The question of Cornish women's roles within overseas mining communities
is an interesting one.

My research into gender roles in Cornish communities in Latin America seems
to point towards much migration having been undertaken with a view to financial
security and enhanced social status. Therefore the male head of household
expected to command wages sufficient enough to enable his wife and daughters
to retire to the gentility of the 'private sphere' as kept women. In the
Latin American mining industry there was a cheap supply of ?native? or slave
labour to perform the tasks commonly undertaken by bal maidens at home and
therefore Cornishmen would not have wanted their wives performing the menial
tasks accorded indigenous labour and slaves. In many ways Cornish females
residing in some overseas mining communities in the early nineteenth century
were even more bound by the paternalistic social conventions of domesticity
founded on the ideology of ?separate spheres? that had been socially remitted
from Cornwall, than were their counterparts at home.

There were count houses on the gold mines of Gongo Soco and Morro Velho,
Brazil, known as the 'Casa Grande'. Although Cornish female immigrants did
not enter into visible, formal waged employment in the mining industry in
Latin America, at Morro Velho for example, Cornish women were on the pay
roll at the mine hospital as dispensers and matrons. As this work took place
in the 'domestic sphere' it was seen as socially acceptable.

Many mines in Australia are quintesentially Cornish in their architecture
and basic lay out and almost certainly had count houses. I see no reason
why women would not have been employed to work in them as they were in Cornwall
as this work took place in the 'domestic sphere'. However, it would be interesting
to find firm documentary evidence for their work in count houses overseas.

Sharron


>-- Original Message --
>Date:         Wed, 29 Nov 2006 13:04:36 -0000
>Reply-To:     "The mining-history list." <[log in to unmask]>
>From:         Lynne Mayers <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Counthouses in the Cornish Diaspora
>To:           [log in to unmask]
>
>
>Please can anyone tell me if counthouses were the norm at mines abroad,
where
>there had been a Cornish influence? If yes, would they then have employed
>counthouse women? In particular, in Australia?
>
>Thanks.
>
>Lynne Mayers



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