Female Enterprise and Entrepreneurship in North East England, 1778-1801
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Female Enterprise and Entrepreneurship in North East England, 1778-1801 Susan Laura Beaumont Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University February 2019 Acknowledgements My most sincere thanks go to my Supervisor, Dr Joan Allen, for her unwavering support and encouragement since I presented myself to her as a historian in search of a subject. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to discuss this with Joan and a achieve a life-long ambition as a consequence. My PhD journey has not been easy, but it could not have been achieved without my husband's and daughter's support. I am therefore deeply indebted to them for their forbearance, borne with great fortitude. I am also grateful to those who enabled me to define my aims: Professor Emeritus John Cannon, Professor David Oldroyd, Dr David Saunders and Dr Graham Butler. I am also very grateful to the Economic History Society for supporting my attendance at several Conferences, where I was able to share my ideas with Dr Amanda Capern, Dr Janet Casson and Dr Helen Paul. The assistance I received from the archivists in Durham University's Palace Green Library and the North East Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering must also be acknowledged to have been exceptional. Finally, I could not have achieved my aim, as a coalfield child, without having acquired a passion for history from Professor Emeritus Philip Woodfine, Dr David Wright and Professor Emeritus Bill Stafford, whose MA in History at the University of Huddersfield was a perfect apprenticeship. Finally, I have aimed to illuminate the lives of enterprising and entrepreneurial women who helped to shape British history. I number my neighbours, friends and relations amongst them. Abstract Existing interpretations of women's work in industrialising England have previously been unable to fully assess the contribution that self-employed women made to this process because evidence of female enterprise and entrepreneurship has been difficult to find. This study addresses this problem as far as the North East of England is concerned, where this form of work was a regional rather than a specifically urban phenomenon, based on women's legalised ownership of their own capital. This is demonstrated here to have encouraged women to engage with enterprise and accumulate sufficient capital to contest the idea that it was men but not women who industrialised Britain. The acquisition of a diversified portfolio of assets is argued here to have challenged 'constraint-based models' of women's work, which assume that gender, social position, marital status, and patriarchal ideology prevented middling women from working, yet, according to the evidence presented here, North Eastern women overcame those constraints. The fact that they did so is addressed in detail here, principally in the argument that female enterprise made an invaluable contribution to English industrialisation. Despite the dominance of male occupations in the North East, few sectors of this regional economy were entirely closed to enterprising women. A mutual commitment to enterprise changed relations between men and women, repositioning women as equal partners in an industrial and commercial context. Charlotte Guest, who described herself as a 'Female Master' summarised what enterprising and entrepreneurial women expected to achieve through their economic agency, namely a new concept of themselves as agents of change rather than a subordinate species. This multi-faceted view of middling women's work sees enterprise and entrepreneurship as a source of empowerment for women in patriarchal societies, which envisioned their eventual emancipation. Contents Introduction I: Female enterprise and entrepreneurship in the North East of England 1 II: Female enterprise and entrepreneurship in a historical perspective 10 III: Thesis structure 12 IV: Methodology and sources 14 Chapter One 1.1 The North Eastern economy in the eighteenth century 19 1.2 Agriculture, industry and management 20 1.3 Enterprise and regional identity 39 Chapter Two 2.1 Female enterprise in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1778-1801 46 2.2 Female enterprise in the traditional 'feminine' sectors 52 2.3 Female enterprise in non-traditional sectors 57 Chapter Three 3.1 Property as capital for enterprise 66 3.2 Women's wealth in probate records 74 3.3 Coverture: the last bastion of patriarchal power 82 Chapter Four 4.1 Capitalising female enterprise 86 4.2 Survivalists, small producers and female masters 91 4.3 The rewards of enterprise 101 Chapter Five 5.1 The 'enterprising sort' 105 5.2 Women's roles in an enterprise culture 118 5.3 The status of women in enterprising societies 120 Chapter Six 6.1 Boom and bust: an eighteenth-century invention 128 6.2 Women's responses to financial crises 134 6.3 Regional responses to economic crises 142 Chapter Seven 7.1 Judith Baker, industrial entrepreneur (1724-1810) 147 7.2 Judith Baker's managerial apprenticeship 152 7.3 The only female master in England's alum industry 160 Conclusion 168 Bibliography 175 List of Maps Map 1: Extent of industry in the Great North Eastern Coalfield, 1800-1850 25 Map 2: North Yorkshire's alum shales triangle and the Boulby alum mine 151 List of Illustrations Frontispiece: Detail from John Rain’s Eye Plan of Sunderland, circa 1790 Illustration 1: Newcastle from Redheugh Station (John Wilson Carmichael, 1838) 1 Illustration 2: An eighteenth-century wagonway carrying coal 19 Illustration 3: Frontispiece, Newcastle's first Trade Directory, 1778 65 Illustration 4: Sarah Clayton (Joseph Wright of Derby, 1769) 72 Illustration 5: Theodosia Crowley's house, staithes and warehouse 86 Illustration 6: Katy's Coffee House, at the foot of the Side, Newcastle 105 Illustration 7: Fashionable young ladies 111 Illustration 8: Coalbrookdale by Night (Philip de Loutherbourg, 1801) 128 Illustration 9: Woman frying sprats (James Gillray, 1791) 146 Illustration 10: Judith Baker's birthplace, Halnaby Hall, North Yorkshire 148 Illustration 11: Ralph Jackson (1736-1790) 154 Illustration 12: North Yorkshire's coastal alum pans 167 List of Tables Table 1.1: Coal exported from Newcastle in 1772, 1776 and 1791-1795 27 Table 1.2: Tonnage of shipping entering and clearing the major ports involved in foreign trade in 1751, 1772 and 1791 28 Table 1.3: Vessels registered at North Eastern ports and London in 1791 28 Table 1.4: The estimated costs of 'winning' North Biddick Colliery, 1783 30 Table 1.5: Wear Coal Vend proprietors' output, 1769-1770 32 Table 1.6: Tyne Coal Vend proprietors' output, 1776 33 Table 1.7: Newcastle Corporation's Revenues, 1780-1800 38 Table 2.1: Female enterprise in a sample of English towns, 1783-1801 48 Table 2.2: Longevity of female enterprise in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1778-1801 49 Table 2.3: Long-lived enterprises in Newcastle and Gateshead ,1778-1801 51 Table 2.4: Short-lived enterprises in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1778-1801 51 Table 2.5: Women's business partnerships, 1778-1801 56 Table 2.6: Female manufacturers in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1778 and 1801 58 Table 2.7: Women who carried a family business on, 1728-1802 59 Table 2.8: Ex-Directory businesses in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1774-1789 60 Table 2.9: Urban women's cross-sector businesses, 1778-1801 62 Table 3.1: North Eastern women's proprietorship, 1725-1746 69 Table 3.2: Types of assets bequeathed in enterprising women's wills 75 Table 3.3: Marriage contracts in the North East, 1726-1793 83 Table 4.1: The North East's survivalists, 1783-1823 93 Table 4.2: The North East's small producers, 1782-1811 93 Table 4.3: The North East's female masters, 1789-1839 94 Table 4.4: Women associated with the coal industry before 1780 96 Table 4.5: Women associated with the coal industry after 1780 98 Table 4.6: Women with property interests related to the coal industry, 1754-1801 100 Table 4.7: Lady Riddell's income and expenditure, April 1769-June 1775 101 Table 5.1: Girls' schools in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1778-1801 112 Table 5.2: Girls' technical schools in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1778-1801 113 Table 5.3: Wearside's female shipowners, 1772-1803 114 Table 5.4: Business expansion in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1778-1801 116 Table 5.5: Diversification in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1778-1801 117 Table 5.6: Female financiers in the North East, 1750-1803 119 Table 6.1: Financial crises in England, 1701-1797 131 Table 6.2: Estimates of bankruptcies in England, 1780-1801 133 Table 6.3: Bankruptcies in the North East, February-June 1789 133 Table 6.4: Land Tax Redemptions in Newcastle in 1798 137 Table 6.5: Location of businesses in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1778-1801 140 Table 7.1: Judith Baker's local network, 1751-1787 152 Table 7.2: Projected revenue based on Colebrooke's alum contract, 1769 157 Table 7.3: Debts to the Boulby Alum Works, 1 February 1773 159 Table 7.4: Alum works in North Yorkshire, 1773-1774 160 Table 7.5: The Baker family's moneylenders, 1718-1750 163 Table 7.6: George and Judith Baker's moneylenders after 1750 163 Appendices A: Long-lived urban enterprises in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1778-1801 215 B: Short-lived urban enterprises in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1778-1801 220 C: Regional enterprise in the North East, 1743-1832 230 D: Widows' wealth at death, according to probate evidence, 1793-1837 240 E: Spinsters' wealth at death, according to probate evidence, 1772-1839 243 F: Men's wealth at death, according to probate evidence, 1765-1803 245 G: Female inn-keepers in Newcastle