Clementina black biography reports

Primary Sources

(1) In 1901 Hilda Martindale became a factory inspector. She soon discovered that women and children were often working in terrible conditions. She described the problem in her book From One Generation to Another.

The hours of employment permissible under the Factory Acts in 1901 were long. Women and girls over 14 years could be employed 12 hours a day and on Saturday 8 hours. In addition, in certain industries, and dressmaking was one, an additional 2 hours could be worked by women on 30 nights in any 12 months.

Workrooms were often overcrowded, dirty, ill-ventilated, and insufficiently heated. The employment of little errand girls, usually only 14 years of age, soon attracted by attention. Their work was very varied - running errands, matching materials, taking out parcels, cleaning the workrooms, and often also helping in the work of the house. To be at the beck and call of all employed in a busy workshop was arduous and fatiguing. They could work legally from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and often were sent out from the workshop a few minutes b

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Spartacus Educational

Primary Sources

(1) On 22nd October 1907, Clementina Black spoke at the National Union Women Workers Conference about unskilled workers.

Trade unionism could not do for the unskilled trades and the sweated industries what it could do for other trades, and they must look to the law for protection. Surely the time was coming when the law, which was the representative of the organised will of the people, would declare that British workers should no longer work for less than they could live upon.

(2) In 1909 Clementina Black's report Married Women's Work was published. Part of the report dealt with women who worked at home.

A very large majority of the women visited in their homes are kindly, industrious, reasonable, self-respecting persons and good citizens. The husbands in the main deserve the same praise… Parental affection seems to be the ruling passion of nearly all these fathers and mothers; they work hard with amazing patience in the hope of making their children happy… What is wrong is not the work for wages of married women, but the und

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Clementina Black (1854 - 1922) was a campaigner committed to improving the plight of working women. In this work of 1918, she urges a reorganisation of household duties, in order to free women from domestic drudgery. In her utopian vision of 'co-operative housekeeping', women would be released from the wasted effort of housework and made available for the labour market, which was now so very depleted of men after the Great War. She criticises the 'stupidity' of 'labour-making houses', and questions the continuing validity of the employment of domestic servants in the modern age. Her solution is to propose the formation of 'domestic federations'. These would represent committees of householders who would collectively manage their domestic arrangements in a centre 'fitted up with store places, kitchens, dining-rooms, offices, and lodgings for a nucleus of resident servants'. Examples of material included: women employed in housekeeping; changes in domestic standards; why not be servantless?; the distaste for domestic service; labour-making ho