do you ever wonder

[mccfluff]

what life would be like for you.. personally if you dial back 100, 150 years.

Ummm's thread about marriage and maggies comment about doing things in order of marriage then sex then babies had me musing

independent, working, living on my own (sort of) no marriage or kids and happy with that. would i of been some kind of spinster living in the woods collecting firewood or something?

oooo or maybe even a witch, i like that idea

[Zhukov]

A lot of Women brewers back then!

[ChuckFickens]

You would have been the local crazy cat lady 100 years ago :-p

[chaptazbru]

Depends how old you are fluff. Possibly 100 years ago you'd now be a spinster living with your aged parents - no home of your own back then !

[ummmm]

We are still young Fluffy...aren't you glad we can have a bunk up when we want? It's a woman's world...or will be soon :-)

[tamborine]

Mortage companies wouldn't lend to single females 40+y ago. Marriage was the only way to have your own home.

[mccfluff]

crazy cat lady is what i am aspiring too

the thought of being s spinster living with my parents makes me feel ill

[mccfluff]

female brewer

why am i thinking of crafty and gin??

[Mosaic]

100 years ago: 1912 - many single women were teachers, owned businesses especially shops, ran services such as dressmaking, laundering, catering. The new-fangled typewriter and telephone meant that women's better hearing, higher voices, nimbler fingers (and lower wage demands) created loads of city-based office jobs. Women nurses, like teachers, were expected to stop their profession if they got married.
50 years before that: you were better off being single as the married women's property act had yet to come about. So on marriage all you owned became your husband's property, as did your children.
At both these times you could have developed an excellent living as a medium as interest in 'the other side' was massive, trading standards did not exist and as long as you did not claim to practise witch-craft you were doing nothing illegal.
Similarly, making and selling your own 'herbal' potions was big business - mainly laxatives, 'tonics' (a bit of opium in suspension) or for 'women's ailments' ie to induce abortion although nobody spoke its name.
The past isn't all bad.

[albaqwerty]

crafty and gin sound a good combination :)

I'm left-handed and like cats = burnt at the stake

[Mosaic]

Firstly it's all in your mind - the pictures that words make. But then there is the simple fact that almost everyone in distant times (when the term spinster was coined) got married, so if a woman couldn't or didn't, she remained 'a burden' on her family. A reason for not marrying might reside in her physical appearance......but in reality it was her occupation ie spinning wool and flax all day to provide saleable yarn for loomshops. So she wouldn't be a burden on her family.
A bachelor means someone available to be trained for battle.
I agree the terms are very redundant now.

[Barmaid]

This is the sort of thing I wonder about all the time. Having done some family tree stuff and easily gone back 150 years, I often wonder what life would have been like for the daughters of the family.

The lack of dishwasher would worry me though (just in case I was too poor to have servants).

[Mosaic]

Laundry would be a nightmare - not just the washing but the drying and ironing. Getting a nice hot bath would be pretty rare for most women.

Did you used to have one of those contraptions at ceiling height for airing clothes? Kind of raised up and down on ropes like the cord in sash windows. We had one right up to the late 1960s.

[jno]

in Victorian times if you hadn't married you'd probably still be living with your parents and expected to care for them. Not such a terrible alternative to putting them into a home, and a reasonable way of earning your keep. (You'd almost certainly not have a job or a home of your own.)

100 years ago you might have a job as a "typewriter" and be smashing windows to promote votes for women.

[nungate]

I heard somewhere recently that a Spinster was the daughter of the family who was best at spinning the thread/wool and was therefore an asset in as much as she provided extra source of income for the family which would be lost to her family if she married. Hence the term being used for an unmarried woman, has anyone else heard of this?

[Mosaic]

Yes Nungate - as above more or less in my post....

[nungate]

Sorry Mosiac, didn't read the other posts thoroughly enough. Thanks for confirming what I thought I'd heard.

[sunny-dave]

"Did you used to have one of those contraptions at ceiling height for airing clothes? Kind of raised up and down on ropes like the cord in sash windows. We had one right up to the late 1960s. "

I still have one - in the conservatory/outhouse - who needs a tumble drier :-)

[nungate]

You can still get those pulley things for your laundry, though I think they get used for hanging dried flowers and other twee things in those "country" kitchens. Catch them hanging wet laundry on them these days!