Anna Elizabeth Blunden (Mrs. Martino), 1830-1915
Signed and dated 1854 Canvas, 1854 x 15 ins.
Exhibited: Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street. 1854, No. 133.
In the early 1840s, lower middle-class, middle-class, and even upper-class women ("distressed gentlewomen") were increasingly put in the position of having to support themselves. Mrs. Jameson noted that if one considers the widows or daughters of "attorneys and apothecaries, tradesmen and shopkeepers, banker's clerks &c, in this class more than two-thirds of the women are now obliged to earn their own bread" ("Condition of the Women and the Female Children," The Athenaeum, 16 (March 18, 1843), 258). Unlike painting or writing, which some middle-class women were taking up as professions, needlework and teaching were seen as "natural" professions for women, and so would have been appropriate for those from the middle- and upper-classes. Whereas only some women had the education to be a governess, virtually all women had the necessary experience for needlework.
Millinery and dressmaking constituted the higher end of female employment with the needle; they were "respectable" occupations for young women from middle-class or lower middle-class families. The number of women involved in dressmaking alone in the early 1840s was estimated to be 15,000 (House of Commons, Reports from Commissioners: Children's Employment, Trade and Manufactures, Sessional Papers XIV (1843) 555). Milliners and dressmakers came from families who had enough money to pay for them to be apprenticed to learn the trade. This type of employment was part of an old, established apprenticeship system (like tailoring among men), and it was one of only a few occupations open to women which offered a skill and a sense of belonging to a trade, and which promised, at least after the apprenticeship period was served, a decent and respectable living.
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