Working-Class Women In The 18th Century

Working class woman in in early 1880s (Alexander, 1984).

“Excluded from the free air, and almost from the pure light of day; shut up in an atmosphere polluted by clouds of fetid breath, and all the sickening exhalations of a crowded human mass, whose unwashed, overworked bodies were also in many cases diseased, and by the suffocating dust that rose on every side; relaxed by an intensity of artificial heat which their constitutions were never framed to encounter in the temperate clime where God had placed them; doubly fevered, doubly debilitated, by excessive toil, not measured by human capacity to sustain it, but by the power of machinery obeying an inexhaustible impetus; badly clothed, wretchedly fed, and exposed moreover to fasts of unnatural
Following were the prominent developments in the later 18th century: 1-Women’s Industrial Council: This organization worked a lot towards s rehabilitation of women status and increasing their wages wage by providing them reasonable job opportunities 2- Council and Society for promoting Employment of Women : This council made the effort to realise the society about the importance of women and their contribution in Britain’s Economy and they encouraged the women to work in a better environment (other than that working of Factories) by admitting firstly that it was among the basics right of women. 3- Taunton Commission 1868: This commission emphasis greatly upon the education of children and later on this commission also started its working on the educational aspects of women also (vocational education for lower class women) and high education for elite class women. 4- National Education Act 1870 & 1876: This act was the first official step from the Government of Britain of that time, which encouraged and enforced basic education for all children and women. 5-Sickness benefits act: This act was especially implemented after the trend of prostitution in 18th century, when women got sexually transmitted diseases and they got no proper aid in hospitals. So proper treatment was aimed to provide to women. 6-Womens’s Protective and Provident league WPPL: The sole purpose of this law was to provide women protection from harassment at workplace or other places. This was much effective that lead to other agitations. 7-National Union for Improvement of Women Education: A lot of work was done under this union, which gave freedom to the women to acquire higher education other than vocational work. 8- Ladies' Sanitary Reform Association of Manchester and Salford: founded in 1862: This law basically focused upon the living conditions of