What was the job of your grandmother?

Norah

My grandmothers didn't work outside their homes. They raised large numbers of babies doing everything that that entails.

My mum did as my grandmothers, as did I.

What about before they and you were married? Did they work then or stay at home to look after their parents?

My paternal grandmother died before I was born.
My maternal grandmother was a dressmaker, but died when I was 6 so I don’t really remember her.

My maternal grandmother was a “Spencer Corsetiere”, she had a plaque by her front door, I used to think it was,ade her very grand!
My paternal grandmother was a teacher but stopped working to raise a family, this was very much the norm in Ireland in the 1920/30’s.

My maternal grandmother (Edith) worked in a Lancashire cotton mill. She was, apparently,very vocal about working conditions. She didn't work after she married. She did remain very vocal.

My paternal grandmother (Jane) was the daughter of a hotelier. She was sent to France to train as a pastry chef. She and her husband also had a hotel for which she was the chef. She was very sophisticated, drove sports cars, wore furs and had the most gorgeous jewellery.

She and my maternal grandmother were chalk and cheese.

My maternal grandmother was a farmers wife and ended up running the family farm during the war as grandad was sent to work in the coal mines.
She had some POW's that were sent to live and work on the farm but I don't know much about them.
I have a treasured photograph of her on a tractor - she was a tiny lady but as strong as an ox!

My maternal grandmother had eight children so worked from home. She was a skilled seamstress and in great demand from posh local women for all their clothes. She was also fantastic at crocheting Irish lace items in white cotton like gloves, collars, tops etc and they sold really well or she added them to garments.

My paternal grandmother took in washing for people and also did some cleaning. She charged 2/6d for a basket of clothes so my late Father told me. He was a little boy and had to help her carry stuff and some of her customers were quite famous actors who had holiday homes in the village.

Her mother was described as a washerwoman/pauper in the census.

My maternal grandmother was a housewife and mother of six children.
My paternal grandmother went into service in her teens until she married, she was not well off her entire life, but a lovely grandma and much loved.

My maternal grandmother was a farmer's wife so worked on the land alongside her husband.
My paternal GM was mother/stepmother to 16 children (the first wife died) so no doubt had her hands full without a 'proper' job!

My maternal grandmother was the eldest daughter in a family of five girls. Her mother died when she was five and a paternal aunt moved in to run the house for her brother, who was a parson.

He was amongst those in the forefront of education and jobs for women, and worried that he would not be able to support adult daughters or leave them much in the way of money, so my grandmother went to one of the first teacher's training colleges for women in Denmark and taught until retirement age. She married very late, for her generation, at 38, had two daughters and lost her husband when my mother was nine months old in 1926. My grandmother had good reason to be thankful that she had continued teaching after she married.

My paternal grandmother had a degree in French and German from Edinburgh University, and taught in Berlin and in Paris fra 1910-13. She met my grandfather, a commercial traveller from a Bradford cloth mill in Paris, married him, and went home to her parents in Edinburgh when the war broke out in 1914 and grandpa, being fluent in French, Flemish and English went into the British Army as a liason officer with the French. Grannie never taught after her marriage, but encouraged my aunt to go to university, as well as my father. Their younger brother was not academically gifted and went into the firm his father worked for.

Like my maternal grandmother, my paternal grandmother was not a young bride. As far as I know three of my maternal grandmother's sisters married young and stopped work, the youngest, also a teacher, never married, and my paternal great-aunt also married young and did not work after her marriage.

My paternal grandmother worked into her 70’s in the millinery dept of a large Co Op store. The lady who worked alongside her was 80. They had the pick of the sales stock and my Gran didn’t leave the house without her nice hat and costume jewellery including heavy earrings which gave her very droopy ear lobes. Her ears fascinated me as a child. I remember her always being very well dressed. Rather like the Queen Mother.

My maternal gran was a farmer’s wife in the west of Ireland. Very primitive living conditions in an old thatched cottage with 2 rooms and a kitchen for 9 children, parents and grandparents. She worked from early morning till late at night caring for the family and working on the farm tending the cows, pigs, sheep and hens. No running water or electricity. Cooking done over a large open fire. Laundry washed in a little stream in the next field. Cows to milk morning and night. Bread baked daily to feed the family.

She had a very hard life and was old before her time. I was looking at a photo of her just recently. She’s in her early 50’s and looks like a frail old woman in her 80’s.

I am finding this thread very interesting.

I’ve already said that my maternal grandmother was a teacher, more or less all her life. I’d just like to add that she had four children, but the first two, a boy and a girl, died of meningitis in infancy. How awful this must have been. My mother was her third child, and the first who lived. There was also a younger brother, my Uncle Rex.

My maternal Nan ran a small boarding house for summer visitors in the house I m living in now
My paternal granny was a beatster she worked from home mending the fishing nets and bringing up five children in a tiny two up two down cottage

My mother’s mother died in 1909 when Mum was a few months old. Before marriage she was a Nottingham lace worker. My grandfather married again and Nan, who had been in service before marriage, looked after his two children. She was also a Salvation Army Officer’s wife, so she ran groups for women and children. Grandfather died in 1918 in the RAMC, so Nan brought up her two stepchildren. She ran a greengrocers shop. My Mum worked there too from the age of 14 until her marriage.

My Grandmother gave birth to fourteen children, twelve of whom survived. Without a single modern convenience, she looked after them all with love, care, and good food. She told my cousin that she hadn't been beyond the end of the road for over two years - hardly surprising. She was loved dearly by all her children, so her 'job' as such was creating a happy secure family.

Lone side of ‘a love affair of the county’!
A person remarked to my father and myself at the turn of the century although she died in 1964

My paternal grandmother was a maid at Belvoir Castle and met my grandfather there - he was a student vet/stud groom. They married very young and my father was born when his mother was 20 and his father 18! They moved to Oxfordshire and two daughters were born. My grandmother continued working as a housekeeper in a nearby boys boarding school. After she was widowed (my grandfather died of meningitis in Baghdad during WW2) she remarried.

My maternal grandmother had a very difficult life. She was married twice and at one point had to resort to a workhouse. She left her first husband and had a fling at some point and two children were born. She worked as a housekeeper for a man who became her second husband eventually. He was 25 years older and was 60 when my mother was born. My grandmother had to wait quite a few years before marrying her second husband. Although he was widowed, she had never divorced her first husband so had to wait for him to die. My mother never mentioned this and I only found out she was illegitimate until she was 12, after she died and I discovered the information on one of the Ancestry sites.

Neither of my grandmothers had a “job” as such.
My Scottish granny ran the newspaper/stationers shop attached to my grandfather’s printing office.
My German granny may have done some dressmaking, she was a skilled seamstress, but I don’t know how possible that was in Berlin during the War.

Grandma70s

I am finding this thread very interesting.

I’ve already said that my maternal grandmother was a teacher, more or less all her life. I’d just like to add that she had four children, but the first two, a boy and a girl, died of meningitis in infancy. How awful this must have been. My mother was her third child, and the first who lived. There was also a younger brother, my Uncle Rex.

I’m interested that she was a teacher despite having children. Obviously I don’t know the years in question, but in England teachers were obliged to resign on marriage.
I believe this so-called Marriage Bar was repealed in 1944 so presumably your granny taught after this date, or in a different country.
The “marriage bar” is the practice of restricting the employment of married women.Common in English-speaking countries from the late 19th century to the 1970s, the practice often called for the termination of the employment of a woman on her marriage, especially in teaching and clerical occupations.Further, widowed women with children were still considered to be married at times, preventing them from being hired, as well

My paternal grandmother left school at twelve and worked in a hosiery factory. She became a Griswold knitter and she did that at home when her children were small. She went back into the factory once they were all at school. She did lots of little jobs too to bring extra cash. Grandad was badly injured in WW1 and was unemployed at times. She cleaned the pub across the road and was caretaker of the hall next door. She cleaned the hall after bingo sessions and dances etc..

My maternal grandmother also did factory work. She worked in shoe factories as a machinist.

All the women in my family have worked. None of them are down as doing domestic duties on the censuses.

This is such an interesting thread . I’m fascinated by family history .
I don’t know what my maternal grandmother did as a job prior to marriage . I do know she was a sahm . She was an amazing cook and baker . She had lots of fruit trees in the garden plus veg and made jams and chutneys and bottled fruit .
My paternal grandmother was a seamstress and later worked in the Freeman’s factory in south London . She was always bringing home things that were slightly faulty .
Note to self , ask DM what her mother did pre marriage.

Maternal gm was a seamstress and milliner and took great pride in her appearance

Paternal gm was one of 10 children of a rural midwife. She was in service when she met my gf who I believe was a postbox at that time. I can always remember her telling me how they had a laundry allocation each week and on the week of her period the rags took up her whole allocation.
Also her role of having a miscarriage one night. Gf cycled to get the doc who came and said she needed to go to hospital, but they could not afford this. Doc took gf on one side and said she would be dead by morning ... but she survived. Such hard times.

He was a postman .... not a postbox!!!!

RosieandherMaw

Grandma70s

I am finding this thread very interesting.

I’ve already said that my maternal grandmother was a teacher, more or less all her life. I’d just like to add that she had four children, but the first two, a boy and a girl, died of meningitis in infancy. How awful this must have been. My mother was her third child, and the first who lived. There was also a younger brother, my Uncle Rex.

I’m interested that she was a teacher despite having children. Obviously I don’t know the years in question, but in England teachers were obliged to resign on marriage.
I believe this so-called Marriage Bar was repealed in 1944 so presumably your granny taught after this date, or in a different country.
^The “marriage bar” is the practice of restricting the employment of married women.Common in English-speaking countries from the late 19th century to the 1970s, the practice often called for the termination of the employment of a woman on her marriage, especially in teaching and clerical occupations.Further, widowed women with children were still considered to be married at times, preventing them from being hired, as well^

My grandmother was a teacher, on and off, in the school where her husband was headmaster. It would have been from the early 1900s until the 1920s or thereabouts, not sure of exact dates. She married in 1903, I think. My mother and uncle were born in 1907 and 1909, and the two who died were before that. She certainly worked, perhaps not full time, when my mother and uncle were children. They were looked after by a housekeeper. I don’t think the ‘marriage bar’ was universal. Or perhaps because it was ‘all in the family’ restrictions were lifted or ignored.

My mother, also a teacher, had to leave when she married in 1935, but she would have left anyway because my brother was born less than a year after that. She stayed at home and looked after us, very happily.

Grandmabatty

Cadenza, Dundee? The well known place for jute, jam and journalism.

No, what is now North London but quite rural then. Great grandmother had 10 children, grandmother only 2.

Cadenza123

My grandmother worked in a jute factory before she married while my great grandmother worked in the fields when her husband was sick and when she was widowed.

My maternal grandmother also worked in a jute mill . She was probalby one of the half timers who did half a day at school and half in the factory this at the age of around 13 .