The Maybury Sisters after their Parents Died

I have discussed the Maybury Sisters, Carrie and Lizzie (Lizzie married Thomas Roberts Riley). and how they had to support their younger siblings after their parents died.    On the 1881 English Census, both of their occupations were listed as Pencil Makers.  Lizzie was 22 and Carrie was 25.


Birmingham was a very industrial city.  It was center of Pen and Pencil Making in England.


 We don't know what their jobs were exactly.  I have researched and found that women held one of two jobs in the pencil factories.


This picture is where the women would put the two halves of the wood around the lead.  This was a job done by women.

The other job they might have done, was to box the finished product, as pictured below.

The pencil making occupation was not a cottage industry, it was a factory job.