Manchester Digital Exhibitions
The work of thousands of women in the cotton mills underpinned the global success of Manchester. Their names rarely survive in the archives.
This huge workforce of women and girls dominated the mills, but they were often excluded by employers and trades unions from the better paid jobs. Opportunities for women to join the ‘barefoot aristocracy’ of mule spinners varied across Greater Manchester.
The Representation of the People Act in 1918 did not give the vote to working class women. Despite their massive contribution to the war effort, most women workers had to wait another decade for the right to vote.
After the First World War ended, some trade unions tried to ban women from continuing to work as spinners. The Oldham unions argued that they wanted to protect the ‘health and morality’ of the women. Bolton, with a longer history of female mule spinners, opposed the ban.
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Rylands and Sons, the company established by Enriqueta’s husband John, employed many women as mule spinners in their mills. In Wigan the coal mines provided local men with work
meaning there were more opportunities for women to work as mule spinners.
During the First World War large numbers of men were on military service overseas and much of the heavy, dirty, manual work was now women’s work. This photographic album shows women working across a range of industries from logging timber and making munitions to keeping the textile mills running.