Silk Sails (6 page)

The example of Ann Mugford, wife of the deceased Robert Mugford, planter at Port de Grave, was a case in which Ann violated the terms of her husband's will, which stated that she had inherited his property for her natural life and then it was to pass to their eldest daughter Frances. Before her death in 1813, Ann Mugford had sold the property to John Walsh, and in 1817, Nicholas Newell, a planter in St. John's, petitioned the court to recover the property since he was married to Frances. The Chief Justice acceded to this request.

There is no doubt that the rules governing inherited property were patriarchal, but in actual fact, when good relationships existed between the widow and her children (as was usual), the family as an economic unit survived and flourished and the widow often continued to play a leadership role in guiding the family fortunes. In fact, Cadigan pays tribute to women “who could take on important economic roles as estate managers and temporary household heads throughout the Anglo-American world in this period,” and he acknowledges that women like Jane Cook of Harbour Grace acted for other women in leasing property to planters and handling women's accounts with merchants and that “women managed property and accounts left to them by their husbands.”

Cadigan builds a very strong case for the way in which “…Newfoundland households integrated women's work into commodity production…” as contrasted with Upper Canada. From the very earliest times up to the 1950s, as long as the salt-fish trade existed (i.e., the preparation of salted, dried codfish for foreign markets), women and men worked together as co-producers in family units. Every other activity in the fisherman's household was subordinate to the salt-fish activity. Women had to be prepared to
set aside everything else they were doing when the fish arrived, for they were acknowledged to be the experts in salting and curing the fish to meet the strict demands of the market.

Nowhere is this specific activity better described than in Hilda Chaulk Murray's
More than Fifty Percent: Woman's Life in a Newfoundland Outport, 1900-1950
. She writes: “In Elliston, in the period prior to 1950, the women were full participants with their menfolk in wresting a living from the sea and land, and were directly involved with all the economic, as well as social activities, in the community. The role of the fisherman's wife was completely intertwined with that of her husband.” Women participated fully in every aspect of the fishing operation except in the catching of fish. Even the making of sails for the boats was a cooperative venture: the men cut the sails, the women sewed them, and the men roped them. When accounts were settled up in the fall, the money was brought home to the woman who “handled the cash and managed the day to day running of the household.”

The routine that Murray described for Elliston was not entirely uniform throughout Newfoundland. For example, when the fish for the large business firms was brought into communities like Grand Bank it was transported by horse and cart to one of the beaches and placed in large piles where the curing process became the exclusive responsibility of the “beach women.” They worked in teams with a boss woman in charge of nine others. Their distinctive attire was characterized by white aprons and white sunbonnets. The fish was spread each day for a month or more until it was dry, then graded, then moved into sheds for inspection by the culler. It must have been one of the striking early examples of assembly-line production.

The St. John's newspaper
Free Press
of November 25, 1913, gives a wonderful example of the cooperation between husband and wife in a fishing venture: “Patrick Tobin of Gray Islands holds the record as an individual fisherman in Newfoundland for having made the biggest bill in the shortest season. A mercantile firm paid him $1,050 for his season's work – July 7 to September 15 – he
landed 160 quintals of cod, fishing ‘cross-handed.' The fish was split and cured by Tobin's wife and self, who also made the oil ready for market. This is the largest individual bill to be made by any fisherman in Newfoundland.” Though Tobin fished “cross-handed,” i.e., alone, his wife on shore split and cured all the fish and made the oil ready for market. These were important skills which ensured the family's survival. There is no mention of children helping with the work, but the example serves to confirm the conclusions of other similar sources.

There are, as well, much earlier examples of women's involvement in the fishery in a hands-on manner. Noel H. Bowen, writing in 1855, decries the lack of women along the Labrador coast, citing an 1852 report that there were 364 men settled on the coast and only 62 women, suggesting that the situation should be remedied by emigration or some other plan, and arguing that “the more the coast is settled the better are its natural resources developed.” He writes further: “The fisherman's wants are few, and he can easily support a wife; moreover she could assist him in his calling as much as one of his own sex, and it often happens that the larger a fisherman's family becomes, the better are his prospects…” But Ephraim Tucker, an American who had spent five months on a voyage to the Labrador in 1838, actually saw women at work in the fishery: “But they engage in the hard and laborious toils of fishing with as much zeal and activity as the males. When the salmon and trout fishing commences, the women and children employ themselves assiduously in the sport, and are often out night and day while the season of this fishery lasts. At the fish stands, while the cod fishery is in the full tide of operation, the women are seen among the most constant and dextrous in dressing the fish, thrown up by the fishermen. Some of these females will dress two or three thousand fish in a single day…” While it may have been “sport” to Tucker, who was at the Labrador for his health, it was mighty hard work for women, men and children. What is most interesting about his words, however, is the confirmation that women were the experts at handling, curing and “dressing” the fish.

The merchants of Newfoundland who used (and preferred) the barter or credit or “truck” system found it in their interests to maintain the patriarchal nature of the fishing business. They preferred to deal directly with the male head of the household. They were at least consistent in this, for in cases where they sued the family, it was always one man or a small group of two or three men, but never a woman. Since the headquarters for the settling of accounts was not always in the same community where the fisherman lived, the merchant seldom had to deal with aggrieved women. In at least one case in which a merchant had to deal with a woman, she was victorious. Mary Reed in 1835 worked for a planter, Thomas Davis, who claimed not to have sufficient money to pay her. When Reed charged that Charles Nuttall, a merchant at Harbour Grace, had received Davis' fish and oil from the voyage, Nuttall was ordered by the court to pay Reed both her wages and damages.

Dona Lee Davis, who conducted a survey in 1978 of women in a south-west coast Newfoundland fishing village and published the results in the book entitled
Blood and Nerves: An Ethnographic Focus on Menopause
, writes: “Women feel particularly free to cause a spectacle or behave rudely when their family or household has been threatened or wronged.” She found in her research that men will often defer to women's desire and ability to put things right. In the words of one of her women respondents: “A man has to be careful but a woman can say exactly what she likes.”

In any event, the family's struggle for survival in what was often a harsh environment, and always against formidable odds, required a strong partnership between men and women in households. Male authority was routinely challenged and compromised for a higher purpose: the family's very survival. The result was a family solidarity that has persisted beyond what might have been expected. This is not to imply that marriages were always ideal relationships, but at least in the earlier periods personal self-fulfilment for both parties, and especially for the woman, was harshly subordinate to existing and surviving.

The written law and unwritten rules and practices have conspired through the centuries to treat women differently from men. A woman has had to fight harder and sometimes “behave rudely” in order to ensure that her case would be considered. Women occupied a dependent status in law for a very long time and were not even defined in certain jurisdictions as “qualified persons” for certain jobs. Power and responsibility were somehow connected with property ownership, and most property was vested in the name of men. Lack of power and responsibility combined with unjustified prejudices about women as inferior and incompetent, as ornaments for men's pleasure and convenience, to create practices of widespread discrimination against women. Marriage became, in the thinking of many men, a means of licensed control over women because the woman's identity was absorbed into their own. This false view of marriage has been rightly viewed as a form of bondage.

The English Common Law gave a husband almost unlimited rights over property belonging to his wife, which represented, in fact, an erosion of certain rights and freedoms that women in Europe had held in the pre-industrial period; women gradually became more associated with household, domestic, social and family matters in later periods. And all during the reign of a British queen!

Newfoundland became an official colony of Great Britain in 1824, and by 1837 had officially adopted English criminal law, which remained in effect until 1949 when Newfoundland became a province of Canada. English criminal law actually had the effect of curtailing more liberal practices with respect to women's ownership of property and management of estates, which had prevailed in the colony prior to this period.

While the rights of widows and single women were approximately the same as men, except for civic rights, the rights of married women were severely curtailed in law. The battles for reform were being fought in England, both by women and by men who supported
them. Two of the most famous proponents of reform were Elizabeth Barrett Browning and John Stuart Mill. Few of the supporters of reform were happy with the limited success achieved in the Married Women's Property Act of 1870, and the battle continued until a more liberal act was passed in England in 1882, the “Magna Carta” for women. A few quotes from
Registration of British Ships
published in 1896 are appropriate here: “As regards married women, a reference to the Married Women's Property Act, 1882…will show under what conditions they are in this country capable of holding ships…the power of a married woman to transfer shares is not absolute. Since the Married Women's Property Acts have been passed, the titles of married women to shares in shipping have frequently been recorded… A registered mortgagee has an absolute power of sale subject to the conditions imposed by Section 35.”

In 1834, Newfoundland had passed the Real Chattels Act, which declared all landed property to be “Chattels Real” and gave responsibility for settling affairs to an appointed executor or administrator, subject to the direction of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland. Historiographers are still trying to determine the full impact of this unique piece of legislation. However, it is worthy of note that following the passing of this Act, women were appointed as executors and administrators (though they are usually called executrixes or administratrixes) of estates, and that this procedure usually passed quickly through the Supreme Court. From the ship registers of all the Atlantic provinces, it is clear that the Supreme Court, which handled estate settlements after death, treated them in a straightforward manner and with reasonable speed. Probate was often granted within a month or two of the owner's death. In cases where the owner left a will with a designated executor (often the owner's wife and/or brother or business associate), the same time-frame is observed. In cases where there was no will, the Supreme Court granted “Letters of Administration,” usually to the wife, and she either sold the ship quickly or continued with the family business, often becoming the business head until one of her sons was old enough to assume responsibility.

In 1876, Newfoundland passed the Married Women's Property Act, based on the British Act of 1870. By this Act, property which a married woman acquired was designated as her own and could be used independently of her husband. A married woman could now carry on a business, occupation or trade separately from her husband. She could register in a joint stock company; she could sue and be sued; and she was now responsible for debts which she accumulated. Not until this Act was amended in 1883 did married women acquire the legal status of a single woman with respect to owning property. This Act was further amended in 1895 to deal with contracts, court action and wills.

Similar legislation came a little later in the Maritime provinces. The Married Women's Property Act was passed in 1884 in Nova Scotia, 1895 in New Brunswick, and 1896 in Prince Edward Island. It was not until 1964 that a similar Act was passed in Quebec. The Civil Code, derived from the old French Law, had operated in Quebec since the sixteenth century, when the territory was known as New France. It is very different from the Common Law of England. The Civil Law is codified as opposed to the largely unwritten Common Law. Marital status, including a woman's right to own property, was strictly defined under the Quebec Code. Many of a woman's legal rights were ceded to her husband at the time of marriage, including property rights. While single women and widows held essentially the same legal rights as men in Quebec, married women were discriminated against simply because they were married. There was one saving grace possible for married women under the Civil Code; it was possible to have a legal marriage contract separate from the religious ceremony of marriage, and many women who held property or possessions at the time of marriage entered into such contracts, as is evident in the Quebec ship registers.