Hello and welcome to the stories of women who were never written into history!
These were women of all kinds: single, married, young, old, from different classes and circumstances in life. The only thing they have in common is that the writers of history books didn’t consider them worthy of note, like this unknown woman in the image on the left from c1880s. [1]
On this ‘HerStories’ blog, I will introduce you to some of these amazing women and piece together their lives and stories from archival records.
These records listed them on the census as domestic servants or catalogued their poverty in times of hardship in the poor law records. Many are left unidentified as faces from the past, such as this Glasgow maid from the c1880s . [2]
These women were manual workers, agricultural labourers, hawkers, street sellers, knitters, sewers, crofters, mill workers, poets, teachers, carers, domestic servants, philanthropists, activists and much more.
This drawing of an Irish street seller smoking a pipe is from Mayhew’s London from 1850. [3]
They were also mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, friends and extended kin and family. Some lived in luxury, others in abject poverty, such as these women photographed by Thomas Annan in 1868 living in a Glasgow slum (Close no. 18, High Street). [4]
But these women’s stories are much more than how society defined them in relation to their male support as wives and daughters or simply as caregivers and mothers.
History is not just about royalty, the rich and entitled or the privileged few. It is also the story of ordinary people and their extraordinary lives and it is time we got to know them.
Women spinning in a Highland Cottage, c1880s. [5]
Image Credits
[1] Unknown Woman, Cartes de Visite, c,1880s (Author’s Own Collection).
[2] Glasgow Maid, Cartes de Visite c1880s (Author’s Own Collection).
[3] Irish Street Seller (Mayhew’s London, 1850) (Author’s Own Collection).
[4] Close no.18, High Street Glasgow (Thomas Annan, 1868) (National Galleries of Scotland Creative Commons CC by NC).
[5] Interior of a Highland Cottage, Scotland with a woman spinning beside the fireplace, postcard of unknown date (Author’s Own Collection).
Copyright (c) Ruth Washbrook 2023 / third party copyright holders
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