LHMP #491j Cleves 2014 Charity & Sylvia Chapter 17 & 18

Chapter 17: Diligent in Business 1835

The chapter opens with a detailed dramatized episode from a typical workday for C&S, cited to a diary entry, but not indicated as direct quotes and clearly elaborated from the author’s imagination. This is the sort of concern I’ve noted previously about the fictionalizing of details.

The emphasis of the chapter is on the exhausting balance between having a constant stream of sewing workload and the material comfort and stability it provided. In general, unmarried women lived lives of poverty or dependence or both. There were many examples around C&S of what happened to women who either had no skills or were too old or infirm to earn their own room and board. C&S recorded endless long working hours and the ill health it generated, including repetitive stress injuries and eyestrain.

While they never became rich, even by local standards, their standard of living and personal property were equivalent to the household of a more traditional married couple, even through multiple general financial crises of the early 19th century. In general, they avoided debt, and many of their customers paid in kind, helping to buffer the consequences of financial panics, even as some relatives were badly affected.

The stability of their business also meant they were able to employ a succession of young women as assistants and apprentices. They provided not only wages, but training that the women could then take with them to support themselves or even to set up their own shops with additional employees. Sewing itself was only part of the job—the more skilled aspect was patterning and the tailoring of male clothing.

Their particular path to economic independence would fade somewhat in mid-century with the invention of the sewing machine and commercial printed patterns.

Chapter 18: The Cure of Her I Love 1839

In 1839, Charity suffered what was likely a heart attack. This came after a lifetime of various acute and chronic ailments that were endemic in the 19th century. Both women experienced chronic headaches, including migraine symptoms, as well as the usual round of infectious diseases. Treatments of the time were largely bleeding and quack medicines, including regular treatments to “purge the system” (i.e., induce vomiting and diarrhea). One medical principle was that a medicine could be considered effective if it produced a violent effect, even if that effect was debilitating. There were also treatments using traditional herbal remedies that likely had a better cost-benefit ratio.

In general, this chapter discusses ailments mentioned in C&S’s correspondence and diaries, with the treatments either used or recommended, as well as discussing the general state of medical practice at the time.

The 1839 attack, though frightening, was survived. Charity lived another 12 years after that to the age of 74. During that period, she would lose siblings and friends, one by one. Another heart attack took her life in 1851.