Good Morning! In your opinion, what would have happend to a single, unmarried woman in the 1860s in Duncormick? Without a husband, would she have ultimately ended up in a Workhouse, or would she have been able to live alone, and have a job, say as a seamstress or a domestic servant? I am unclear about society in the 1860s in Duncormick.Thank you for your time.
Dear hkftbl:
This is an interesting question.
I know that for many single women in the mid19th century, they had to work to help support families either by being skilled in domestic service or in a skilled trade. In some cases, single women went to America or elsewhere to work as servants. This was especially true for single girls between the ages of 17-30 where domestic servants were needed in the well-to-do homes in the U.S. There are several good books that discuss this:
The Irish Bridget: Irish Immigrant Women in Domestic Service in America 1840-1930 by Margaret Lynch Brennan (Syracuse University, 2009)
Irish America: Coming into Clover by Maureen Dezell (Anchor, 2002).
For those women who remained in Ireland, they were farm workers and later caretakers after parents died. In my own family in Ireland, the unmarried woman was often very devout and very much the housekeeper and the farm worker around the house.
Here is an article written about 6 years ago in the Irish Times:
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/century/century-women-and-the-vote/women-s-work-1.553384
The best of luck with your research.
Kind regards,
Jane.
Thank you. :-)