Original Victorian CDV of 3 Wigan (Lancashire) pit brow girls, wearing working clothes, including trousers with shovels and sieves, working tools. Photo by Herbert Wragg of Wigan (printed on front of photograph) & reproduced by A. & G. Taylor, 34 Church St. Liverpool, circa 1885
See Alamy ref: 2H2P6NE for reverse of this card. Further info from this source: “Possible link to social documenter diarist and barrister Arthur Munby who had an interest in working-class women, especially those who performed hard physical labour and he collected photographs of them and documented their lives. In 1842 it became illegal for women and children to work at the coal face, with boys being allowed to work at 11. The women were replaced by pit ponies, although they continued to work at the surface of mines (at the pit brow) undertaking hard manual labour. At a time when ladies legs or ankles were not on display, trouser-wearing mining women were considered a curiosity and soon became a tourist attraction. Their scandalous trouser-wearing became famous, and souvenir carte-de-visite (CDV's) like this one were sold depicting the mining women in their working clothes - dirt and all." Further info from this source: "Images like these were produced for the commercial market. They were taken by local photographers and sold to visitors. as novelties. The lunch baskets and tea cans add interest. These portraits of local colour were the precursors of the picture postcard and similar images depict fishermen and women, milkmaids and so on. They should not be confused with privately commissioned portraits of people in working dress. Pit brow lasses were distinctive and controversial in Victorian society because they wore trousers. Some even feared that this habit could lead to a loss of femininity and moral degeneration in the wearer. A number of 20th-century critics have described these pictures as titillating and exploitative – the soft porn of the Victorian era!”
Size: 5000px × 7848px
Location: Wigan, Lancashire, England, UK
Photo credit: © ThislifeThen / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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