Sarah Bagley
Encyclopedia
Sarah George Bagley
Sarah George Bagley was an advocate for women's rights and one of the most important labor leaders in New England during the 1840s. An advocate of shorter workdays for factory operatives and mechanics, she campaigned to make ten hours of labor per day the maximum in Massachusetts. Her activities in support of the mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts put her in contact with a broader network of reformers in areas of women’s rights, communitarianism
, abolition
, peace
, prison reform
, and health reform. Sarah Bagley and her coworkers became familiar with middle-class reform activities, demonstrating the ways in which working people embraced this reform impulse as they transformed and critiqued some of its key elements. Sarah’s activities within the labor movement reveal many of the tensions that underlay relations between male and female working people as well as the constraints of gender that female activists had to overcome.
Henry, and one sister Mary Osgood. It is also supposed that there was a miscarriage right after Sarah.
working at the Hamilton Mills. She published one of her first stories “Pleasures of Factory Life” in an 1840 issue of the Lowell Offering
. The Offering was a literary magazine written, edited, and published by working women, some of them very young. Their purpose was to show the world that women who worked could also write and have a thirst for learning.
In late November 1842, 70 weavers at the Middlesex Mills walked off their jobs, protesting the requirement to tend two looms instead of one. Shortly after this “turn-out” or strike
, Bagley left the Hamilton Mills and went to work for the Middlesex Mills as a weaver, possibly taking the place of striking workers. Between 1842 and 1844, over 1,000 textile workers left Lowell as a result of an economic depression, which caused wage cuts and stretch-outs. In March 1844, under improved economic conditions the Lowell textile corporations raised the wages of male textile workers but not female workers to the 1842 levels.
In 1845, Bagley and her friends gathered names of other textile workers on petitions sent to the Massachusetts Legislature, demanding a Ten-Hour Day. As a result of dozens of petitions, for the first time in the United States history, a state legislature held hearings to investigate the conditions of labor in the manufacturing corporations. Bagley and others testified to the long hours and unhealthy working conditions in the mills. The committee led by Representative William Schouler (1814-1873) reported that the legislature did not have the power to determine “hours of work” and that the Ten-Hour Day must be decided between the corporations and the textile workers. The workers were furious and campaigned to defeat Representative Schouler in the next election.
Bagley and her friends continued sending petitions to the state legislature for a Ten-Hour Day, they gathered over 10,000 names from throughout Massachusetts, and more than 2,000 signatures were from working women and men of Lowell. Again hearings were held to investigate working conditions, and again the Massachusetts Legislature refused to take action. However, labor and political pressure on the Lowell textile corporations was so great that in 1847 the mills shortened the workday by 30 minutes. As the labor reform movement persisted the corporations again reduced the hours of labor to eleven in 1853.
. In Springfield, she was very unhappy to discover that she earned only three-quarters as much as the man she replaced. She wrote to a friend of her growing commitment to human equality and the rights of women.
where she worked with the Quakers as the executive secretary of the Rosine Home, providing a safe place for prostitutes and disadvantaged young women. While in Philadelphia, Bagley met James Durno (1796-1873) and they married on November 13, 1850.
and began their practice as homeopathic physicians. At that time, homeopathic health care was a new field of medicine, which used herbs and medicines rather than the more radical cures performed by some of the well-known doctors – bleeding patients, or “purging” the body through vomiting. Their practice specialized in providing medical care for women and children. The price of their services was “to the rich, one dollar - to the poor gratis [free].” James Durno began manufacturing herbal medicines and Durno Catarrh Snuff. By 1867, the Bagleys had moved their manufacturing company to New York City and lived in a large brick house on Brooklyn Heights in Brooklyn, New York. In 1873, James Durno died in Brooklyn and was buried in Green-wood Cemetery
. Sarah Bagley Durno's death has yet to be discovered, but it appears she died about ten years later.
Sarah George Bagley was an advocate for women's rights and one of the most important labor leaders in New England during the 1840s. An advocate of shorter workdays for factory operatives and mechanics, she campaigned to make ten hours of labor per day the maximum in Massachusetts. Her activities in support of the mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts put her in contact with a broader network of reformers in areas of women’s rights, communitarianism
Communitarianism
Communitarianism is an ideology that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community. That community may be the family unit, but it can also be understood in a far wider sense of personal interaction, of geographical location, or of shared history.-Terminology:Though the term...
, abolition
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
, peace
Peace
Peace is a state of harmony characterized by the lack of violent conflict. Commonly understood as the absence of hostility, peace also suggests the existence of healthy or newly healed interpersonal or international relationships, prosperity in matters of social or economic welfare, the...
, prison reform
Prison reform
Prison reform is the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons, aiming at a more effective penal system.-History:Prisons have only been used as the primary punishment for criminal acts in the last couple of centuries...
, and health reform. Sarah Bagley and her coworkers became familiar with middle-class reform activities, demonstrating the ways in which working people embraced this reform impulse as they transformed and critiqued some of its key elements. Sarah’s activities within the labor movement reveal many of the tensions that underlay relations between male and female working people as well as the constraints of gender that female activists had to overcome.
History
Sarah Bagley was born in New Hampshire to Rhoda Witham and Nathan Bagley, both members of large New England families. Nathan and Rhoda farmed, sold land, and even owned a small mill trying to make money to support their family. She had two brothers, Thomas andHenry, and one sister Mary Osgood. It is also supposed that there was a miscarriage right after Sarah.
Textile Worker
In 1835, at the age of 28, Bagley first appeared in Lowell, MassachusettsHistory of Lowell, Massachusetts
The History of Lowell is closely tied to its location along the Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimack River, from being an important fishing ground for the Pennacook tribe to providing water power for the factories that formed the basis of the city's economy for a century...
working at the Hamilton Mills. She published one of her first stories “Pleasures of Factory Life” in an 1840 issue of the Lowell Offering
Lowell Offering
The Lowell Offering was a monthly periodical collected contributed works of poetry and fiction by the female textile workers of the Lowell, Massachusetts textile mills of the early American industrial revolution. It began in 1840 and lasted until 1845...
. The Offering was a literary magazine written, edited, and published by working women, some of them very young. Their purpose was to show the world that women who worked could also write and have a thirst for learning.
In late November 1842, 70 weavers at the Middlesex Mills walked off their jobs, protesting the requirement to tend two looms instead of one. Shortly after this “turn-out” or strike
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
, Bagley left the Hamilton Mills and went to work for the Middlesex Mills as a weaver, possibly taking the place of striking workers. Between 1842 and 1844, over 1,000 textile workers left Lowell as a result of an economic depression, which caused wage cuts and stretch-outs. In March 1844, under improved economic conditions the Lowell textile corporations raised the wages of male textile workers but not female workers to the 1842 levels.
Labor Activist
In December 1844, Bagley along with five other women met in “Anti-Slavery Hall, in the Spalding Block on Central Street in downtown Lowell.” They formed the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, to improve health conditions and lobby for the Ten-Hour Day. At that time, women worked about 13.5 hours a day in the Lowell textile mills. As president, Bagley saw the LFLRA grow to nearly six hundred members. They published their own labor newspaper The Voice of Industry for which Bagley frequently contributed articles and edited a woman’s column.In 1845, Bagley and her friends gathered names of other textile workers on petitions sent to the Massachusetts Legislature, demanding a Ten-Hour Day. As a result of dozens of petitions, for the first time in the United States history, a state legislature held hearings to investigate the conditions of labor in the manufacturing corporations. Bagley and others testified to the long hours and unhealthy working conditions in the mills. The committee led by Representative William Schouler (1814-1873) reported that the legislature did not have the power to determine “hours of work” and that the Ten-Hour Day must be decided between the corporations and the textile workers. The workers were furious and campaigned to defeat Representative Schouler in the next election.
Bagley and her friends continued sending petitions to the state legislature for a Ten-Hour Day, they gathered over 10,000 names from throughout Massachusetts, and more than 2,000 signatures were from working women and men of Lowell. Again hearings were held to investigate working conditions, and again the Massachusetts Legislature refused to take action. However, labor and political pressure on the Lowell textile corporations was so great that in 1847 the mills shortened the workday by 30 minutes. As the labor reform movement persisted the corporations again reduced the hours of labor to eleven in 1853.
Involvement with the Telegraph
In June 1846, John Allen became the new editor of The Voice of Industry and immediately fired Bagley. She wrote that Allen “does not want a female department. It would conflict with the opinions of the mushroom aristocracy that he seeks to favor, and beside it would not be dignified.” Discouraged and angry, Bagley looked for another job. In February 1846, only two years after Samuel Morse's first successful demonstration of the electric telegraph, the New York and Boston Magnetic Telegraph Company opened an office in Lowell, and Bagley was hired as probably the first female telegrapher in the United States. Not only did she tap out messages, but she helped people write their messages and letters. Early in 1847, Bagley was contracted to run the magnetic telegraph office in Springfield, MassachusettsSpringfield, Massachusetts
Springfield is the most populous city in Western New England, and the seat of Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers; the western Westfield River, the eastern Chicopee River, and the eastern...
. In Springfield, she was very unhappy to discover that she earned only three-quarters as much as the man she replaced. She wrote to a friend of her growing commitment to human equality and the rights of women.
Return to Lowell
A year later Bagley returned to Lowell, working for the Hamilton Mills and living with her brother, Henry Bagley, to save money. While in Lowell, she traveled throughout New England, writing about health care, working conditions, prison reform, and women’s rights. In 1849, she moved to Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
where she worked with the Quakers as the executive secretary of the Rosine Home, providing a safe place for prostitutes and disadvantaged young women. While in Philadelphia, Bagley met James Durno (1796-1873) and they married on November 13, 1850.
Homeopathic Physician
In 1851, Sarah George Bagley and her husband James Durno moved to Albany, New YorkAlbany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
and began their practice as homeopathic physicians. At that time, homeopathic health care was a new field of medicine, which used herbs and medicines rather than the more radical cures performed by some of the well-known doctors – bleeding patients, or “purging” the body through vomiting. Their practice specialized in providing medical care for women and children. The price of their services was “to the rich, one dollar - to the poor gratis [free].” James Durno began manufacturing herbal medicines and Durno Catarrh Snuff. By 1867, the Bagleys had moved their manufacturing company to New York City and lived in a large brick house on Brooklyn Heights in Brooklyn, New York. In 1873, James Durno died in Brooklyn and was buried in Green-wood Cemetery
Green-Wood Cemetery
Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 as a rural cemetery in Brooklyn, Kings County , New York. It was granted National Historic Landmark status in 2006 by the U.S. Department of the Interior.-History:...
. Sarah Bagley Durno's death has yet to be discovered, but it appears she died about ten years later.
External links
- Sarah George Bagley by Mayo, Martha. University of Massachusetts Lowell, Center for Lowell History
- Mill Life in Lowell Website University of Massachusetts Lowell, Center for Lowell History
- The Lowell Offering University of Massachusetts Lowell, Center for Lowell History
- The Voice of Industry