BOOK REVIEW: Wendy M. Gordon.MILL GIRLS AND STRANGERS: SINGLE WOMEN'S INDEPENDENT MIGRATION IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND THE UNITED STATES, 1850-1881. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mill Girls and Strangers: Single Women's Independent Migration in England, Scotland, and the United States, 1850–1881 Lisa Chilton (bio) Mill Girls and Strangers: Single Women's Independent Migration in England, Scotland, and the United States, 1850–1881, by Wendy M. Gordon; pp. x + 234. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002, $68.50, $22.95 paper. Wendy Gordon's Mill Girls and Strangers is ambitious. Through an examination of three urban centres in which textile manufacturers featured prominently as employers of female labour, this book endeavours to make sense of the migration of single women in three different national contexts. Preston, Paisley, and Lowell, Massachusetts, serve as case studies for developing trends in England, Scotland, and the United States, respectively. This study was designed to work both at the "macro" level, plotting migration patterns and their relationships to quantifiable socioeconomic factors, and at the "micro" level, examining in detail the personal experiences of individual migrant women. The study seeks to answer questions such as: "Under what circumstances did employers' needs exercise more influence on single women's migration, and when were the women's own needs and desires a stronger factor? What experiences were common to all textile cities, and which were specific to the city or region in which they [were discovered]?" (14). The book's introduction claims that it will contribute to our understanding of "the dynamic of the textile cities themselves," including "how nineteenth-century urban populations coped with women who were on their own" (2). Likewise, Gordon argues that the combination of quantitative and qualitative study that underpins Mill Girls and Strangers allows this book to "illuminate individual women's experiences from different perspectives, including insight into their goals and feelings regarding migration" (5). According to Gordon, this book presents "a picture of single female migrants with multiple dimensions, revealing their hopes and failures as well as their economic roles" (5). Mill Girls and Strangers is organised into three sections, each of which explores one of the three highlighted cities. Gordon begins her study with an examination of single women's migration to Preston, moves on to an exploration of Lowell, and concludes with Paisley. The logic behind the order in which the reader is introduced to these case studies is clear. At the heart of the study is the information that was gained from the cities' sampled census reports for the years 1850-51 through 1880-81. Gordon notes that in the case of Preston there are few "qualitative" documents through which to gain further access to female migrants' lives. (In fact, the only archival sources listed in [End Page 512] the bibliography for this city are a Penny Bank Minute Book and a set of Preston Savings Bank Records, which Gordon uses to question the extent of migrant women's continuing financial relations with their families back home.) Preston thus serves as the base upon which the more "qualitatively" rich case studies of Lowell and Paisley will build. The Lowell chapter contributes information derived from the particularly rich collection of migrant women's correspondence available for that location, while the Paisley chapter adds evidence gained from government institutions' records relating to migrant women whose efforts to gain or maintain independence went awry. Gordon's book is a solid contribution to the literature on women, waged work, and migration during the Victorian period. It provides information that may be instructively applied to questions relating to the motivations behind single women's migration, and to questions concerning the effects of migration on the migrants themselves. Gordon's findings confirm that single women were considered vulnerable to sexual predation and corruption during the late nineteenth century, and that this had a significant impact upon their decisions regarding where they would seek paid employment. Mill Girls and Strangers emphasises that migrant women's movements were determined by a variety of factors (including the needs and desires of prospective employers, the availability of desirable waged labour close to home, established patterns and cultures of migration, and the more personal whims and ambitions of the migrants themselves), and that the weighting of these various factors differed from case to case. In these respects, Gordon's...