Clara Goldberg Schiffer print collection documenting working women, 1839-1994 (inclusive), 1851-1890 (bulk)
Overview
19th century prints of women's work in the United States and abroad.
Dates
- Creation: 1839-1994
- Creation: Majority of material found within 1851-1890
Language of Materials
Materials in English.
TERMS OF USE
Access. Unrestricted.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright. Radcliffe College makes no representation that it is the owner of the copyright in any part of this collection; permission to publish must be obtained from the owner(s) of the copyright (the author or her/his transferees, heirs, legatees, or literary executors.)
Copying. Papers may be copied in accordance with the library's usual procedures.
Extent
2.96 linear feet ((1/2 file box, 2 folio+ boxes) plus 1 folio folder, 3 oversize folders, 1 photograph folder, 1 folio+ folder of photographs)This collection contains electrotype (some hand colored) and photomechanical prints, as well as engravings, photographs, clippings, pamphlets, and other miscellaneous material illustrating women at work in the United States and abroad in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The collection shows women's traditional spheres of work in domestic service, needlework, and agriculture; the development of their roles in commerce (from street markets to department stores); the limited occupations available to African American women in the South and to immigrants in the North; and the opportunities for women's professional advancement in teaching, medicine, and nursing. There are also illustrations of new openings for women as workers in government offices, telephone exchanges, and telegraph companies, and the employment of women in factories making clothing, munitions, textiles, tobacco, or watches, or processing food.
The collection illustrates not only the greater presence of women in the labor market, but also their sex-segregated jobs and exploitation in factories and sweatshops. Other aspects of the social history of women such as fashion, recreation, and sports are also shown.
The collection is arranged in two geographical and one miscellaneous series. In the first two series each print is designated by a folder and item number; in the third series items are grouped in numbered folders. There is an artist, subject, and occupation index at the end of this finding aid.
Series I, Prints of United States subjects (items #1-201), consists of electrotype and photomechanical illustrations of women's employment clipped from Gleason's Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, Harper's Weekly, Harper's Bazar, Ballou's Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, The London Illustrated News, other nineteenth century pictorial periodicals, and books. They are arranged alphabetically by subject or industry and illustrate women at work in agriculture, industry, commerce, domestic service, and the professions. Also interfiled alphabetically are topics unrelated to work, such as city and seascapes, fairs, slave auctions, suffrage, and depictions of immigrants and pioneers.
Series II, Prints of non-United States subjects (items #202-261), arranged alphabetically by country, shows the employment of women in France, Germany, and Great Britain in the 19th century with scattered examples of women's work in Ceylon, Costa Rica, India, Spain, and Switzerland.
Series III, Other formats (folders #27-35f+), includes the first issue of The Lowell Offering, pamphlets and catalogs about 20th century women printmakers and print exhibitions; clippings and pamphlets about women's occupations and women's field hockey and baseball; color reproductions of paintings showing women at work; a song in Yiddish memorializing the victims of the Triangle Shirt-Waist Co. fire; and photographs of women workers.
BIOGRAPHY
Clara (Goldberg) Schiffer (A.B. Radcliffe, 1932 and M.A. George Washington University, 1939) was a health program analyst for the United States Department of Health and Human Services and was concerned with occupational and environmental health and disease prevention. Earlier she had worked her way through college and spent summers working in factories and thus developed an interest in the history of women and work. Over the years, Schiffer assembled a large collection of prints culled from the 19th century pictorial press, which provided compelling documentation of women's labor history.
The era of pictorial journalism began with the publication of the London Illustrated News in England (1842) and Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion (1851) in the United States. In the United States a brilliant group of wood-engravers were employed by magazines to translate artists' sketches (by Winslow Homer et al.) into engravings on blocks of boxwood. For large illustrations, composite blocks were put together and then electrotypes capable of withstanding thousands of printings were produced from the blocks. The whole industry disappeared in the 1880s with the introduction of photomechanically produced blocks.
Physical Location
Collection stored off site: researchers must request access 36 hours before use.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Accession numbers: 88-M191, 90-M114, 90-M188, 91-M125, 93-M171, 94-M126, 96-M150, 97-M152
This collection was assembled by Clara Goldberg Schiffer and given to the Schlesinger Library between November 1988 and November 1997.
Related Material:
There is related material at the Schlesinger Library; see Clara Goldberg Schiffer print collection documenting working women, 1861-1999 (Gr-11.).
CONTAINER LIST
- Folio+ Box 1: #1-55, 57-68, 70-74, 76-90, 92-114
- Folio+ Box 2: #115-189, 191-193, 195-199, 201-221, 223-232, 234-252, 254-259, 261
- Box 3: Folders 27-29, 31, 32f+, 33f
INDEX
Index of artists, places, subjects, and occupations
- Abbey, Edwin Austin 171
- Actresses 26
- Ammunition 48-49, 201, 207, 221, 261
- Amusement parks 147
- Afro-Americans 1 3-7, 10, 15-16, 68, 70, 79, 93, 98, 100-102, 104, 163-164, 186-188, folder 29
- Agriculture 2-19, 85, 203-204, 212-218
- Archery 150
- Art 20-25, 254
- Artists 20-25, 200o, 254
- Arts 26-29, 254
- Asylums 140
- Ballerinas 27
- Baseball folder 30o
- Bicycles 152
- Bookkeepers 206
- Boston (Mass.) 36-41, 96-97, 142, 174, 182
- Brushmaking 50
- Buttermaking 2
- Cannery workers 80, 210-211, 239
- Ceylon 203
- Charities 30-35, 141, 155, 170
- Charleston (S.C.) 98, 102, 187
- Child care workers see Servants and Teachers
- Church, Frederick S. (Frederick Stuart) 122
- Cigarettes 66-69
- Cityscapes 13, 36-46
- Civil War (1861-1865) 74-76, 132-134
- Clergy 47
- Clothing industry 115-131, 182, 184-185, 200o, 209, 215-217, 232-233
- Coal mining, see Mining
- Costa Rica 204
- Cotton growing--Southern States 3-7, folder 35f+
- Cotton mills 60-63, 65, 229-231
- Cotton (textile) 60-63, 65, 229-231
- Cranberry bogs 8-9
- Cushman, Charlotte 26
- Davis, Theodore R. 19, 49, 157
- De Thulstrup, Thure 14, 29, 43
- Dressmakers 58-59, 115-131
- Excursions 144, 146-152
- Exhibitions 63, 65, 73, 78, 118, 229
- Factories 48-73, 209, 221-235
- Fairs 74-78
- Farming 10-13, 17-19, 203-204, 217-218
- Fashion 124-129
- Field hockey folder 29
- Firefighting 238
- Firewood 16
- Fishing 79-80, 210-211, 239-240, folder 35f+
- Forests 14-16
- France 205-211
- Frenzeny, Paul 114, 137, 196, 204, 211
- Fruit farms 17-19, 218-219, folder 35f+
- Germany 212-217
- Government employees 81-88, folder 34
- Great Britain 218-252
- Homer, Winslow 11, 34, 36-40, 48, 61-62, 74-76, 90, 96-97, 166
- Hotels 157
- Immigrants 89-92, 137
- India 256
- Industrial expositions 63, 65, 73, 78, 118
- Italy 257
- Kendrick, Charles 148
- Knitting 32, 119
- Laundresses 141, 255
- Lebanon 2
- Libraries 69o, 94
- Limmer, Emil 213
- Linen 64, 233o
- Lowell Offering, folder 27
- Macquoid, Percy 232, 239
- Mail carriers 201
- Market places 95-111, 240-242, 255
- Matches 52, 224-226
- Medicine 112-113, folder 34
- Milliners 200o, 205, 228
- Mining 114, 243-245
- Musicians 28-29, 214, 255
- Needleworking 33-34, 58-59, 115-131, 200o, 202, 215-217, 232, 246
- New York (N.Y.) 32-34, 42-43, 66, 74-77, 99, 101, 103, 108-113, 124o, 131, 139-140, 144, 148, 150-151, 157, 159, 166-167, 171-172, 183, 190o-191, 193, 195
- Nursing 132-136, 140, 247-249, 254, folder 34
- Orchards 17
- Orphanages 34, 162
- Papermaking 53-54, 200o
- Perfume 208
- Philadelphia (Pa.) 44-46, 78, 81
- Physicians 112-113
- Pilots 201
- Pioneers 137
- Plantations 3-7
- Policewomen 201
- Post offices 42, 74
- Printers (people) 138, 200o, 250
- Printing 138, 250
- Prisons 139, 141-143
- Prostitutes 141
- Railroads 201, folder 35f+
- Ray, Frederic E. 57
- Reading 32
- Recreation 144-153
- Reformatories 141-142
- Restaurants 154-160
- Rogers, W. A. (William Allen) 13, 25, 109
- Saloons 154, 158-160
- Seashores 149-150, 179
- Servants 161, 175-181
- Sheppard, William Ludwell 10, 16, 70
- Silk manufacture 209, 235, 258
- Skaters 151
- Slave auctions 186-188
- Small, Frank O. 153
- Smedley, W. T. (William Thomas) 257
- Spain 259-260o
- Sports 150-152, folders 29-30o
- Stone, M. L. 176
- Stores 182-185, 230
- Strikes 196, 198-199
- Suffrage 189, folder 34
- Sweatshops 124o, 131
- Swedish immigrants 89, 92
- Switzerland 261
- Taylor, James E. 5, 145, 164
- Teachers 161-174, 251
- Telegraph offices 190o-191, 252
- Telephone exchanges 192-194o, 213, 253o
- Temperance 194o
- Textile workers 51, 55-56o, 60-65, 229-231, 234, 236
- Textiles 51, 55-56o, 60-65, 229-236
- Theater 26, 29
- Tobacco 66-70
- Trade unions 195-199
- United States Sanitary Commission 74-76, 132-134
- Washington (D.C.) 82-84, 104-105, 107, 132-133
- Watchmaking 71-73
- Waud, Alfred R. (Alfred Rudolph) 77, 82, 91o, 100, 103, 163, 165
- Woodhull, Victoria Claflin 189
- Working class--Songs and music folder 33f
Processing Information
Processed: March 1998
By: Jane S. Knowles
Genre / Form
Geographic
Topical
- African American women--Pictorial works
- African Americans--Pictorial works
- Businesswomen--Pictorial works
- Charities--United States--Pictorial works
- Childcare workers--Pictorial works
- Clothing workers--Pictorial works
- Cotton growing--Southern States--Pictorial works
- Dressmakers--United States--Pictorial works
- Factories--Pictorial works
- Fishing--Pictorial works
- Laundresses--Pictorial works
- Marketplaces--Pictorial works
- Needleworkers--Pictorial works
- Nurses--Pictorial works
- Prisons--Pictorial works
- Prostitutes--United States--Pictorial works
- Women artists--Pictorial works
- Women cannery workers--Pictorial works
- Women clerks (Retail trade)--Pictorial works
- Women coal miners--Pictorial works
- Women household employees--United States--Pictorial works
- Women in agriculture--Pictorial works
- Women in charitable work--United States--Pictorial works
- Women in education--Pictorial works
- Women in science--Pictorial works
- Women labor union members--Pictorial works
- Women physicians--United States--Pictorial works
- Women teachers--Pictorial works
- Women's clothing industries--Pictorial works
- Women--Employment--France--Pictorial works
- Women--Employment--Germany--Pictorial works
- Women--Employment--Great Britain--Pictorial works
- Women--Employment--United States--Pictorial works
- Working class--Great Britain--Pictorial works.
- Working class--Songs and music
- Working class--United States--Pictorial works
- Title
- Schiffer, Clara Goldberg, collector. Clara Goldberg Schiffer print collection documenting working women, 1839-1994 (inclusive), 1851-1890 (bulk): A Finding Aid
- Author
- Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America
- Language of description
- eng
- EAD ID
- sch00272
Repository Details
Part of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute Repository
The preeminent research library on the history of women in the United States, the Schlesinger Library documents women's lives from the past and present for the future. In addition to its traditional strengths in the history of feminisms, women’s health, and women’s activism, the Schlesinger collections document the intersectional workings of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class in American history.