ABSTRACT
More research might lift the clouds of almost unmitigated destitution which appears to have been the fate of practically all needlewomen in the 1830s and 1840s, indeed throughout the nineteenth century. To write about seamstresses, as Cherry suggested, is to write about culture, technology, feminism, business, labor, shops and shopping, consumers, employers, and employees. There, the woman encounters a heartless and greedy employer and begins an irreversible decline leading to illness and death and/or prostitution. Even the “evidence” in government reports and newspapers offered this narrative, although in a semi-detached manner and format that often included statistics and tables. The seamstress narrative, which leads by necessity to death and/or prostitution, was not the only narrative on seamstresses that was produced during this period, but it was by far the dominant one. Millinery and dressmaking constituted the higher end of female employment with the needle; they were respectable occupations for young women from middle-class or lower middle-class families.
