The Case of Clarinna Stringer: Strategic Options and the Household Economy in Late Nineteenth Century Australia’

In the winter of 1892 Clarinna Stringer was starving.¹ Her husband’s death had left her alone to care for four children; to make ends meet she took in a little washing and sold wood from her backyard in Tyne Street, Carlton. Throughout the summer she had called regularly on the ladies of Melbourne’s Benevolent Society; their irregular three-shilling cards for rations were a sensitive barometer of a failing household economy. Normally, the winter months would signal some modest improvement in the family fortunes. As the bitter June winds whipped through Melbourne even the poorest needed wood to warm their families