Ada Nield Chew

Ada Nield Chew (1870-1945) Radical feminist and trade unionist, and my great, great aunt. This is a place for me to compile the snippets of info about her available online.

[adanieldchew]

[adanieldchew]

Ada Nield Chew’s political activity should influence working class women in 2011. It should inspire us to “protest the injustice done” to us all — to fight the onslaught of attacks on every aspect of our lives as the bosses’ class takes our jobs, our benefits, our health care and pensions, our children’s chances of going to university. We must not allow them to make us pay, yet again, for the inevitable crisis of capitalism. These are fine shoulders on which to stand.

Jill Mountford (2011) 

http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2011/02/23/ada-nield-chew-i-could-not-stay-silent

[adanieldchew]

Ada Nield, the second child in a family of thirteen of William Nield, brick maker, and his wife, Jane Hammond Nield was born in Audley, Staffordshire, on 28th January 1870. Ada was taken from school at the age of eleven to help look after the family, especially her younger sister May, who was an epileptic. As the authors of One Hand Tied Behind Us (1978) have pointed out: "She had to leave school at eleven and take on the heavy responsibility of looking after her seven younger brothers, combining this with various odd jobs. Her father, a poor farmer, had to give up his farm for lack of capital, and moved his family to Crewe where he could more easily find another job." In 1887 the Nield family moved to Crewe, and Ada worked at a shop in Nantwich. Later she found employment in the Compton Brothers clothing factory. In 1894 she published anonymously in The Crewe Chronicle, a series of letters describing conditions in her factory. As her biographer, David Doughan, pointed out: "These letters were circumstantially critical of the pay and conditions of factory women, especially compared to those of their male colleagues doing the same work. This resulted in Ada losing her position"

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wchew.htm

[thebookmouse]

To take what may be considered a good week’s wage the work has to be so close and unremitting that we cannot be said to “live” - we merely exist.

From “A Living Wage for Factory Girls at Crewe, 5 May 1894” by Ada Nield Chew, political activist who was born today in 1870.

Photo: Spartacus Educational

(via thebookmouse)

[swiftblog]

In your issue of 5 May you were good enough to publish a letter of mine on the above subject, and also to invite me to write you further on our wages, hours of work, and conditions of employment. Before responding to the same I have waited in the hope that an abler pen than mine might take up my...

[adanieldchew]

Ada Nield Chew (28 January 1870 - 27 December 1945) was a British suffragist. Ada Nield was born on a farm near Butt Lane in North Staffordshire on 28 January 1870, daughter of Willam and Jane (née Hammond) Nield...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Nield_Chew

[adanieldchew]

Ada Nield Chew (1870-1945)

Radical feminist and trade unionist, and my great, great aunt. This is a place for me to compile the snippets of info about her available online.