The job of governess would almost always be taken by single women with no family. Women were there to have children and if you were a single woman or worse, a married woman who couldn’t produce children, then you were to be pitied as something quite unnatural. Those jobs that involved working with children were often seen as consolation to women without children of their own.

The woman’s place was most definitely in the home and nowhere is this more evident than in the writings of Isabella Beeton whose 1861 publication of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management became the must-have tome for all “Household Generals”.

Other jobs that were available to women were things such as seamstress, milliner, washerwoman or knitter. These jobs would be taken as well as running their own home and raising their family. Such was the woman’s responsibility.

Women were not allowed to vote, would almost never be granted custody of their children in the case of divorce, were not allowed a savings account of their own and even gave up all of their possessions and money upon marriage.