ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the areas of the industry, earthenware, China and fine China, where women are mostly concentrated. The other areas are sanitary-ware, tiles and electrical porcelain, but the numbers of men and women involved in these sections are far smaller than in earthenware and China. John Baddeley’s Day-book, describing a pottery in the 1760s, also suggests that few women were employed, and that their wages were lower than men’s. In 1842, Scriven’s report to the Royal Commission on the Employment of Children and Young Persons in the District of the Staffordshire Potteries lists 12,407 workers with 978 boys and 522 girls under the age of 13. At the time of author research in the early 1980s, some people could remember pressing, jolleying and casting. The jolleyer’s skill was replaced by machines which are now mostly minded by men, and this effectively reduced the jobs open to women in the clay end.
