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MIDDLESEX, Massachusetts in the 1840s: 1 through 4 of 4

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  1. Charles Dickens and the Women of Lowell, Massachusetts
    date 1842map MIDDLESEX, Massachusettstags Industrial Revolution, Cotton Mills, Charles Dickens, Lowell, women's rights

    He said he wasn’t going to compare the textile factories at Lowell, Massachusetts, to the ones in his home country of England, but how could he not? After all, Charles Dickens would make it his life’s work to critique the deplorable working conditions that his fellow countrymen had to suffer through on a daily basis. “The contrast would be a strong one,” Dickens wrote in comparing Lowell to...

  2. The Role of Poetry and Prose in the Lowell Mills: An Examination of Mourning in the Factory-workers' Literary Magazine
    date January 1, 1840 to December 31, 1845map MIDDLESEX, Massachusettstags Labor, Art/Leisure, mid-nineteenth century, female factory workers, women's writings

    Published in the January 1843 edition of "The Lowell Offering and Magazine" is a poem entitled "On A Young Man Lost At Sea" by an author credited as "M.G.B." The mournful poem reads like a funeral dirge and expresses the sorrow of a sister who has lost her dear brother. The author writes of how this young man's voice will never again be heard nor will his presence be seen around the family hearth....

  3. The Black Enchanter
    date January 15, 1848map MIDDLESEX, Massachusettstags Blackface, Minstrel Show

    “The Black Enchanter…”  functions as the comic relief in a play titled John-Donkey’s Prize Plays. This actor was one of many white actors in a black face minstrel show in the period before the Civil War. This black character is portraying the “court jester” of  this time period, entertaining white people in old torn clothes with his over exaggeration of black features:  broken language,...

  4. Maintaining a Gender Hierarchy
    date April, 1848 to 1848map MIDDLESEX, Massachusettstags working women, Lowell, hierarchy

    Eliza Jane Cate was an unmarried woman who worked in the Lowell mills for several years and contributed a great number of moralistic essays to the New England Offering during the late 1840’s. Although Cates essays in the Offering were fictional, Cate presented realistic morals and views based on her experiences in the Lowell factories. She begins her essay “Duties and Rights of Mill Girls” with...