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WOMEN, FINANCE AND CREDIT IN ENGLAND, c. 1780-1826 Christine Wiskin Submitted in fulfilment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History at the University of Warwick June 2000 Contents List of illustrations 1 List of maps 11 List of tables 111 List of figures lv Acknowledgments V Abstract vi List of abbreviations vii Chapter 1 Introduction Concepts of women and credit 1 Sources and methods ii Historiography 22 New directions 30 'A history of industrial possibility' 44 Chapter 2 The Economy of the West Midlands in the Eighteenth Century Characteristics of the region 49 Cash and credit in the region 63 Small-scale capitalism 82 Contrasts, complexity and change 88 Chapter 3 Women in business, c. 1780-1826 Industrious independence 92 Businesswomen as managers 113 The impact of change 119 Reputation and respectability 128 Businesswomen in industrialising England 144 Chapter 4 Businesswomen and entrepreneurial networks The membership of networks 147 Trust and prudence 171 Some benefits of membership 180 Reconsidering entrepreneurial networks 190 Chapter 5 Women and the financing of business Capital requirements 192 Women and capital 205 Borrowing from banks 223 Financing the enterprise 235 Chapter 6 Women and trade credit An issue of gender? 239 Record keeping 262 Success and failure 268 Women, business and credit 285 Chapter 7 Conclusion 288 Bibliography 303 List of illustrations Plate 1 110 Abigail Robinson heads an elegant oval cartouche listing businesspeople in the Birmingham metal trades in this illustration from Bisset's Directory of 1800 (Courtesy Birmingham Local Studies Library) Plate 2 270 Order and regularity in Mary Rollason's advertisement of her extensive stock of china, glass and earthenware in Wrightson's Triennial Directory of Birmingham, 1825 (Courtesy Birmingham Local Studies Library) II List of maps Map 1 England and Wales, showing the principal towns and cities mentioned in 7 this thesis Map 2 Sketch map of Birmingham, showing the principal areas mentioned in 109 Table 3.7 (based on C. Pye, Plan of Birmingham Surve y'd in the Year 1795) ifi List of tables 1.1 Outline biographies of businesswomen, 1780-1828 20-21 2.1 The Provision of Banks in the West Midlands, 1760-1826 50 3.1 Businesswomen with male employees, 1780-1826 94 3.2 Businesswomen with male business partners, 1780-1826 96 3.3 Widowhood as an economic condition - Birmingham, c. 1780-1826 98 3.4 Advertisers in Birmingham directories, 1774-1825 103 3.5 Female advertisers in West Midlands' directories, 1780-1798 105 3.6 Occupational categories of West Midlands' businesswomen 106 3.7 Location of businesswomen's premises, Birmingham 1780-1825 108 3.8 Wolverhampton female advertisers 122 3.9 Wills of businesswomen, c. 1780-1826 124 3.10 'Respectability' Matrix: English Businesswomen, c. 1780-1826 131 3.11 Marital status of West Midlands' businesswomen, 1780-1825 139 4.1 Women's entrepreneurial networks, 1792-1828 166 4.2 Commercial intelligence provided by businesswomen 178 4.3 Diversification as a business strategy for women traders, c. 1780- 183 1826 4.4 Sun Fire Office policyholders, Wolverhampton 1776-1787 184 5.1 Disposition of property by male testators, 1780-1800 208 5.2 Birmingham women and bank finance, 1780-4 226 6.1 Businesswomen's payments to creditors 271 Charlotte Matthews, London 1796-8 6.2 Businesswomen's payments to creditors 272 Maiy Stubbs, Wolverhampton 1785-1795 iv List of figures 2.1 Indebtedness of Boulton & Watt to C. Matthews 1792-1801 81 3.la Birmingham female advertisers, 1780-1825 120 3. lb Birmingham female advertisers, 1780-1825 121 4.1 Sun Fire Office Insurance Bonds, 1783 159 5.1 Financing business in industrialising England 195 5.2 Sources of finance for business in industrialising England 196 6.1 Charlotte Matthews - analysis of receipts and disbursements 259 6.2 Charlotte Matthews's account at the Bank of England 1793- 274 1800 - Net movement of funds 6.3 Jane Tait - analysis of unpaid debts 1828 281 V Acknowledgments This thesis was prepared with the assistance of studentship no. R00429634 128 from the Economic and Social Research Council and I would like to thank that institution for its support. My thanks are also due to the archivists and staff of the Public Record Office London, the National Register of Archives, the Bank of England, Lloyd's of London, Lloyds TSB Group, Warwickshire County Record Office, Gloucestershire Record Office, Worcestershire Record Office, Lichfield Joint Record Office, and the City Record Office, Coventry. I am particularly grateful to the archivist and staff at Birmingham City Archives for introducing me to the correspondence of Mrs. Charlotte Matthews, and to the curator and staff of Soho House Museum, Birmingham for discussions on the life and work of Matthew Boulton. I thank the librarians and staff of the University of Warwick, the University of Keele, the Guildhall Library London, Birmingham Local Studies Library, and Coventry Local Studies Library for their help. References to material held in the Wedgwood Archival Accumulations at the University of Keele Library are by courtesy of the Trustees of the Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. Comments and criticisms from my fellow students in the Centre for Social History and the Department of History at the University of Warwick have been a great help. G.W. Wiskin checked my calculations on which Figure 6.2 is based. Finally, I would like to record my gratitude and appreciation to Professor Maxine Berg, of the Department of History, and Professor Gwynne Lewis, formerly of the Centre for Social History, at the University of Warwick for acting as my supervisors. Their guidance, advice and breadth of knowledge have been invaluable to me. I confirm that this thesis is my own work and has not been submitted for a degree at another university. Christine Wiskin vi Abstract Credit may mean both a way of doing business and the reputation of the individuals transacting it. Both aspects are explored in this thesis. Access to sources of finance for business and the ways in which trade credit transactions took place are amongst the economic issues examined. The cultural aspects of credit, such as trust, personal standing and the language in which this was expressed, adherence to, or deviation from, socially acceptable standards of behaviour, are discussed. Credit is used as a tool of analysis to investigate orthodoxies about women's use of it for business purposes. Small-scale capitalism, with its specific objectives of industrious independence and economic individualism centring on the family firm, provides the organising concept and the explanation for how and why women from the middle ranks of society ran businesses during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Findings, based on the business activities and trade credit transactions of women resident in, or conducting business in, the English West Midlands, reveal their greater participation in the economic community than has been recognised hitherto. Furthermore, they indicate that trade credit transactions between men and women regarding the new consumer goods and services of the first industrial revolution were not an arena for the working out of gender politics. Women belonged to mixed-sex business networks where they were judged, as men were, on the punctuality of their payments and the honouring of their obligations. As a result, the limitations of the existing historiography are shown. Arguments for a specifically female type of credit negotiated between women principally for domestic purposes or that women with capital restricted their economic activity to investment to provide for their non-working existence do not do justice to the 'middling sort' businesswomen whose contribution to the processes of industrialisation is now recognised in this work. vii List of abbreviations used in this thesis BCA Birmingham City Archives CR0 City Record Office, Coventry GHL Guildhall Library, London LJRO Lickfleld Joint Record Office PRO. London Public Record Office, London IJKL, WAA University of Keele Library, Wedgwood Archival Accumulations WCRO Warwickshire County Record Office Chapter 1 I n trod u c tio n Concepts of women and credit In 1 752 a Court of Requests, to deal with claims for debts of less than 40 shillings (2.00), was set up in Birmingham. Thirty-five \'ears later, William Hutton, one of its commissioners, wrote a book describing how it operated and the contribution it made to the provision of legal services in the town. In the volume there are references to women s plaintiffs and defendants but none is as colourful as his account of Betty John. Despite being already married to a man in the neighbouring county of Shropshire, Betty went to Birminharn, disguised herself as a man, conducted herself in the manner of a man, married a young woman who later died, and then took a mistress. When sued for debt in the Court of Requests, her defence was that, despite her masculine appearance and behaviour, she was a woman. Furthermore, she was a married woman and not answerable for those debts which she had incurred since her marriage. Her masculine personation had been sufficiently convincing that the Court did not believe her and, because she refused to pay, imprisioned her. Incarcerated in the town lockup, it became apparent that 'she had nothing of the man about her higher than the feet'.