What was the job of your grandmother?

My grandmothers were nowhere near as grand as some of the posts. My maternal grandmother left school at 13 and went straight into service, starting work at 5am until late then at 16 she married my grandfather. After his death she got a job as a dinner lady in the local school where she worked until she retired. My paternal grandmother was a rag sorter which reminds me very much of Dickens Christmas Carol when the housekeeper sells his bed curtains.

My maternal grandmother worked in service before her marriage to my granddad. As far as I know she was a housewife and mother after that, who was a skilled seamstress, making all my mother's clothes. Sadly she died when my mother was a teenager leaving my mum looking after her poorly father and her baby brother, with her aunt's help. My granddad remarried and my step grandma later ran a corner shop and off licence which my grandad bought for them while he worked as a driving instructor after leaving his work as a weaver in a cotton mill.
I don't know if my paternal grandmother worked. She died when I was 3 and I don't remember being told much about her. Most of what I know came from my mum and I don't think they had a particularly good relationship so my opinions of her are rather negative.

My maternal grandma was used to be the maid of her ageing widowed father until my grandfather literally snatched her from when she was walking back from washing something down the river and took her to his home. She never returned and stayed with him, marrying due to honour and all that. She worked in a factory.

The other was a maid initially to her very rich noble Mistress who educated her and saved all her salary and gave it to her as a form of a dowry. Later on she was trained from scratch to be a surgeon's nurse right hand and served her local community as a nurse, midwife, librarian and just before retiring did some factory work also

I don't believe either of my Grandmothers officially worked (for money) before they married but I do know one was a keen amateur photographer, making her own camera and developing her photos, until her dark room became a pantry when the kids started arriving, after she married. The other probably helped her widowed mother look after the boarders, along with sewing. Both would have left school around 12 to 14 years old, as did my mother at 14, (she worked in a shop and later became a TB Nurse before marriage).
One of my Gt Gt Gt Grandmothers was still working on a farm in her 80s when she slipped on ice and drowned in a stream, and I believe she had done similar work all her life, particularly after her husband was shipped off to Australia. She probably didn't attend school at all. I know she was illiterate.

I do know one of my Gt Grandfathers was working away, in a stables at the age of 12.

My maternal grandmother worked in a brick factory.

My paternal one worked in a factory weaving silk regalia.

My grandmother sourced clothes for theatrical costumers and also had a drapers shop and a small pawnbrokers business. Other gran was an upholsteress then a cook.

My maternal grandma helped her stepmother deliver babies and lay out the dead in the small fishing village she lived in. Later she worked as a rent collector going house to house. She was proud to have 'put her husband through ?college for his skipper's ticket' with her income. BTW, his trawler was converted to a mine sweeper during the second
World War and he captained in throughout the war, serving in the Thames Estuary in particular. Grandma had moved onto collecting insurance payments by then,,, My Paternal grandma who died before I was born was apparently a court dressmaker. She certainly owned a house in Windsor and. had £900 when she died.....worth £50,000 these days apparently. No idea what happened to the cash as my dad ran off to the RN aged 15 after she died.....

Mine was a PE teacher, and a VAD during WW1, until she married in 1919. But only single women could teach so she had to stop working then. My mother was a professional Civil Engineer, qualified in 1955. She at least was allowed to carry on working until she got pregnant - although when she left, the firm she worked for removed her name from all their formal records, even though they couldn't have done the work without her because she was the only member of staff who had studied Soil Mechanics.

My maternal grandmother was a nanny for the local pharmacist who had daughters. She stopped working when she got married, then had 2 daughters of her own. When my brother was born in 1958 she e refused to change his nappies as she couldn’t bring herself to look at ‘male parts’.