WORKING WOMEN IN LONDON How They Manage to Live Respectably on 8s a Week or Less.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 150, 17 April 1886, Page 6

WORKING WOMEN IN LONDON How They Manage to Live Respectably on 8s a Week or Less.

The number of women earning their own living, aDd often assisting to keep the family in London ia increasing every day. Hundreds are employed in the Post-office, in some of the insurance companies as cashiers and book-keepers, in tracing engineers' plans, in type writing, in telephone work and cigarette making —all employments of comparatively recent date, for it is not ao many years ago since the trial of fe^^ clerks in the clearing house of tV d p os^. Office was thought a wonderful innovation and one which many wise hea^g predicted muchevilof. There are besides, o f course the very large number of working women in the more ordinary sense -the dressmakers, milliners and shop assistants. Among the latter, perhaps, it is truest that we know little of how they live. One thing is not half enough known about them, and that is the large number of girls and women employed in London at a rate of payment which is quite inadequate for them to live upon, however careful they may be. They are generally machinists or dressmakers, or milliners' assistants, sometimes attendants in second-rate shops. It is a common thing for these women to be paid 8s a week, or les3— they think themselves well cff when they earn 9s and the work is not constant ; because, when times are bad, or the slack season sets in, they are turned off. They will go day after day to some of the shops where their work is known and sit in the waiting-room on the chance of an odd hand being wanted. If these earnings are only part of the household's means, it is well enough; the girl's work pays the rent if it does not always keep her, and she is not without food or shelter during the time the work fails. But it is wholly different with the young woman who has no home but that she pays for. It she is quiet and respectable she generally lodges wilh some fellowworker older than herself who has furniture. She pays 2d or 2s 6d a week for a bed in the same room and for her share of the lit ing and light. She buy 3 her own food and cooks it herself. Six shillings for seven days is not very much, everyone will allow ; but when we show that the recipient is expected to dress well - that in respectably—and find her own boats • that is going out in all weathers her clothes wear out more quickly, no one need by surprised that her wages alone cannot keep her and dress her In most of the large shops the assistants live in houses provided for them, under the charge of a matron or housekeeper ; but there iq a very large .number of women in London employed during a day who have to find homes for themselves as beat they may. By combination good, wholesome food oan be obtained at a rate which is simply impossible to separate catering — at fact which is of course, seli-evident, although few are aware of the figures which represent thia saving. As an example, I may mention that to my own knowledge, a dinner consisting of soup, a cut from a freshly-cooked joint, two vegetables ania ! roll oost something under fivepence v a head, when supplied to forty people for the actual food alone — that is to say, without charge for kitchen fire or attendance ; and that when five or six people join together for tea it costs them, including sugar and milk about 3d per week. It is easy to see how cheaply a number of women could be provided for if the food were well managed. So far the cluba or lcdgings where the plan has been adopted of a common kitchen have been eminently successful, and the only difficulty ia that there are not nearly enough of them, an,d that there are never any vacancies in those which exist. In some of these an excellent hot djnne^ ojE,

meat, two vegetables and bread served i the rooms at the rate of 8d per head, than which nothing better or cheaper could be desired. For 4s 8d per week a woman can thus have the food without which she cannot continue to work, and her breakfast and tea are small items in comparison to dinner. This is, of course, only to be had in residential clubs for a higher class of women than milliners' assistant, who out of her scanty earnings could never afford 48 8d a week for her dinners. The evil in these cases is that the dinners are only served in the middle of the day, and many of the workers who cannot get home to dinner are unable to benefib by them. It is not by any means, however, among this class of women only that there are workers struggling hard to keep their heads above water. It is no exaggeration to say that in London there are hundreds of gently bred and cultured women living actually alone, going forth to their daily work and returning to their lodgings in the evening, with perhaps a stinted fire or bad light. Many of these are quite young, and, to their credit be it spoken, they livo as blameless lives, though cut off from all supervision, as their carefully guarded sisters, whose parents Burround them with every possible protection, and would fain have them ignorant that evil exists. — " The Queen."

Physic beats the faith cure because it has the inside track. A North Carolina editor puts on his free list every woman in the State who becomes the mother of twin boye.