Working Women All Through History: Blacksmiths, Silversmiths, Nail Makers

If you thought that "Kate the Blacksmith" was an anachronism in A Knight's Tale... she wasn't. (Well except for her dialect... and maybe her attitude...)  Despite the feminist mythology, women have engaged, openly and profitably, in almost every occupation in every era in the western, Christian world.

In the 14th Century Holkham Bible, this illustration shows a woman blacksmith forging a nail. Note the assumption in the caption, written by a modern author, that she is "the Blacksmith's wife".  Maybe she was and maybe she wasn't... what the factual record shows is a woman working at a forge with hammer and tongs.

In the brief article "Blacksmithing of the 18th Century", the author notes that the demand for nails was huge, and making them was a common sideline for people, including women - even those women who were not full-fledged master smiths.

The Bodleian Library blog has an interesting article about "Lizzie Bennett, Blacksmith":

" An account of blacksmithing work done in December 1708 by Eliz[abeth] Bennett at Blenheim ‘Castle’, her job included making 32 dozen holdfasts for the joiners (at 2 shillings a dozen), making new handles for three saws, mending a pump in the meadows, and making wedges and clouts (patches or plates) used in the stairs. But in addition to making items for a fixed price, she also charged for work by the pound weight. Twenty five pounds of iron works for a grindstone at 4 pence a pound earned her 8s 4d (100 pence total) and 31 pounds of wedges and clouts, also at 4 pence a pound, made her 10s 4d.The total for what would have been several days or weeks of highly skilled work? 4 pounds, 17 shillings, 2 pence. Not bad at all if you compare it to a female servant’s income at about that time – maidservant Sarah Sherin made £4 a year in 1717, while in the farming world, a female labourer called Goody Currell was paid 4 pence a day at an Oxfordshire farm in 1759, fifty years later."

An article from the Colonial Williamsburg journal:

"The Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths in London lists sixty-five "brethren" and two "sistren" in its 1434 charter."

"A 1770 publication called The Tradesman's True Guide or a Universal Directory for the Towns of Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Walsal, Dudley and the manufacturing village in the neighborhood of Birmingham carries exhaustive lists of tradesmen and -women alphabetically by name and by trade. There are women listed in every trade from butcher to wire drawer."

"Only recently did a Colonial Williamsburg interpreter look closely at a nineteenth-century print that had been hanging on the wall at the Geddy House for years: a portion of Ben Franklin's Poor Richard Illustrated features a country blacksmith shop where four men are working, and in the right-hand corner, a woman hammers at an anvil rather inconspicuously. A 1505 Polish print is centered on a lovely woman at a spindle, but a careful inspection of the background shows a woman making a shoe on her knee."

The article notes the big error in modern & postmodern Feminist History: the idea that women "weren't allowed to work" doesn't hold up to scrutiny:

"What is more compelling is the lack of documentation that women were not allowed to work. Although religious practices and social norms might have restricted certain activities in some parts of the world, there were no laws prohibiting women from working a trade.

"Yet sometimes scholars and guests have a hard time accepting the notion that women did just that. Schumann says that "the greatest obstacle for the visitor is in accepting Rind as an eighteenth-century woman, and not a 'born-before-her-time' women's libber."

As I point out when demonstrating Letterpress Printing, an ordinary occupation of women since Gutenberg's time, women have always worked for pay - they had to make a living, then as now. This author agrees:
".... no matter what century it is, women have always done what is necessary to provide for themselves and their families."

Hillary, Obama, & the Democrats Mistake Monty Python For A Real Playbook

Hillary, Democrats, Media, & Quislings started out by pretending that poor old Hillary "I fall down but someone props me up again" Clinton was a shoe-in, despite that she's crooked and looney to boot, and they kept pretending all the way up to the Electoral College vote:






Democrats and Media pretend that Hillary lost >90% of the Continental Land Mass "because Voter ID":






Democrats, People Famous-For-Being-Famous, the Weirder of the Mainstream Media, Quislings, and College Freshmen ran around yelling, to nobody in particular, "Not My President":







Democrats, Illegal Aliens, and Professional Rioters ran around committing arson, vandalism, and generally acting like they live in the Third World when they found out that Hillary made history by being one of two women nominees who couldn't get enough people to actually vote for them to win the election in 2016:








Then they tried pretending that Hillary and Jill lost because of "rigged voting", until recounts showed more votes for Trump, and ... hey why are there more votes than voters in these places Hillary won?








Having lost the Presidency, the Senate, the House of Representatives, a majority of Governorships and most State Legislatures (Dems hold Governor & Legislative majorities in only FIVE states) , some Democrats begin calling for "bipartisanship":







Next, Obama, Hillary, Democrats & Quislings pretend Russia did mean things, but President Trump & the Deplorables aren't fooled:





And finally, the ridiculousness reached levels of clinical instability, because they have to live with the knowledge that in the end, all those people the Elites and Progressives and Globalists and Democrats have been laughing at... are not so ordinary after all.

MAGA!!!!!!!!!

The Other Dame Julian: The Mother of Fly Fishing was a 15th Century English Nun

I first read about Dame Juliana Berners a few weeks ago, and I am still enthralled with this quaint little fact from "A Brief History of Fly Fishing":

"The first English book on fly fishing was written by Dame Juliana Berners in 1496: Treatise of Fishing with an Angle, which contained a wealth of practical angling advice and details on equipment. As the Abbess of the Sopwell Priory, Berners cast flies and wrote between prayers. She described the rod as having two parts: a ‘staffe’ or butt, and a ‘croppe’ or top. The butt was made of hazel or rowan, cut between Michaelmas and Candlemas (that is, in the winter), and was six feet long or more."

She also contributed a middle-ages how-to book on hunting, in "The Book of Saint Albans".  For a letterpress printer, it gets better, because the second edition of her Treatise was published by none other than Wynken De Worde, and has never been out of print in 450 years! Here is a link to the full "Treatise on Fishing With An Angle".

Those crazy Medieval nuns! I have always been fond of the eminently quotable  Dame Juliana of Norwich, whose record of her Visions of Divine Love in 1373 remains a breathtaking work of faith in Jesus Christ that inspires to this day. By happenstance, or perhaps the Grace of God, it is also the earliest surviving book written by a woman in English.  I have read her in several translations, and once even started a translation of my own, working from the original Old English.

And now to read about another ordinary soul who surprises and upends our assumptions and the "expert" guesses about the lives of Religious in those so-called dark ages following the Black Death. Something tells me their lives were quite livelier - and perhaps much more like ours - than we have been taught.

Isn't it interesting how different history looks when you let the facts speak for themselves, unpainted with fictional anachronisms or modernised disclaimers.

First Amendment Quote of the Day - February 18, 2014

The Articles of the Warsaw Confederation, issued January 28, 1573 by a group of Polish and Lithuanian leaders, were an early written declaration of religious freedom in Europe, allowing all denominations to worship as they wished, without interference from anyone who did not approve or who professed otherwise, and without punishment, fines, or taxes from the government or King.

Excerpts:

"That, specifically, it is sworn to maintain civil peace among people who are differentiated by faith or religious practice, and that without a declaration of the sejm we never be forced across the borders of the realm by any royal action or request, not forced to pay five grzywna per shaft, nor shall there be a general levy called."

"Therefore we swear to rise up against anyone who would constitute or allow himself to be elected at a time or place other than that indicated, or who would desire to create tumult at the election, or who would accept bonded serving people, or who would dare to oppose an election concluded with complete assent."

"And whereas in our Commonwealth there are considerable differences in the Christian religion, these have not caused disorders among people, as detrimental as have begun in other kingdoms that we have clearly seen, we promise to one another, for ourselves and for our descendants, for all time, pledging our faith, honor and conscience, we swear, that we who are divided by faith, will keep peace among ourselves, and not shed blood on account of differences in faith or church, nor will we allow punishment by the confiscation of goods, deprivation of honor, imprisonment or exile, nor will we in any fashion aid any sovereign or agency in such undertakings. And certainly, should someone desire to spill blood on such account we all shall be obliged to prevent it, even if the person uses some decree as pretext or cites some legal decision."

"All ecclesiastical officials who enjoy royal benefits, such as archbishops, bishops, and all others similar, will be granted these prerogatives equally: to clergy of the Roman church and to those of the Greek church as both are by law Polish citizens."

"And so that peace may be broadly shared, and so that differences among the estates would be checked, and so that the differences in matters of temporal politics between the secular and ecclesiastical estates be small, we promise to coordinate all these matters at the next electoral sejm."

          The Articles of the Warsaw Confederation, issued January 28, 1573.  An English translation is at Reformation.org , and here is a link to the original text in Polish.