Here Come the Girls Shopgirls: The True Story of Life Behind the Counter

Today, we take it for granted

that the majority of our shop assistants are women.

But 150 years ago, being served by a shop girl

was a strange, new phenomenon.

And the story of how an army of women

swept onto our shop floors is an extraordinary one.

In this series, I want to follow the journey of the shop girl,

from the almost-invisible figure in the stark Victorian stalls

to being the beating heart of today's vibrant shops.

I want to explore the drama behind her history,

her exploitation by ruthless shopkeepers

and her enjoyment of selling beautiful objects.

Her defiant fight against a trashy reputation and class snobbery,

her romantic entanglements, and her cult status.

I want to hear the voices of the shop girls themselves,

their bosses and their customers.

I did feel we were all partners.

He would walk past a counter,

and if it was dusty he'd write his initials, HGS,

-in the dust.

-SHE LAUGHS

"Ordered and paid for - hat at Pontings.

"Girl tried to stick on three shillings extra. Cheat."

And, ultimately, through these shop girls' stories,

I want to understand how society changed

when thousands of young women surged into shop work.

This is George Square,

the heart of Victorian Glasgow.

Just round the corner were the offices of the Glasgow Daily Herald.

In July 1861, the paper ran a bizarre story

under the headline

'Romantic Freak Of A Glasgow Girl Of Sixteen.'

It reported that a young man had answered

a provision dealer's advertisement

and was duly hired as a shop assistant.

All went well for the first few days,

the lad giving rather extra satisfaction,

according to the article.

But, then, the young man's landlady visited the provisions dealer.

"Lo and behold, he was told that his young, active shopman,

"instead of being of the masculine, was of the feminine gender."

The article goes on to say that the supposed shopman tried to

deny it but eventually confessed to being a girl of 16.

The boss fired her on the spot. He only employed men.

Now, we don't know who she was or what was really driving her,

but, remarkably, she did it again.

She landed another job in another shop, once more,

disguised as a shopman.

This story sums up so neatly attitudes to shop work of the time.

The fact that she was labelled a romantic freak shows just

how puzzling people found her.

Why would a girl like this want to break in to such a male domain?

This girl was ready to do whatever it took to challenge an old order.

Shop work was a closed world for most women

in the mid 19th century across the country.

This is Wisbech in the Fens.

In the 1850s, it was one of the most thriving market towns

in Cambridgeshire,

with its elegant Victorian and Georgian buildings,

rows of shops, and prosperous, independent tradesmen.

It was also home to local photographer, Samuel Smith,

who captured street and river scenes from the time

that give us an insight into the town's shop life.

Wisbech was a typically prosperous provincial town,

and almost all its shops were owned and staffed by men.

-And this is the map.

-OK.

Mike, this is a beautiful town plan of Wisbech from the 1850s.

So, how would you define the shopocracy in Wisbech?

Well, there's no legal definition of them

but they'd be the sorts of people who would inhabit the houses

on these streets -

the grocers, drapers, printers, stationers.

We're very lucky because we've got

some local photographs of these actual shops.

These are the ones along here, cos that's the Post Office

and the Fire and Life office at the end, isn't it?

-Oh, yes, it is.

-Yes, yeah.

I think what's even better is,

if you look at the census, you can peer inside and go through

the keyhole and see who's living inside these properties,

and along this row here there's a shop called Fosters.

-It's a draper's and a grocer's.

-Draper's and grocer's.

-So, there's Nelson Foster, there's his wife, Eliza.

-Yeah.

-But she's just listed as wife.

-Yeah.

But I bet you she was more than a wife.

I'm sure she would have helped out in the shop a little bit.

We know from other censuses that sometimes people are listed

as housekeeper or wife, but we know that they did assist in the shop.

Yes, the census conceals quite a lot of women's work, doesn't it?

-It often underestimates it, yes.

-Who else have we got?

We've got two Johns, who are assistants, aged 25, 21,

one a grocer's assistant, one a draper's assistant.

So, as far as the census is concerned,

this business is owned by a man

-and has two male assistants.

-Yeah.

Do you think that was common that most of these businesses

-had apprentices?

-Oh, yes.

If you look through the census at other examples,

quite a lot of them would have apprenticeships,

invariably, teenage boys or young men.

And how did that system work, Mike?

Well, you'd pay a premium to a trader

to provide board and lodging, and training for them,

living in, so that they would acquire the skills of the trade.

The experiences of the teenage boy apprentice in the 1850s

were described in the diaries of grocer TD Smith.

"I was curing pigs, cutting sugar from pillars or loaves

"and grinding it,

"learning about the origins and natures of products,

"tea blending, book-keeping, coffee roasting, et cetera.

"Lived in. Hours 7.30am to 9pm, and to 11.30pm Saturday.

"Had to dress for meals after closing the shop.

"Wage - £26, and saved half of it."

Mike, you said girls tended not to have a career in the retail trade.

Largely so, because they wouldn't view them

-as having that career path.

-Hm.

But these employers didn't need to hire girls.

If you could get virtually free young men to do the jobs for you...

-Either your sons or an apprentice.

-Or an apprentice, then

there's no need to hire cheap labour,

even if women were cheaper.

Mid-19th century Wisbech reflected the entrenched customs

of a country where women weren't forbidden from working in shops

but were virtually invisible on the shop floor.

The old shopocracy was hanging on to its traditions,

passing everything - trade, business, employment -

down the male line.

And in the great metropolis,

the picture was barely any different.

London was buzzing, its coffers swelled by money from the Empire

and Britain's status as the world's most powerful trading nation.

In the 1850s, it was the biggest city it the world,

with a population of over 2½ million,

and its commercial influence reaching across the globe.

London now boasted a vast array of luxury shops,

from piano forte makers, to French corset and stay-makers,

from turtle soup specialists, to exclusive milliners,

and, from gun makers, to purveyors of biscuits to the Royal family.

From the outside,

the variety of goods on offer in specialist shops

seemed delightfully tempting,

especially to a new middle class with money to spend.

But, inside, the shopping experience could be quite daunting.

Lady Mary Jeune was a glamorous high-society hostess and journalist.

But she remembered her shopping experience of the mid-19th century

as a uniquely unpleasant male-dominated business.

"An afternoon shopping was a solemn and dreary affair

"when one was received at the door of the shop

"by a solemn gentleman in black,

"who, in due time, delivered one over to another solemn gentlemen,

"and perhaps again to a third, who found one a chair,

"and in sepulchral tone of voice

"uttered some magic words, such as 'Silk, Mr Smith,'

"or 'Velvet, Mr A,'

"and then departed to seek another victim."

The idea that shopping could be made a pleasure for a woman

was still a world away, at least for Lady Jeune.

London was bursting with shops

but women were employed in very few of them.

Simon, what's your speciality?

Well, the speciality of the company is wine.

But originally this business was founded

selling the most expensive drinks of the world.

But, in 1698, that wasn't wine or a whiskey, it was tea and coffee.

How long has the business been trading from these premises?

Since 1698.

It really goes back to the times

when people weren't expected to come in.

When these windows were first put in, the idea was,

we threw the windows wide open and sold onto the streets.

-So, you served from the windows?

-We served from the windows.

So, display became important much later on.

It became important around 1800.

There's a woman called Lady Mary Jeune in the mid 19th century

who writes that shopping was a rather solemn affair, and it

was a case of being passed from one solemn gentleman to another.

I mean, is that something that Berry Brothers would recognise?

Uh, probably, yes.

Did you ever employ women here?

Yes, we did.

But, in the shop, the first one didn't come until the 1980s.

-I can remember, I was working in the shop myself.

-1980s?

-1980s.

It feels like rather a man's world.

It may feel a bit like a man's world

-but almost half the shop staff are girls now.

-Mm-hm.

And it's a much better,

much less intimidating place as a result of that.

Inside the mid-19th century shop, even here in the city,

male dominance of the shopping business looked set to continue.

But, outside, long-held traditions

of working life were changing rapidly.

More and more working men were being drawn into the factories

and offices of the big industrial cities.

Others went abroad to seek new lives and prosperity in the Empire.

Smaller artisan businesses, including shops,

no longer had the same ready supply of young men as apprentices.

They now had to compete with the employment might of big industry.

As for women, the problems they faced in gaining work

were revealed when the 1851 census was published.

The results were startling.

It showed that out of 20 million people,

there were an estimated 2½ million unmarried women in Britain

who were self-supporting.

And, on top of this,

there were half a million more women than men

in the population overall.

Without the support of the kindly husband,

as Victorian tradition would have it,

the question was what to do with these women.

Just about here, on Regent Street in Central London,

stood a building whose address was 19 Langham Place.

In the late 1850s, a group of radically-minded women

met here to address an urgent problem -

how to get the huge surplus of unmarried women into work.

They were known informally as the Ladies of Langham Place.

At the forefront of this group

was determined campaigner Jessie Boucherett.

Since the capacity and sheer number of shops had expanded

with the growth of Britain's cities,

Jessie saw shop work as one of the key areas

for employing these surplus women,

so, she formed the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women.

Pam, we're in the rather sumptuous Langham Hotel,

we can see Langham Place out of the window.

Tell us a bit more about the Ladies of Langham Place.

Well, they were a remarkable bunch.

They were very, very keen on, sort of, social progress.

And they were trying always

to get better education for girls, better training.

Women were working at this time, weren't they?

-Yes.

-You've got the working class professions of service,

and agriculture, and needlework,

and middle class women are working as governesses and seamstresses,

so, what's the problem?

There were jobs for the women up to a point

but there were still just hundreds of thousands

of...often middle class women who had only been trained, as it were,

to expect to be married and to be supported by a husband,

to be passed from father to husband.

So, if something went wrong, if their father went bankrupt,

if marriage didn't appear

then they weren't actually trained to do anything.

They were possibly worse off then than a young working class girl

apprentice to a milliner.

So, it's almost as though this... Shall we say, lower middle class

women were in a very sort of awkward position if they'd had no training.

We've got a brilliant document here, a statement of the views and plans

-of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women.

-Mm-hm.

Jessie writes in there, "Let us look around

"and see where the men are never to be found

"occupying easy, remunerative places

"that could be as well, or better, filled by women.

"Why should bearded men be employed to sell ribbon-laced gloves,

"neck handkerchiefs and the other dozen trifles to be found

"in a silk-mercers or haberdasher's shop?"

Some people said, "Well, you know, you couldn't have women,

they wouldn't stand all those hours standing up,"

because they had to stand up, just, you know, serve long hours,

ten-hour days.

And she said, "Well, you know, working class women

"stand up in factories all day long at machines.

"Why wouldn't women be able to do this?"

-And did they also need training?

-Yes.

And she felt that nobody would take on a young woman in a shop

if they couldn't, you know, for example,

do the change in their head - mental arithmetic.

And also measuring and weighing things accurately as well.

-And didn't she want to set up a school?

-Yes.

She mentions it in here.

"It is the intention of the society

"to establish a large school for girls and young women

"where they may be specially trained to wait in shops

"by being thoroughly well instructed in accounts, book-keeping,

"et cetera,

"and to be taught to fold and tie up parcels,

"and perform many of the other little acts

"which a retired shop woman could teach them.

"The necessity of politeness towards customers

"and a constant self-command will also be duly impressed upon them."

She did say that it was beholden on that trained young shop woman,

shop girl, to always be courteous,

never, sort of, to react badly,

because, otherwise, she regarded it as actually

a crime against the shop owner.

Because if you were once rude to a lady shopping

she might never come again.

How important were they in empowering women?

They're pressing for better education for middle class girls,

so that it might be as good as the sort of education

their brothers might get.

They're trying to get, you know,

university colleges for women set up, they're trying to get the vote.

And this is all before the suffragettes, as we know.

Everybody knows about the suffragettes,

and not so many people know about the Langham Place Group or Jessie.

So, yes, I think they're terrifically important.

The women of Langham Place knew they could not educate

all those who wanted to learn.

The plan was to start with one school and build from there.

The aim was to act as a pioneer

to show that the women they trained

could carry out shop work, previously reserved for men.

What Boucherett and her colleagues were suggesting was truly radical,

not only that women enter a professional man's world,

but that they shrug off notions of gentility and respectability

which held that shop work and, indeed, all work,

was somehow unladylike.

In the 1860s, thousands of young, aspiring, single women

flocked into the cities looking for work.

Some found it in domestic service but others found it in shops.

Shopkeeping was expanding, shopkeepers needed staff.

These young women fitted the bill.

They were mobile and cheap.

Trinity College, Cambridge,

holds a rare account of one typical shop girl

who travelled from her home farm in the countryside

to find shop work in the big city.

The record was made by civil servant and writer Arthur Munby.

Munby's notorious today.

He had a fetishistic, often sexual interest in working women.

He had a forensic fascination for the minutiae

of their everyday lives.

He collected photographs of servant maids, pit lasses, acrobats,

fisher girls.

But, most significantly, he wrote diaries

detailing his hundreds of encounters with women,

including several shop girls.

Well, here are the diaries,

pages and pages of perfect handwriting detailing Munby's life.

Here's one of his first encounters with a shop girl, Eliza Close.

He says, "I took refuge under the trees from a long shower

"which came on, and I fell in talk with a sweet,

"pleasant-looking young woman who stood next to me in the group.

"She was dressed in a black silk gown and light-coloured thin shawl,

"a gay but pretty white and green bonnet,

"kid gloves and a few cheap, simple bracelets."

He goes on to say, "Her father, it gradually appeared, is a farmer

"near Lutterworth, and she, his only daughter, is a draper's shop woman.

"She likes the country for a fortnight or so

"but thinks it's so solitary

"and much prefers her employment here in London.

"My young friend thought it most improper

"that women should milk cows or do anything else out of doors."

So, this is a story of aspiration.

Eliza doesn't want to stay at home in the country milking the cows,

she wants to come to town, work in a shop and better herself.

It's a story of social mobility.

"Her homely prattle made picong by occasional solecisms in grammar

"and by her perfect naivety was very pleasant.

"Such girls as she - shop girls, milliners, refreshment room girls

"and the like, are thoroughly differentiated into a class.

"Their views and habits and speech come midway

"between the dignified reserve and fastidious delicacy of a lady,

"and the honest bluntness and crude vulgarity of a servant."

Now, Munby's hit on an important point here,

because if girls like Eliza

were to give middle class ladies the service they expected and demanded,

they would have to conceal their lower class origins.

So, really, they're caught between classes,

and it's that in-betweenness that's so endlessly fascinating

for men like Munby and so many others.

It was a difficult line to tread.

They lacked middle class money and status,

and many working class people saw them as betraying their own kind.

Some called them counter-jumpers.

But ingrained social attitudes

could not get in the way of massive economic growth.

As successful high street stores expanded

buying up neighbouring premises,

two assistants became four, six or eight.

New, specialist goods,

display areas and interior designs began to appear.

Drapers moved into haberdashery, millinery and leather goods.

Grocers moved into perfumery,

and new buildings sprang up

to accommodate this expanding consumer world.

Shopping had arrived on a grand scale, and a new frontier

was opening up for the shop girl -

the department store.

This is Jenners, on Princes Street, Edinburgh.

It was founded as a drapery in 1838 by Charles Jenner

and Charles Kennington.

Its original buildings were destroyed by fire in 1892.

Three years later, it was rebuilt on the same site.

When the building was designed, Charles Jenner

insisted that the caryatids,

the sculpted female figures on the outside,

should symbolise that women were the support of the house.

Charles Jenner not only founded Scotland's oldest department store

but was also a philanthropist, botanist and patron of the arts.

He was a typical example of the moral Victorian proprietor,

like fellow store owner Robert Anderson

who was High Sheriff of Belfast,

or Emerson Bainbridge of Newcastle

who was a staunch Wesleyan Methodist.

There was a religious and civic conviction

about many of these Victorian proprietors

which would have been reassuring to a young shop girl and her family.

She was surely entering a safe and virtuous world

as she made her way from country to city.

And what Charles Jenner knew

was that, like the statue supporting his building,

women should be at the centre of his business

on both sides of the counter.

As he put it himself,

"This is a rock on which some other stores have perished.

"They concentrated on trying to attract male customers

"instead of women."

In the late 19th century,

the doors to shops across the country were flung open,

and thousands of single women,

including self-supporting middle class women,

poured in looking for work.

The hierarchy in the department store has changed relatively little

in the last 150 years.

The floor walkers, department heads and supervisors

are all visible on the modern shop floor.

The main difference then was that,

almost exclusively, it was men who took those roles.

Shop girls could work as counter staff, cashiers,

clerks, packers and sewing hands.

Some could rise to become head of department

but there was no doubt that in rank and pay

most were at the bottom of the heap.

Wages could vary from store to store

but a typical shop girl's salary in 1890 was £20,

including board and lodging -

only £2,000 a year in today's money,

and around only half of what her male equivalent was earning

doing the same job.

But it was still better paid

than most jobs in domestic service or agriculture,

and the working environment of a shop

was far more attractive than a factory.

And it now offered the chance to build a relationship

with the customer.

Women were deemed to be

naturally better at selling to women and to men

as society hostess and journalist Lady Mary Jeune

reflected on her own shopping experiences.

"Women are so much quicker than men,

"and they understand so much more readily what other women want.

"They can enter the little troubles of their customers,

"they can fathom the agony of despair

"as to the arrangement of colours,

"the alternative trimmings,

"the duration of a fashion,

"the depths of a woman's purse, and, more important than all,

"the question as to the becomingness of a dress."

Shopping was becoming more and more attune

to the emotional demands of the middle class woman,

with shop girls at the centre of the experience.

With money and goods pouring in from the Empire,

they were the handmaidens of Victorian consumer culture.

The Victorians were consummate shoppers,

particularly the aspirational middle classes,

who packed their houses with an ever-increasing range

of exotic goods.

So, here we are in the home of a middle class consumer.

-Yes, indeed.

-We're on the other side of the counter now.

-Who lived here, Shirley?

-Well, it was Marion and Linley Sambourne,

and they moved in here when they were married in 1875,

and they furnished the whole house from top to toe

with everything that an upwardly-mobile artistic pair

could ever want or need.

What kind of people were the Sambournes?

Linley Sambourne was an artist.

And Marion, did she work at all or was she the lady of the house?

Oh, no. Her father was a wealthy stockbroker,

and he did actually pay for half the house, so, that was quite generous.

What kind of things were in vogue at the time?

This is largely what we call an aesthetic movement house.

In this room, he has chosen to furnish it with antiques,

and I think he's been very clever

because they look as if they're very good,

but quite a lot of them are not very good.

For instance, the clock over there,

this is in the style of Boulle, who worked for Louis XIV,

-but it's not genuine Boulle, it's a 19th century copy.

-It's a copy?

But I'm sure you can't tell the difference.

How about Marion, what kind of shopping trips did she embark on?

Well, she liked to go and shop for clothes, and, of course,

on the high street there is an underground station

which was opened in 1868, so that was very convenient

for going round what she called the Metro, but we now call it the Circle.

So, she would've gone to Westbourne Grove to go to Whiteley's, and

she'd have gone on to Baker Street to go to the Baker Street Bazaar.

And then she went on to Goodge Street to go to Maple's and Shoolbred's.

And, of course, it was often very tiring,

so you had to stop off and have a little refreshment.

She could go to Gunter's for ices or Charbonnel's for a cup of chocolate.

So, there was a wonderful choice.

-So, the Circle line is really the shopping line?

-Oh, definitely.

These are Marion's diaries.

-Does she write about shopping?

-Yes, quite a bit.

We have an entry here that you might like.

"Walked down Sloane Street,

"bought feathers, three and sixpence,

"and gloves, four and 11.

"Ordered umbrella to be covered, and bought lace and stamps."

So, that was a very good day's work, wasn't it?

Oh, here, she's going to Marshall's, Marshall and Snelgrove.

She often calls it either Marshall's, or she called is Snelgrove's,

but it was both. And she bought a dress.

Here, she says, "Sent back grey dress to Snelgrove's.

"They promised to send credit note."

Which shows the power of the woman customer.

Oh, very much so. Oh, yes, yes.

If you didn't like it, you would either send it back or didn't pay.

And here, for instance, she goes to Pontings,

and she bought four pairs of combinations and two silk vests.

-Combinations are foundation-type garments?

-No, underwear.

-Underwear.

-Horrid, scratchy, woolly combination,

sort of vest and bloomer affair.

Dreadful thing. Had them when I was young, yes.

"Ordered and paid for hat at Pontings,

"12 and 11.

"Girl tried to stick on three shillings extra. Cheat"

THEY LAUGH

-She's quite disapproving of the shop girl.

-Yes, yes, yes.

What kind of service did she expect from the shop girls?

Oh, very obsequious, yes.

But you have to remember that the shops all had high counters,

the shop assistant would stand behind the counter,

you would ask for what you wanted and the shop assistant

would bring it, and she'd put it on the counter for you to see.

Very often, there was a chair provided for the customer,

beside the counter, so you could sit down.

And things don't change, you know.

I don't know if you want to know what it was like when I was a girl

but my grandfather

had a haberdashery shop, and it was exactly the same.

When I was a little girl, I was carried in

and sat on the counter while my mother chatted to the shop assistant

who, of course, could never sit down. She had to stand.

It's interesting that the chair was provided for the customer

and never the assistant.

-Not for the assistant, yep.

-Do you think this was all part of it?

The way that shops created a respectable name for themselves?

Yes, definitely, yes.

And the cleaner and smarter you made your shop,

and the more obsequious and helpful the assistants were,

um, the better you did.

Marion Sambourne seems like the classic example

of an aspiring middle class Victorian.

Today, it all seems perfectly natural -

a shopping trip with a friend,

stopping off for something to eat, taking back unwanted goods.

But, in fact, it was all new.

As the world of shopping became more pleasurable for the female customer,

it was getting more testing for the shop girl.

The intensity and long hours weren't just tiring for shop assistants,

they made them physically ill.

There are vivid accounts of anaemia, severe indigestion,

headaches - all related to long days upright at the counter.

Some even called it the standing evil.

This is an article from the Girl's Own Paper,

and it's subtitled A Plea For Shop Girls.

The article says that conditions are beginning to improve

in larger stores but it goes on to say,

"Sadly different, however, is all this from the smaller

"and second-rate shops, where the hours of closing are very late,

"the food wretchedly indifferent,

"and barely time allowed for taking it.

"No possibility of resting or sitting down,

"the live-long, weary day..."

The piece makes some suggestions

about how to deal with these problems,

"Severe maladies amongst which swelled feet,

"legs and varicose veins are the least."

And I love this one.

This is a suggestion for a portable shop seat.

It's a kind of shooting stick that's sewn neatly

into the back of a bustle. You could just perch on it

for a few minutes during the day without causing offence

to customers who didn't like to see shop girls sitting down.

But the bustle stick was never going to be the answer to these problems.

Death And Disease Behind The Counter was published in 1884.

It was an often-gruesome collection of testimonies, of illness

and injury in shop work,

compiled by liberal reformer Thomas Sutherst.

For two years, he gathered first-hand accounts of the physical,

moral, mental suffering of shop assistants in our big cities.

So, here are some shop girl voices.

This is Kate, she's 18 and a draper's assistant.

And she says by the end of the day her whole body aches.

"I have heard almost all my fellow assistants

"complain of the pains I have described as feeling myself.

"I am suffering weak action of the heart and often have fainting fits."

This is 20-yearold Nelly.

"I was in good health when I went into business four years ago

"but now I'm weak and almost worn out.

"I have, during my short experience, known three deaths through

"consumption, brought on by the overwork and constant standing."

Sutherst's own summary of the damaging effects of shop work

is even more dramatic.

"The bronchial tubes become clogged, and the blood is speedily poisoned

"from the continual breathing of air charged with dust and impurity."

Sutherst was pushing for legal reform, and was joined by other

eminent doctors, philanthropists and politicians.

As a result of their campaigning, the government stepped in

and set up a select committee to look at every element

of shop work, from working hours and wages

to the class of assistant employed.

They scrutinised endless testimonies from the shop floor,

summoning Sutherst and members of the medical profession

as expert witnesses.

And one of the key hazards of shop work they highlighted

was the particular danger it posed to young women,

and it was gynaecological.

They went further, listing pelvic diseases

and other serious threats to fertility.

They concluded that shop work reform was no less a question than

the physical condition of the future race.

But despite the best efforts of the liberal reformers,

shop work conditions changed little for women

until well into the next century.

For many shop workers, the hardship didn't end with

the long working day.

That was because many were required to live in.

That meant they had to live in accommodation

provided by their employers,

usually in shared rooms or dormitories

either above the shop or in hostels nearby.

Living in had its origins in the apprenticeship tradition

where unpaid teenage employees took board and lodging

in their master's household.

For shop girls, often working far from home, it was an effective way

for their employer to protect and to control his poorly-paid workforce.

By the early 1890s, living in had grown on an industrial scale.

Of Britain's one million shop workers, half lived in.

This is the site of the original Robert Sayle department store

in Cambridge. It was founded by draper Mr Sayle

in the mid-19th century.

It's now become a shopping centre

but you can still see some of the original features of the building,

including the living-in quarters above the shop.

Francis Waterson was one of the last ever shop girls

to live in at Robert Sayles, leaving in the 1960s.

Does it bring back memories being here?

Yes. This was the corridor that we would walk down.

And there was one room there, and that's the window.

Then you had the corridor, and then my room was here

and there would be another window like that one.

-So, this was your room pretty much?

-Yes, yes.

What are these photos?

That's me in the... On the roof.

-Just out the back here?

-Out there, hm.

It's a gorgeous dress.

And that was in the rest room.

-The rest room...

-Right.

-..that's the one where the Grand Arcade is now.

Oh, OK. So, it's like a sitting room?

Yes, it was the rest room for the staff during the day.

-Is that a birthday?

-Yes, that's me. That's my 21st.

In Victorian and Edwardian times the rules were quite strict.

-How did you find it?

-Well, they didn't like gentlemen in the room.

Did they not?

It had to be your father or your brother, otherwise...

Did you have sign people in?

Um, well, you would have to tell the night watchman.

-The main rule was that they liked you in by ten.

-Right.

If you were going to be out later you had to say that you were

-because the back gate was always locked by then.

-OK.

So, Saturday night, you could go out till midnight but you had to

-let them know?

-They didn't like too much of it, you know?

-Did they not?

-No.

Did they keep a record of who was staying out?

No, I just think if too much was done then the registrar was told, yes.

Right, OK. Were there other kinds of rules?

-Did you have to keep your room tidy, that kind of thing?

-Yes, you did.

-You had to keep it clean and tidy.

-Did you?

-Yes.

They didn't like it if you didn't.

-And did people come and have a check?

-Yes.

Yes, cos they would leave the clean sheets every week,

-so when they left them they would observe.

-Yes.

And in the Victorian period it was a source of some kind of contention

that some employees really enjoyed it, liked it,

other people felt quite exploited by it because their living costs were

taken out of their wages, so living in was a way of keeping wages down.

You still got your... Money came out of your wages for the room.

-OK. Yes.

-Yes, that still happened.

Cos I think you were one of the last generation really to live in,

-weren't you?

-Yes.

Yes, there was just another elderly lady still here when I left.

-Really?

-Yes.

-So, you were last two?

I think we were, yes.

Back in the late 19th century, living in was more the rule

than the exception.

Many found it extremely tough.

It was a constant struggle to keep yourself clean, warm and well fed.

And if you stayed out too late, you could find yourself locked out.

Badly paid and trapped in the living-in system,

some shop girls would have to resort to darker means to make ends meet.

This is the Burlington Arcade in London.

It's Britain's first shopping mall.

Ever since it opened in 1819,

it's been a high class shopping area,

linking Piccadilly in the south to Mayfair in the north.

From its beginnings to the present day, the Arcade's shops

have been small and exquisite,

offering high-end jewellery, fashion accessories,

art and antiques to the sort of clientele able to afford them.

But from their earliest days,

some of these shop fronts hid another kind of business.

Upstairs, some shop girls were working as prostitutes.

-Hi there.

-Good afternoon, how are you?

-I'm very well, thank you.

-Good.

Beautiful shop.

The Burlington Arcade's known for selling luxury goods.

-Well, as I like to call it, fancy goods.

-Yes, fancy goods.

-I think fancy goods has a nice ring to it.

-Yes.

-I think that term should come back.

-Yeah, I do too.

And there's the story, isn't there,

that some of the shop assistants working in the Arcade had...

-slightly double lives, let's say, that, you know...

-Hm.

Some things were sold in the shop downstairs, and upstairs other things were sold.

Basically, sex was sold upstairs. Is it that sort of thing?

That's rather blunt. I think ladies of the night

is rather a nice way of putting it.

-They plied their wares.

-Yes, yes.

-Could we take a look upstairs?

-Yes, of course you can.

-Great.

-After you.

-Sure.

Beautiful staircase this, isn't it?

-Yes, they're rather a nice shape.

-Yeah.

-I always think I ought to cover it in leather.

-Yes, I think you should.

Yes, I know. It's always sort of something that's crossed my mind

as something to do.

So, would this have been part of the shop as well, been trading up here?

-Or a workshop.

-OK.

I think trading on the ground floor was probably the predominant area.

Right. So, she could be working downstairs on the shop floor

or you could be up here making and finishing goods.

Or, as I understand it,

you could also be on the...even on the upper floors

-selling other services.

-It appears to have been...

..not a place of ill repute but there were opportunities

for those wishing to find and those wishing to imply.

In the 1860s Henry Mayhew, writer and chronicler and journalist,

wrote about the Burlington Arcade and the people who frequented it.

He says "They", and he is talking about upper class men.

"They are to be seen between three and five o'clock

"in the Burlington Arcade,

"which is a well-known resort of Cyprians of the better sort.

"They are well acquainted with its Paphian intricacies."

Paphos was the birthplace of the God of Love,

so, talking here about sexual desire.

"They will, if their signals are responded to,

"glide into a friendly bonnet shop, the stairs of which

"lead in to the coenacula or upper chambers

"are not innocent of their well-formed 'bien chaussee' feet."

Mayhew also talks about the kinds of women that may have been involved.

"It is true that a large number of milliners, dress-makers,

"furriers, hat-binders, silk-binders, tambour-makers,

"shoe-binders, slop-women or those who work for cheap tailors,

"those in pastry-cooks, fancy and cigar shops,

"bazaars, servants to a great extent,

"frequenters of fairs,

"theatres and dancing rooms are more or less prostitutes and

"patronesses of the numerous brothels

"London can boast of possessing."

The Burlington Arcade was not an isolated example.

The reality was that many women were so badly paid in shop work

and its supporting trades, things like millinery, dressmaking,

trimming and glove making, that many resorted to sex work.

The result was that these trades and the women that worked in them

became increasingly associated with prostitution.

We're in Shepherd Market, which is

a famous red-light district from the 18th century,

and possibly even today.

How widespread was prostitution in the 19th century?

In the 19th century, prostitution was very widespread,

-far more so than people realised.

-Right.

We have figures from the 1850s

which suggest that there was somewhere between 80 and a 100,000

-professional prostitutes just in London alone.

-Really?

If you were walking down Regent Street at the time,

say in the 1860s, '70s, '80s,

would you have been able to tell what was going on,

or was everything rather beautifully disguised?

From the reports, it's not disguised in the slightest.

It's very difficult for a woman to walk down Regent Street any longer

-without being bothered.

-Any woman?

-Any woman, yes.

Because the men are said to perceive any woman as being a prostitute

if she's on Regent Street.

And at this point, the police make it a ruling that any woman out

after ten o'clock at night will be a prostitute and...

-Will be suspected of being a prostitute.

-Absolutely.

Or could be liable to be charged.

She must be a prostitute, so they can be arrested on the spot.

You've looked in to the case of one particular woman, Elizabeth Cass.

Elizabeth Cass, yes. Now, Elizabeth Cass wasn't a prostitute.

Elizabeth Cass was a dressmaker and she'd only been living in the city

about three weeks when she decided to go and buy herself some gloves.

The shops in Regent Street were open very late at night.

She wanders off down into Oxford Street and turns into

Regent Street, and then finds herself with a policeman taking her arm,

who escorts her to the police cells over at Tottenham Court Road.

She's thrown into a cell and she's then charged as being a prostitute.

But, then, basically, all hell breaks loose. The Parliament gets involved.

-Yes.

-Why would Parliament get involved?

Because of this idea of Regent Street becoming a no-go area,

that a normal, totally innocent, totally respectable woman

can simply be dragged off the street and charged with being a prostitute.

And this hits the national news.

You can see here, this is from the Illustrated Police News,

-and here we have poor Miss Cass in her cell.

-In her cell.

"Don't put me in there!" And Miss Cass fallen down on the mat.

-Here she is first being...

-Oh, yes.

"I asked him not to take hold of my arm," says Miss Cass.

So, she becomes a national figure through stories like this?

Very much so, yes.

There's general outrage about this, as you can understand.

To the point where we find newspaper reports like this one

from the Pall Mall Gazette,

explaining how the tradesmen feel

as though there is a black flag raised over Regent Street

at ten o'clock every night.

These tradesmen are very upset about the idea that any woman

who is out in the street - that includes of course their staff -

can be accused of being a prostitute.

This is causing problems with business,

it's causing problems with the portrayal of shop girls.

Obviously, some shop girls were prostitutes, but not all.

Well, that's fascinating, Amanda,

because what you're saying is that there is a connection between

shop work and sex work, not saying that all shop girls are prostitutes.

-No, no.

-By any means. But that some were,

and that those that weren't ended up being tarred with the same brush.

Yes.

Through the second half of the 19th century

the good name of the shop girl

risked being dragged down by seedy associations.

But her risque reputation helped to make her central

to the country's popular culture,

in everything from novels, to penny papers, to the stage.

If they had cash to spare, some shop girls were heading out

into the lively, often bawdy, Victorian music halls.

Judith, this is an amazing building. Can you tell us about the history?

Ah, well, this is the oldest surviving music hall in the world.

It was originally a warehouse

and in the 1850s, it came up for redevelopment.

And originally they were going to convert it

into a department store,

but they decided instead to give the people of the area

something they wanted, so they turned it into a music hall.

And what were they coming to see?

Well, they were originally coming to see singers and comics,

but it was the dancers

and the salacious lady singers that were particularly popular.

So who sat where? What was the seating plan?

Well, down there is the stalls, and in a theatre the stalls

are the posh, expensive seats, but not in here,

because of people spitting over the balcony

to try and hit people down in the stalls.

And the boys used to love that area at the front of the balcony

because they could urinate over the edge and try and hit

whatever comic was on the apron in front of the stage at the time.

And the far corner there,

we're sitting quite near

(prostitute corner.)

-OK.

-And the mashers would bring their Judys into this corner.

Who were the mashers?

The mashers were the toffs that used to come in here to slum it

-and also get their Judys.

-And who's a Judy?

A Judy is a Victorian term for

(a prostitute.)

And would shop girls have come here? Glasgow shop girls?

Oh, yes, they would.

Particularly the shop girls that were working in the department stores

locally. And the girls would quite often not just work there

but they would live there as well in the dormitories,

which meant they were away from their families

and they would come in here,

probably with their boys that they picked up in the shop.

These women you're describing, they're out,

they're earning their own money. Are they a new class of women worker?

They are very much.

I mean, by the 1880s, I think the working class woman

was no longer the mill girl living in the poor house.

She could afford to have a few beautiful things,

like a cameo brooch, for example, or a new hat.

And, of course,

they would wear their best outfit for going out to the music hall.

Would the shop girls, the working women in the audience,

have seen their lives reflected on stage?

Well, as a matter of fact, in the 1890s there was, in fact,

a three-act musical comedy called The Shop Girl.

-It was on at the Gaiety.

-And it was on at the Gaiety, in London,

which was a very different theatre from this one.

It held 2,000 people,

it had 2,000 gas jets illuminating it.

It had a separate restaurant, a separate smoking room.

And the idea was,

by producing something like The Shop Girl,

a musical comedy, it was to attract the ladies in.

What's the story of the music hall?

Well, really ,it's about one foundling, Ada,

who ends up working as a shop girl.

She gets in with the other shop girls, they're a bit naughty.

They're there to wink the eye and try and get themselves

a rich Johnny, because I mean they were shop girls,

you know. They were, in the working-class world,

the elite of the working woman.

And here we actually have a picture of the foundlings.

And what I love about The Shop Girl is that it was

so successful that Debenhams and Liberty

actually used to put their own latest fashions

on the girls on the stage.

I knew the theatres introduced matinees for women shoppers.

-Yes.

-But I didn't realise the department stores used the theatre

-to showcase their fashions.

-Taking advantage.

-Yeah.

So, there's a common thread here, in that the working class audience

in the music hall and the audience in the Gaiety Theatre

-are both seeing their lives reflected on stage.

-Absolutely.

You've got the shop girl seeing her life reflected,

and the middle-class lady that shopped there seeing

her life reflected, and, of course, the fashions on the stage.

# When I came to the shops some years ago

# I was terribly shy and simple

# With my skirt too high and my hat too low and an unbecoming dimple

# But soon I learnt with a customer's aid

# How men make up to a sweet little maid

# And another lesson I've learnt since then

# How a sweet little maid makes up for men. #

For a shop girl's life to be reflected, celebrated

and romanticised in this way seems to me to be hugely significant.

By the 1890s, we've moved from a world where she was

almost invisible, an anomaly, to one where she's out on the town,

going to the music hall, taking centre stage in popular culture.

And women's presence on the shop floor continued to grow.

In 1871, there were little over 120,000 women

working in the shop industry.

A decade later it was 140,000.

But by the turn of the century

nearly a quarter of a million women were employed in shop work.

The wealth of industry and empire were fuelling a consumer boom.

The big shops, their proprietors, and their workforce

now had to rise to the challenge.

This is Whiteley's shopping centre in Bayswater, London.

The building dates from 1911, and it stands near the site

of what was once one of the world's largest department stores,

founded by the fiery, unconventional,

charismatic William Whiteley.

Originally a draper's apprentice from Yorkshire,

Whiteley moved to London in his early 20s.

Visiting the Great Exhibition of 1851,

he was inspired by the exquisite displays

and range of goods to create the first truly modern department store.

Like so many of the other larger- than-life Victorian proprietors,

his store was driven by a vast army of shop girls.

But Whiteley's connections to his female workforce

were to become deeply and scandalously personal.

William Whiteley gave himself a rather grand title

-of the Universal Provider.

-Yes.

-Why did he call himself that?

I think he liked to believe

that he was this wonderful provider of anything for anybody.

He believed he could provide everything

that was necessary for life.

He used to say "from a pin to an elephant".

-From a pin to an elephant.

-Yes.

And sometimes people tested him out on this.

Somebody did once order an elephant as a joke, and when he got back home

he found one in his stable and was rather alarmed.

-He said, "I only did it for a joke."

-Oh, I see.

And he built this store on an army of workers,

-including an army of women workers.

-Yes.

As the business expanded, so he got more and more girls

into the shop until there was this row of them,

shoulder to shoulder, serving all the lady customers, who were eager

for all the bargains and the trimmings he was selling to them.

And he had a bit of a mixed reputation as an employer.

On the one hand, he provided a lot of clubs and social activities.

-On the other hand, he had some very draconian rules.

-Yes.

Mr Whiteley, his public image was a genial, smiling gentleman

who provided everything and was kind to his staff,

and behind the scenes he was really rather unpleasant.

He had a bad temper, threatened to dismiss people at once.

I've got this picture here which is actually I think

almost like a publicity photo for him.

This was how he liked to present himself,

the kindly, genial Mr Whiteley.

-But he had more than a passing interest in shop girls.

-Yes.

He definitely, throughout the whole of his life,

took a consideration interest in girls probably half his age.

His wife, in fact, was originally his first shop girl

and he married her and she gave birth to her first child

-two months later.

-Right.

And... But then he had affairs with shop girls, he would take them out.

-His own shop girls from Whiteleys?

-Oh, yes, his own shop girls.

He would take them on trips, they'd go away to the seaside.

And, certainly, when he went abroad to Paris to see his buyers

and so on, he expected to pick a girl to take with him.

They used to hide when they saw him coming round

so they wouldn't be picked.

Was all this quite scandalous at the time?

It wasn't known about at the time.

People didn't really know about this until after he was dead,

so it was... His public image had to be protected.

His end in itself was rather dramatic, wasn't it?

Yes, he was shot dead in his own store by a man

who came to see him, and this man claimed later on

to be Mr William Whiteley's illegitimate son.

-By one of the shop girls?

-Yes.

I think he wanted to blackmail Mr Whiteley,

saying that he would reveal all his philandering.

And Mr Whiteley wasn't having anything of it, called the police,

and this man, whose name was Rayner, took out a gun and shot him.

-And that was that.

-That was that.

So really, shop girls helped to make Whiteley's fortune,

but they also were part of his downfall.

They were indeed.

We were, we still are, a nation of shopkeepers,

but one carried by an army of shop girls.

By the turn of the century, a quarter of a million strong,

they'd forged new kinds of work for women

and even helped to transform the experience of shopping itself.

Shop girls were yet to gain the pay, recognition and rights

they deserved, but their journey had been a momentous one,

from the margins of the Census to the West End stage.

From anonymity to visibility.

Shop girls were here to stay.

In the next episode, I'll discover how shop girls

in the early 20th century marched in protest against tough conditions.

Why one daring assistant went undercover.

And how iconic stores like Harrods, Marks & Spencer, John Lewis

and Selfridge's transformed shop girls' lives.