cinder-woman

I be but the under-shepherd boy, and my father he was but your humble Grace's hedger, and my mother only the cinder-woman in the back-yard!

A Changed Man; and other tales Thomas Hardy 1884

I had seen nothing of the sort, nor yet even so much as a semblance of it, and therefore I had no idea that there existed such a miserable shred of degradation, for example, as a cinder-woman -- desolate and dirty as her employment -- bowed down -- a shadow among shadows -- busily prone, beneath the sheety night sky, to find out and fasten upon the crumb, whose pilgrimage certainly had not improved it since falling from the rich man's table.

The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century Various

I be but the under-shepherd boy, and my father he was but your humble Grace’s hedger, and my mother only the cinder-woman in the back-yard!

A Changed Man 2006