Letting One's Hair Down (1850s)

At some point, I got into an argument about when women of the 1850s wore their hair down versus up. It resulted in the following list of contemporary paintings, which, in my humble opinion, supports the hypothesis that even very poor women generally wore their hair up.

Rural Working Class & Poor
French peasant (1855) Hair worn in fashionably wide bands.
Gorse gatherer (1855) Hair pinned up (details unclear, seems unfashionably tight and narrow, but still very much worn up and out of the way).
Countrywoman (1855): The cottage may be small and dark, but mom's wearing her hair up, under a neat cap.
Rural Scottish women (1855): Orphans, dirty cottages...and both women wearing their hair up, under caps, with neat center parts.
Cottager (1850) dressing a baby: hair is up, center parted, and under a cap.
Cottagers (1850) dressed up for a Baptism: hair is up and under caps!
Horse-riding member of the rural working class (1850) [note the man's smock]: Again, hair is up, bonnet is on.
Peasant woman in short skirts (1850): Hair up with center part and low chignon at the back.
Peasant woman (1855): Wearing her hair up, under a cap.
Cottager (1855) getting visited by the local gentry: has her hair up under a neat cap, center part visible.
In the yard (1854), the young mother wears her hair neatly dressed up.

Urban Working Class & Poor
Lacemaker (1855) In a garret, starving (the painting's titled "Bread and Tears"), but her hair is not only worn up, it's neatly brushed to glossiness and dressed fashionably wide over rats.
Seamstress (1858) Neatly dressed, with hair likewise.
Beggar girl (1855) Literally freezing on a street, still wearing hair up under a cap.
Dead destitute woman (1850): Has frozen on the streets, but her hair is still worn off the face, and appears contained.

Household Work
Peeling onions (1852), with hair worn up out of the way.
Cooking (1856) with hair up in stylish glossy bands.
Making stew (1854), the mistress wears her hair in fashionable bands, but the servant also has her hair up neatly up and out of the way.
Cooking waffles in a hearth (1853), the woman's hair is dressed low in bands.

Travelling
Emigrant woman (1855) She may be riding uncomfortably on the deck, but Madame has her hair up in wide bands, and wears a bonnet and shawl.

Undress
Bathing in a stream (1855), this lady still puts her hair up in glossy, wide bands.
Sleeping outdoors after bathing (1850) Hair is mostly obscured, but appears to still be up. [Note before clicking link that the figure is unclothed.]
Half dressed, without a chemise, but hair being put up first. [Note that the figure in this painting is topless before clicking link.]
Wearing a wrapper (1857) while caring for a baby, hair is worn up.
Wearing a wrapper (1855) while playing with baby, hair is worn up.

Hair worn down
Young woman with a sick baby (1855): Alone, in the privacy of the house, and with other pressing concerns, this young woman's hair is down...but still center-parted and smoothed behind the ears.
Teenage French Peasant herding cows (1855), one exception to the many women wearing their hair up and out of way while working outdoors.
Elizabeth Siddal appears with hair down or being combed in a number of Rosseti's drawings and paintings of her (some historical, some contemporary).

My conclusion remains that (unless one is running with the pre-Raphaelites) adult women of the 1850s wore their hair up--even if they were poor, or working, or in their own room at home.