Working-class girls: the life-courses of 33 women cotton workers in Ghent around 1900.

June 2, 1893 was an important day for twelve-year-old Louise De Cock. That day she walked through the gate of the A.Voortman cotton mill in Ghent for the very first time. Louise was the youngest child of a humble working man’s family. The little money she earned was welcome. Her father was ill and died four months later. At Voortman, Louise started as a reeler. When she was fourteen, she became a cotton bobbiner. Until the age of fifty, Louise stood behind the bobbin winding machine, except for the years the cotton mill closed its doors (1916-1921). Day in day out she replaced full and empty bobbins and tied broken threads. Louise stayed single. Until she was thirty-three she looked after her mother with one of her sisters, who also stayed single and with whom she lived together in the north of Ghent. Nine times they moved their humble belongings to another working man’s house. In 1958, she moved into an old people’s home in Ghent, where she died five years later, aged 82.