Needles and Penury in 19th Century London: The Diary of a Poor Quaker Seamstress

Abstract

In 1833 a Quaker seamstress in London began ajournai in which she recorded aspects of her life as a worker in the East End. Though the journal spans only seven months, it provides much useful material to social historians, since it illuminates well the life of a workingclass woman. For Friends the journal serves as a reminder that not all Victorian Quakers were as prominent or well-to-do as Elizabeth Fry, Elisha Bates, J. J. Gurney and John Bright. It also presents important insights into how Quaker meetings looked after the welfare of their poor members, and in doing so gives us a new perspective on the Victorian life of not-so-prominent Quakers. By the time the journal was donated to the Quaker Collection at the Haverford Library in 1903, the identity of the writer was lost. The small manuscript was then entitled, Diary of a Quaker Seamstress, 1833-1834, being a pathetic record of monotonous penury, but who was the Poor Quaker Seamstress? The diary yielded clues which were decisive in determining the identity of the author. The first set of clues was a collection of place names which indicated that the diarist had lived near Bethnal Green, and it was therefore obvious that the manuscript had originated in London. 1 The other clues, which the diarist provided were the month and day of her birth and of her father's death.2 Most important, the diarist recorded: