Female Networks of Labor: Making a Living in Early 19th-Century Providence

Andrew Polta, Public Archaeology Lab

Click here to join via Zoom: https://aflcio.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYlfuigrDksHdfNWxIhXjycaQ7UEIrsDH6T

The conditions of men’s labor in a port like Providence pushed many women into the labor market during the early decades of the nineteenth century. Forced to provide a significant portion of their family’s income, these women faced a dilemma: prevailing gender norms depressed wages for the most readily available jobs, and truly lucrative work was often illicit, if not illegal. Both types of labor left women vulnerable to removal by the Providence Town Council, as either unwanted paupers or disorderly vagrants. Drawing on hundreds of interviews the town council conducted with ordinary Providence residents, we can reconstruct these women’s responses to their situation. The records show women who stubbornly refused to give up lives they had built for themselves and who formed neighborhood networks to help evade the attentions of Providence authorities. At the center of these networks were so-called disorderly houses, female-run boarding houses or brothels, which provided everything from work opportunities to a place to hide to even rudimentary social services for women in need.