Unwed, pregnant, and on-the-move: domestic workers in turn-of-the-century Montreal

This article traces the lives of three British migrant domestic workers who experienced out-of-wedlock pregnancies in Montreal at the turn of the twentieth century. Using a microhistorical approach, we reconstruct their movements across households, institutions, communities, and national borders, examining mobility not simply as the transatlantic journey that brought them to Canada but as a recurring feature of their lives. Migration and domestic service could intensify precarity by separating women from kin, tying residence to employment, and increasing dependence on employers and institutions. Yet repeated relocation could also make mobility a resource for responding to crisis and seeking greater autonomy. The contrasting experiences of Mary, Clara, and Florence show that women’s ability to make mobility work depended on their control over movement and access to resources, including kin, employment, institutions, and knowledge. Their stories reveal mobility as both a condition of migrant women’s vulnerability and a resource through which they attempted to shape what happened next.