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COTTAGE HABITATIONS. 81
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
-«Sg3»- To The Editoe.
and vulgar prints I often see on our Engiish cottage walls , wifcli nothing depicted therein to touch any serious or truly human emotion
in the beholders . In the dwellings of the work-people in Lyons , I thought the space allotted to the sleeping rooms small ; sometimes
the beds were in an outer room , where there was not light enough for the loombut in that casethere was aways a partition or thick
, , curtain arranged so as to guard the space and give it an air of retirement without preventing the ventilation at the top of the
apartment . One weaver ' s dwelling at Lyons , out of many we visited , I
particularly remember , where , as indeed at all the others , we were most politely receivedand _evexy information we asked for given , about
, their work and their general habits of life . This apartment was reachedafter mounting three or four nights of stone steps . The
, room in which the dwellers worked was twice as high as our ordinary cottage rooms , and the looms were placed on one side , well
lighted by windows , whilst on the other side they had constructed a sort of gallery slightly partitioned off from the large room , in which
were two or three beds , whilst below it were sundry arrangements for domestic and household comfort .
The people in these countries have so many more holidays , and these holidays so charmingly gay compared to ours , and enjoyed in
the open air and under a delicious climate , that their healthy supply of air does not nearly so much depend on the manner in
which their houses are built , as it does too often with us . Their women are not confined as ours are in large factories , made
unhealthy by the vast quantity of human exhalations , and by the burning of innumerable gas lights . In the winter months they are
not exposed to sudden transitions from their beds to the open air * early in the morning ; and from the heated factory again to the chill
damp of our English sunset . The young woman in the silk weaving at Lyons , if not working with her father or brother , usually places
herself either as apprentice or journey woman under a respectable woman who may take four or five girls in this way ; and whilst they
are under her roof , she considers them as her own family ; they go out with her on Sundays and fete days , and she guards them as her
children , giving them in turn the house work to do , which plan must in a great measure prevent the domestic deterioration which
we deplore so much in our factory girls . But then these Lyonese silk workers do not use the power loom
or work in factories . The only application of steam , compatible with domestic privacy I have heard of , was adopted I believe near
Coventry , where I have been told that a gentleman had recently erected a row of good cottages with a weaving shop to each , placed
along the back , and that with a steam engine at one end he has contrived to convey the power from it to every separate loom , in this
way preventing the necessity of the women leaving their homes ;
and I was assured that the advantage to the master was soon per-
Cottage Habitations. 81
COTTAGE HABITATIONS . 81
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Oct. 1, 1859, page 81, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01101859/page/9/
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