My husband’s highest wages during the time you ask were 36s., lowest 24s., but in his trade wet weather and frosty weather means no work, and in addition no pay during slack times.
There is one thing—as to mechanical prevention of family. I know it is a delicate subject, but it is an urgent one, as it is due to low-paid wages and the unearthly struggle to live respectably. All the beautiful in motherhood is very nice if one has plenty to bring up a family on, but what real mother is going to bring a life into the world to be pushed into the drudgery of the world at the earliest possible moment because of the strain on the family exchequer.
I was much struck with the remarks of “Kitchener’s” boys who have been billeted on me, about my boy. He is only nine, and they said he was as big as the general run of lads in the North when they are thirteen—“But then, ma, you’ve only one to keep which is different to seven or eight.”
There is nothing that is done can ever be too much if we are to have going a race in the future worthy of England, but it will not be until the nation wakes up to the needs of the mothers of that future race.
Wages 24s. to 36s.; one child, one still-birth, one miscarriage.
63. “A Miserable Experience.”
I am really not a delicate woman, but having a large family, and so fast, pulled me down very much. I used to suffer very much with bad legs; and my husband was laid out of work most winters, so I had a great deal of poverty to deal with.
Nearly all my children were delicate, and being badly off, very often I could not get or do what I would like to for them. I lost four out of the ten, and had a very great difficulty in rearing some of the others. They were nearly all two years before they ran; my eldest girl was three years before she ran; I never thought she could live, but, thank God, she has lived, and is nearly twenty-two. If something could be done for poor women with large families, I think it would be a good thing; for a woman’s life is not much when she is in poverty and got sickly children, and never knows what an hour’s liberty is. It is keep on work with no rest days, and not much nights very often. Of course, during pregnancy one never feels well, what with one thing and the other. That was my experience; and after confinement I used to be so weak, and by the time I began to regain my strength a little I was in trouble again. So you can’t wonder poor delicate women break down and very often die. It would be good if something could be done for them, so as to give them a change and a little rest. And when you have got an unkind husband it is a terrible life. I very often think that is why my poor children have to suffer so much now they are grown up, as they are not any of them strong, and very often ailing with one thing or the other. You may depend on it there is a good many women got unkind husbands that make it a great deal worse for women.
My husband used to lose his work through drink. I couldn’t tell you exactly what my wages were, but I feel almost sure, to take the years through, they never amounted to £1 a week. I was in hopes, as soon as my boys started work, I should have got on better, but the more I got off my boys the less I got off my husband, for mine has been a miserable experience.
For a good many years I kept account of what he gave me, and to take the year through it used to amount to about 15s. a week.