#1800s women's work

[resplendentoutfit]

The non-resplendid Outfit: What poor women wore in the mid to late 1800s, Victorian era

Housemaids, early 1860’s. They are dressed in their best for the photographer, but look at their hands. From Victorian Working Women. They could perhaps have scullury maids, who were a lower ranked of housemaid.

Fig. 1 - Washerwoman and young girl • Mid-1800's

Fig. 2 - From 'Street Life in London', 1877, by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith. "The accompanying photograph represents a second-hand clothes shop in a narrow thoroughfare of St. Giles."

Fig. 3 - These women were referred to as "tip girls". Their job was to unload mine refuse from train cars and on to the "tip" of the mountains of mine waste. Tredegar, Wales, 1865. Photo by W. Clayton from Victorian Working Women

fig. 4 - This dress features a loose fitting, unlined bodice gathered gently under the bust and at the center back. The sleeves are cut moderately to encourage movement and feature a short cuff with button closure. The semi full skirt is gathered into a waistband and attached to the bodice. The skirt is hemmed to the ankle with a single turn hem. The gown closes at the center front with buttons. Shown over over a quilted petticoat and extra full petticoats. Typically worn between 1840 and 1890. This dress is a replica based on research.

Working class women in the Victorian era couldn't afford the latest fashions. They wore simple, practical clothing in a style dependent on their ooccupation. In figure 1, The woman is wearing a simple dress and cape. Her clothing looks clean because she's a washerwoman; her clothing only exposed to water and soap. Her dress is very similar to the one in figure 4.

In figure 2, the women working in the second-hand clothes shop are also performing work that isn't likely to soil their clothing. It's interesting to discover there were such shops. I always assumed poor women of this era made their own clothing.

A job such as handling coal (figure 3) was such dirty work that the clothing worn for it had to be made from thick, rough fabrics and cut loose to facilitate movement. The dirtier and more physically demanding the work, the rougher the clothing.

[sinisteryuri]

ok. tragically separated wwi era vampire twins.

[minniiaa]

Mondays at work make me understand why Japanese office workers jump in front of trucks in hopes of being isekai’d to a fantasy land

[life-imitates-art-far-more]

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) "The Cotton Pickers" (1876) Oil on canvas Realism Located in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, United States

[mxjackparker]

La Prostitution Contemporaine: Étude d'une question sociale (1884)

TRIBADES Jealousy, between girls addicted to the vice of sapphism, often causes quarrels, and sometimes veritable duels, in which the most frequently used weapon is the hair comb.

An illustration of multiple lesbian sex workers, printed within "La Prostitution Contemporaine" by Léo Taxil in 1884, with translated caption.

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (French, 1845-1902) L'Orientale au Tambour, 1880

[diagonal-queen]

i just read all of Take no Kido in one sitting and. i am very upset with the ending. kunikida you owe me compensation for emotional damages

[prans-micellar-water]

Had the most. Specific dream

[liminal-barbie]

William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Le Travail interrompu - Work Interrupted (1891)

[fullfrontispiece]

Happy Hour

“Work time is over, time for happy hour!”

[mariocki]

Mrs. Rattenshaw: 'Tisn't much I've got to offer you, but such as it is, you're heartily welcome. Will it be poached eggs, now, and a bit of bacon, or fried ham, and potatoes in their jackets?

Maud: Oh, poached eggs I think, thank you; don't you papa? [Aside to him] I don't know what she means by potatoes in their jackets.

-

Lucy Whitehead, Granny (c.1890)

[caramelmochacrow]

brain got fucking fried as hell the fuck *insert image of a cat that looks so sickly*

[citedesdames]

In the summer of 1885 female factory hands at Amamiya Silk Reeling Company in Kōfu temporarily walked off the job to protest the capricious conduct of male supervisors who showed favoritism toward "the fair of face" and treated plain-looking women harshly. A year later on June 12, 1886, nearly one hundred factory girls again marched out of the Amamiya filature. This time strikers sought refuge in a local temple, where they discussed their grievances and plotted strategy. The women were angry that the mill's owner intended to reduce wages while adding thirty minutes to the workday. Nor were they pleased with a long list of fines that ownership threatened to impose on workers who did not comply with the new regulations or with a rule that once hired, a woman would not be allowed to take a job at a different mill for one year. ... The number of strikers at Amamiya quickly doubled to include virtually the entire work force. With no way to keep the filature open, the owners' mediators agreed to meet with the strikers' representatives. At first, management suggested that it would preserve the 4:30 AM to 7:30 PM work day if the women would accept a 30 minute lunch period and the elimination of most toilet breaks. The workers balked at that idea, and after long hours of negotiation the owner of the Amamiya mill dropped plans to lengthen working hours, eliminated new regulations that would have imposed heavy fines on women who arrived late (or left early) by even a few minutes, and promised to consider "other ways to improve conditions." ... The confrontation between labor and management in Kōfu received just momentary coverage from the nation's press before receding to the hazy fringes of Meiji history. Such fleeting attention was a disservice to the young women at the Amamiya filature since their walkout in 1886 constituted the first organised industrial strike in Japanese history."

James McClain, Japan, A Modern History, 2002

[theawkwardone6]

Literally don’t talk to me about how uncomfortable Victorian women’s fashion was unless you’ve had a Victorian outfit tailor made for your exact measurements, you’ve broken in your corset, and you wear it for a whole day or I will stab you 13 times

[moki-dokie]

been seeing some stuff on blue eye samurai and big yikes to nearly everyone pushing extremely western ideals onto these characters.

this is early edo period. 1600s. the japan you know now did not exist yet.

yall. please. there was NO concept of sexuality in pre-modern japan. that came with both the influx of christianity and western influence very very late in history. like, mid-1800s. (yes, there was christianity pre-1800s but it was not a widespread idea yet and wouldn't be until about the 1800s since, y'know, missionaries were routinely murdered before then)

"so and so is either bi and hasn't figured it out yet or..." no. that isn't how it worked then. nobody gave a shit what was between your legs. anyone could be attracted to anyone else. it was a little more common for male homosexual relationships to be between an adult and younger male - like many other places around the world - but two adult men could bang and love each other just as easily. relationships between women were quite common - especially since so many men were often away at war. there's tons of pornographic prints from the time depicting all manner of fun queer relationships. sex itself had absolutely no moral assignment to it. good sex was good health. it didn't matter who with. (well, social class/caste mattered more than anything else tbh but that didn't stop upper and lower class from fucking.) that isn't to say people didn't have preferences. of course they did. that is human nature. preferences arose more from physical appearance, caste, and circumstances with gender being about the last thing one would look for in a partner - romantic, casual, or otherwise. the only role in sex where gender actually mattered was for procreation.

there would be no queer awakening moment, no sudden switch flipped, no stigma to have internal conflicts about because it simply did not exist as a concept whatsoever. you were either attracted to a person or you weren't, it was that simple. gender played no role when it came to sex and sexual attraction. the japanese were lightyears ahead of western cultures in this particular area - like most cultures were before christianity came in and ruined everything with its backwards morals and strict good/evil dichotomy.

yall have got to realize queer rep will not and should not always adhere by modern western standards. there was no straight, gay, bi, or anything else of the sort. the closest they ever got was referring to roles during sex - as in who is giving and who is receiving.

i know this is mostly a made up story but it is still set within a very specific time period and culture, which should be honored and respected by not making it fit into our box. tons of research went into making this show historically accurate (albeit with some discrepancies but tbh they aren't really that huge) right down to the calligraphy writing. please please please don't whitewash the culture from these characters.

i say this mainly because without this knowledge, so many of you are going to build these characters up on a foundation they aren't meant to be on and then you'll rage about queerbaiting and bad queer rep if it isn't somehow super explicitly stated, if it doesn't match your very modern, very western ideal of what queer looks like. don't try to force this plot and narrative and characters into something they canonically and historically aren't. headcanons are a thing, AUs are a thing, fanfiction is a thing - leave your western thinking for those and let these characters simply exist as they should otherwise. this is one of those times where the queerness really does not need to be examined at all beyond what we get.

i know it can be hard to wrap your head around - sexuality is such a huge part of our identity in the western world and has slowly started to spread amongst other parts of the world in importance. but just keep in mind with these particular characters, that concept would be so very alien to them.

[darkandstormydolls]

PSA to all historical fiction/fantasy writers:

A SEAMSTRESS, in a historical sense, is someone whose job is sewing. Just sewing. The main skill involved here is going to be putting the needle into an out of the fabric. They’re usually considered unskilled workers, because everyone can sew, right? (Note: yes, just about everyone could sew historically. And I mean everyone.) They’re usually going to be making either clothes that aren’t fitted (like shirts or shifts or petticoats) or things more along the lines of linens (bedsheets, handkerchiefs, napkins, ect.). Now, a decent number of people would make these things at home, especially in more rural areas, since they don’t take a ton of practice, but they’re also often available ready-made so it’s not an uncommon job. Nowadays it just means someone whose job is to sew things in general, but this was not the case historically. Calling a dressmaker a seamstress would be like asking a portrait painter to paint your house

A DRESSMAKER (or mantua maker before the early 1800s) makes clothing though the skill of draping (which is when you don’t use as many patterns and more drape the fabric over the person’s body to fit it and pin from there (although they did start using more patterns in the early 19th century). They’re usually going to work exclusively for women, since menswear is rarely made through this method (could be different in a fantasy world though). Sometimes you also see them called “gown makers”, especially if they were men (like tailors advertising that that could do both. Mantua-maker was a very feminized term, like seamstress. You wouldn’t really call a man that historically). This is a pretty new trade; it only really sprung up in the later 1600s, when the mantua dress came into fashion (hence the name).

TAILORS make clothing by using the method of patterning: they take measurements and use those measurements to draw out a 2D pattern that is then sewed up into the 3D item of clothing (unlike the dressmakers, who drape the item as a 3D piece of clothing originally). They usually did menswear, but also plenty of pieces of womenswear, especially things made similarly to menswear: riding habits, overcoats, the like. Before the dressmaking trade split off (for very interesting reason I suggest looking into. Basically new fashion required new methods that tailors thought were beneath them), tailors made everyone’s clothes. And also it was not uncommon for them to alter clothes (dressmakers did this too). Staymakers are a sort of subsect of tailors that made corsets or stays (which are made with tailoring methods but most of the time in urban areas a staymaker could find enough work so just do stays, although most tailors could and would make them).

Tailors and dressmakers are both skilled workers. Those aren’t skills that most people could do at home. Fitted things like dresses and jackets and things would probably be made professionally and for the wearer even by the working class (with some exceptions of course). Making all clothes at home didn’t really become a thing until the mid Victorian era.

And then of course there are other trades that involve the skill of sewing, such as millinery (not just hats, historically they did all kinds of women’s accessories), trimming for hatmaking (putting on the hat and and binding and things), glovemaking (self explanatory) and such.

TLDR: seamstress, dressmaker, and tailor are three very different jobs with different skills and levels of prestige. Don’t use them interchangeably and for the love of all that is holy please don’t call someone a seamstress when they’re a dressmaker