‘Pleasurable homes’? victorian model miners' wives and the family wage in a south yorkshire colliery district [ 1

Abstract

Abstract This article challenges the notion that, in the second half of the nineteenth century, mining households were characterised by the family wage and the male breadwinner. Through a close reading of sources drawn from the South Yorkshire oalfield considerable evidence is unearthed which suggests that miners' wives and their daughters often played an important role as wage earners. Female members of mining families usually earned money within the privacy of the domestic sphere. In public at least this allowed the affirmation of the family wage and the male breadwinner as the economic modus operandi within the mining household.