Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy

by Emma Griffin

The overlooked story of how ordinary women and their husbands managed financially in the Victorian era – and why so many struggled despite increasing national prosperity

Nineteenth century Britain saw remarkable economic growth and a rise in real wages. But not everyone shared in the nation’s wealth. Unable to earn a sufficient income themselves, working-class women were reliant on the ‘breadwinner wage’ of their husbands. When income failed, or was denied or squandered by errant men, families could be plunged into desperate poverty from which there was no escape.

Emma Griffin unlocks the homes of Victorian England to examine the lives – and finances – of the people who lived there. Drawing on over 600 working-class autobiographies, including more than 200 written by women, Bread Winner changes our understanding of daily life in Victorian Britain.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Economics, British Literature, Academic

320 pages, Hardcover

First published June 9, 2020

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bread Winner – An Excellent History

As we are often told by some historians, Victorian Britain was a ‘Golden Age’ or ‘The Age of Decadence’, it may have been for some, but for 75% of the country it was not. That 75% were the working class, poor and some in dire poverty, rammed together in the most overcrowded areas of our town and cities. The majority of people did not have houses in the suburbs, with running water, gardens and space.

Emma Griffin has looked at how the majority tried to survive in the Victorian Economy and the reality of life, especially for women. What screams loudly through this wonderful exploration of history, is how gendered Victorian society was. To quote professor Griffin “Britain was much richer in 1914 that at anytime previously, but it was still a gendered society in which men earned the bread and women baked it!”

By viewing how the domestic situation, we can see the many challenges working class families encountered, from the cost of foods and that by viewing the diet we are provided with a unique window on the living standards of the lower classes. If men earned the money, could they always be relied up to hand over a fair proportion to support the home, and sometimes this was not the case.

Professor Griffin also uses some working-class autobiographies to illustrate her points, and these speak loudly throughout the book. What does strike the reader, is that the autobiographies of the working-class do not turn into a misery memoir but are rather stoic. But what we do see from these is that hunger was unpleasant and memorable. Whilst that there were many reasons for this, these are investigated with fairness and no bias.

What you do learn from this book is how apparent that not everyone shared in the nations wealth, and at the heart of Victorian Society was a gendered inequality. By grasping this basic but simple truth can we truly start to grasp the meaning of economic growth in Victorian Britain. What also happens is that you are able to re-evaluate the concept of the Victorian family, and those that survived, really need our admiration and respect.

[Edward Champion · Rating 3 out of 5]

First off, I cannot quibble at all with Ms. Griffin's scholarship. She is resolutely fair-minded in her interpretations and she has done a great deal of work in trying to find the choice bits for how Victorians lived, worked, ate, and got through their often rugged existence. But I do find significant fault in the rambling and desiccated academic tone. There are some important findings here about, say, gender breakdown in machine shops. But Griffin often gets so lost in attempting to synthesize all this that you are left frustrated, hoping that Griffin will get to the goddamned point already. So I'd categorize this book as a valuable info-mining read (indeed, one I read for research), but extremely annoying and often TOO fulsome in execution.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Bread Winner" is a detailed look at how the increasing male wages of the Victorian period didn't necessarily mean that the women and children in British working-class families also experienced more financial security. The author looked at autobiographies of both men and women during the period of the 1830s up to 1914, and she sometimes compared this to information gleaned from autobiographies written before the 1830s. She talked about different aspects of finances and life, summarizing information gleaned from these autobiographies and including a few quotes to give an idea of what specifically was said. She covered information about when women took paid work and what their wages were able to buy versus when men took paid work and their wage rates. She also talked about the importance of the unpaid work that women did at home, and how women were deliberately forced to depend on men's wages for financial security due to the unequal wage rates.

The author also talked about the various reasons for the male wages to be insufficient to support the family and statistical rates of these reasons occurring in the autobiographies. These ranged from the choice of the men to not share their full wages to injury or inconsistent work. She talked about how women worked out of the home or with her husband to supplement his wages or what they did to support the family when the husband was injured or abandoned them. She explored how working men were treated as special with increased respect and better food, and how children sometimes had to find other ways to get food when there wasn't enough money to feed everyone. She ended by talking about how children viewed their mother and their father in terms of how they fulfilled their roles more than with emotional words like "love." Overall, this is not an entertaining read, but it's very informative. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in how male/female roles and wages changed in England from the 1800s to the 1900s.

I received an ebook review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.

[Jeanette Petersson Munro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely wonderful explanation of the inequalities for the poor working class of the Victorian and Edwardian era. Clear analysis of how women were kept dependent by wages in the jobs that women often took being kept so very low. That a school boy would earn as much or even more as a paper boy compared to a woman working a very long week illustrated the structural problem.
The men's wages were generally far more than most women could obtain. Also, domestic work (washing clothes, cleaning and scrubbing the house, sewing and mending clothes, cooking, planning how to feed the family with very limited resources etc) took a great deal of time. Whether working for wages or in the house meant very long hours.
In addition, family planning was not available which often led to many children making it even hard to manage.
If a bread winning man died or was incapacitated, it meant disaster for the family. It was virtually impossible for most working-class woman to earn a reasonable wage (the book has some examples of those who do). Also it was very tough for one person to work for long days for wages and do all the domestic work; especially when the wages were insufficient.
No doubt, alcoholism for men and women was partly due to the stress of the poor working conditions outside and the lack of money within the home.
Excellent with important, relevant points for today's society!

[Jerry Wall · Rating 4 out of 5]

English academic reads autobiographies of folk growing up in England in nineteen hundreds to
two thousands (some 650 or so biographies and talks of life these documents reflected and
the dynamics involved. Poverty is a big part of it as well as what is needed to support a good life
considering such circumstances. Very good, though it took me a while to read (other books
seemed more demanding at times).
Family as microcosm giving insight into macrocosm of society is one aim.
Ultimately, government needs to help poor as wages (more earnings) don't seem to be able
to pull families out of poverty.
Henry George " material progress does not merely fail to reduce poverty - it actually produces it. "
p. 2
30 percent of children [in bios] had lost a parent by age 16. p. 09
Whiskey was simply happiness doled out by the glass. p. 134
Soup kitchen filled many a child's empty belly and were a powerful force in diminishing the extent and severity of hunger. But they are also testament to the failure of an increasingly wealthy society to feed its people. p. 225
Families lived where they did because of where their father worked. They lived how they did because of how well he worked and how he shared his earnings. p. 229-30. !!!!.
. . . some men who had successfully managed to evade their family responsibilities. * * *
. . . the absence of conveniences like how, running water. . . . p. 299

[Clare Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect social history
Shining a lens on societal change and politics through ordinary people’s lives, with really engaging stories