Modern careers for women
Introduction
Victorian Bournemouth (239) examines how the resort’s large drapers began hiring shopgirls as live-in staff. They participated in a socio-economic development that had become a national occurrence. Genealogical analysis charts the social profiles of shopgirls employed by one draper’s during 1891 and 1901.
Victorian Bournemouth (239): survey
Growing practice
During the Industrial Revolution, factories employing large workforces supplanted individual home-based labour. A comparable transformation occurred in nineteenth-century retail, as the rapid growth in urban populations created commercial opportunities beyond the capacity of traditional small family-run businesses. Textile sales shifted to larger establishments owned by entrepreneurs with expansive business visions, leading to the emergence of substantial drapery shops and, later, department stores, some of which became chains operating in multiple towns. To manage costs, owners of sizable drapery enterprises began hiring women as shop assistants—a role hitherto reserved for men. Many recognised both operational efficiencies and commercial benefits in engaging women to sell textiles to female customers, even when social divisions persisted between staff and clientele. Shop employees often resided on the premises as part of their compensation, a practice evidenced by census records listing numerous assistants at single business addresses. This situation occurred in Bournemouth.
Bournemouth
Between 1871 and 1901, the number of the resort’s drapery businesses increased. Analysis of the census shows that business owners adopted the practice of having their staff live on their premises. Staff numbers for some businesses increased. The census shows staff living on the premises included domestic servants, milliners, and male assistants. Female assistants, however, outnumbered the males as a rule. From 1871 onwards, the number of businesses having more than two female drapery assistants on the premises doubled every ten years. This measure also suggests that the average size of businesses increased. Those on Old Christchurch Road appeared larger than those on Commercial Road, the town’s older shopping parade. It would seem plausible that practices concerning their staff recorded in drapery businesses elsewhere would have applied to the Bournemouth shops. Thus, draconian discipline, both in and out of work, in addition to unappetizing living conditions, appeared standard practice.
Victorian Bournemouth (239): biographical thumbnails
Assistants at the Tyrell family business (1891)
The Tyrell family draper and its magnified successor, Plummer, Tyrell, and Roddis, employed over twenty female shop assistants during 1891 and 1901. In many cases, enough genealogical evidence has survived to capture thumbnail sketches of their lives. Three examples of women working there during 1891 show a range of experiences. Amy Atkins, a journalist’s daughter, born in Melcombe Regis (1869), married a chemist (son of a game dealer) in 1895 and moved to Devizes, ending her commercial career. Alice Ayles, daughter of an auctioneer and timber merchant, born in Ringwood (1871), thereafter moved to Alexander and Cherry, Blandford, draper, remaining unmarried in 1911. Rose Bending, a farmer’s daughter, born in Honiton (1871), stayed in Bournemouth, where by 1901 she had a drapery business, listed at 224 Old Christchurch Road in 1911. She married the next year. Someone with her name left almost £15,000 in 1955, still a Bournemouth resident.
Assistants at Plummer, Tyrell, and Roddis (1901)
Examples taken from the 1901 census show similar careers: some married, some remained in the drapery business. By now, the store had moved from family to corporate ownership. Edith Murray, daughter of a hotel waiter, born in Brighton (1881), never married, still working as a draper’s assistant in 1911, but had returned to her family home in Stockwell. Alice May Carroll, a mariner’s daughter, born in Weymouth (1879), married a draper, son of a gardener (1910). In 1911, they ran a drapery shop near Sunbury. Gertrude Cox, a draper’s daughter, born in Melton Mowbray (1885), later worked in her father’s outfitting business, Lymington, 1911, seeming never to have married. Esther Glassbrook, a provision dealer’s daughter, Ashbourne, Derbyshire (1882), in 1902 married a jewellery assistant, working in Bournemouth. Convicted of jewellery theft, he served time in Winchester. In 1911, still in Bournemouth, with three children, she claimed an independent income.
Victorian Bournemouth (239): analysis
Respectable girls
A noticeable proportion of these shopgirls came from families established in respectability or on its frontier. Their fathers ran farms, had professional occupations, or worked as skilled artisans. In some cases, their fathers left estates valued at four figures. For example, the father of Alice Ayles, an auctioneer, had an estate worth over £7,500. The girls did not come from labouring families. In almost every case, when they married, they found partners who belonged to the same social level as they, if not higher. Thus, these shop assistants would have appeared to their customers as respectable people who inhabited a similar milieu to them, albeit diluted. The job prepared some of the girls for later life. A few continued in the business, either as staff or, in a few cases, as business owners. Those who married, in most cases, found partners who could support them without their needing to work.
Recruitment pressures
In 1901, a fire broke out within a grocer’s located in the Arcade, beside Old Christchurch Road. Substantial damage ensued. Above the grocery and perhaps adjacent buildings slept ‘a large number of young lady shop assistants and dressmakers’. The fire caused ‘considerable confusion and dismay’. Employees of more than one textile retailer slept here. Williams and Hopkins, drapers, employers of many of these girls, exhibited a traditional paternalism during the aftermath. They may have sensed a commercial need to apply this, since demand for staff in the town perhaps made recruitment difficult. Genealogical analysis suggests that the girls working at Plummer, Roddis, and Tyrell during 1901 perhaps did not have quite the same social edge as those of 1891. Thus, as the drapery boom continued, recruitment pressures may have caused employers to relax their requirements to some extent. The girls, however, came from the same cabinet, albeit a different drawer.
Takeaway
Victorian Bournemouth (239) has surveyed the category and social profiles found for female drapery assistants working at Plummer, Roddis, and Tyrell during the 1890s. In most cases, the girls came from respectable backgrounds, yet proved willing to work for a living. Their social profile suited them well to assist well-heeled customers drawn by the new super-stores.
References
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