A Singer sewing machine is transported on a cart pulled by six goats through Charleville in Queensland, Australia, in 1910. Jerrold tells that a demand for ‘iron seamstresses’ at home in England had been created by the colonies, which had been very successful in tempting the flesh-and-blood sort abroad. “The cry for wives, reaching England from Australia, also brought good tidings to many faint hearts; and hundreds of seamstresses were helped to ships that would carry them to comfortable homes. [...] Many seamstresses did embark, and are now happily married to prosperous colonists.” A few years later, the emigrants were using sewing machines just like everyone else.
Part 1 of 2
IN the delicate parts of work — in those mysteries known to the erudite as flounces, gussets, frills, and tucks — in the learned complications of the herringbone system, and the homely art of darning — we imagine that the iron lady is not proficient. We believe her to be able, at the present time, to take in only the plainest needlework. She must cede the graces of the art, as yet, to her human rivals: content to stitch and sew anything put before her, at the goodly rate of five hundred stitches per minute.*
Yet, even now, the friends of human seamstresses may well begin to consider the effect this iron rival will ultimately have on human labour. Will the iron seamstress drive the seamstress of (not much) flesh and blood to more remunerative employments? The answer is not an easy one. Needlework, though poorly paid, has long been the drudgery to which women have taken when the strong arm that shielded them has fallen suddenly away.
The modern sewing machine was invented by Elias Howe (1819-1867), an American who came to England to get financial backing for his ingenious contraption in 1848. Sewing machines can be traced back at least to Charles Fredrick Wiesenthal, a German-born British resident, in 1755, but Howe developed and patented the lockstitch that remains the most common mechanical stitch. Fellow American Isaac Singer (1811-1875) pirated Howe’s innovation for his own machines, and having grudgingly settled royalties on Howe came to dominate the market, thanks to his superior design and marketing skills.
Précis
In 1854, journalist William Blanchard Jerrold wrote a short piece for ‘Household Words’ about the recently invented sewing machine. He noted that, although human seamstresses were still required for more complex stitches, for plainer work the ‘iron seamstress’ was quite sufficient, and he asked what women who were no longer required for this work were to do instead. (57 / 60 words)
Part Two
The original Elias Howe sewing machine, as patented in 1846. Howe’s lockstitch was the innovation that ushered in the sewing machine revolution, but he did not receive either the recognition or the commercial success he deserved. His machine was copied by fellow American Isaac Singer (1811-1875), and although a five-year battle in the courts brought Howe the consolation of royalties on every Singer machine, it was Singer who became the household name through superior design and marketing.
IT was work easily learned and abundantly wanted. Poor creatures whose prospect was so dark that any pittance was a relief, could always, if they would accept the hard price, get the work. True, better times than those of forty-eight have dawned:* and in the future, hope is placed most confidently by all men.
But while we acknowledge that it is for the good of everybody that the iron seamstress should ply her double needles,* we may well look around to see what field of labour may be fairly laid open to helpless women. We are told that they would make tender doctors for one another; that in walks of science and knowledge, there is room they may well fill; that in the broad ways of the world there are many honourable employments for which they are appropriately fitted.* No doubt. Still, if we look to it a little, while the iron seamstress is practising her five hundred stitches per minute, we may take that one effective stitch in time which is said to save nine.*
A reference to the ‘year of revolutions’ that shook Continental Europe in 1848, and was felt even in the United Kingdom. In the issue for October 29, 1853, William Duthie and Henry Morley had written about the impact on France. “The French workman always is a loser by political disturbance. The crisis of eighteen hundred and forty-eight — a workman’s triumph — reduced the value of industry in Paris from sixty to twenty-eight millions of pounds. Fifty-four men in every hundred were at the same time thrown out of employ, or nearly two hundred thousand people in all.”
Charles Dickens, Jerrold’s editor at ‘Household Words,’ was keen on industrial innovation. In the issue for January 31, 1857, Henry Morley drew on an address by Sir Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890), as reported in the Journal of the Society of Arts (Nov. 14, Dec. 26, 1856), to argue that mechanised mass production improved the lot of the labouring man by creating new jobs and raising wages. Neither Dickens nor Jerrold wanted to see the sewing machine put back in its box; they wanted to see women granted wider access to the opportunities that the ‘iron seamstress’ was creating.
See also Equally Free, in which Victorian expert on education Joshua Fitch (1824-1903) urged that women be allowed (but not forced) into all the professions at every level.
‘A stitch in time saves nine’ is a proverb encouraging swift intervention now to prevent a great deal of trouble later on. Economist Jean Baptiste Say (1767-1832) gave an example, reading like a fable but sadly only too real, in which failure to mend a broken latch on a gate resulted in severe hardship. See A Stitch in Time.
Précis
Jerrold reminded readers that work as a seamstress, though poorly paid, had at least been reliable. Sewing machines were a social blessing but it was right to help women find alternative employment, for example in medicine or education. Whatever the work may be, Victorian men must embrace opening it up to women, or there would be trouble ahead. (58 / 60 words)
