My Wife, My Daughter and Poor Mary Ann

by Beverley Kingston

My Wife, My Daughter and Poor Mary Ann tells of the movement of women into the workforce from the 1860s to the 1930s, when paid employment at last became respectable for unmarried women. The factory, school, hospital or office was often preferable to life at home, in spite of long hours and appalling conditions.

But what of the women who did not work? Beverley Kingston has used diaries, letters, newspapers and women's magazines to reveal the unenviable lot of those who rocked the cradles of the developing Australian nation. The coming of gas and electricity merely served to bind women more firmly to the home, where they became minders of machines and small children in millions of 'unsupervised factories' throughout towns and cities, in which any kind of slavery was condoned in the name of comfort and good living.

Dr Beverley Kingston is a lecturer in Australian History at the University of New South Wales; her book makes compelling reading about an important and largely ignored aspect of our country's past.

158 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book looking at women's roles in Australian society and how they are usually forgotten within society.