I need a few good women (or bad ones). Can you help?

The purpose of this blog is to document women who had an occupation other than “wife”, or were involved in activities outside of the house up to 1900. Particularly ordinary women, working women, whose stories HAVEN’T been remembered.

Unfortunately the best place to find these are in primary sources and most of the primary sources I deal with are Tasmanian, so I have a LOT of Tasmania material, both posted and waiting to be posted, but very little from the other colonies. I’m sure they had women who did things too!

So, I need to ask for help from people who read primary sources or otherwise might come across women doing things. Please tell me about them! (And send a link/material to include where possible.)

More about the scope of the project or just browser the existing posts.

Particularly interested in:
Material other then newspaper text (e.g. photos, drawings, associated objects, museum displays, letters, posters)
Occupations other than the “typical” female occupations
Interesting things (that’s deliberately vague).

Also good:
Photos of shops & businesses
Traditional/common female occupations with interesting associated material
Links to things on other web sites (less work for me & it’s good to promote other people’s work)
Obituaries
Monuments & headstones
Museum exhibitions & panels (if they’re about a particular person) in smaller museums
Anything I don’t already have in terms of occupation, location, race, type of material
Most things actually.

Not that keen on:

Hotelkeepers. There were a lot of these. A lot. And I can’t include all of them. Unless they come with a background or story (like this), or there’s something unusual about them, I can’t really include any more.

Newspaper advertisements for shops, boarding houses or teachers. Again, there were a lot of these.
Unless it’a a shop not usually associated with women (e.g. sporting goods or hardware).
Also, photos of the shops, invoices, associated objects, stories/background information, or links to a web articles are GOOD. Just the advertisement by itself, not so useful.

If it has an Australian connection, up to about 1900 and something I can include here (public domain) or link to, I’d like to see it.


(Opening image: Women’s Royal Naval Service recruitment poster, 1917, Australian War Memorial)