ABSTRACT
The survival of ancillary female occupations, such an important feature of 'pre-industrial' society, has been generally underestimated. At least until the 1880s the Industrial Revolution continued to offer increased opportunities for female employment. Children had been an essential part of the family economy long before the Industrial Revolution wherever corn was to be gathered or wool carded and spun. Many historical sociologists assert that an inevitable consequence of industrialisation is the destruction of craft skill and substitution of a basically proletarian workforce alienated from the means of production and the system of industrial capitalism which created them. Britain's early industrial workforce was highly diverse. Industrial production demanded work discipline. Factory owners investing in new machinery needed, or felt that they needed, to keep it working almost ceaselessly. ‘Work-discipline' in pre-industrial society had minimised the value of timed labour and drawn fewer distinctions between work and recreation.
