daniel, 21
Robinson, Mary, 132, 135, 137 Todd, William, 78
Robinson, Susannah,94 Tornkyns,Mrs, 93
Robison, John, 120 Trail!, Susan, 110, 111
Rochefoucauld, Fran~ois de la, 18 Treadwell, Mattie, 81
Rockingham, 2nd Marquis of, 21 Tribout, Madame, 105
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 42, 43 Trimmer, Sarah, 52
Trimmer, Selina, 52
Sanderson, Elizabeth, 114 Trotti, Marquis, 169
Sandes, Flora, 88 Trusler, John, 20
Shackleton, Elizabeth, 22 Trustram, Myna, 81
Shadwell, Thomas, 79 Turner, James Grantham, 115
Shakespeare, William, 140, 142, 157,
180 VanAken, Joseph, 178
Sharpe, Pamela, 114 Van de Pol, Lotte, 82
Shelley, Mary, 169 Venables, Robert, 80
Sheridan, Geraldine, 110 Verrier, Frederique, 85
Sheridan, Richard Brindsley, 110, 152, Vickery, Amanda, 16, 17
153, 154, 168 Victoria, Queen, 62, 81
Shevelow, Kathryn, 27 Villette, Marquise de, 126
Sibbald, Susan, 168 Voltaire, 126, 127
Siddons, Sarah, 53, 134, 139, 150, 154,
158, 168 Wade, General, 61
Silverlock, Eliza, 149 Wainwright, Harriet, 149
Smith, Adam, 152, 155 Walker, George, 3
Walker, John, 67 White, Mrs, 95

Walker, Patrick, 67 Wildblood, Miss, 23
Wallis, Tryphosa, 146 Wilkes, John, 121
Wakefield, Priscilla, 41, 43 Wilson, Mrs, 156, 157
Walpole, Horace, 167 Witney, Hannah, 82
Warburton, Lady Elizabeth, 23 Wollstonecraft, Everina, 53
Warburton, Peter, 23 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 2, 3, 39, 40, 41,
Warrand, Mrs, 109 42,43,44,45,46,50,53,54, 139,
Watt, James, 170 140
Webber, Mr, 48 Wood, Lucky, 101
Wellington, Duke of, 75 Woolley, Hannah, 13, 14, 15
Wells, Mary, 136 Worgan, James, 149
Wesley, Eliza, 149 Worgan, John, 149
Wesley, Thomasine, 149 Worgan, Mary, 149
West, Jane, 39, 40, 43, 45, 46 Wycherley, William, 79
Whatman, Susanna, 25
Wheatley, Francis, 173, 176, 177, 179 Yates, Mary Ann, 134
Wheelwright, Julie, 77, 78, 79, 83, 84, Yeo, Geoffrey, 91
87
Whitaker, Elizabeth, 23 York, Duchess of, 168
Whitaker, Joshua, 23 Zoffany, Johann, 5
Whitaker, Mary, 24

(Studies in Labour History) Isabelle Baudino, Jacques Carré, Cécile Révauger - The Invisible Woman - Aspects of Women's Work in Eighteenth-Century Britain-Ashgate - Routledge (2005)

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(Studies in Labour History) Isabelle Baudino, Jacques Carré, Cécile Révauger - The Invisible Woman - Aspects of Women's Work in Eighteenth-Century Britain-Ashgate - Routledge (2005)

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The Invisible Woman

The Invisible Woman

Published 2016 by Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright ©Isabelle Baudino, Jacques Carre and Cecile Revauger 2005

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Library of Congress Control Number: 2005922123

ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-3572-7 (hbk)

PART I: WOMEN IN THE DOMESTIC SPHERE

The Birth of a New Profession: The Housekeeper and her

2 The Representation of Housework in the Eighteenth-Century

3 Needlework and the Rights of Women in England at the End

4 Governesses of the Royal Family and the Nobility in Great

PART II: WOMEN IN MALE STRONGHOLDS

5 The Labour and Servitude of Women in the Highlands of

6 Women in the Army in Eighteenth-Century Britain

7 Hospital Nurses in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Service

8 Claiming their Place in the Corporate Community: Women's

9 Women Barred from Masonic 'Work': A British Phenomenon

PART III: WOMEN AND THE CULTURAL SCENE

10 The Actress and Eighteenth-Century Ideals of Femininity

II Women in Action: Elizabeth Inchbald, Heroines and Serving

12 Profession: Siren-The Ambiguous Status of Professional

13 The Lee Sisters: Eighteenth-Century Commercial Heroines

14 Eighteenth-Century Images of Working Women

Fig. 5.1 From: Edward Burt, Letters from a Gentleman in the

Fig. 5.2 From: Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Scotland and Voyage

Fig. 5.3 From: Edward Burt, Letters from a Gentleman in the

Fig. 5.4 'Graddaning' (Sketch from the National Museum of

Fig. 5.5 From: Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Scotland and Voyage

Fig. 5.6 From: Edward Burt, Letters from a Gentleman in the

IsABELLE BAUDINO is lecturer in British cultural history at the Ecole Normale

JACQUES CARRE is professor of British cultural history at the Sorbonne (Universite

PIERRE DuBOIS is lecturer in British cultural history at the Sorbonne (Universite

CHRISTINE RIVET is a lecturer in the English department at the University of Caen.

SEVERINE LANCIA is completing a doctoral thesis on the social status of late

GUYONNE LEDUC is professor of English literature at the Universite Charles de

GILLY LEHMANN is a professor in the English department at the University of

SoPHIE LoussouARN is a lecturer in the English department at the Universite de

MARION MARCEAU is a lecturer in the English department at the Universite of

CECILE REvAUGER is professor of British cultural history at the Universite Michel de

MARIE-CLAIRE RoUYER-DANEY is professor of English at the Universite Michel de

DEBORAH SIMONTON teaches at the University of Aberdeen. Her recent publications

ANGELA J. SMALLWOOD is a senior lecturer in English literature at the University of

MARIE-HELENE THEVENOT-TOTEMS is professor of Scottish Studies at the Sorbonne

invisible, or more accurately unrepresentable. Thus it was only in virtue of their

The Birth of a New Profession:

D. A. Kent, 'Ubiquitous but Invisible: Female Domestic Servants in Mid-Eighteenth

13 See G. E. Fussell and K. R. Fussell, The English Countrywoman (London: Melrose,

downwardly mobile, gives directions to a wider range of lower servants (the

18 The Gentlewomans Companion (London: A. Maxwell for Dorman Newman, 1673),

24 John Essex, The Young Ladies Conduct (London, 1722), xxxiv-xxxv.

of wages gives the salaries of twenty-one housekeepers, the highest-paid receiving

49 Hecht (1956), 142-148.

Shackleton paid her cook-housekeepers £5 while the other maids received 4

56 See Vickery (1998), 137.

housekeeper to unmarried or widowed gentlemen, but that now 'this being is no

61 Grose, The Olio (London, 1792), 40-41.

63 This account of Elizabeth Raffald is based on two complementary biographies by Roy

These case-histories illustrate the diversity one meets when exammmg a

The Representation of Housework in

3 Robert D. Mayo, The English Novel in the Magazines 1740-1815 (Evanston:

Before examining that satirical representation of housework, I will try to show