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T was said in Victorian times that the women of that era had no rights, only wrongs, but without the influence of women, the salt workers of industrial Winsford would have been lost.

Not only did they have to laboriously do the washing in a time when washing machines were unheard of and the average family washing process would take three days to complete, a survey by Proctor and Gamble showed us that our great-great grandmothers would slave away for up to 15 hours a day on household chores.

My gran Curzon was still cleaning her windows, black-leading her stove and polishing her step into her 80s just as she had done at the turn of the last century.

It seems that before the Suffragette movement came along women had a raw deal and that their only pleasure other than taking a pride in home and family was the Saturday evening trip to the market and their church on a Sunday.

Up to 40 per cent of the salt workforce was made up of women in a time when three out of four people died under 40, and one in two died under the age of 20 in the 1880s.

As proof that hard work didn't harm you, the mortality rate in Winsford was actually lower than the national average - so much for salt being bad for you.

In 1867 women were forbidden to work nights in the salt works and after 1876 no girls were allowed to work in the open pans of salt.

Many Winsford women helped their partners on the boats but it was easier for men to join a trades union than a woman.

Working conditions in the Over cotton mill might have been bad but Didsbury's 'salt workers' write of 'groups of weary women making their way to the salt pans where they would commence to move blocks of wet salt weighing 45lbs to the stove. After moving some 70 of these they would return home to prepare breakfast and begin their household tasks'.

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any women subsidised their housekeeping by taking in washing, sewing or lodgers - as many travelling men took up work in the salt trade.

My gran as a girl was in service where many others would do housework for the upper classes.

It was also unheard of for women to enter licensed premises. If thet were in pubs 'unaccompanied' by a male. They were considered to have low morals and harassed by the temperance movements of the time - not an easy life.