sempstress

plural sempstresses

1. A seamstress, a woman employed to sew.

   This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything.

   1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

   3 more examples

   Two hundred Sempſtreſſes were employed to make me Shirts, and Linen for Bed and Table, all of the ſtrongeft and coarſeſt kind they could get; which, however, they were forced to quilt together in ſeveral Folds, for the thickeſt was ſome degrees finer than Lawn.

   1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], “Of the Inhabitants of Lilliput; […]”, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part I (A Voyage to Lilliput), pages 107–108

   I am sure he might pick and choose amongst the best dowried dowagers in England; and, instead of making any thing of himself, he has actually been all the way to Granard Park to look at his wife's picture, and make his bow to all the people who knew him, as "Manuello, the emigrant Italian," hunting up his sempstress and washerwoman, to make their old age comfortable, and talking religion with paralytic vicars and learned curates.

   1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], “(please specify the page)”, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, pages 301–302

   They were composed of a heterogeneous collection of men and women of the lower layers of society, workmen, sempstresses, night watchmen, farm-hands, mechanics and railway-workers – a laic image in sharp contrast to the bourgeois image produced in the cathedral.

   1982, Lawrence Durrell, Constance (Avignon Quintet), Faber & Faber, published 2004, page 950