1. Quoted in Eric Richards, ‘Women in the British Economy Since about 1700: An Interpretation’, History, 59 (1974), p. 351.
2. Elizabeth Roberts, Women’s Work, 1840–1940 (Basingstoke: Macmillan — now Palgrave, 1988), p. 22. The equivalent rates in Scotland were 28 per cent in 1871, 27 per cent in 1891, and 24 per cent in 1911.
3. For a clear account of the factors affecting women’s work, the analysis of Tilly and Scott remains extremely useful: Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott, Women, Work and Family (London and New York; Routledge, 1989, first published 1978), pt 2.
4. Ellen Jordan, ‘Female Unemployment in England and Wales, 1851–1911: An Examination of the Census Figures for 15–19 Year Olds’, Social History, 13 (1988), pp. 175–90.
5. Joanna Bourke, Husbandry to Housewifery: Women, Economic Change and Housework in Ireland, 1890–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993).