Technology has been changing workforce since the Industrial Revolution. Technology created new employment opportunities while making other occupations obsolete. This is a short list of occupations that were once quite common and now either no longer exist or are very rare:
Men’s Occupations
- Watchman: The precursor to the security guard.
- Carter: A person who drives a cart. Similar jobs include coachman, drayman, hackman and teamster.
- Streetcar conductor
- Railroad jobs including hostler and lineman
- Livery workers: Liveries were places horses were lodged and fed in exchange for compensation.
- Porter: The precursor of the doorman and hotel valet.
- Stationer: Someone who sells stationary.
- Blacksmith
- Chimney sweep
- Whitewasher: Someone employed to whitewash objects.
- Cooper: Someone who makes barrels.
- Currier: Someone who dresses leather after it has been tanned.
- Mason: A constructor worker who builds using stone or brick.
- Miller: Someone who works at a flour or grist mill.
- Plasterer: Someone who works with plaster.
- Puddler: Someone who makes wrought iron.
- Tailor
- Tinner: Someone who works with tin.
- Wheelwright: Someone who manufactures and repairs wheels for wagons.
- Cesspool and sewerman
- Rat catchers
- Street sweepers
Women’s Occupations
- Copyist: Someone who makes copies of documents.
- Bleacher: Someone who bleaches fabric.
- Dressmaker
- Dyer: Someone who dies cloth.
- Milliner: Someone who makes and decorates women’s hats.
- Seamstress
- Tallowmaker: Someone who makes soap or candles from tallow.
- Warper: Someone who forms yarn for looms into warps.
- Washerwoman
- Governess
Women in the Workforce Before World War One
For centuries, women worked in the home and on the family farm for no pay. It only has been in the past 200 years that women have been allowed to enter what was considered a man’s domain: the workforce.
The idea of a woman working for an employer was shocking. Most considered the business world beneath women’s dignity and against societal conventions. Many even thought it would make women want to abandon marriage entirely.
“The evolution of American women in the workforce is often overlooked when studying the progression of American society,” blogger Dhara Shah says, although the statement could apply to women worldwide. “Since the beginning of time, American women have gone through a series of struggles, battles, and tests to prove their capability of being an active part of the American labor force.”
Here are some positions your ancestors may have held:
Mines and Factories: Women were employed in mechanized factories producing goods. These factories are what today we would call sweatshops. Workers toiled for long hours with little pay. Often, there were no windows in the factory and employees were not permitted breaks. These conditions sometimes led to tragedies, the worst of which was the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Women worked in mines, hauling coal carts, a position also often filled by child laborers.
Teachers: Teaching opened to women of all classes beginning in the 19th century. For most of the century, teachers needed very little, if any, formal education. By the close of the century, most teachers were women, and they were educated in formal teaching colleges. Positions like school administrators and principals, however, were largely still held by men.
Office Workers: Industrialization created several clerical positions. The positions usually didn’t pay more than factory jobs, but they were safer and came with job security. Clerical jobs were aimed at young women and were viewed as temporary positions that prepared women to be better wives. These jobs were repetitive and considered beneath male clerical positions. These positions included stenographer, typewriter and telephone exchange operator.
Servants: Having a family member “in service” or being in service yourself was common. Domestic servants were needed to run the expansive homes of the upper middle class and wealthy prior to the invention of many electric conveniences. Working in service was a respectable career path for the lower class. Maids, cooks and other domestic servants lived in their employers’ homes and worked long hours. There was a strict hierarchy of servants, and one could move up after several years of service.
Rules for Domestic Servants
Domestic servants followed a number of rules during their employment. These rules were laid out in several household management books, including the famous Mrs. Beeton’s.
Rules include:
- Upper servants should respect lower servants by treating them well.
- Lower servants should respect upper servants by cheerfully following orders.
- Servants should never speak of the family’s business to others.
- Servants should not steal from their employers.
- Employers should treat servants like people with responsibilities and should forgive human shortcomings.
- Employers should know how much time it takes to complete household tasks.
- Employers should not be afraid to give praise, reminders or disapproval.
- Servants have the right to the tools necessary to perform their duties
- Servants are to give proper notice before leaving a position, unless in the case of illness or injury.
- Employers are not obligated to give references.
- Employers must trust members of their management staff.
- Employers and management must take steps to ensure staff does not take advantage of coworkers with kind personalities.
A Hierarchy Among Servants
While we may think of servitude as drudgery, there was a hierarchy among servants that affected how they were treated by employers and coworkers and how much they were paid.
My source listed the hierarchy of British servants in 1890. However, many great homes in the United States and Canada would have employed this same hierarchy. The number of servants, on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as their responsibilities, was determined by the size of the estate. The larger the estate, the more specialized the work.
Professional employees:
- Land steward: paid $11,000-$33,000 annually
- House steward: paid $5,500-$11,000 annually
- Governess: paid $2,700 annually
Upper house staff:
- Butler: paid $4,300-$6,400 annually
- Housekeeper: paid $3,700-$5,400 annually
- Cook or chef: paid $3,200 to $32,000 annually
- Valet: paid $2,100-$3,200 annually
- Ladies maid: paid $2,100-$3,200 annually
Upper land staff:
- Head groom/stable master: paid $3,100- $5,300 annually
- Head gardener: paid $12,800 annually
Lower house staff:
- First footman: paid $3,200 annually plus tips
- Second footman: paid $2,700 annually
- Head nurse: paid $2,700 annually
- Footman: paid $2,100 annually
- Chamber maid: paid $2,100 annually
- Parlor maid: paid $2,100 annually
- House maid: paid $1,700 annually
- Between maid: paid $1,600 annually
- Nurse: paid $1,100-$1,600 annually
- Under cook: paid $1,600 annually
- Kitchen maid: paid $1,600 annually
- Scullery maid: paid $1,300 annually
- Laundry maid: paid $1,300 annually
- Page or tea boy: paid $860-$1,700 annually
Lower land staff:
- Groom: paid $1,600 annually
- Stable boy: paid $640-$1,300 annually
- Game keeper: paid $3,100-$5,400 annually
- Groundkeeper: paid $850-$1,700 annually
- Gate keeper: paid $1,100 annually
World War One Changes Women’s Roles in the Workforce
Women entered the 20th century with a world of opportunities. As the new century dawned, it was becoming increasingly common and acceptable for women to work. Women continued to hold many of the same positions they had before – teacher, servant, mill worker, shop girl and seamstress – but new jobs also enticed women.
War Nurses: Even before World War I erupted, nursing was an important job. It had gone from a support role to a full-fledged profession, and women serving as war nurses were highly educated. They were graduates of nursing schools in a time when the average person didn’t finish high school. Nurses attended three-year programs that included studies in anatomy, physiology and communicable diseases.
Munition Workers: The nations at war needed to feed their killing machines. This led to many woman taking positions at ammunition factories. In Britain, around 1 million women worked munitions jobs during the war. Munitions work was dirty and dangerous. Not only was there the risk of explosion, but the women were exposed to hazardous chemicals. Eighty percent of the shells and weapons used by the British army were made in factories that employed predominately women.
“Routledge puts the number of deaths from poisoning and explosions at around 300, excluding those who died subsequently of illnesses caught at the factories,” The Guardian said.
The BBC places the figure at closer to 400.
Replacement Workers: As men went off to war and losses mounted, their former positions were left vacant. Women filled these positions, which included:
- Business clerks
- Bank tellers
- Postal workers
- Firefighters
- Civil service positions
- Field hands
- Police
- Public transportation – conductors, ticket collectors, railroad guards
Wartime Women’s Workforce
Like their prewar predecessors, women earned less than men for the same work. Some women went on strike, demanding equal pay for equal work. They never received it.
After the war, women were expected to surrender their jobs to returning veterans and resume traditional women’s roles. They had, however, proved women were capable of doing any job. Women also gained a sense of empowerment that led to something as small as women wearing trousers or as large as the Women’s Rights Movement.
Visit Hettie’s World
This blog is a companion piece to Melina Druga’s WWI Trilogy, available in eBook, paperback and hardcover.
Book 1: Angel of Mercy
The first installment in a spellbinding trilogy centered around Canada’s involvement in World War I follows a privileged young newlywed to the fraught medical encampments of the Western Front. Buy now.
Book 2: Those Left Behind
Told through a series of epistolary vignettes, the second novel in Melina Druga’s World War I trilogy traces the lives of the Steward and Bartlette families as they contend with their children’s and siblings’ wartime absences. Buy now.
Book 3: Adjustment Year
The stunning conclusion to Melina Druga’s World War I trilogy traces Hettie’s attempts to reacclimate to civilian life in the aftermath of the conflict. Buy now.
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