The College, the Market, and the Court: or, Woman's relation to education, labor and lawDall, Caroline Wells Healey
History
The College, the Market, and the Court: or, Woman's relation to education, labor and law
Dall, Caroline Wells Healey
Women -- Education; Women -- Employment; Women -- Legal status, laws, etc.
scale, something like a school; and this was resisted by such combined
effort on the part of the trade, that Mr. Bennett and his friends began
to make a stir through the press. The "Edinburgh Review" mentions a
watchmaker's wife who wished to work with her husband in his special
department. Finding that it could not be done with the consent of the
trade, she undertook, instead, the engraving of the brass work; but,
though working in her own house, she was at last successful only under
the plea that she had been regularly apprenticed by her father, also in
the business. She persevered, and taught her two daughters; and so will
many others.
Women in England must certainly make watches; and the time is not far
distant when the men of Coventry will yield to this demand, as they have
already yielded to others. A few years ago, winding silk, weaving
ribbon, and pasting patterns of floss upon cards, excited the same
opposition; but now thousands of women pursue these employments, and
the men look on as quietly as the grazing cattle in the fields.
"The first steam factory in Coventry," says the "Edinburgh Review" for
October, 1859,--"a very small factory,--was burned down during a quarrel
about wages. Then there was an opposition to the employment of women at
the looms. To this day, one of the lightest and easiest processes in the
manufacture, which a child might manage, is engrossed by the men, under
heavy penalties."
Fancy a strong man winding silk for a whole day, or sorting colors in
floss! How has he ever degraded himself to such girls' work?
I need only remind you of the formal petition sent in at the time of the
opening of the School of Design at Marlborough House, to entreat the
Government not to instruct and aid women, lest the poor, helpless men
should starve! A similar prejudice, much more active than any in
America, prevents English women from qualifying themselves as
physicians. Dr. Spencer, of Bristol, really educated his daughter as an
accoucheuse; but the prejudice was so strong that she was not allowed to
practise, and became a governess instead. The same prejudice kept the
English Army suffering for months, while it delayed the departure of
female nurses to the Crimea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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