Introduction

Abstract

Studies of women’s work in British towns before 1800 have been few.¹ Two important works produced earlier this century are Alice Clark, The Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (1911) and Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers in the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (1930). Although these studies were not immediately followed up, nevertheless over the last decade or so there has been an increasing interest among English historians in all aspects of women’s history. Some of them have focused on women and work in towns: for example, Mary Prior’s work on Oxford, ‘Women and the Urban Economy, 1500–1800’. However this activity in England has not sparked off a similar commitment to research into the subject of women’s work in Scotland before 1800. Rosalind Marshall’s Virgins and Viragos (1983) is a survey of the period 1080–1980 which does not deal with women’s employment in depth. Rab Houston’s paper, ‘Women in the Economy and Society of Scotland, 1500–1800’ (1989), is also a general discussion of Scottish women over a long period and does not focus on work. The only study to include a discussion of women’s work in an urban setting is Winifred Coutts, ‘Women, Children and Domestic Servants in Dumfries in the 17th century’ (1986). Even in the English context, however, Lindsay Charles claimed in her Introduction to Women and Work in pre-Industrial England (1985) that women’s work in earlier periods had been relatively neglected, and she also drew attention to Kay Casey’s comment that it is ‘the least well-explored area of women’s studies’.²