Condition of Working Women and the Factory Acts, The (Boucherett and Blackburn)

Definition

In The Condition of Working Women and the Factory Acts (1896), Jessie Boucherett and Helen Blackburn set out to dismantle the corrupt and oppressive political and capitalist system that continues to enslave women and forces them out of employment. Analyzing the existing Factory Acts and their system of evaluation, the authors demand a reform of the evaluation process, to amend and re-evaluate already established Factory Acts, as well as to stop new restricting ones.

Introduction

The Condition of Working Women and the Factory Actswas published in 1896 with Elliot Stock in London and was edited by Jessie Boucherett and Helen Blackburn. While Boucherett and Blackburn contributed five chapters to the book, it also contains a report on the work of women in the white lead trade at Newcastle upon Tyne by Helen Ogle Moore and Edith Hare. The 84-page text presents a state of affairs of working women’s political, legal, and economic situation in late nineteenth-century Britain...