Strange Skills All Women Had To Learn 100 Years Ago

Let’s face it, we live in a better-smelling world now than women did a hundred years ago. Those poor souls had to contend with countless gross stenches in everyday life, and let’s not forget that actual human waste ended up in rivers all the time. Ewww! So unsurprisingly, the women of yesterday needed perfume and plenty of it.

Unfortunately, the perfumes of the day were pretty gross-sounding by our standards, too. Many of them were made with ambergris, which is… a type of excretion from the inside of a sperm whale. But if you didn’t want that, you could always make your own perfume! Many women pressed flowers under cotton and used the resulting oil.

So, embroidery actually dates back much further than a century or so. People have been decorating their clothes with stitches since, well, the needle and thread were invented. And a hundred years ago it would have been expected that a middle or upper-class lady knew how to do it. It sounds like a frivolous skill, but some women used it to their advantage.

Some women became so skilled at embroidery that they were able to get a career out of it, a rare thing in an era where women were expected to be only wives and mothers. But then the Industrial Revolution came along and suddenly machines could embroider, so the skill fell by the wayside. There are still plenty of talented embroiderers out there, though.

Here in the modern world, we can call someone on the phone, send a text, send an email; the list goes on. But back in the olden days, there was only really one way to stay in touch with old friends, and that was to write them a letter. Letter writing was about more than detailing your daily habits, though.

Your average woman of the 1910s wasn’t just expected to write neat letters, but she also had to consider proper title use while doing it. For example, a letter to a married lady had to start with "Dear Madam," and she had to use high-quality pen and paper. She also had to ensure that the letter was sealed with only the appropriate color of wax. And most importantly, every letter had to be interesting. It takes more practice than you'd think!

A century ago, one of the most important food sources was the garden, and ladies were expected to tend to it. This didn’t just mean cultivating fruit trees, either. Some high-class women designed their household gardens all by themselves, creating spaces that are still enjoyed by people today.

And when both World Wars broke out, having a garden suddenly became even more important. Brits were encouraged to “dig for victory” and turn their gardens into allotments to grow food. For some families, without Mum around to keep the garden growing, they might well have eventually starved. These victory gardens were planted all over the world, from the U.K. to the U.S. to Australia.

There are many people today who sing the praises of the “make do and mend” mindset, and they’re absolutely right to. Think of the satisfaction you would get, being able to repair your own clothes instead of throwing them away! But for women a hundred years ago, they didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.

Unless you were very rich, you simply had to repair your old clothes. Darning socks, sewing on buttons, fixing rips — these were skills many women learned from girlhood. Ask your grandmother how to do basic fabric repairs, chances are she’d be happy to teach you! Learning to do this also means you’re helping the environment by reducing clothing waste.

As soon as women were taught to read — or taught themselves in many cases — an interesting new subset of that skill developed: reading aloud to other people. Ladies would read the latest Charles Dickens novel to their friends just in the same way that girls today would get together for a Netflix binge watch.

In fact, reading aloud to a man was a pretty neat first date idea if you were a Victorian lady in need of a husband. After all, it meant you were alone with someone else, often in a room lit only by candlelight, reading out romantic statements in your own voice. If you were particularly good at this, perhaps a proposal would follow.

There were no convenience stores or fast food outlets back in the day. If you wanted something to eat you had to cook it yourself from fresh ingredients. And that meant you’d have to devote a huge amount of your time to things such as churning butter, peeling vegetables, and making bread.

In the nineteenth century there was no safety net if you found yourself hungry, and many women probably resented having to do so much work in the kitchen. Cooking for hours on end can be exhausting! These days, though, there are plenty of people who are happy to cook from scratch, have found ways to cut the preparation time down, and consider it to be part of a healthy lifestyle.

One important thing a higher-class woman had to learn was the art of hostessing. And it wasn’t anywhere near as easy as it sounds. It wasn’t just getting people together and serving some appetizers; it required a complex navigation of social etiquette that sounds ridiculous to us in the modern day.

The hostess had to take care of the seating arrangements, the luggage brought by guests, the rooms in which guests would be staying, which gentlemen would accompany which ladies, and so much more. Even playing the piano if requested, because it would be rude not to. And yep, she had to do all this with a smile on her face… ideally.

Who among us hasn’t wondered what it would be like to keep chickens in our own outside coop, or even a cow on the front lawn or a nearby field? Back in the old days, these farm animals were there solely for the milk and eggs they provided, and that was it. However, if you wanted to actually get those things from animals, you had to look after them properly.

So for many women a hundred years ago, a big part of their day was dedicated to feeding, milking, and yep, cleaning up after animals. There was a major upside to this, though. According to historians, rural farmers who ate mostly animal products and vegetables had the lowest mortality rate of the era.

It’s easy to imagine that women in the past had no control over their money whatsoever, and that was indeed the truth for many. In the Victorian era, to give just one example, whenever a woman got married her property was immediately given over to her husband. But budgeting still became an important skill to have. 

A woman, especially one with a family, needed to know how much money to spend. So keeping the accounts for the whole household would have been one of the skills required, thus ensuring no money was ever wasted or stolen. Obviously, this is an incredibly useful thing to learn these days as well.

In the days before TV, let alone 24-hour streaming services, music was a good way to keep yourself entertained. So it was very helpful for a woman to have at least some musical abilities, be that singing or playing the piano or the violin. If you happened to be tone-deaf, well, bad luck.

Wealthy households usually had a whole room set aside for music, an extravagantly decorated space in which the piano and any other musical instruments would reside. And whenever a suitor of good standing came calling, a lady could take him to the music room and impress him with her skills. 

Quilting is one more skill that’s been around for a very long time and has more practical uses than some people might realize. Once upon a time, it was even used to create armor for whole armies of men. But for women in the more recent past, it was a skill they maintained to create warm blankets and clothes.

Quilting was also a chance for women to upcycle the neglected material in their households. They could use old scraps of fabric or even the silk ribbons which came with cigar packages back then. But of course, there was an artistic element to the craft as well. Many people consider some nineteenth-century quilts to be amazing works of art.

Virtually everyone has experienced the disappointment of opening a cupboard only to find the food inside has gone bad. And a century ago that would have been even more of a disappointment for a hungry person because grub wasn’t widely available on supermarket shelves. So one overlooked but very important women’s job sprung up: preserving food.

To preserve food at home, women had to learn canning — a method of sealing food in hot jars to ensure no microorganisms could destroy it. While most women of the past didn’t know the word “microorganisms” they knew canning food would make sure it lasted, and it’s a skill that can — see what we did there? — come in handy today.

A wedding day has always been one of the most important days of a woman’s life. Everything has to be perfect: the hair, the makeup, the cake, the dress. Arranging all that is a skill in itself, of course. But during the World War years, some women went a step further and made their gowns out of old parachutes.

Some brides even made their wedding dresses out of the parachutes which had saved their grooms during the war! They were able to come up with some absolutely stunning creations, and of course, the symbolism was important too. Many of these dresses still survive today, they were that well-made and taken care of.

Haggling hasn’t completely gone away! Some people still haggle over things like the price of a new car. In the past, it used to be much more common, though, and a woman who wanted to save money would have a vast repertoire of skills she could call on whilst shopping. And of these skills, negotiating for cheaper prices was among the most important.

If you want to try it yourself, there’s plenty of advice on the internet about how to haggle effectively. You can try looking for a household item that has slight cosmetic damage and ask for a price reduction based on that. Or try the same thing with products going out of season. It’s what Grandma used to do.

Modern medicine is obviously vital when it comes to saving lives. For some small ailments, though, natural remedies are just what you need, and generations of women have passed them down. For example, chicken bone broth may not exactly sound appetizing, but it’s very good for making you feel better.

That’s not all. Did you know leeches — those horrible blood-suckers you find in ponds — secrete proteins and have incredible healing powers? In the past, some unlucky women even collected leeches by walking into water and having them, well, attach. You, on the other hand, may prefer to simply keep your medicine cabinet stocked with healthy herbs.

If you love animals, maybe look away now. In the olden days, everyone knew where the meat came from, exactly where it came from. And it usually fell to the mother of the household to kill the smaller animals and chop them up for meat. An unpleasant job no doubt, but it had to be done. Think of the yum in ya tum…

Despite this, there still aren’t that many women in the meat industry these days. All across the world it’s seen as a man’s domain. Some people think this is because of the physical strength required for the job, though many women do of course possess that, too. So maybe the number will rise in the future.

Once upon a time, women created a whole new language using hand-held fans! Frustrated with having to hold their tongues all the time, they came up with a way to signal to each other with the pretty little objects they always held. Ladies passed it along to other ladies and the practice grew and grew. Who knew?

Plenty of fan language is still known today if you ever want to learn it. For example, opening the fan wide meant “Wait for me,” placing it on your left ear meant “Go away,” and drawing it across your cheek meant “I love you.” Perhaps it’s time to bring this back, especially for people who talk in the movie theater.

Are there many jobs more important than bringing new life into the world? Midwifery was always a woman’s domain and each older generation passed along advice to the new one. It’s strange to think of, but there weren’t actually professional midwives in the United States of America until the mid-19th century.

The non-professional midwives were usually older, sometimes widowed women who knew their way around natural remedies. And if you’re thinking it was that exact sort of women who were burned as witches in the past, you’re exactly right. Luckily times changed, and midwifery gradually became a highly thought-of, well-regarded job.

Life for a woman a hundred years ago was dangerous for all sorts of reasons, and unfortunately one of them was the presence of men who were up to no good. Luckily women were able to learn various self-defense techniques that could potentially save their lives, and one of them in particular caused a storm.

During the latter half of the 19th century, hatpins became popular, and women suddenly realized they could easily be used as weapons to scare off unwanted men. As the years went on, hatpin self-defense became more and more popular and women happily taught it to other women. The media was horrified — but it worked.