What was the job of your grandmother?

My Grandmother worked in an arsenal munitions factory making bombs during the war, they were known as the canaries due to their hair turning yellow with the substances they were using.
She had a very hard life as she was a widow with three young children and had to go out early to catch two buses to work
She was a wonderful woman and grandmother, she never moaned about anything and she was more of a mother to me than her daughter was, I still miss her twenty five years after she has gone.

That was my maternal grandmother. I'm not sure that my paternal grandmother 'worked' (outside the home). She may have taken in laundry. She definitely took in lodgers. She was the second wife of my paternal grandfather, a widow) and he had 6 children by his first wife, then 2 including my father as the last) with his second wife. My paternal grandfather died while my dad was small but I don't remember him saying his mother ever worked. He had 3 spinster sisters; a housekeeper, a seamstress and a shop worker. MY paternal grandfather and his first wife were in service - he was a chauffeur (horse and trap) and then hansom cab driver - this was in 18th C - and she was a housemaid).

My maternal grandmother wasn’t expected to work as her family were quite wealthy, but she ran away to London to see Dame Nelly Melba perform. On her return her father agreed she could be a governess for a family friend. She met my grandfather shortly afterwards.

Maternal grandmother ran a sub post office in a rural village and paternal grandmother was an actress and at various times had a hairdresser and a jewellery shop. Both grandfather's were long gone before I was born.... I've no idea what they did, I'm away to ask my older sister!

My maternal grandmother was a crofter's wife in the Highlands of Scotland. As well as housework and childcare, the wives of crofters looked after sheep dogs and hens, milked cows, made butter and cheese, and helped with the work of the croft, including lambing, haymaking, weeding crops, lifting crops, working in the peats and so on..

My father's mother was a cook in the mansion house of the owner of the small Hebridean island where she was born and then the wife of the gamekeeper on the estate. She had five sons and did all the domestic work for them and her husband.

My paternal grandmother was a 'lady typewriter' typing up documents for a national newspaper on Fleet Street.

My maternal grandmother, stayed at home to help her parents until she married when she became a housewife. I don't think she ever did any paid work!

My paternal Granny, before marriage, worked at the pit head tending to the pit ponies. They hauled the coal up the rails from the shaft below. Unfortunately I don't remember her, as she died when I was 1 year old. But her sayings and quips live on. She had a great sense of humour.

Parental GM was a farmer wife which of course involved making butter, feeding chickens and pigs as well as rearing 7 children - probably a busy life
Maternal GM married a teacher and also had 7 children, then was widowed in her mid 30s, I knew her as a old lady in the ‘50s married to a publican of a spit and sawdust pub in the NW

My maternal grandmother worked on her father's farm of some 40 acres as a girl. I have a photograph of her father ploughing a field behind one horse and she and a sister are gleaning the furrows of stones after the plough. After she married she became a full time housewife and mother. All five sisters lived into their late nineties and one to 103. My mother achieved 104.

My maternal Grandmother was born in 1876 in Stoke Newington into a large family of 12. She worked in service from the age of 12 as a maid who did sewing and mending for a well-off London family. She had hardly any schooling. She met Grandad in her early 20s…and had a family of six children in Bethnal Green.
Nanna wasn’t very mobile, as she had very bad arthritis. She worked as a seamstress, earning money where she could, but Grandad was the main breadwinner. As the family became more affluent, they managed to move to West London.

When I was doing a Fam History course, I discovered my grandparents didn’t get married until Nanna was 63…in 1939. The reason was in order to claim a ration book during the war years, a couple had to be married.
They had lived together “over the brush” i.e. unwed…for more than 40years meaning all my aunts, uncles and mother were “illegitimate” …which was quite accepted in those days. Nanna said she was so busy looking after the family, they hadn’t had time to get wed, let alone afford a wedding!

Paternal grandmother married at 18, had 7 children, the first when she was 19 and the last (my father) when she was 42. No paid work. I know she came from a quite “well to do” family and wouldn’t have had to work before her marriage.
Maternal grandmother married at 19. She was working in a jeweller’s shop when she met my grandfather. (I think it likely that she had to work to support her parents). My grandfather, a young university educated teacher, had gone in the shop to buy an engagement ring for someone else!! She had my mother, an only child, at 20 and had no more paid work.

Paternal (step) Grandmother - Clippie (bus conductor). Wish we still had those as I think it was a backward move to make bus drivers do everything.
Paternal Grandfather - Bus driver
Maternal Grandmother - Rock roller
Maternal Grandfather - Confectioner (he was a ship's stoker in WWII)

Both my grans lived in inner city Liverpool and married soldiers who became railway workers.
I don't know where they worked before marriage. My maternal gran had 11 children and my paternal gran had 9 children. My paternal gran was widowed in her late 40s and had a job in a transport cafe and made blouses and shirts. I don't think my maternal gran worked after marriage and bringing up children.
I remember asking questions but I was often told it was no concern of mine. I thought it was odd as I was just inquisitive wanting to know my family history

My maternal Grandma was called Annie Elizabeth and was born 07/11/1907, from the age of 12 she was a half timer, mornings was spent at school and the afternoon was spent in the woollen Mill, the week after its reversed, children had such a hard life in those days, sadly.

My maternal grandmother was a teacher. As far as I understand, she was not qualified in the way modern teachers are, but she worked in a small private school (probably a "dame school") and just stayed on to teach the younger ones what we used to call "the 3Rs".
My paternal grandmother was a nurse in WW1. She owned a corner shop but did not work in it -my father was the delivery boy when at school.
I don't know how old either were when they married.
I think school leaving age was only 12 back then but seems likely they stayed on past that, given their jobs. I know very little about either of them and never met my paternal grandmother.

My maternal grandmother worked in factories. She read tea leaves until she saw domething bad for a colleague. She did this free it was for everyone a bit of fun, but she def had foresight. She was also a gifted singer but her husband (not my grandad) used to beat her up and stopped her progressing her career. He died and she thankfully remarried.

My paternal grandmother was widowed in the second world war with four young kids. She knew about farming (they were all farmers) so she used to help others farm their land mainly paddy fields as well as farming her own.

Both were amazing resilient women.

Maternal grandmother was in service until marrying my grandfather a coal miner. Than a housewife. Paternal grandmother was a seamstress in a tailor shop her brother owned. Unfortunately her marriage to my grandfather failed due to his philandering and gambling. He was the head stable boy at a racing stables. So she took in sewing to provide for her two sons. No such thing as maintenance in those days

gwyneth28

My maternal Grandma was called Annie Elizabeth and was born 07/11/1907, from the age of 12 she was a half timer, mornings was spent at school and the afternoon was spent in the woollen Mill, the week after its reversed, children had such a hard life in those days, sadly.

Goodness - She was younger than my Mother!

She worked in one of the mills in Derby on a loom before she married. She had a slightly crooked finger at the tip where it was caught in the loom. Her sister worked opposite and was stone deaf and my nan told her to stop the loom whilst she sorted out a problem. Auntie May didn’t hear. Limited health and safety in those days.

I'm ashamed to admit I actually do not know !
I spoke with my cousin who is 9 years older than me, thinking she'll definitely know.
She doesn't know either.

Elusivebutterfly

My maternal grandmother was a teacher. As far as I understand, she was not qualified in the way modern teachers are, but she worked in a small private school (probably a "dame school") and just stayed on to teach the younger ones what we used to call "the 3Rs".
My paternal grandmother was a nurse in WW1. She owned a corner shop but did not work in it -my father was the delivery boy when at school.
I don't know how old either were when they married.
I think school leaving age was only 12 back then but seems likely they stayed on past that, given their jobs. I know very little about either of them and never met my paternal grandmother.

My mother taught the infants at her village school for a year before she left at 14 because her teacher said she couldn't teach her anything more. She had passed the scholarship to the Girls' High School but couldn't go because there was no way she could get there, living out in the countryside and her family couldn't afford to buy her a bicycle. She said she used to see the local farmer's daughter, her friend, going off to the High School on her shiny new bike - a 20 mile round trip each day.

Pantglas2

My maternal grandmother was a farmer’s wife with 8 children in 1920s/1930s in a farm with no running water and a well in the nearest field.

She cooked three meals a day, baked her own bread and cakes and didn’t have a washing machine until the early 60s. The kitchen floor was scrubbed daily and chamberpots were still used overnight…☹️

She kept chickens and pigs and harvested rhubarb, plums, apples for jams and chutneys and another sideline was teaching
tonic sol-fa.

We enjoyed farm holidays there from Spring through to autumn half term and I rarely saw her sitting down! Maybe a cuppa whilst listening to Mrs Dales Diary each afternoon when she would nod off occasionally as I read quietly.

She rose at 6am each morning and never went to bed before 10pm and whilst the wireless was on all day I never saw her watching television in the sitting room!

She was my example of a SAHM and worked a darn sight harder, for longer every day of the week, than I or my mother ever did and didn’t “retire” from the farm until she was 75.

Pantglas2. I am so in awe of your maternal grandmother! How did she find the time to do all the things she did in one day? And looking after all those children too! What a woman!

My grandma was a landlady she lived near the theatre and took in lodgers as a child we saw many exciting people especially at panto time there were lots of houses offering the same lodging the artists provided the food and grandma cooked for them the funniest thing I remember was couple didn’t pay for the week escapeing via knotted sheets out of the bedroom window no one else did as grandma nailed the window down this was over 70 years ago

My maternal grandmother was one of 8 sisters from a farming family. Farming went through a difficult period in the late 19th century, and early in the 20th, and my great grandfather, unusually for men of his generation, saved up to ensure that all his girls had a training so they could earn their own livings if need be, and not be dependent on becoming farmers' wives.

Gran as a result left the West Country after WW1 to attend a new physical education diploma course in the north, for women wanting to teach P.E. to girls. She became the P.E. teacher she aspired to be.

The course she attended was run by one Irene Marsh. I.M. Marsh College in Liverpool in time became part of Liverpool John Moore's University.

My son did a sports science degree there nearly a hundred years later.

vegansrock

My paternal grandmother worked in Fry’s chocolate factory in Bristol. My maternal grandmother ran a market stall in Liverpool not sure what she was selling.

@Vegansrock. Snap! My Paternal Grandmother worked at the chocolate factory in Bristol ( I think it was called Carson's then). She met my Grandfather there. I wonder if our Grandmothers knew each other....