What was the job of your grandmother?

*Upholsteress

My maternal grandmother was Irish, she trained as a cook but went into an apprenticeship as an pholsterers . She worked on something that was on the Titanic, the deck loungers I believe. Paternal grandmother had 2 shops with my grandfather, a drapers and second hand apparel.

This is such a lovely thread, talking about real life people of their time. How hard they all worked in their own ways.
(So much more interesting to read than when this was discussed before on GN and resulted in sneering, not by anyone on here now I add).

My paternal grandmother worked in a big stately home as a "downstairs" maid and married another servant then he got a factory job but we hardly saw them they lived a long way away.

My maternal grandmother had come over from Ireland.her parent were immigrants, and she was brought up by big sisters and wanted my mum to be "a lady" so off to elocution lessons. Sorry to say she wasn't a warm person.

henetha

My paternal grandmother never worked. She was one the older girls in a family of 13 and helped look after her younger siblings until she got married.
I never knew my maternal grandmother.

Your paternal grandmother definitely worked ! She just didnt receive any pay.

Sago

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 Mum trained with Spencer to work part time. I remember her going off on a course and when she came back she had brought me a tiny toy plastic sewing machine. Funny how some things stick in your mind .....

My maternal grandmother worked as a housemaid from leaving school at 13. After her marriage she never worked outside the home as had plenty to do in it.
My paternal grandmother was the daughter of a publican and did domestic work in the pub until old enough to work behind the bar.She was a talented amateur pianist and singer, she was once asked if she would like to go to Italy to train as an opera singer. Her father would not allow it, as he had heard what happened to some girls going alone to foreign countries, he imagined she would be used to walk the streets.
After marriage she had a part time job as a pianist asocial gatherings.

My paternal grandmother died when my Dad was a baby, so he never knew her. He was the youngest of 10, so I can’t imagine that she went out to work.
My maternal grandmother worked in a Lancashire cotton mill, part-time from the age of 12, then I think full-time from 15. She probably stopped working when she had children. Her first baby died of meningitis. My Mum was her second child. She looked after me from babyhood to teenage while my Mum went out to work. I still miss her.

There were always ways around the 'marriage bar'. My mother worked in the insurance industry before WW2 and said quite a number of the women she worked with were married. They just did not tell their employer and never wore their wedding or engagement rings at work and never talked about their family life at work.

Obviously, if they became pregnant, then they left. I suspect the same applied in lots of other industries where there were 'marriage bars'

In teaching I suspect that the marriage bar was only mandatory (if known) in state schools. In private schools, especially where a husband and wife were the owners, I doubt that any such bar existed.

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 .

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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

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 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.