The preceding pages indicate that the experiences of mining, fisher and farming women differed significantly. Indeed, they varied as much as the environments in which the women lived: grimy pit villages with pit heaps looming over them; picturesque, wind-blown fishing villages with boats drawn up on the white sand; isolated farms on the slopes of the Cheviot Hills or in the valleys, sheep scattered over them. It is true that in places such as Newbiggin-by-the Sea mining was conducted alongside fishing and, in some others, farming existed alongside fishing. Further south in the county, it co-existed with heavy industry. Yet for many communities the contrast did exist. This divergence in the experiences of these women indicates that we cannot assume that to be a woman meant the same thing, even within the working class, within the same region. A ‘good wife’ in a mining house-hold got up at all times of the night to prepare food, to wash the grime off her husband's back, to prepare endless baths if there was more than one worker in the household, to keep a spotless house in a grimy, dust-filled atmosphere and, when possible, to earn some extra money. In the case of some, to be a mining woman meant to play an important role in politics. Fisher women's role was quite different. They needed to be skilled in the day-long preparatory work necessary for line fishing, in packing herring, in managing the finances and in hawking fish from the creel.

Women in coal mining communities have been largely ‘hidden from history’, appearing briefly in a single chapter in works which focus upon miners or on the economics of the coal industry. miners, on the other hand, have long drawn the attention of scholars and literary figures. Historians, particularly labour historians, have been attracted from as early as the nineteenth century by their volatile industrial relations which often ended in violence. The emergence of stable trade unions in the late nineteenth century, born of a remarkable solidarity which, in turn, grew out of the uniquely difficult conditions in which miners worked, led to a proliferation of studies of trade-union histories dealing with virtually every mining region in england, Wales and scotland. Northumberland too has its chronicler, though the story is limited to the post-World War one period. Unlike the other studies, which focus on labour relations alone, both the Derbyshire Miners: A Study in Industrial and Social History by E.W. Williams written in 1962 and, more recently, Carolyn Baylies' The History of the Yorkshire Miners 1881–1919 (1993) have tried as far as possible, in what are trade-union histories, to include women. that the miners in the 1920s became the backbone of the Labour Party was a further incentive for studies dealing with miners, as was the bruising six-month lockout in 1926.

To find the female agricultural labourers of Northumberland we must move inland from the windswept coastal fishing villages and the grimy coal mining towns and villages, to where the Cheviot Hills slope down to the fertile valleys of the River Till and its tributaries. There, in Glendale and further east in Belford – the rural districts studied in most depth – we find women labourers in abundance. These labourers formed an essential part of farming in Northumberland, as they did in the East and West Lothians, Roxburgh and Berwickshire in southeastern Scotland and in Westmoreland, long after women had ceased to be an important part of the farming labour force in the southeast of England – though not, as once thought, in the west of England. They had experiences and self- images very different from those of fishing and mining women. These experiences can be linked to the economic, geographic and demographic structures of the area. We have found a similar congruence between the experience of women in mining and inshore fishing communities and the structural characteristics of their communities.

The key factor in the lives and work of agricultural women was the development in the late eighteenth century of advanced farming, an important part of which was the addition of turnips, sown grasses and potatoes to the cultivation of oats and barley.

As we have suggested, the role of labouring farm women in Northumberland, Westmoreland and in southeastern Scotland was multifaceted. In addition to playing a very important role in the farming economy, wives and daughters of hinds made a substantial contribution to the family economy. Like inshore fishing, a household economy, reminiscent of pre-industrial times, prevailed in these agricultural farming families. Given the low wages of the hind, the wives' farming and domestic skills and ability to manage a meagre budget were vital to the survival of the family. Their important role inevitably brings up the question of the degree of the authority they enjoyed. The previous groups of women we have studied had varying degrees of authority in the household: fisher women most of all, though mining women – particularly those who were involved in political activities – had a considerable say in their households, and even the more typical domestic woman had more power than is immediately obvious. The degree of authority enjoyed by farming women varied depending on the group to which they belonged: wives, bondagers, cottars or daughters. The picture is, in fact, curiously mixed.

One aspect of their domestic role was onerous maternal duties. The Census of Fertility of 1913 indicates that agricultural workers in the nation as a whole had higher fertility than all other groups in the nation, except coal miners. In the years 1881–86, they averaged 7.72 births compared to 8.88 for miners working at the face.