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| Spirit of Independence: Cornish women lead the field |
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Page 1 of 3 Women’s work: were Cornish women really more emancipated than their sisters elsewhere in Britain? The Rev Borlase of Ludgvan was wiser than his parishioners might have supposed. When he noted in 1736 that ‘there are no women to be hired in this parish for friendship or money, being employed about copper,’ he made an observation that 21st century historians are just starting to investigate: that women in Cornwall were as, if not more, independent than their English sisters. It’s a pattern that’s evident from a glance at the lives of Cornish women over the centuries. The Duchy’s geography and climate and its unique industrial and cultural heritage have given women the chance to break the mould: periods of great deprivation, insecurity of employment and reliance on limited sources of income have forced women to diversify and find new ways to support themselves and their families. The domestic range of work for women in Cornwall was wide and diffuse: childbearing and child-care, weaving and sewing, dairying, cooking, storing, kitchen-gardening, brewing and candle-making. Much time had to be spent gathering fuel, both for baking and washing, and storing for winter. Washdays without running water, electricity and gas constituted an almighty struggle. So wide was the field of work in a family home or in domestic service that it was not recorded, just assumed. Until recently Cornish women’s contributions both to Cornwall and to the UK have been largely unexplored. Researching women’s work in Cornwall is a struggle in itself as there’s little evidence and few statistics. While the names of Cornwall’s movers and shakers are well known, most of the women who worked on and under our land remain nameless. Balmaidens, pipe-smoking fishwives, knitting factory workers, pilchard packers, seine net menders, and farmers’ wives were all integral parts of their respective industries. Infections were rife, industrial accidents common, and women frequently died in childbirth, leaving daughters to take their place at the core of the family. Although it’s well known that women worked for Cornwall’s mines until the 20th century, there are no accurate figures to show how many or who these women were. Both local mine managers’ records and official census figures vary widely and contemporary reports tend to reveal more about their writers than their subjects. Nonetheless, it’s now being recognised that Cornwall’s balmaidens made a huge contribution to Cornwall’s economy and culture and, more widely, to women’s gradual achievement of equality. The lack of written evidence about the balmaidens is meaningful in itself. It reveals much about their status and the nature of their work, which was flexible, unskilled and often seasonal, and much about the nature of the Cornish mining industry as a whole. The balmaidens in fact played a vital if little documented role in Cornwall’s mining economy. These young women, many of whom were under 18, worked in the open air wheeling barrows, separating tin and copper ore from rock with heavy hammers and grinding it on anvils. Journalists and writers told tales of plucky girls who sang at their work, but there’s no doubt that there was little to sing about. Pay was low and sometimes non-existent or paid up to two months in arrears, and workers were at the mercy of the demand for metals. |
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