Sarah George Bagley
Personal Information
Born: 1806
Died: 1889
Country of Birth: USA
Nationality: USA
Ethnicity: White
Education
Unknown
Professional Life
Field of Study: Labor Reform
Institution/Corporation: None found
Degrees & Memberships: Member: Lowell Female Labor Reform Association (1844)New England Workingman's Association (NEWA)Lowell Union of Associationists (founder 1844)
Awards & Achievements
Awards: None found
Achievements: labor leader in New England during the 1840s; an advocate of shorter workdays for factory operatives and mechanics, campaigned to make ten hours of labor per day the maximum in Massachusetts instead of the 12 to 14-hour days female mill workers worked; 1846 was the 1st female telegraph operator in the US, quit after 2 years when she found out her male counterparts were earning 25% to 33% more than she was; wrote about health care, working conditions (compared the number of hours mill workers had to work with those of prison inmates & found out the inmates worked less), prison reform, & women's rights; 1849 moved to Philadelphia & worked with the Quakers as the secretary of the Rosine Home providing a safe place for prostitutes & disadvantaged young women;
born & raised in New Hampshire; moved to Lowell, MA at age 31 (1837) to work as a weaver at Hamilton Manufacturing Co
wrote for the Lowell Offering a literary magazine written by female mill workers but overseen & partly funded by mill owners
1840 wrote "The Pleasures of Factory Work" an essay for thee Lowell Offering which argued cotton mill labor was congenial to "pleasant contemplation" & other noble purities but said the pleasures were like angel visits, "few & far between"
1845 with 8 other mill workers testified before the Massachusetts State Legislature about their demand for a 10-hour work day & ending the corporate abuses of female workers
1845 was a writer & short-time editor of the Voice of Industry founded by New England Workingman's Association (NEWA) & condemned the Lowell Offering as a "mouthpiece for the corporations"
published her last piece for the Voice of Industry in 1846 & left the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association (LFLRA) which by then was known as the Female Labor Reform & Mutual aid Society
1848 left Lowell & never returned
1850 married James Durno (alternate spelling Dourno) a homeopathic doctor who sold medicines & she practiced as a rheumatic physician with him in Albany, NY for many years beginning in 1851
couple eventually moved to Brooklyn, NY & opened s company that made snuff for catarrh a kind of cold remedy
was one of the Merrimack Valley Lowell Mill Girls
the Mill girls lived in company owned boarding houses, had to pay rent, observe a curfew,, & attend church on sundays
1845 organized the Industrial Reform Lycceum & created a lecture curriculum around women's rights & labor issues
financially supported her aging parents & bought them a house; cared for her father when he was ill with typhus