Women at Home and at Work 

'Mans work ends at setting sun
Yet womans work is never done.'

Until the 19th Century girls could be married at twelve years of age. Before leaving home they were expected to learn all the practicalities of housekeeping and assumed the responsibility for upholding family morals. Before the agricultural and industrial revolutions most forms of work were undertaken by both men and women. In fields and in mines, workshops and markets women contributed to the family income by working alongside their men, replacing them in their absence or after their death. Inevitably they were paid less in17th - Century England male labourers earned 8d (the equivalent of £2.70 today) and females 6d (£2.00) while male reapers earned 5d (£1.65) and women 3d (£1.00), with meat and drink.

On the farm women also drove the plough, shepherded the sheep and fowl, processed the dairy products, tended the kitchen garden, spun, wove and sewed the flax and wool, sold the produce at market and kept the household accounts. In addition, women had special responsibility for brewing ale and cider in Northern Europe (where women were frequently licensed publicans), and wine in the South. Women often made a great success of businesses they inherited from fathers or husbands. The great champagne vineyard of Veuve Cliquot was named after the widow of  M. Cliquot.

With the shift from an agricultural to an industrial economy, from country to town and from home to factory, women lost much of their previous flexibility and control of their work. Jobs in factories were generally low-paid, low-grade and repetitive. The alternatives were shop-work, nursing and midwifery, going into service or, at worst, prostitution. At first considered as bad as the brothel, the theatre offered a variety of creative opportunities for performers as singers, dancers or actresses. Two of the most celebrated actresses of whom ceramic souvenirs were made were Kitty Clive in the mid 18th Century and Madame Vestris in the early 19th Century.

Better educated women could become teachers or governesses while a few earned their livings as writers. In the 17th Century Aphra Behn was the best known, the author of plays, novels and copious poetry. Equally famous in the late 18th Century was the radical historian Catherine Macaulay, whose eight-volume History of England was controversial for its Republican bias, and the celebrated playwright Hannah More, who later devoted herself to writing moralising religious tracts. Both Macaulay and More were included in Richard Samuels majestic group portrait of The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain, (1778), now in the National Portrait Gallery.

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