The Song of the Shirt

There was an outcry about the starvation wages paid to needleworkers during the 19th century, with the cause being taken up by magazines such as Punch, and many artworks and painting appeared in connection with the famous poem "The Song of the Shirt "http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hood/shirt.html.They would depict the exhausted needle woman in a state of collapse over her work for the wealthy, and it became the hot topic of the period.