Royal Commission on Labour - The Employment of Women 1894
- GVHeritage Groups
- Dec 1, 2024
- 2 min read
by the St Luke's Heritage Group for Futures Past
Hours worked and Rates of Pay
1894 domestic sewing rates and hours worked – 1s would be worth £8.00 in today’s money. 15 hours per day for 5 ½ days per week may only bring in as little as £80.00 by current rates.
This logbook included a record of individual seamstresses and a commentary on their time keeping, reliability, work rate etc. One bad word in here and you could become unemployable.
Caroline A. Foley, writing in The Economic Journal, Volume 4, Issue 13, 1 March 1894, Pages 185–191 - an except:
(2) It is impossible here to draw up from the Report tables of average wage-rates in all the trades employing women, in order to substantiate my general statement. The work teems with figures yielding not a ' living' but a starving wage. The net-weavers (women) of Kilbirnie averaging 18s. 6d. a week and those in the South Scotch woollen trade averaging from 16s. to 20s. are brilliant exceptions rather than the rule. Even the shop assistant, usually under-paid because of defective organisation anid the over-attractive ' gentility ' of the profession, can in one abnormally fortunate employ in the Haymarket earn £100 per annum with board and lodging.' But while women will make shirts (throughout) at 2s. 3d. a dozen, drill trousers at 2s. 6d. a dozen, drill jackets at 3s. 9d. a dozen (p. 71),-when some at this sort of work can never earn more than '2s. 8d. a week' (p. 79),-when we find dressmakers ( best hands') after several years' training getting only 10s. a week without board or lodging (p. 89), stocking seamers realising 2'd. a day ' working hard all the time' (p. 160) bead-embroidery, one yard per hour, paid at 1d. a yard (p. 161), finishing trousers at 2d. per pair, two hours' work (p.274), Ayr worsted spinners, 'emaciated . . . ragged and dirty,' averaging 6s. 6d. a week-such trades can hardly be said to be well paid. In many cases they command worse wages now than in former years for the same work. Again, Leeds' tailoresses command better pay than Bristol tailoresses, Yorkshire weavers than West country weavers (pp. 35, 143). Many instances go to prove that where the normal wage-rate is low, wages and morality among women rise and fall concomitantly (pp. 183-186, 296). In very nearly every instance where men and women are engaged upon the same kind of work, the latter are paid at a lower rate.
