A Hard-Working Woman - 1890s

Some of the favourite talks I’ve given have been about women’s work in the home. These prompt lots of discussion!

The ‘women’s pages’ of the newspapers, as we used to call them, in the 1890s included a variety of topics suitable for readers from many walks of life. In this one newspaper, I just read “Useful Recipes” for a Jennie Lind Cake, Thin Cookies (“Watch them constantly as they burn very easily.”) and “homemade tooth soap”, a variety of salads and an Omelet with Baking Powder (!). As well there are descriptions of “Interior Novelties” most women seldom dreamed of, for example, a wallpapered dining room with garlands of rosettes and knots of ribbon, and a row of pearl ornaments above the moulding.

And then there’s a long practical discussion of “The Kitchen Floor” – “It must be something that will stand the tramp of many feet in a farm-house. Boys and men, with heavy boots, pass over it many times a day…. A clean floor is a delight to a tidy housewife, and a soiled one an annoyance which must be removed at the first opportunity.”

Whether in BC or on the Canadian prairies in the past, for most women there was always a task to be done, a chore to be completed, and a new day full of the same routines and challenges ahead, most often with few conveniences and never enough hands. But as my Na used to say “A change is as good as a rest” and any opportunity for socializing was likely appreciated, even if work was involved, as in this photograph.

Greta McCleery (right, born about 1880) and her cousin Agnus Mary (born about 1881), in a kitchen, churning butter". Documenting Dunbar project, Vancouver, BC, Canada. 

Courtesy of the City of Vancouver Archives: AM1533-S2-4-: 2009-005.231. 

This poem, printed in the ‘Ladies’ section of this 1893 Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Canada newspaper, one that my relatives likely read often, sums up decades of women's experience.

A Hard-Working Woman

All day she hurried to get through;

The same as lots of wimmin do:

Sometimes at night her husban’ said:

“Ma, ain’t you goin’ to come to bed ?”

An’ then she’d kinder give a hitch,

An’ pause half way between a stitch,

An’ sorter sigh, an’ say that she

Was ready as she’d ever be,

She reckoned.

An’ so the years went, one by one;

An’ somehow she was never done;

An’ when the angel said as how

“Mis’ Smith, it’s time you rested now,”

She sorter raised her eyes to look

A second, as a stitch she took:

“All right: I’m coming now,” says she,

“I’m ready as I’ll ever be.

I reckon.”

The author’s name wasn’t given but I’ve since learned the poem was by Albert Bigelow Paine.

Published in the Portage la Prairie Weekly Review, Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Canada, 8 March 1893, page 2 – “FOR THE LADIES”.

Many of Manitoba’s historical newspapers, and more, can be searched and read for free at the University of Manitoba's Digital Collections (formerly on Manitobia).