“I Have Got My Pocketbook by My Machine”: Place, Space, and Women’s Pocketbooks at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

As critical masses of American women took on new roles as waged workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, no other single item symbolized women’s newfound independence and autonomy more than the purse. As women spent more time outside the home, purses grew in size and were increasingly made out of leather, making them more durable and useful for women who were expected to perform many different roles. This paper analyzes how “pocketbooks” aided working women, with a particular focus on how immigrant women who worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory used their pocketbooks as they moved between the private and public sphere. It argues that purses offered expanding numbers of waged women an increasingly gendered, intimate space that they strategically used to navigate a masculine, public world. As oral histories and trial transcripts demonstrate, when this space was invaded by male bosses, women felt physically and psychologically violated. And yet they still viewed purses as critical to their own survival and liberation.