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
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).
