ABSTRACT
Women in early modern England were workers, as Alice Clark demonstrated in her classic study many years ago. 1 Their working lives varied according to their life stages and their social status. The basic business of getting a living was arduous for most women, and at different stages of their lives, they might engage in multiple occupations or even in illegal work. The concept of ‘family wage economy’ disguises the reality of women’s working lives; ‘the family’ never provided for the majority of women who laboured both inside as well as outside marriage. Wives needed the larger wages men could command as well as their own to support their children; and should their husbands fall ill, die, or desert, female wages were usually insufficient to maintain a family. Widows and orphans were classic recipients of poor relief.
