The Irish connection 1800 - 1933.
In the early 1840s, lower middle-class, middle-class, and even upper-class women ("distressed gentlewomen") were increasingly put in the position of having to support themselves. Mrs. Jameson noted that if one considers the widows or daughters of "attorneys and apothecaries, tradesmen and shopkeepers, banker's clerks &c, in this class more than two-thirds of the women are now obliged to earn their own bread" ("Condition of the Women and the Female Children," The Athenaeum, 16 (March 18, 1843), 258). Unlike painting or writing, which some middle-class women were taking up as professions, needlework and teaching were seen as "natural" professions for women, and so would have been appropriate for those from the middle- and upper-classes. Whereas only some women had the education to be a governess, virtually all women had the necessary experience for needlework. )
Millinery and dressmaking constituted the higher end of female employment with the needle; they were "respectable" occupations for young women from middle-class or lower middle-class families. The number of women involved in dressmaking alone in the early 1840s was estimated to be 15,000 (House of Commons, Reports from Commissioners: Children's Employment, Trade and Manufactures, Sessional Papers XIV (1843) 555). Milliners and dressmakers came from families who had enough money to pay for them to be apprenticed to learn the trade. This type of employment was part of an old, established apprenticeship system (like tailoring among men), and it was one of only a few occupations open to women which offered a skill and a sense of belonging to a trade, and which promised, at least after the apprenticeship period was served, a decent and respectable living. )
Dressmakers were involved in an old type of commerce the business of producing women's clothes made to order. However, in the 1830s and 1840s, the growing middle class created a new demand for cheap ready-made men's clothing (the work of the bespoke tailor was simply not affordable). Like many trades in the 1830s and 1840s, tailoring had therefore shifted from the unionized labor of skilled male artisans to the cheaper labor of women. To serve this growing market for cheap clothing, many women worked at home sewing ready-made clothing (also called "slop" and "slop-work") for very low piece-rates. The women who sewed slop could be young, but they were sometimes older and widowed with children and other relatives to support. Sewing men's shirts, even for starvation wages, was often preferable to the only other option, domestic service, because it allowed one to remain independent (an important factor for middle-class women and distressed gentlewomen). )
In the spring of 1843, the Second Report of the Children's Employment Commission shocked the public with horror stories of the cruel and heartless exploitation of needlewomen in the backrooms and garrets of London. The public was appalled to learn that so many "delicate" young women lived, worked, and died, in such miserable conditions, and what was worse for Victorian sensibilities, that some resorted to or succumbed to prostitution. )
Soon after the publication of the Second Report, the distressed seamstress became something of a cause celebre. The public was barraged with newspaper articles, pamphlets, novels, short stories, poetry (the most famous of which is Thomas Hood's "Song of the Shirt"), and plays, many of which utilized the information on needlewomen "uncovered" by the government's commissioners (often quoting it verbatim and at length). In October of 1843, a report in The Times about a needlewoman who had illegally pawned the clothing she was given to sew, because she and her child were starving, escalated the concern for seamstresses into something of a hysteria. Two months later, in December 1843, another scandal (also reported in The Times) erupted when a shirt-maker tried to kill herself and her child. Together, these cases (and a handful of others) shaped public opinion about the condition of all needlewomen in London. They became the symbol of how poor, helpless English women were driven to criminal activity and even infanticide by unfeeling and (significantly) Jewish merchants. Jewish slop-sellers were frequently blamed by The Times and Punch for what was really simply the unheeding and often cruel progress of capitalism. The Times also used seamstress stories as part of their longstanding (and sometimes scandal-mongering) campaign to discredit the New Poor Law of 1834. )