head includes the miscellaneous sorts of needlework which cannot be classed.
The dressmakers and milliners make up consderably more than half of the total, their numbers being 202,448. The shirtmakers and other plain sewers come next, being 60,588. Then come the glovers and hosiers (40,766), the hat and bonnetmakers (27,176), the shoebinders and sewers (22,657), and the staymakers (10,383). Nearly 25,000 come under the head of “miscellaneous.” If the same rules of arrangement are employed next spring, we shall be able to learn by the Census of 1861 whether the sewing machine has dismissed more needlewomen than the increase of national numbers and wealth has brought into the business. It should be remembered in this connection that the opening of new and remunerative employments to women must operate in increasing the business, and therefore in time the number of professional needlewomen, while it tends to raise their pay. Women employed as compositors or accountants now put out their sewing, or some of it; whereas before, they not only made all their own clothes, but probably trenched upon the professional needlewomen by taking in more. The better occupied other women are, the more will the needlewomen prosper; and the coming Census cannot but show some expansion in the field of female industry.
Next to the shirtmakers, the dressmakers and milliners move most compassion in the rest of society. I wish that means could be found to move those whose fault it is that these women work long hours—hours murderously long. The shirtmaker works long hours because she cannot otherwise earn her three or four shillings a week. The dressmaker works long hours in London because ladies all rush to give their orders at the same time, and are all in a hurry to have them executed. So much has been said about this—the sinfulness of such thoughtlessness and selfishess has been so plainly exposed at public meetings, and through the press, that it is inconceivable that the evil should be now what it once was. I had occasion to know something of the way of going on twenty years ago. I knew the story of reduced widow lady whose daughter was apprenticed to a great dressmaker at the West End. The girl drooped and became ill; and at last it was necessary to sacrifice her prospects, and the premium paid, if brain or life was to be saved. During the throng of orders in the London season, the girl left the workroom only every two or three days or nights. The room was kept hot and light; the workers were fed with prime beef and porter, and well plied at night with strong green tea. When any one fainted (as this girl did) she was laid on the floor to revive, and as soon as she could sit up again, she had more tea, or more porter, and was set to work again. She repeatedly went on for three days and two nights, with mere snatches of sleep in her chair. It is needless to say that her eyes were strained, her brain was dizzy, her liver was disordered, and she was fearfully nervous. Her mother shrank from the feel of her hands. Remonstrance with the employer was of no avail. She said her customers left her no option: and those who entered her concern must conform to circumstances. She was herself driven, and she must drive others while the season lasted. When the season was over they could all rest.
Since that time there have been houses which observe reasonable hours. But there will be no cure for the evil till the customers attend to their duty in the case. The most thoughtless fine ladies must know long before what dresses they will be likely to want during the season; and they might order at least all the plainer sorts, if not the whole, at a sufficiently long interval to enable the business to be better distributed than it can be under the ordinary pressure which precedes a drawing-room. There is something childish in the haste which unemployed women put into their little affairs, sufficiently mortifying to the wiser part of their sex; but the feeling of contempt rises into strong indignation when the habit of haste inflicts such mortal injury as it does among the dressmakers. It is a child’s “way” to fidget and fret for its food while it is cooling on the plate before its eyes. It is the “way” of certain imperious young men in Batavia, effeminate to excess, to cry like babies if kept waiting for their tea. It is a pity to be obliged to add that it is the “way” of not a few ladies in England to be in such a hurry for a new dress as to inflict torture on the makers, in spite of all warning and remonstrance.
It is a common observation that blind persons are apt to hurry those who serve them. Not seeing how any work gets on, they are always fancying it more advanced than it can possibly be, and make their own observations on the slowness into which mankind are falling,—so different from the activity in their young day. The letter would have been written—the cap would have been made—in half the time, or they would have rued it. Fine ladies who never tried to make a dress themselves have no excuse for criticising the workers in the same way. Before they dare to do it they should enter a workroom, and see how long it takes to flounce a skirt, even amidst the feverish and trembling haste of the overwrought workers. An hour so spent would be salutary to all parties. But there are even more ladies who do not consider the subject at all. They buy a dress, and then only know that they long to see it home—want to have it and wear it—and use all the power of employer over employed to get the toy brought home at the earliest possible moment. Such women may be soft-hearted in their way about human suffering. They may give money freely to charitable institutions, or to cases of individual distress. If so, there should be some one to tell them that, while giving a sovereign or two to a hospital, and another sovereign or two for the relief of some reduced gentlewomen who have pawned their last shawl or gown, they have themselves blinded one or two apprentices, thrown another into a brain fever, or compelled others to throw up their apprenticeship, and be the reduced gentlewoman who has to pawn her last gown. Such things as these she has done in the course of showing how childish a woman can be who passes for sane. If any such woman, or any other kind of woman, supposes me romancing, let her look at the evidence given before the Select Committee of the Lords, in 1855, on the condition of Needle-