Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

hemp and flax plots receded, but dairying and market-gardening would offer some
employment for women in 1840.
It is noticeable that in 1831 there were more females than males in Alcester and
Redditch. This may partly be explained by the possibility of jobs in the service sector, but
the needle industry also provided opportunities for women’s work. 8
Different communities
perhaps had different attitudes towards working women according to the employment
opportunities. In Redditch there were several women recorded as needlemakers in the
registers 1813-1840 when they baptised their illegitimate children. Some of these can be
identified in the 1851 census, still unmarried and still working in the needle-trade. 9
It may
be that the stigma of having illegitimate children had precluded marriage, but it could also
be that they felt no need to marry, as employment in the needle-trade allowed them a
certain independence, enabling them to provide for themselves and their children. 10
Apart from apprenticeship records the child’s role in the workforce is largely hidden
in local archives until the 1851 census. However, apprenticeships were served in many
occupations (including housewifery) and children must have been occupied in spinning and
various agricultural pursuits such as bird-scaring and minding livestock. In the nineteenth
century many girls as well as women in the west of the study area were outworkers for the
Worcester gloving industry.
8 1831 census. 53.4% of Alcester’s population were female, while the figure for the Worcestershire part of
Tardebigge parish (including Redditch) was 53.3%. Some small parishes also had more females than males,
which may be explained by the presence of a ‘big house’ with many female domestic servants. In the
quarrying parish of Temple Grafton only 45.7% of the population was female.
9 WoRO, Redditch baptisms 1813-40, and Redditch 1851 census.
10 C. Jones in Goose, Women’s Work in Industrial England, pp. 289-313, mentions ‘never-married’ and ‘evermarried’
women needlemakers in Alcester in 1881.
346