Mill girls and strangers : single women's independent migration in England, Scotland, and the United States, 1850-1881 /

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator: Gordon, Wendy M., 1967-
Format: Book
Language:English
Imprint: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2002]
Subjects:
Description
Summary:In the nineteenth-century mill towns of Preston, England; Lowell, Massachusetts; and Paisley, Scotland, there were specific demands for migrant and female labor, and potential employers provided the necessary respectable conditions in order to attract them. Using individual accounts, this innovative and comparative study examines the migrants' lives by addressing their reasons for migration, their relationship to their families, the roles they played in the cities to which they moved, and the dangers they met as a result of their youth, gender, and separation from family. Gordon details both the similarities and differences in the women's migration experiences, and somewhat surprisingly concludes that they became financially independent, rather than primarily contributors to a family economy.
Physical Description:x, 234 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-230) and index.
ISBN:0791455262
0791455254
Author Notes:Wendy M. Gordon is Assistant Professor of History at Plattsburgh State University.