Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-94d59 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T13:43:25.868Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Business and Pleasure: Middle-Class Women’s Work and the Professionalization of Farming in England, 1890–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Farmer and Stockbreeder, 7 January 1935, 53.

2 Farmer and Stockbreeder, 18 March 1935, 637.

3 Farmer and Stockbreeder, 16 December 1935, 2858.

4 Burnette, Joyce, “The Wages and Employment of Female Day-Laborers in Agriculture, 1740–1850,” Economic History Review 57 (2004): 664–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sharpe, Pamela, “The Female Labour Market in English Agriculture during the Industrial Revolution: Expansion or Contraction?Agricultural History Review 47, no. 2 (1999): 161–81Google ScholarPubMed; Verdon, Nicola, Rural Women Workers in Nineteenth-Century England: Gender, Work and Wages (Woodbridge, 2002), chap. 4Google Scholar, and Agricultural Labour and the Contested Nature of Women’s Work in Interwar England and Wales,” Historical Journal 52, no. 1 (March 2009): 109–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Burnette, Joyce, “Laborers at the Oakes: Changes in the Demand for Female Day-Laborers at a Farm near Sheffield during the Agricultural Revolution,” Journal of Economic History 39, no. 1 (1999): 4167CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gielgud, Judy, “Nineteenth-Century Farm Women in Northumberland and Cumbria: The Neglected Workforce” (DPhil diss., University of Sussex, 1992)Google Scholar; Miller, Celia, “The Hidden Workforce: Female Fieldworkers in Gloucestershire, 1870–1901,” Southern History 6 (1984): 139–61Google Scholar; Speechley, Helen V., “Female and Child Agricultural Day Labourers in Somerset, c. 1685–1870” (PhD diss., University of Exeter, 1999)Google Scholar.

6 Verdon, Nicola, “‘… Subjects Deserving of the Highest Praise’: Farmers’ Wives and the Farm Economy in England, c. 1700–1850,” Agricultural History Review 51, no. 1 (2003): 2339Google Scholar, and ‘The Modern Countrywoman’: Farm Women, Domesticity, and Social Change in Interwar Britain,” History Workshop Journal 70, no. 1 (Autumn 2010): 86107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Davidoff, Leonore, “The Role of Gender in the ‘First Industrial Nation’: Farming and the Countryside in England, 1780–1850,” in Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (London, 1995), 200Google Scholar. This chapter was first published in Crompton, Rosemary and Mann, Michael, eds., Gender and Stratification (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar.

8 The classic account is Davidoff, Leonore and Hall, Catherine, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (London, 1987)Google Scholar. For a recent assessment of its impact and importance, see Gleadle, Kathryn, “Revisiting Family Fortunes: Reflections on the Twentieth Anniversary of the Publication of L. Davidoff & C. Hall (1987) Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850,” Women’s History Review 16, no. 5 (2007): 773–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 First Report from the Commissioners on the Employment of Children, Young Persons and Women in Agriculture. Report by the Reverend James Fraser, British Parliamentary Papers (BPP), 1867–68, XVII, p. 16.

10 For an overview of the representation of Victorian women in agriculture, see Sayer, Karen, Women of the Fields: Representations of Rural Women in the Nineteenth Century (Manchester, 1995)Google Scholar.

11 On the regulation of agricultural gangs, see Verdon, Nicola, “The Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture: A Reassessment of Agricultural Gangs in Nineteenth-Century Norfolk,” Agricultural History Review 49, no. 1 (2001): 4155Google ScholarPubMed.

12 Whitehead, Charles, Agricultural Labourers (London, 1870), 53Google Scholar.

13 Census of England and Wales, General Report with Appendices (London, 1904), BPP 1901, CVIII, p. 103Google Scholar.

14 Blake, Catriona, The Charge of the Parasols: Women’s Entry in the Medical Profession (London, 1990)Google Scholar; Copelman, D. M., Gender, Class and Feminism: Women Teachers in London, 1870–1930 (London, 1995)Google Scholar; Crawford, Elizabeth, Enterprising Women: The Garretts and Their Circle (London, 2002)Google Scholar; Hawkins, Sue, Nursing and Women’s Labor in the Nineteenth Century: The Quest for Independence (London, 2010)Google Scholar; Summers, Anne, “Ministering Angels: Victorian Ladies and Nursing,” in Victorian Values: Personalities and Perspectives in Nineteenth-Century Society, ed. Marsden, Gordon (London, 1990), 121–33Google Scholar; Oram, Alison, “Women Teachers and the Suffrage Campaign: Arguments for Professional Equality,” in Votes for Women, ed. Purvis, June and Holton, Sandra Stanley (London, 2000), 203–25Google Scholar.

15 I am very grateful to Karen Sayer for pointing out these early debates and allowing me access to her unpublished work on Victorian women farmers.

16 White, Cynthia L., Women’s Magazines, 1693–1968 (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Beetham, Margaret and Boardman, Kay, eds., Victorian Women’s Magazines: An Anthology (Manchester, 2001)Google Scholar; Fraser, Hilary, Green, Stephanie, and Johnston, Judith, Gender and the Victorian Periodical (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar.

17 Young, Arlene, “Ladies and Professionalism: The Evolution of the Idea of Work in the Queen, 1861–1900,” Victorian Periodicals Review 40, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 190CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Ibid., 191–92.

19 Ladies in Agriculture,” Country Life 11 (November 1899): 578Google Scholar.

20 Brassley, Paul, “Agricultural Science and Education,” in Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 7, 18501914, ed. Collins, E. J. T. (Cambridge, 2000), pt. 1, 649Google Scholar.

21 The South Eastern Agricultural College (which later became Wye College) in Kent was men only, as was the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester. Seale Hayne College in Devon began to admit women in the mid-1930s.

22 Meredith, Anne, “Middle-Class Women and Horticultural Education, 1890–1939” (DPhil diss., University of Sussex, 2001), chap. 5Google Scholar; see also her Horticultural Education in England, 1900–40: Middle-Class Women and Private Gardening Schools,” Garden History 31, no. 1 (2003): 6779CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Mrs.Wilkins, Roland, “The Work of Educated Women in Horticulture and Agriculture,” Journal of the Board of Agriculture 22 (1915–16): 554–69 and 616–42, quote at 622Google Scholar.

24 Meredith, “Middle-Class Women and Horticultural Education,” 118.

25 Ibid., 48–50.

26 Archives for both the Agricultural Association for Women (as part of Studley College) and the Women’s Farm and Garden Association are held at the Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading (hereafter MERL). See MERL, FR WAR 5, Studley College Collection, 1898–1969, and MERL, SR WFGA, The Women’s Farm and Garden Association, 1899–1991.

27 On the problems of surplus women in the middle of the nineteenth century, see Worsnop, Judith, “A Reevaluation of the ‘Problem of Surplus Women’ in Nineteenth-Century England: The Case of the 1851 Census,” Women’s Studies International Forum 13, nos. 1–2 (1990): 2131CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levitan, Kathrin, “Redundancy, the ‘Surplus Woman’ Problem, and the British Census, 1851–1861,” Women’s History Review 17, no. 3 (July 2008): 359–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the general question of middle-class women’s work in the nineteenth century, see Vicinus, Martha, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–1900 (Chicago, 1985)Google Scholar; Jordan, Ellen, The Women’s Movement and Women’s Employment in Nineteenth-Century Britain (New York, 1999), chap. 1Google Scholar.

28 Women as Agriculturists,” Land Magazine 2, no. 7 (October 1898): 490Google Scholar.

29 Warwick, Lady, “The New Woman and the Old Acres,” Woman’s Agricultural Times 1, no. 1 (July 1899): 1Google Scholar.

30 Ladies Field, 17 February 1906, 437.

31 Margaret Bateson, “The Business and Pleasure of Farming,” Queen, 20 June 1903, 976.

32 Ibid.

33 Ladies Field, 19 August 1911, 403.

34 Frances, , of Warwick, Countess, Life’s Ebb and Flow (London, 1929), 247Google Scholar.

35 Ladies Field, 19 August 1911, 403.

36 Davin, Anna, “Imperialism and Motherhood,” History Workshop Journal 5, no. 1 (1978): 965CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Dyhouse, Carol, “Working-Class Mothers and Infant Mortality in England, 1895–1914,” Journal of Social History 12, no. 2 (Winter 1978): 248–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Soloway, Richard A., Demography and Degeneration: Eugenics and the Declining Birthrate in Twentieth-Century Britain (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995)Google Scholar.

37 Howkins, Alun, “The Discovery of Rural England,” in Englishness: Politics and Culture, 1880–1920, ed. Colls, Robert and Dodds, Philip (London 1986): 6288Google Scholar; Jones, Gareth Stedman, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar.

38 Saville, John, Rural Depopulation in England and Wales, 1851–1951 (London, 1957), 5455Google Scholar.

39 In 1881, there were 847,954 farm laborers and servants in England and Wales (male and female). This fell to 578,005 in 1901.

40 Haggard, Henry Rider, Rural England: Being an Account of Agriculture and Social Researches Carried Out in the Years 1901 and 1902, vol. 2 (London, 1906), 540Google Scholar.

41 Ibid., 542.

42 Howkins, “The Discovery of Rural England,” 66.

43 There is, however, debate about the regional impact of agricultural depression, which appeared to hit the large arable farmers of southern and eastern England the worst. See Perren, Richard, Agriculture in Depression, 1870–1940 (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar.

44 Warwick, Life’s Ebb and Flow, 250.

45 Bradley, Edith and La Mothe, Bertha, The Lighter Branches of Agriculture (London, 1903), 1112Google Scholar.

46 Warwick, Life’s Ebb and Flow, 250–51. On the wider back-to-the-land movement, see Marsh, Jan, Back to the Land: The Pastoral Impulse in England from 1880–1914 (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Gould, P. C., Early Green Politics: Back to Nature, Back to the Land, and Socialism in Britain (Brighton, 1988)Google Scholar; and Hardey, D., Alternative Communities in Nineteenth-Century England (London, 1979)Google Scholar.

47 Thirsk, Joan, Alternative Agriculture: A History from the Black Death to the Present Day (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar.

48 Bradley and La Mothe, Lighter Branches of Agriculture, 11.

49 Bradley, Edith, “Openings for Women in the Lighter Branches of Agriculture,” Women’s Employment 1, no. 10 (1901): 6Google Scholar; see also Warwick, “The New Women and the Old Acres,” 1–2.

50 Horn, Pamela, Victorian Countywomen (Oxford, 1991), 124 and 130Google Scholar.

51 Dugdale, J. Marshall, “Lady Warwick’s Agricultural Scheme for Women,” Land Magazine 2, no. 9 (December 1898): 702–3Google Scholar.

52 The Times, 17 August 1898, 5.

53 Ladies Field, 17 February 1906, 437.

54 Verdon, “… Subjects Deserving of the Highest Praise.”

55 Long, James, “The Farm for the New Woman,” Woman’s Agricultural Times 1, no. 2 (August 1899): 4Google Scholar.

56 SirBlythe, James, “Women and Agriculture,” Woman’s Agricultural Times 1, no. 1 (July 1899): 3Google Scholar.

57 Lady Warwick, “Introduction,” in Bradley and La Mothe, Lighter Branches of Agriculture, xiii–xiv.

58 Wilkins, “The Work of Educated Women,” 622.

59 “Ladies in Agriculture,” 579; Woman’s Agricultural Times 2, no. 3 (September 1900): 3Google Scholar.

60 “Ladies in Agriculture,” 578. “Brye” was a northeastern term for a barn.

61 “Women as Agriculturalists,” 496.

62 Warwick, “Introduction,” xiv; Ladies Field, 7 January 1899, 153.

63 Bradley and La Mothe, Lighter Branches of Agriculture, 14.

64 Bateson, “Business and Pleasure,” 976. For similar portraits of Katherine Courtauld, see Ladies Field, 7 October 1899, 182–83, and Famous Women Farmers III: Miss K. M. Courtauld,” Woman’s Agricultural Times 2, no. 4 (1900): 4Google Scholar. For a general background on her life, see King, Peter, Women Rule the Plot (London, 1999), 106–8Google Scholar.

65 Bateson, “Business and Pleasure,” 976.

66 Lord Willoughby de Broke, quoted in “Women as Agriculturists,” 498.

67 Clark, Gill, The Women’s Land Army: A Portrait (Bristol, 2008), 35Google Scholar.

68 Grayzel, Susan R., “Nostalgia, Gender, and the Countryside: Placing the ‘Land Girl’ in First World War Britain,” Rural History 10, no. 2 (1999): 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Report by Investigators on Wages and Conditions of Employment in Agriculture, BPP, 1919, IX, vol. 2, Cheshire, 38, Northamptonshire, p. 236.

70 SirHall, A. D., “The Position of Women in Agriculture,” Journal of the Board of Agriculture 25, no. 7 (October 1918): 786Google Scholar.

71 Mrs.Wilkins, Roland, The Training and Employment of Education Women in Horticulture and Agriculture (London, 1927), 6Google Scholar.

72 Margaretta Hicks, “Give the Women a Chance,” Land Worker, February 1921, 6. For a background to Hicks, see Hunt, Karen, “Negotiating the Boundaries of the Domestic: British Socialist Women and the Politics of Consumption,” Women’s History Review 9, no. 2 (2000): 389410CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 MERL, SK WFGA E/2/2, monthly journals (April 1919).

74 Poultry Farming as a Profession,” Women’s Employment 21 (April 1921): 3Google Scholar.

75 See, e.g., Careers for Educated Women: Section 6, Open-Air Professions (London, [1920s])Google Scholar; Strachey, Ray, Careers and Openings for Women (London, 1935)Google Scholar; Hughes, D. W., Careers for Our Daughters (London, 1936)Google Scholar.

76 Report and Journal of the Women’s Farm and Garden Association, MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/25, 1935–36 (1936), 6.

77 Meredith, “Middle-Class Women and Horticultural Education,” 94–102.

78 Ibid., 90–91 and 245.

79 Report and Journal of the Women’s Farm and Garden Association, MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/23, 1933–34 (1934), 6.

80 Farmers Weekly, 17 June 1938, 50.

81 Farmers Weekly, 27 May 1938, 50.

82 Farmers Weekly, 8 July 1938, 54.

83 Perkin, Harold, The Rise of Professional Society: England since 1880 (London, 2002), 23Google Scholar.

84 Brassley, Paul, “The Professionalization of English Agriculture?Rural History 16, no. 2 (2005): 235–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 Park, Edith E., Farming for Ladies (London, 1907), 2627Google Scholar. Park ran a forty-four-acre farm in Billingshurst, Sussex. For background on her, see Ladies Field, 19 September 1908, 90–91.

86 Women’s Farm and Garden Association Journal, MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/27, 1937–38 (1938), 21.

87 Ibid., 22.

88 Women’s Farm and Garden Association Journal, MERL SK WFGA/E/1/26, 1936–37 (1937), 18.

89 Howkins, Alun, The Death of Rural England: A Social History of the Countryside since 1900 (London, 2003), chap. 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

90 Park, Farming for Ladies, 27

91 Wilkins, “The Work of Educated Women,” 624.

92 Women’s Farm and Garden Association Journal, MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/24, 1934–35 (1935), 30.

93 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/27, 21.

94 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/26, 16.

95 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/24, 31.

96 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/27, 23.

97 On the origins of the “South Country,” see Howkins, “The Discovery of Rural England,” 63–64.

98 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/24, 30.

99 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/27, 21.

100 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/26, 15.

101 Ibid., 16.

102 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/27, 25.

103 Leigh, Margaret, Harvest of the Moor (London, 1937), 275–76Google Scholar.

104 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/27, 21.

105 Women’s Employment 25, no. 7 (April 1925): 3Google Scholar.

106 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/24, 30.

107 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/27, 22.

108 Farm and Garden Business,” Women’s Employment 24, no. 3 (February 1924): 3Google Scholar; Wilkins, Training and Employment of Education Women, 5–6.

109 Leigh, Harvest of the Moor, 275.

110 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/26, 16.

111 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/24, 31.

112 Meredith, Anne, “From Ideals to Reality: The Women’s Smallholding Colony at Lingfield, 1920–39,” Agricultural History Review 54, no. 1 (2006): 105Google Scholar.

113 Street, A. G., Farmer’s Glory (London, 1932), 238Google Scholar.

114 Women’s Employment 22 (February 1922): 3; Nalder, M., “Farming as a Profession for Women,” News about the Guild 3, no. 1 (February 1911): 6Google Scholar.

115 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/27, 20.

116 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/26, 19.

117 Wilkins, “The Work of Educated Women,” 625.

118 Florence B. Low, “Joys of an Outdoor Life,” Queen, 21 February 1934, 37.

119 Pugh, Martin, We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain between the Wars (London, 2008), 270Google Scholar.

120 Leigh, Harvest of the Moor, 274.

121 Co-operation for Women,” Woman’s Agricultural Times 2, no. 6 (December 1900): 4Google Scholar. On the wider cooperative movement, see Gurney, Peter, Co-operative Culture and the Politics of Consumption, 1870–1930 (Manchester, 1996)Google Scholar.

122 Farmer and Stockbreeder, 28 January 1935, 221.

123 Farmer and Stockbreeder, 10 June 1935, 1298.

124 Bradley and La Mothe, Lighter Branches of Agriculture, 340.

125 Meredith, “From Ideals to Reality,” 119.

126 On the attacks on women teachers, see Oram, Alison, Women Teachers and Feminist Politics, 1900–1939 (Manchester, 1996)Google Scholar, and “Embittered, Sexless or Homosexual: Attacks on Spinster Teachers, 1918–39,” in Current Issues in Women’s History, ed. Angerman, Arina et al. (London, 1989), 183202Google Scholar. On the arguments of sexologists and psychologists, and the interwar feminist response to them, see Oram, Alison, “Repressed and Thwarted, or Bearer of the New World? The Spinster in Inter-war Feminist Discourses,” Women’s History Review 1, no. 3 (1992): 413–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

127 King, Women Rule the Plot, 108.

128 Brander, Michael, Eve Balfour: The Founder of the Soil Association and Voice of the Organic Movement (Haddington, 2003)Google Scholar.

129 Holden, Katherine, Froide, Amy, and Hannam, June, “Introduction,” Women’s History Review 17, no. 3 (July 2008): 322CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Holden, Katherine, The Shadow of Marriage: Singleness in England, 1914–60 (Manchester, 2007)Google Scholar.

130 Low, “Joys of an Outdoor Life,” 36–37.

131 MERL, SK WFGA/E/1/27, 20.

132 Haggard, Rural England, 540.

133 Hall, A. D., A Pilgrimage of British Farming (London, 1914), 436–37Google Scholar.

134 Street, Farmers’ Glory, 303–4.