Bed and Breakfast Inns

In a previous article, "The Lowell Mill Girls," I wrote about the girls who worked in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. One of those girls was Sarah Bagley, although she was only a kid when he came to Lowell to work in 1836 at the age of thirty.

Most of his coworkers were between the ages of fifteen and thirty. They lived in company-owned boarding houses, where they slept six to a room, two bed. Privacy was nonexistent. Your accommodation and meals was deducted from his salary.

Factory work was a blessing and a curse. The conditions were poor, the strenuous physical demands, the endless hours, but wages were the highest ever paid to a worker in this country.

A brief description of a typical day of work has to show what he found when he arrived at Sara Lowell

4:30 Wake up

5:00 am Work began

7:00 am Breakfast

7:30 Back to work

12:30 p.m. Dinner

1:00 am to job resumes

7:00 pm-ended Working Day

10:00 pm Lights out

Sarah managed to find the time and energy to study writing in the Universalist near the church, and began writing articles for "Lowell offers" a document that was controlled by the mills. During his early years there, his writings were very complimentary toward their employers, but his attitude changed after working there a few years.

Sarah went home in New Hampshire for six weeks each summer. However, after three years, his health began to suffer. Most women had digestive problems since they are only allowed only half hour lunch, during which time they had to travel back and forth to the pension house.

Between 1842 and 1844, an economic depression caused hundreds of textile workers to leave Lowell, due to wage cuts. In the spring of 1844, the economy has improved, and textile companies raised wages male supervisors, but not for women workers, representing over 80% of the workforce.

In December 1844, Sarah and five other Lowell the women formed the Association of Female Labor Reform (LFLRA) to protest poor working conditions and 13 hours a day. Sarah worked tirelessly for the union and served as group A of the first president, and quickly grew to over five hundred members. She spoke in public, something that women do didnÂ't then. It was considered unfeminine.

She organized a petition drive urging the state government of Massachusetts to investigate conditions in factories. Sarah testified at legislative hearings fear, but he said the protest issues should be resolved between textile companies and their workers. He followed the request of the legislature, but the authorities refused to take action.

Sarah was able to get the support of members of the Association of New England Workingmen (NEWA), although most men of that time were threatened by women entering the workplace. They also believed in the old adage, "a place a woman is in the described on Alibris"

The NEWA published a document called a "voice of the industry," in which the two unions protested the conditions in the factories, and asked ten hours a day. Sarah became the editor of the newspaper. Political pressure exerted on the textile companies, finally led to shortening the workday by thirty minutes in 1847.

Sarah had been working at the mill during eleven years. She was frustrated and angry, and started looking for another job. The new technology of sending messages by cable came to Lowell. Sarah was hired as the first woman telegrapher in the U.S. Later, he was sent to Springfield, Massachusetts, to run the telegraph office there, and was very upset to learn that was making a third less than the man he replaced.

A year later, she again worked for the mills. This time, she lived with her brother and was able to save a nice sum of money. She traveled throughout New England, and began writing about women's rights, health, and prison reform. In 1849, he worked with the Quakers in Philadelphia to establish a shelter for prostitutes and poor young women. He also met and married James Durno in 1850.

The following year, the newlyweds moved to Albany, New York, and began to practice homeopathic medicine. It was a new field herbs and plants used for healing the body, rather than the more invasive medical procedures used at the time, such as bleeding and purging patients the body through vomiting. They specialized in the care of women and children, offering its free services where necessary.

James started to make drugs and herbal snuff. In 1867, moved its plant in New York, where they lived their lives in a large house in Brooklyn Heights.

Sarah is one of a large number of women living in the middle of the nineteenth century, and they made a commitment to improving the quality of life for all disadvantaged people and enslaved.

They are my heroes.

Maggie MacLean has written a Civil War novel, Tennessee Twilight, which she will serialize online in the near future. There is an excerpt at http://www.maggiemaclean.com. She also has a new blog at http://civilwarwomen.blogspot.com. Stop by and have a look.

New Home For Sale On Quiet Street in Robbinsville, NJ