
Death at the Needle: The Tragedy of Victorian Seamstress Mary Walkley - Avawelles
https://mimimatthews.com/2016/09/20/death-at-the-needle-the-tragedy-of-victorian-seamstress-mary-walkley/
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astrocat
It's unclear the intent of the author, but for this community it can be taken
as a reminder that scandal is often ephemeral - stirring up the press and
public but making no lasting change. The tragedy of a Victorian seamstress,
the San Bernardino iPhone, Sandy Hook... To effect change requires a
concerted, persistent, depressingly long effort to see it through, not just
shouting for a bit.

I forget where I read it recently, but there was a piece about how some great
strides forward were made not overnight, even though they may have seemed that
way (I think the context may have been civil rights), but through decades of
constant, vigilant advocacy and activism.

~~~
iaw
I felt like the author allowed the reader to draw their own conclusions but my
takeaways were in the same vein: awareness and outrage don't immediately solve
problems.

~~~
Avawelles
I feel the same. I don't think that there is an intent other than education on
19th century history and events. The readers get to draw their own
conclusions.

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pjc50
Garment-stitching work is notorious for these kind of conditions, it's just
moved around the world over the years to places like Bangladesh.

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sgt101
Seemstress = Startup Developer?

I was reminded of the airbnb foundation legend : three designers on airbeds on
the floor of an apartment. I also picture rows of developers crouching over
macbooks (when any sane employer has keyboards and 2*24' monitors + a decent
chair).

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brianwawok
No seamstress did not make wages in the top 10% in the richest country on
earth while working 7 hour days.

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sgt101
Well...

The seamstresses in the story lived in the richest country in the world (at
the time!) And at that time inequality in GB was so eye popping that these
poor girls may have actually been close to the top 10%, although a gigantic
distance from the top 1% and an unimaginable distance from the top 0.1%

Also startup developers (proper startup developers) do not work 7 hrs, they
work 14hrs.

~~~
Retric
I found some info for the US, I assume England would have similar numbers.

[http://www.nber.org/chapters/c2500.pdf](http://www.nber.org/chapters/c2500.pdf)
page 101 suggests seamstress was making about 1/3 what a carpenters made. Thus
seamstresses where far from the to 10%.

The US numbers look for top 10% was ~1/3 of all income top 5% = 20% of all
income so 90-95% was ~10% of all incomes. The bottom 40% was 13.6% of all
income. Page 32:
[http://eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/cromer/e211_f12/LindertWilli...](http://eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/cromer/e211_f12/LindertWilliamson.pdf)

So, someone at 90.001 percentile was making about 8x what someone at 20.001
percentile.

PS: Inflation is hard to calculate for this time-span but it was the
equivalent of something like 2$ per hour.

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mcguire
If you are interested, check out Magdalene laundries as well.

