The Matchmaker - Center Stage

Glossary
continued
you pay those girls of yours too much.
you pay them as much as men
According to the Aldrich Report, skilled laborers in 1880
were paid an average of $1.32 for a day’s work, and about 13
cents an hour. Most women were paid 40-60% of their male
equivalents’ wages, while children’s payscales were in the
30–40% range. Less fortunate female laborers from the period
worked up to 12 or 15 hours a day, with short breaks of about
twenty minutes for meals.
your niece is of age
Though books of the period suggest 14 and 16 as proper ages
to begin courtship and suggest a limit of 30, the average age
of a woman who married for the first time in the 1890s was
22, as opposed to 27 in the 1790s. Working-class men and
women were a notable exception, often working for a number
of years before marrying and not establishing their own
households until their early thirties. The transition from youth
to adolescence in female during the Victorian era was marked
by a stark shift in clothing, especially in the coiffure and the
corset. At the onset of puberty, girls were expected to pin up
their hair in the “womanly” fashion (previously it had been
worn down) and exchange children’s underwear for the more
confining whaleboned or steel-springed variety.
Next Stage: The Matchmaker | 1