The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.48 No.4 | March 2022

Local Group Programmes

domestic servants or cooks and this was attractive because accommodation and meals were included. They also learned transferable skills. Home-working was a very convenient and rewarding role for women and Janet listed a number of piece-meal jobs where you were paid based upon output. There were opportunities to make lace, gloves, stockings, boxes, artificial flowers, buttons and hats with straw plaiting. Fashion items production paid well and a woman could earn more in a couple of days than her husband could in a week. Sometimes an entire family could be involved. Home-working tended to be based inland and usually occurred in manufacturing areas or where men earned a low wage. People in fishing communities often all worked at the ports. A mobile group of workers called the ‘herring girls’ followed the fishing fleets down the East Coast and could prepare caught fish at an astonishing rate. It was tough work. Jobs on the land or in factories were dangerous and poorly paid. We heard examples of women miners who even went underground until it was banned – but they still could work on the surface. We heard about the factory ‘match girls’ who worked poorly paid twelve hour days with chemicals, like TNT, that released phosphorus causing them long term illnesses. They successfully went on strike to ensure better conditions. Later, WW1 production of munitions was equally dangerous and required a large workforce of women to make the weapons for war. Gradually professions for women evolved. These included nursing, teaching and retail which used training to gradually achieve a professional and credible status. Nursing originally had a poor reputation whilst school mistresses might use their house for what was really childminding and little education offered. Shop workers were not under the same jurisdiction as factory workers and often endured long hours and poor conditions until the 1960s. Many things have improved but inequalities still remain! Forthcoming Meetings:

Victorian Crime, Police and Criminals Antony Marr - via Zoom

March 10th

Members’ Evening – TBA

April 14th

Basingstoke Meetings normally commence at 7. 30 p.m. and are held on the fourth Wednesday every month (except August and December) at St Michael’s Church Cottage Hall, Church Street. Contact: Email:

basingstoke@hgs-online.org.uk

Notes by Elaine Bye (October) Members’ Presentation – Police Ancestors.

Jane Hussey led the meeting and gave a brief history of the police, from the formation of the Metropolitan Police in 1832 by Robert Peel to the replacing of truncheons with batons in 1996!

168