I think you will find that this applies after the passing of the
Education Act in the late 19th century (can't recall the exact year but
somewhere around 1874 I think) when the Dame Schools by law had to
provide some teaching other than just the practicalities of lacemaking -
ie the children would be able to read and write their name, and perhaps
a few passages from the Bible, but certainly didn't have anything like
the sort of education in English and Maths that we do now. The dames
themselves would not necessarily have been well educated, either! Many
of the parents, who had to pay extra for this privilege, objected on the
grounds that it wouldn't teach them anything useful - so they also faced
discouragement at home. Before the Education Act there was no
requirement for the children to learn anything other than lacemaking at
these "schools". If they learnt anything else at all, the likelihood
would be that it would have been at Sunday School where they picked up
the basics of the three Rs, together with needlework, etc (I have my
great great grandmother's sampler which would have been worked at Sunday
School - she would have been helping her parents, her father was a
nailer in Bromsgrove - in the home and forge during the week before she
left home and went into service).
Running the home would have taken second fiddle to making enough lace to
survive, with chores undertaken early in the morning or late at night, I
suspect it was in many cases a hand to mouth existence - make the lace,
sell it, use the money to buy provisions.
I also don't think they were that well off - remember the lace was sold
to a dealer, on "cut off day" - if the lace wasn't up to scratch they
weren't paid, and if they were, it was usually by the "truck system"
where they were paid in tokens (as were their ag lab husbands) which
could be exchanged for high price goods (ie food etc) in the dealer's
shop - if they wanted to be paid in cash (which is still a legal right)
then they were paid less - about 10d to the shilling. It was because of
the poverty that many lacemakers moved to jobs in the factories when
they could - maybe away from home and not quite so clean, but certainly
better paid - and also why so many burnt their lace equipment to
celebrate their escape from the "slavery". As fashion changed throughout
the 19th century demand dropped, putting both hand and machine lace
workers out of employment. One of the reasons why it was so difficult to
find sufficient lacemakers to work the lace for Queen Victoria's wedding
dress was that efforts to earn enough from lacemaking had led to a drop
in quality of workmanship. The end product may be high priced, but only
after the dealers had made their profit, they were the ones who were
well paid! To compare, consider how little lacemakers in third world
countries get today, by the time you have deducted the various taxes,
transport costs, wholesaler and retailer's profit, etc from the lace you
see on sale in various tourist areas - no way do they get a decent wage!
Their work would have been repetitive, maybe not making exactly the same
pattern but certainly the same type of lace - according to the dealer's
pattern book and their skill level. The best lacemakers would have had
the most varied life.
In message <0AD9359F26314D88A5A2E02A1B4B758D@dellsx280>, Peter and
Kathleen Harris <[email protected]> writes
I would like to address Lorelei's comment that the lacemakers working by
hand were often illiterate. My understanding is quite different. In the
English villages where lace was made, many of the children, both boys and
girls, were sent to lace schools. Lacemaking was taught, but also basic
reading, writing and arithmetic, this being necessary to justify them being
called schools.
--
Jane Partridge
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