compositoress

plural compositoresses

1. alternativeAlternative form of compositress.

   One of the lady “compositoresses” in the “side show” is said to have picked the winners to the extent of several hundred last week, and all owing to “Fatty” Payne as a mascot.

   1903 April 9, “Sandwiches and Run-Downs”, in The Trades Unionist, volume VII, number 43, Washington, D.C., page 1

   3 more examples

   The female compositors are the most refined, sensible, and practically educated of all the women workers in busy, pushing Boston, where they serve in almost every capacity. Daily the written thoughts of our best and ablest men lie on their cases; the prose and poetry of this and other lands pass continually through their hands—thus, while they labor they obtain knowledge. This very labor, wearing as it is on life and health, improves the mind and educates the poor compositoress in a manner more useful, self sustaining, and systematic than that afforded by our fashionable boarding schools.

   1867, Friends’ Intelligencer: A Religious and Family Journal, volume XXIV, Philadelphia, Pa.: Emmor Comly, published 1868, page 633

   We are certainly in favor of woman’s rights to the full extent demanded by these compositor-esses, and we would not be at all surprised should they be able to make the Union folks sorry for their harshness towards them.

   1868 August 22, Los Angeles Star, volume XIV, number 36, Los Angeles, Calif.

   The beautiful woman you met last week surrounded by wealth, and the best men and women in the land eager to claim her attention, used to work early and late as a compositoress on a daily newspaper.

   1869 July 23, Cecilia L. Whiteley, “How She Won Him”, in The Elk County Advocate, volume I, number 36, Ridgway, Pa.