In a previous article, "The Lowell Mill Girls," I wrote about the girls who worked in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. One of those girls was Sarah Bagley, though she was hardly a girl when she came to Lowell to work in 1836 at the age of thirty.
Most of her coworkers were between the ages of fifteen and thirty. They lived in company-owned boardinghouses, where they slept six to a room, two to a bed. Privacy was nonexistent. Their room and board was deducted from their pay.
Working at the mills was a blessing and a curse. The conditions were poor, the physical demands grueling, the hours unending, but the wages were the highest ever paid to a female worker in this country.
A short description of a typical day of work will demonstrate what Sarah encountered when she arrived in Lowell:
4:30 a.m. Wake up call
5:00 a.m. Work began
7:00 a.m. Breakfast
7:30 a.m. Back to work
12:30 p.m. Dinner
1:00 p.m. Work resumed
7:00 p.m. Workday ended
10:00 p.m. Lights out
Sarah managed to find the time and energy to study writing at a nearby Universalist church, and began writing articles for the "Lowell Offering," a paper that was controlled by the mills. During her first years there, her writings were very complimentary toward her employers, but her attitude changed after working there a few years.
Sarah went home to New Hampshire for six weeks every the summer. Still, after three years, her health began to be affected. Most of the women had digestive problems because they were only allowed only a half-hour to eat, during which time they had to travel back and forth to the boarding house.
Between 1842 and 1844, an economic depression caused hundreds of textile workers to leave Lowell, because of wage cuts. By the spring of 1844, the economy had improved, and the textile companies raised the wages of the male overseers, but not for the female workers, who comprised over 80% of the workforce.
In December 1844, Sarah and five other women formed the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association (LFLRA) to protest poor working conditions and 13-hour workdays. Sarah worked tirelessly for the union and served as the group's first president, and it quickly grew to over five hundred members. She spoke out in public, something women didn't do back then. It was considered unfeminine.
She organized a petition drive that urged the Massachusetts state government to investigate conditions in the mills. Sarah fearlessly testified in legislative hearings, but was told that the issues she was protesting must be worked out between the textile corporations and their workers. She continued to petition the legislature, but the authorities declined to take action.
Sarah was able to gain the support of the members of the New England Workingmen's Association (NEWA), though most men of that time were threatened by women entering the workplace. They also believed in the old adage, "A woman's place is in the home."
The NEWA published a paper called the "Voice of Industry," in which the two unions protested the conditions in the factories, and begged for a ten-hour workday. Sarah became the editor of the paper. The political pressure brought to bear on the textile companies finally caused them to shorten the workday by thirty minutes in 1847.
Sarah had been working at the mill for eleven years. She was frustrated and angry, and began to look for another job. The new technology of sending messages by wire came to Lowell. Sarah was hired as the first female telegrapher in the U. S. Later, she was sent to Springfield, Massachusetts, to run the telegraph office there, and was very upset to learn that she was making one-third less than the man she replaced.
A year later, she went back to work for the mills. This time, she lived with her brother and was able to save a nice sum of money. She traveled across New England, and began to write about women's rights, healthcare, and prison reform. In 1849, she worked with the Quakers in Philadelphia to establish a shelter for prostitutes and impoverished young women. She also met and married James Durno in 1850.
The following year, the newlyweds moved to Albany, New York, and began practicing homeopathic medicine. This was a new field that used herbs and plants to heal the body, rather than the more invasive medical procedures used at the time, such as bleeding the patient and purging the body through vomiting. They specialized in the care of women and children, providing their services free when necessary.
James began to manufacture herbal medicines and snuff. In 1867, they moved their factory to New York City, where they lived out their lives in a large house in Brooklyn Heights.
Sarah is one of a large number of women who lived in the mid-nineteenth century, and who made a commitment to improve the quality of life for all disadvantaged and enslaved people.
They are my heroes.
Maggie MacLean has written a Civil War novel, Tennessee Twilight, which she will serialize online in the near future. There is an excerpt at http://www.maggiemaclean.com. She also has a new blog at http://civilwarwomen.blogspot.com. Stop by and have a look.
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