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SUMMARY:Ellen McArthur Lecture: Eve Also Delved: Gendering Economic Histor
 y (2) - Professor Jane Humphries (Oxford)
DTSTART:20160224T170000Z
DTEND:20160224T190000Z
UID:TALK63133@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:31344
DESCRIPTION:*2. The spinster: a tragic heroine of the industrial revolutio
 n?*\n \nLecture 2 takes these arguments down to a specific occupational/in
 dustrial case study in terms of the tragic fate of the hand spinner\, an u
 ntil recently forgotten figure in the British industrial revolution.  This
  has changed with the success of Robert Allen’s ‘high wage economy’ 
 interpretation of industrialisation\, and inclusion of the spinning jenny 
 in his list of macro inventions.  The spinster moves from the economic per
 iphery to centre stage\, her earnings depicted as growing sufficiently dra
 matically to prompt the invention and innovation which placed the textile 
 industry in the vanguard of the first industrial revolution\, a perspectiv
 e which rests heavily on Craig Muldrew’s earlier empirical work on the e
 xtent and remuneration of hand spinning. The lecture draws on current rese
 arch (with Ben Schneider) which uses previously neglected sources to estim
 ate the productivity\, employment and wages of female and child spinners. 
 In contrast to the high wage view\, our data do not show a steady rise in 
 wages prior to the spinning innovations of the 1760s and 1770s.  I will sp
 eculate why spinners did not share in the HWE and suggest an alternative i
 nterpretation of the appearance and expansion of the factory system.
LOCATION:LG18\, Faculty of Law\, Sidgwick Site\, 10 West Rd\, Cambridge\, 
 CB3 9DZ
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