The Contribution by Women to the Social and Economic Development of the Victorian Town in Hertfordshire

1 The Contribution by Women to the Social and Economic Development of the Victorian Town in Hertfordshire Jennifer Ayto Submitted to the University of Hertfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of PhD September 2012 2 Abstract This study focuses on the role and contribution of women in the context of the social and economic development of two towns in Hertfordshire during the nineteenth century. Although the age saw an increase in urbanisation, Hertfordshire remained an agricultural county with long established land owners, a middle class with influence in the towns and its closeness to London attracting the newly wealthy in search of a country estate. The towns selected for this study, Hertford and Hitchin, changed little in their character and, compared with others which experienced industrial expansion, saw a modest population growth. This, however, brought the consequential pressures on housing and poverty. This research is unique in combining the study of the activities of women and the challenges faced by two market towns over a period of time of change and thus making a contribution to the debate on the concept of “separate spheres” by demonstrating that women had a place in the public arena. The daily life of a country town was reliant on a thriving economic environment. As this research demonstrates, many women had trades and businesses, contributed to good causes and were central to the education of children and adults. Their philanthropic efforts supported the building and maintenance of churches, schools, and hospitals. It charts the role of ordinary women, operating in a small town environment, before extension of the suffrage and Equal Opportunities legislation established their position as legitimate influencers of policy and practice. Little work has been done on how the English small town coped with its growth in population and the summons from central government on compliance with an increasing body of legislation on how the town should be run. It was men who undertook the necessary offices associated with this seed of local government but a micro-history of the people who inhabited these two towns demonstrates that women made a significant contribution to social and economic life of these towns. 3 Contents Page No. Abstract 2 List of tables 5 - 6 List of appendices 7 1 Introduction 1.1 Introduction: Objectives and context 8 - 9 1.2 Victorian Women 9 - 13 1.3 Small towns 13 - 14 1.4 Hertford and Hitchin 15 1.5 Demography 15 - 19 1.6 Commerce and Occupations 19 – 21 1.7 Governance 21 – 24 1.8 Sources 25 – 28 1.9 Conclusion 28 2 Women, occupations and commerce 2.1 Introduction 29 2.2 The female community 29 - 31 2.3 Occupations 31 - 34 2.4 Married women 34 - 43 2.5 The plight of the widow 43 - 47 2.6 Widows and occupations 37 - 53 2.7 Women and commerce 53 - 59 2.8 Widows and dynasties 59 - 64 2.9 Unmarried/never married women 64 - 72 2.10 Unmarried women – 1891 72 - 80 2.11 The domestic servant 80 - 82 2.12 Women and investment 82 - 85 4 2.13 Conclusions 85 - 89 3 Philanthropy 3.1 Motives for philanthropy 90 - 97 3.2 Motives for women 97 - 103 3.3 Charitable activity in Hertford and Hitchin 103 - 112 3.4 Women and charity in Hertford and Hitchin 113 - 115 3.5 Bible and missionary societies 115 - 120 3.6 The bazaar 120 - 129 3.7 Fundraising 129 - 133 3.8 Wills 133 - 137 3.9 The poor 137 – 148 3.10 Women and government 148 - 150 4 Education 4.1 Introduction 151 - 152 4.2 The growth of literacy 152 - 159 4.3 Schools and schooling in Hertfordshire 160 - 166 4.4 Schools in Hertford and Hitchin 166 - 175 4.5 Sunday schools 175 - 179 4.6 Women and Sunday schools 179 - 182 4.7 Adult schools 183 - 186 4.8 Schooling at the end of the century 186 - 193 4.9 Conclusion 193 - 196 5 Conclusions 197 - 202 Appendices 203 - 215 Bibliography 216 - 230 5 List of Tables Page No. 1 Population: Hertford and Hitchin 1851 17 2 Population: Hertford and Hitchin 1891 17 3 Population – Hertford and Hitchin 1881, 1891, 1901 17 4 Occupational Structure - 1851 – Hertford 20 5 Occupational Structure – 1851 – Hitchin 20 6 Unmarried women over the age of twenty and widows and percentage of the total female population over the age of twenty – Hertford and Hitchin 30 7 Widows as a proportion of total heads of household 30 8 Women employed in the manufacturing and domestic service categories – Hertford and Hitchin – 1851 32 9 Percentage employed in manufacture – female population – Hertford and Hitchin 33 10 Female employment by marital status – 1851 – Hertford and Hitchin 39 11 Workhouse population – Hertford and Hitchin – 1851 46 12 Widows – Hertford and Hitchin – 1851 47 13 Income source – Widows – Hertford and Hitchin – 1851 48 14 Widows – Income source by percentage 52 15 Women running a business in the 1860 trade directory for Hertford who were married in 1851 55 16 Women running a business in the 1860 trade directory for Hitchin who were married in 1851 57 17 Percentage of households headed by a single woman 67 18 Income source – unmarried heads of household – Hertford and Hitchin – 1851 68 19 Occupation break-down by percentage – unmarried women with an occupation enumerated in the 1891 census (1851 figures in parentheses) 76 6 20 Sources of income – unmarried women heading a household – 1891 78 21 Allocation of Miss Dimsdale and Grass Money – Hertford 107 22 Distribution of income from endowed charities – Hertford – 1867 108 23 Legacies recorded in the Minute Book for the North Herts and South Beds Infirmary 135 24 Workhouse population – Hertford and Hitchin 144 7 List of Appendices Page No. 1 Hertford – Ordnance Survey map – 1880 203 2 Hitchin – Local board of Health Ordnance map – 1852 204 3 Manufacture – Male population – Hertford and Hitchin - 1851 205 4 Hertford and Hitchin – Marital status – 1851 206 5 Hertford - Women who were married in 1881 and enumerated without 207 occupation and widowed in 1891 6 Hitchin – Women who were married in 1881 and enumerated without 208 occupation and widowed in 1891 7 Hertford – 1851 – Families with unmarried daughters and grandchildren 209 8 Hitchin – 1851 – Families with unmarried daughters and grandchildren 210 - 211 9 Unmarried women aged 40 and over; enumerated without occupation – 212 Hertford - 1891 10 Unmarried women aged 40 and over; enumerated without occupation – 213 Hitchin – 1891 11 Bazaars advertised or reported in the Ipswich Journal 214 12 Employment of children as recorded on the census – 1851 – 215 Hertford and Hitchin 8 The Contribution by Women to the Social and Economic Development of the Victorian Town in Hertfordshire 1.1 Introduction: Objectives and context The nineteenth century saw a growth in urban development and an increasing interest by central government in local administration. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 in particular has been credited as the start of a new era in local government in Britain which became more complicated as the century progressed.1 We can identify the mayors, aldermen and the men who undertook the offices associated with the poor law and school boards, but what contemporaries and historians have neglected is the unrecorded, but significant, contribution made by women in terms of economic activity, philanthropy and education. This study is unique in its focus on the role and contribution of the women living in two market towns in England which had to contend with concomitant challenges associated with a growth in population and an increasing interest by central government in local matters. Writing in 1973, Davidoff recorded that accounts of the nineteenth century recognised Queen Victoria and a few notable women who were writers, the path-breakers and, in the later years of the century, those in the suffrage movement but noted a neglect of accounts of the lives of the majority of women in the context of their commitments and activities.2 Twenty five years later Cannadine could acknowledge that there had been studies on women but made a plea that women’s history be integrated into the mainstream of research.3 Even more recently it was stated that women’s history and local history had developed in parallel.4 In practice there have been many surveys of women’s work in the nineteenth century, sometimes general or concentrated on a specific class, work area or location.5 In particular, the publication, in 2007, of a collection of studies on women and their working lives in nineteenth century 1 G. Best, Mid-Victorian Britain 1851 – 75 (London, 1982), p. 55. 2 L. Davidoff, The Best Circles, Etiquette and the Season (London, 1973), p. 14. In a later paper, first published in 1990, she noted that issues of family and kinship had been neglected. Family history has become the territory of the amateur. See L. Davidoff, “Regarding Some ‘Old Husbands’ Tales’: Public and Private in Feminist History” in L. Davidoff, Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (Oxford, 1995), p. 229. 3 D. Cannadine, History in our time (New Haven; London, 1998), pp. 107 – 8. 4 J. Howells, “By her labour: Working wives in a Victorian provincial city” in C. Dyer, A. Hopper, E. Lord and N. Tringham, eds., New Directions in Local History since Hoskins (Hatfield, 2011), p. 158. 5 W. Neff, Victorian Working Women (London, 1966); N. Goose, ed., Women’s Work in Industrial England (Hatfield, 2007); E. Gordon and G. Nair, Family and Society in Victorian Britain (New Haven and London, 2003); C. Chinn, They worked all their lives; Women of the urban poor in England 1880 – 1939 (Manchester, 1988); D.

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