Anne Laurence History of Women As Investors RoBookFi

Women and their Money 1700–1950
This book examines women’s financial activity from the early days of the stock
market in eighteenth-century England and the South Sea Bubble to the mid
twentieth century. The essays demonstrate how many women managed their
own finances despite legal and social restrictions and show that women were
neither helpless, incompetent and risk-averse, nor were they unduly cautious and
conservative. Rather, many women learnt about money and made themselves
effective and engaged managers of the funds at their disposal.
The essays focus on Britain, from eighteenth-century London to the expan-
sion of British financial markets of the nineteenth century, with comparative
essays dealing with the United States, Italy, Sweden and Japan. Hitherto, writing
about women and money has been restricted to their management of household
finances or their activities as small business women. This book examines the
clear evidence of women’s active engagement in financial matters, much
neglected in historical literature, especially women’s management of capital.
This book charts the sheer extent of women’s financial management and pro-
vides for economic, social, cultural and gender historians material grounded in
empirical research essential for understanding women’s place in capitalist
societies.
Anne Laurence is Professor of History at the Open University and author of

Women in England 1500–1760: A Social History. Josephine Maltby is Profes-
sor of Accounting and Finance, University of York. Janette Rutterford is Pro-
fessor of Finance at the Open University and author of Introduction to Stock
Exchange Investment.
Routledge international studies in business history
Series Editors: Ray Stokes and Matthias Kipping
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2 The Development of Accounting in an International Context

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6 The Americanisation of European Business

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Business in Lancashire and Kansai 1890–1990
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8 Foreign Multinationals in the United States

Management and performance
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Transforming American management and technology models
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Business strategies in small open country
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A materialist interpretation
Daniel Gaido
13 International Business and National War Interests

Unilever between Reich and Empire, 1939–45
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14 Narrating the Rise of Big Business in the USA

How economists explain Standard Oil and Wal-Mart
Anne Mayhew
15 Women and their Money 1700–1950

Essays on women and finance
Edited by Anne Laurence, Josephine Maltby and Janette Rutterford
Women and their Money
1700–1950
Essays on women and finance
Edited by Anne Laurence,

Josephine Maltby and
Janette Rutterford
First published 2009
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2009 Selection and editorial matter, Anne Laurence, Josephine Maltby
and Janette Rutterford; individual chapters, the contributors.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Women and their money 1700–1950: essays on women and finance/edited
by Anne Laurence, Josephine Maltby and Janette Rutterford.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Women–Finance, Personal–History. 2. Finance–History. I. Laurence,
Anne. II. Maltby, Josephine. III. Rutterford, Janette.
HG179.W5765 2008
332.0240082'0903–dc22 2008025174
ISBN 0-203-88599-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-41976-X (hbk)

ISBN10: 0-203-88599-6 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-41976-5 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-203-88599-4 (ebk)
Contents
List of figures x
List of tables xi
List of contributors xiii
1 Introduction 1
ANNE LAURENCE, JOSEPHINE MALTBY AND
JANETTE RUTTERFORD
2 Women and finance in eighteenth-century England 30

ANNE LAURENCE
3 Women in the city: financial acumen during the South

Sea Bubble 33
ANN M. CARLOS, KAREN MAGUIRE AND LARRY NEAL
4 Women, banks and the securities market in early

eighteenth-century England 46
ANNE LAURENCE
5 Women investors and financial knowledge in

eighteenth-century Germany 59
EVE ROSENHAFT
6 Accounting for business: financial management in the

eighteenth century 73
CHRISTINE WISKIN
viii Contents
7 Women and wealth: the nineteenth century in
Great Britain 86
LUCY A. NEWTON, PHILIP L. COTTRELL,
JOSEPHINE MALTBY AND JANETTE RUTTERFORD
8 Between Madam Bubble and Kitty Lorimer: women

investors in British and Irish stock companies 95
MARK FREEMAN, ROBIN PEARSON AND JAMES TAYLOR
9 Female investors in the first English and Welsh

commercial joint-stock banks 115
LUCY A. NEWTON AND PHILIP L. COTTRELL
10 To do the right thing: gender, wealth, inheritance and

the London middle class 133
DAVID R. GREEN
11 Women and wealth in fiction in the long nineteenth

century 1800–1914 151
JANETTE RUTTERFORD AND JOSEPHINE MALTBY
12 Octavia Hill: property manager and accountant 165

STEPHEN P. WALKER
13 Female investors within the Scottish investment trust

movement in the 1870s 178
CLAIRE SWAN
14 Women clerical staff employed in the UK-based Army

Pay Department establishments, 1914–1920 197
JOHN BLACK
15 Women and money: the United States 218

NANCY MARIE ROBERTSON AND SUSAN M. YOHN
16 ‘Men seem to take delight in cheating women’: legal

challenges faced by businesswomen in the United
States, 1880–1920 226
SUSAN M.YOHN
Contents ix
17 ‘The principles of sound banking and financial
noblesse oblige’: women’s departments in US banks
at the turn of the twentieth century 243
NANCY MARIE ROBERTSON
18 Women, money and the financial revolution: a gender

perspective on the development of the Swedish
financial system, c.1860–1920 254
TOM PETERSSON
19 Women’s wealth and finance in nineteenth-century

Milan 271
STEFANIA LICINI
20 The transformation from ‘thrifty accountant’ to

‘independent investor’?: the changing relationship of
Japanese women and finance under the influence of
globalization 290
NAOKO KOMORI
Index 303
Figures
3.1 Prices of Royal African Company senior shares, Ps, and

engrafted shares, Pe and Bank of England shares (BOFE) 37
4.1 Number of women’s stock and lottery purchases through
Hoare’s Bank 1718–25 51
4.2 Number of women’s stock and lottery sales through Hoare’s
Bank 1718–25 51
4.3 Number of women’s dividend and interest payments and
lottery prizes though Hoare’s Bank 1718–25 52
4.4 Value of women’s stock and lottery purchases through Hoare’s
Bank 1718–25 53
4.5 Value of women’s stock and lottery sales through Hoare’s
Bank 1718–25 53
4.6 Value of women’s dividends and interest payments and lottery
prizes through Hoare’s Bank 1718–25 53
8.1 Women as a percentage of shareholders in British and Irish
stock companies, 1780–1851 99
8.2 Women as a percentage of first shareholders in new joint-stock
companies, Britain and Ireland, 1780–1850 100
8.3 Women as a percentage of shareholders in British and Irish
stock companies, by decade 101
8.4 Women’s share of share capital in British and Irish stock
companies, 1780–1851 102
10.1 Time elapsed between making a will and the date of probate 1830 139
Tables
3.1 Women’s transactions by value and number by social and

marital status in Bank of England stock 39
3.2 Number of unique women sellers and buyers by number of
transactions in Bank of England stock 39
3.3 Number of transactions by women sellers and buyers by block
size transferred in Bank of England stock 40
3.4 Transactions by women in senior and engrafted stock by month
for Royal African Company 42
4.1 Proportions of Hoare’s Bank customers with stock in chartered
companies or lottery tickets 51
8.1 Ratio of average female shareholdings to overall average
shareholdings, by decade and by sector 102
8.2 Women’s per caput investment in joint-stock companies by
sector, 1780–1851 103
8.3 Women’s share of share capital in joint-stock companies by
sector, 1780–1851 104
9.1 Subscriptions to bank shares, 1827–1833 118
9.2 Subscriptions to bank shares, 1835–1836 119
9.3 Ownership of bank shares by women, 1847–1864 121
9.4 Bank shares: prices and dividends, 1844 123
9.5 Bank shares: prices and dividends, 1854 124
10.1 Occupational classification of male testators in 1830 compared
to 1851 census of male occupations (Booth–Armstrong
classification) 138
10.2 Executor where wife was the residual legatee 140
10.3 Types of provision where a wife was still alive at the time of
making a will 142
10.4 Real estate and trusts in London men’s wills 144
13.1 Investment trust company shares: prices and dividends for
30 April 1880 (unless otherwise stated) 181
13.2 Male and female investors and their shares in number and as a
percentage, 1879–80 183
13.3 Percentage of number of different types of female investors 184
xii Tables
13.4 Average numbers of shares held by male and female investors 187
13.5 Total value of different types of female shareholders’ holdings (£) 188
14.1 Army Pay Department – strength at home 1914–20 211
14.2 Army Pay Corps – strength at home 1914–20 211
18.1 Growth rates of real GDP per head of population in Sweden,
Denmark, Finland, Norway, UK, Germany and France,
1820–1913 (annual average compound growth rates) 255
18.2 Various financial measures in percentage of GDP and the
organizational development of the Swedish banking system,
1860–1910 257
18.3 The growth of deposits in the savings banks and the
commercial banks, 1860–1920 (at 1860 constant prices) 260
18.4 Swedish bond loans distributed by borrower, 1835–1916 262
18.5 Women investors at the C.G. Cervin banking firm, 1881–1930 264
18.6 Gender distribution of executives, middle managers and
employees in Swedish commercial banks 1891, 1916 and 1927 266
19.1 Decedents with positive wealth at death, by sex, Milan,
1862–1900 272
19.2 Top and bottom percentiles, by sex. Total population with
positive wealth, Milan, 1862–1900 272
19.3 Female and male population with positive wealth: percentile
shares Milan, 1862–1900 273
19.4 Distribution of the estates, by sex and rank of wealth, Milan,
1862–1900 273
19.5 Distribution of large estates, by sex, Milan, 1862–1900 274
19.6 Decedents with positive wealth, by sex, Milan, 1871–81 274
19.7 Wealth composition, by sex, Milan, 1871–81 275
19.8 Financial assets, by sex, Milan, 1871–81 276
19.9 Financial assets composition, by sex, Milan, 1871–81 276
19.10 Decedents by occupational status and sex, Milan, 1871–81 277
19.11 Top first and tenth percentiles by occupational status and sex.
Total population with positive wealth, Milan, 1871–81 277
19.12 Top tenth and bottom fiftieth percentiles: wealth composition
by sex. Total population with positive wealth, Milan, 1871–81 278
19.13 Top tenth and bottom fiftieth percentiles, financial assets by sex.
Total population with positive wealth, Milan, 1871–81 278
19.14 Men’s and women’s loans 279
19.15 Taxpayers, category A, by sex, Milan, 1872 280
19.16 Taxpayers, category A, by sex. Income >10,000, Milan, 1872 281
19.17 Female wealth composition, by civil status, Milan, 1871–81 281
19.18 Female financial assets, by civil status, Milan, 1871–81 282
19.19 Female loans composition, by civil status, Milan 1871–81 282
19.20 Female ‘great lenders’, income >20,000 lire, Milan, 1872 283
Contributors
John Black is a part-time Research Associate at the School of Accounting and

Finance, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England. He
entered academic life late, having previously served in the Regular Army
(Royal Army Medical Corps and Royal Army Pay Corps) for 15 years. This
was followed by a further 15 years as a secondary-school teacher in Bristol
where he taught economics and business studies. John Black is conducting
further research into the role of the War Office Finance Branch and army pay
services during the First World War for future publication.
Ann M. Carlos is Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado and at
University College, Dublin. Her current research with Professor Larry Neal
focuses on the microfoundations of the London stock market in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Her other research project, in col-
laboration with Professor Frank Lewis, analyses various aspects of the Native
American economy in the Canadian sub-Arctic in the eighteenth century.
Philip L. Cottrell is Professor of Financial History at the University of Leices-
ter and has published studies of the London capital market’s mid-nineteenth-
century development; Victorian industrial finance; the finance of transport
improvement – railways and shipping; British overseas investment; the
growth of joint-stock banking from the local level to being nationwide; and
the interaction of business, politics and finance in the ‘West’s’ involvement
with east-central Europe during the inter-war period.
Mark Freeman is Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of
Glasgow. He was educated at the Universities of Oxford and Glasgow, and
has also worked at the Institute of Historical Research and the Universities of
York and Hull. He has published widely on many aspects of modern British
social and economic history, and is now working on a study of corporate gov-
ernance in British business before 1844, co-authored with Robin Pearson and
James Taylor, and to be published by the University of Chicago Press.
David R. Green teaches in the Geography Department at King’s College,
London. His research interests focus on a range of topics relating to the
provision of welfare from the Poor Law through to various aspects of
xiv Contributors
inheritance. He is currently working on an ESRC-funded collaborative
project relating to wealth and shareholding in England and Wales between
1870 and 1930. His latest book, Pauper Capital: London and the Poor Law
1790–1870 was published by Ashgate in 2008.
Naoko Komori is Lecturer in Accounting at Sheffield University Management
School where she completed her PhD. Previously, she has worked in the
Faculty of Economics at the University of Wakayama, Japan and at Manches-
ter Business School. Her major research interests are in the areas of gender
and accounting; the development of accounting and auditing in non-Anglo-
Saxon social contexts; the changing status of auditing in Japan and its effects
on corporate governance and accountability processes. Her research has
recently received funding from the Japan Foundation.
Anne Laurence is Professor of History at the Open University and works on
early modern women in Britain and Ireland. She has a particular interest in
women and patronage and in how women paid for the objects of their patron-
age: clergymen, sermons, schools, houses, almshouses and churches. She also
works on the development of the early stock market and, in particular, how
women participated in it.
Stefania Licini is Associate Professor of Economic History at the University
of Bergamo, Italy. She graduated in Economics in 1981 and completed her
PhD in Economic and Social History in 1998. Her research interests focus
on the economic and social history of nineteenth-century Italy. Author of a
number of books, she has presented papers at several international confer-
ences and has written articles published in Italian and English academic
journals.
Karen Maguire is a PhD candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder,
with an expected graduation date of May 2010. Her previous work includes
‘Financial Acumen, Women Speculators, and the Royal African Company
during the South Sea Bubble’ with Professors Ann Carlos and Larry Neal.
She is writing her dissertation, under the direction of Professor Lee Alston,
on the political economy of regulating oil and natural gas development in
several Western states.
Josephine Maltby is Professor of Accounting and Finance at the York Manage-
ment School, University of York. She was previously Professor of Financial
Accounting at the University of Sheffield. In addition to her work on the
history of women as investors, she researches the history of accounting and
corporate governance and accounting within the British Empire.
Larry Neal is Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, Visiting Professor, London School of Economics and
Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His
research interests include monetary and financial history, European economic
history and the economics of the European Union. He is past president of the
Contributors xv
Economic History Association and the Business History Conference. From
1981 to 1998, he was editor of Explorations in Economic History. He is
author of The Rise of Financial Capitalism: International Capital Markets in
the Age of Reason, Cambridge University Press, 1990; The Economics of the
European Union and the Economies of Europe, Oxford University Press,
1998; co-author (with Rondo Cameron) of A Concise Economic History of
the World, 4th edn, Oxford University Press, 2002; and The Economics of
Europe and the European Union, Cambridge University Press, 2007, as well
as numerous articles on American and European economic and financial
history. His current research, funded by two NSF grants, deals with develop-
ment of microstructure in securities markets and risk management in the first
emerging markets.
Lucy A. Newton, BA, PhD, is a Lecturer in the Department of Management,
University of Reading. She previously held positions at the University of
Leicester and the University of East Anglia. She was a Council member of
the Association of Business Historians 1997–2000 and was elected as a
Trustee of the Business History Conference, serving from 2004 to 2007. Lucy
has published on a variety of areas of British financial history including the
development of early joint-stock banks; trust and banking in the nineteenth
century; banking and industrial finance in the inter-war period; female invest-
ment in the early nineteenth century; and capital networks in industrial
regions. She is currently researching bank marketing and public relations in
the twentieth century.
Robin Pearson is Professor of Economic History at the University of Hull. He
was educated at the universities of Edinburgh and Leeds. He has published
widely on various aspects of British and international economic and business
history, with a particular focus on the insurance industry. In 2002 he won the
Harvard-Newcomen Prize for best article in business history. His most recent
book, Insuring the Industrial Revolution, won the 2004 Wadsworth Prize for
Business History. He is currently working on a study of corporate governance
in British business before 1844, co-authored with Mark Freeman and James
Taylor, and to be published by the University of Chicago Press.
Tom Petersson is Associate Professor at the Department of Economic History,
Uppsala University. One of his research areas is the development of the
Swedish financial system. He is currently involved in research projects con-
cerning the Swedish financial revolution in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries and the development of Stockholm as a financial centre
for the Swedish economy.
Nancy Marie Robertson, BA, MA, PhD, is Associate Professor of History and
the Director of Women’s Studies at Indiana University, Purdue University
Indianapolis. She holds an appointment in the Philanthropic Studies Program
and is a Fellow with the Center for the Study of Religion and American
Culture. She has had a variety of public history positions, including as
xvi Contributors
Assistant Director of the Margaret Sanger Papers Project and Consulting His-
torian for the JP Morgan Chase Archives. Her research interests include
women; voluntary associations; and social change. She is the author of Chris-
tian Sisterhood, Race, Relations, and the YWCA, 1906–46, University of Illi-
nois Press, 2007.
Eve Rosenhaft is Professor of German Historical Studies at the University of
Liverpool. She studied at McGill University and the University of Cam-
bridge, and has held fellowships in Britain, Germany and the United States.
She has published widely on aspects of German social history since the eight-
eenth century, including labour, gender, urban culture and issues of race and
ethnicity, as well as on financial culture and early life insurance.
Janette Rutterford is Professor of Financial Management at the Open Univer-
sity Business School. Her research interests include both modern finance
issues, such as pension-fund investment strategies and equity valuation, as
well as the history of investment, in particular that of women investors. She is
currently working on an ESRC-funded collaborative project relating to
wealth and shareholding in England and Wales between 1870 and 1930, as
well as the history of new issues.
Claire Swan, MA (Hons) MPhil, is a PhD student in History at the University
of Dundee. Her doctoral thesis on the Scottish investment trust industry is
funded by the Carnegie Trust and is expected to be completed in 2008. She
has worked as a research assistant at Queen Mary College, University of
London, and has published her undergraduate dissertation as Scottish
Cowboys and the Dundee Investors, Abertay Historical Society, 2004. A
version of her Master’s thesis was published in Scottish Archives 13, 2007.
She has presented her research both nationally and internationally.
James Taylor is Lecturer in History at Lancaster University. He was educated
at the University of Kent. His book, Creating Capitalism: Joint-Stock Enter-
prise in British Politics and Culture, 1800–1870, was published in 2006, and
he is the author of several articles exploring aspects of British economic and
cultural history. He is currently working on a study of corporate governance
in British business before 1844, co-authored with Mark Freeman and Robin
Pearson, and to be published by the University of Chicago Press.
Stephen P. Walker, BA, PhD, CA, is Professor in Accounting at Cardiff Uni-
versity and was previously Professor of Accounting History at Edinburgh
University. He has held visiting positions in Australia and New Zealand. He
was President of the Academy of Accounting Historians in 2007 and editor of
Accounting Historians Journal, 2001–2005. He is a former Convenor of the
Accounting History Committee of ICAS and Academic Fellow of the
ICAEW. He has published widely on the history of accounting and gender,
social identity and the accountancy profession. In 2005 he received the Hour-
glass Award of the Academy of Accounting Historians. He is a member of
Contributors xvii
the editorial boards of a number of journals in accounting and accounting
history.
Christine Wiskin worked in industry, the civil service and the law before
becoming a mature student. She studied for an ESRC-funded doctorate in
History at the University of Warwick where she taught modern British and
world history. She also taught women’s studies and history at the University
of Gloucestershire, as well as lecturing and publishing on eighteenth-century
English businesswomen. She is now an independent scholar, researching
aspects of business history in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century provincial
England.
Susan M. Yohn is a Professor of History at Hofstra University in Hempstead,
New York. Her work has focused on women religious reformers, their organ-
isations, and more recently on women and money. She is the author of A
Contest of Faiths: Missionary Women and Pluralism in the American South-
west, Cornell University Press, 1995 and ‘Crippled Capitalists: The Inscrip-
tion of Economic Dependence and the Challenge of Female Entrepreneurship
in Nineteenth-Century America’, Feminist Economics 12 (1–2),
January–April 2006, pp. 85–109.
1 Introduction
Anne Laurence, Josephine Maltby and
Janette Rutterford
Historians working in social and economic history and in women’s and gender
history usually discuss the economics of women’s lives in terms of poverty,
powerlessness and absence of money and of waged and unwaged work.
Women’s financial affairs have made little impact on accounting history, busi-
ness history or financial history. Where moneyed women have attracted notice,
historians’ views have been highly gendered. W.D. Rubinstein’s study of the
very wealthy in Britain since the industrial revolution excludes women ‘because
of the haphazard nature of inheritance of large fortunes by women in England
and the difficulties of tracing biographical details of their lives’.1 The very small
number of women who were wealthier than their husbands or fathers, he argues,
probably owed their funds either to tax-avoidance schemes or to ‘shrewd invest-
ment and cautious spending by the heiress or her advisors’.2 He notes the small
number of women who made business fortunes, and also the small number of
inherited industrial fortunes by comparison with fortunes derived from com-
merce or land.3 His views are not surprising in view of the kind of attention
given to the wealthy in the nineteenth-century press. In 1872, the Spectator pub-
lished a list naming the 124 individuals who had left £250,000 or more at death
between 1861 and 1871; this included five women, of whom one was a noted
heiress and political hostess, two appeared in lists of charitable donors from time
to time, and the other two made virtually no public impact.4
In contrast to the work of economists and economic historians, who consider
the market to be gender neutral, has been that of literary scholars and cultural
historians who have discussed whether the market itself was gendered. Follow-
ing J.G.A. Pocock, many scholars have commented on the representation of
credit as a woman and the feminisation of the market. Catherine Ingrassia’s
work has explored the representation of women as sexually and financially
rapacious in their participation in the South Sea Bubble, while E.J. Clery has
shown how women featured disproportionately in the backlash that followed the
Bubble.5
Introducing the concept of gender challenges ideas about the nature of ration-
ality and whether women can reasonably be conceptualised as ‘emotional’ eco-
nomic actors in contrast to ‘rational’ economic men. If the market is ‘rational’
can it really be gender neutral? The work of feminist economists and
2 A. Laurence et al.
philosophers considers women’s capabilities, repudiating the notion common to
both Western and non-Western societies, that women are emotional and that
emotions are feminine and the enemies of reason.6 Martha Nussbaum has con-
vincingly demonstrated that emotions do not arise from women’s nature, rather
from the circumstances of many women’s lives.7 Furthermore, what might seem
rational in the twenty-first century often did not seem so in the eighteenth or
nineteenth centuries: considerations that might be important to us may have
been insignificant in past times. For example, we are increasingly concerned
with the consequences of longevity for our own financial futures; before the
twentieth century there was the likelihood of death at a relatively young age
often occurring speedily and unexpectedly, though whether ‘the brevity and
uncertainty’ of life, as Richard Dale suggests, increased the attraction of get-
rich-quick commercial ventures is debatable.8
At the same time, assumptions about women’s incapacity have inclined both
historians and present-day commentators to treat women’s financial manage-
ment as conservative and averse to undue risk, directed at providing income
rather than trading gains or capital growth. As Laurence and Carlos and Neal
have shown for the eighteenth century and Rutterford and Maltby for the nine-
teenth century, women were present and active in financial markets, and, while
many of them did require an income, they were also active traders.9
The women who make up the subject matter of this book include a few who
were numbered among the very rich of their time, but the majority were prosper-
ous upper-class women living on incomes provided by their families, or middle-
class women engaged in managing their own finances or running businesses.
Many of the women who appear on these pages had to take an active interest in
their own finances because they did not have much money. Within the house-
hold, married and unmarried women were concerned with income and expendi-
ture. The development of banks, the stock market, government debt and a host
of financial ‘products’ such as bonds and lottery tickets required middle-class as
well as wealthier women to make judgements and decisions about how to
dispose of their funds. The growing numbers of women in waged work required
women further down the social scale to take an active interest in pensions and
savings.
Common to the women who people these pages was the experience of pos-
sessing or acquiring money and looking after it themselves, and of gathering
knowledge and experience in doing so, frequently in the face of legal disabilities
and social disapprobation. So this book seeks to chart, in a variety of settings,
the extent of women’s financial activity, and to explore how they acquired their
knowledge and used it to manage their financial affairs. While we do not explic-
itly consider arguments about emotion, women’s nature and economic ration-
ality, many of the chapters look at how women’s financial actions made sense in
the particular circumstances in which they found themselves. Perhaps the most
important story told by the studies in this book is that, despite the different legal
regimes under which women lived, women took control of their affairs within
existing constraints which usually permitted little financial independence for
Introduction 3
married women and limited independence for unmarried or widowed women. So
a significant theme of this book is women’s agency.
The chapters in this book are concerned with two broad themes: one is
women’s command of financial and investment knowledge and the other is
investment behaviour. They identify key features of women’s financial and
investment behaviour for the various periods and territories with which they are
concerned, the significant factors influencing it, and the implications for our
understanding of women’s role as investors. Many of the chapters deal with
Britain, which, after the Netherlands, had the earliest financial markets. Chapters
on other countries show how differences in legal systems, in marriage practices
and in financial institutions could have an impact upon women’s experience.
So this book is concerned with some of the many ways in which women
engaged with understanding and managing their own finances in the period cov-
ering the start of the stock market in England, the enactment of Married
Women’s Property Acts in the nineteenth century, the integration of women into
the waged workforce as factory, service and office workers, and the impact of
the First World War, with comparative studies from Sweden, Japan, Germany,
Italy and the United States. It offers the view that women were active in the
stock market and in other forms of financial management, that it is possible to
quantify this activity, and that they were competent economic actors. This intro-
duction is concerned with the context for women and finance in Britain and with
some of the general issues raised by a discussion of these subjects over such a
long period. Separate introductions to the sections provide historical context.
Gender
We know a good deal about men’s financial affairs, their attitudes to risk, their
participation in the market, and the professionalisation of banking, stockbroking
and accounting. Men are generally assumed to outnumber women so over-
whelmingly that women’s financial behaviour scarcely signifies or is merely
supplementary to men’s. When women are considered, they are taken to be
conservative both in choice of investments and in their management, and women
making business decisions are considered not to be risk-takers. Women played
little part in the emergence of the financial professions; they were, for example,
excluded from membership of the professional organisation of chartered accoun-
tants in England and Wales until 1919 and from the floor of the London stock
exchange until 1973.10 But set against this is the ‘law’, enunciated by the eco-
nomic historian Joan Thirsk, that:
whenever new openings have appeared in the English scene, whether in crafts,
or in trade, and, in the modern world, in new academic endeavours, or in the
setting up of new organisations in the cultural field, women have usually been
prominent alongside men, sometimes even out-numbering them.... But that
situation has only lasted until the venture has been satisfactorily and firmly
established . . . when [it] fall[s] under the control of men.11
This might prompt us to look at women’s participation in the financial revolu-
tion of the early eighteenth century in a different light. It might, too, suggest
that subsequent developments in financial markets, in the professionalisation of
investment and accounting, in the concept of the portfolio, the development of
savings schemes and in attitudes to risk, deserve examination to see whether
women and men acted and reacted in the same way. Attitudes to investment
and speculation influence the definition of sensible financial management by
men and women: the great growth in the share-owning population of Britain
after 1870 required that putting money into the stock market be conceptualised
in some way that emphasised its prudence rather than its risk; investment for
income was acceptable, and, as Itzkowitz puts it, speculation was
domesticated.12
But the purpose of the chapters in this volume is not merely to fill in a
missing piece of history, it is also to draw attention to the fact that financial
behaviour takes many different forms. Women are one of the sub-sets of
investors that are easiest to identify. Gender, apart from its intrinsic significance,
offers a way of identifying a group of financial actors who might be supposed to
have common interests or characteristics that influence their financial behaviour.
Certainly it is easier, in a list of customers, shareholders or employees, to distin-
guish men from women, in a way that is extremely difficult and time-consuming
to do with such characteristics as age, wealth or marital status.13
In the early days of trading in stock, the press identified women as being
foolish and short-sighted gamblers, primarily on the basis of women’s supposed
nature rather than their actual behaviour.14 Newspapers such as the London
Journal reported at the time of the South Sea Bubble in 1720 that ‘The ladies
have mortgaged their pin money’, had stopped buying clothing and ornaments
and that such was the frenzy that ‘there is not a pawnbroker in London of any
figure that has any money left’.15 At the same time, journalists noted the names
of women who had made fortunes in trading stock. Historians have not necessar-
ily done much to dispel this reputation for irresponsibility. Malcolm Balen, for
example, writes of women throwing themselves at John Law for shares in the
early-eighteenth-century Mississippi scheme.16 But what startled commentators
at the time of the South Sea Bubble was the visibility of women’s participation.
In reality, women had been significant investors as early as 1685 and were
able legally to deal in the market because, being a new phenomenon, no one had
thought to exclude them.17 P.G.M. Dickson, writing on the eighteenth-century
financial revolution in England before the impact of second-wave feminism,
identified women as one of the groups worthy of attention (though they do not
qualify for an entry in his index) – around one-fifth of the investors in a variety
of different forms of stock and government debt were women.18 Alice Clare
Carter noted that ‘women investors [in the eighteenth century] seem to have
been much more capable than is generally believed’.19 Alongside the idea of
women as emotional and irrational speculators, as the use of the market spread,
they were conceptualised as cautious, risk-averse investors interested in income
rather than trading gains.
Introduction 5
Under English common law, single women (whether spinsters or widows)
had virtually the same rights over property as men; the position was very differ-
ent for married women.20 So a woman’s capacity to operate independently in
affairs of property and finance was much affected by her marital status. In con-
sidering gender, finance and property, gender is not a single category of analy-
sis. Married Women’s Property Acts, passed at different times in the various
common-law jurisdictions during the nineteenth century, gave married women
rights over property they brought to the marriage and property they acquired
during it, but few of them at first pass gave married women rights comparable to
those of women without husbands.21
Gender also provides an interesting, if sometimes difficult, basis for compari-
son between countries. The difficulties arise from differences in legal rights,
especially in relation to women’s capacity to own and freely to dispose of prop-
erty, to dowries and to dower, and also from uneven economic development
between countries.
Class
The chapters in this volume covering earlier periods deal with upper- and
middle-class women, since these were the women who had money to dispose of.
They extend the work started by Peter Earle on the middle classes in late-
seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century London that alerted historians to the
idea that women not only ran businesses, but also owned capital.22 He demon-
strates that middle-class London citizens between 1660 and 1720 increased their
investment in government debt by 400 per cent, while their ownership of stocks
and bonds rose by a mere 30 per cent, but he also notes that the greatest expo-
sure to stock was among the richest citizens. Poorer people put their money into
leases, loans and government debt.23 He does not break down these figures by
gender, but he does suggest that women were as much a part of this financial
transformation as men. Most landed families until well into the nineteenth
century used non-land assets for limited and temporary purposes, to lodge
money for short periods or to provide an assured income.24
Women and credit in early modern England have been the subject of histor-
ians’ attention for some time.25 Judith Spicksley notes that their ownership of
credit was characterised by dispersing the risk by making numerous small short-
term loans to relatives and neighbours and that by 1700 lending by single
women had become a more formal business, and was increasingly likely to be
secured by a formal credit instrument.26 Earlier strictures against usury had been
abandoned and the most objectionable feature of money-lending was to charge
excessive interest.27 Indeed, it was almost a Christian duty to ensure that the
money of those who were incapable (orphans, widows, the physically or men-
tally incapacitated) was carefully managed.28 Margaret Hunt, looking at middle-
class finances, suggests that families continued to be a vital source of capital for
business throughout the eighteenth century and that lending institutions did not
become significant until the nineteenth century.29
The work by Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall on men and women of the
English middle class has been immensely influential. They subscribe to the view
that middle-class women in the nineteenth century were increasingly defined by
their inactivity, providing ‘hidden investment’ in family businesses as business
and family affairs were increasingly differentiated.30 They describe a world in
which marriage structured the meaning of property for both men and women.31
They also see the development of separate spheres – one public and male, the
other private and female – as coincident with the development of industrial
capitalism. All this was dependent upon a general increase in wealth that
‘enabled dependent women to be supported while keeping their capital in circu-
lation’.32 The implication of the development of the domestic ideology was that
women would work for wages or run a business only when forced to do so by
the absence of male support.
The rare women who owned and managed substantial and successful busi-
nesses, such as Sarah Child, who ran Child’s Bank after her husband’s death in
1782, or Lady Charlotte Guest, who ran the Dowlais ironworks from 1852 to
1855, have been the subject of occasional studies, but are commonly viewed as
dogs walking on their hind legs. There were a few large-scale and unsuccessful
women’s enterprises such as those of Lady Mary Herbert who, having ventured
and lost a large sum of money in John Law’s Mississippi scheme in the 1720s,
lost a further fortune in a silver mine speculation, and Sarah Clayton who,
having successfully turned round her brother-in-law’s failing colliery in the
1740s and 1750s, overstretched herself with her own colliery and was declared
bankrupt shortly before her death in 1779.33
Recently, several studies of women who ran smaller businesses have
appeared and have challenged the stereotype of women’s businesses as small-
scale, temporary and undercapitalised.34 Christine Wiskin’s chapter discusses
three businesswomen: Eleanor Coade, the manufacturer of architectural ceram-
ics; Charlotte Matthews, banker and bill-broker; and Jane Tait, dress-maker and
milliner. Women have traditionally operated businesses in spaces unoccupied by
men and, especially in pre-industrial economies, primarily in the textiles and
clothing trades, the second-hand trades and pawnbroking, victualling and service
industries.35 Peter Earle notes that women were more likely to be creditors than
debtors in London bankruptcy cases in late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-
century London.36 Women were essential to the development of the new
eighteenth-century trades serving the growing population of consumers and
exploiting opportunities offered by urban sociability, and they continued to work
in these trades in the nineteenth century.37 The conclusion of these studies is that
women were active in more trades, were often operating at a higher financial
level and in a wider variety of different kinds of partnership, and continued to be
active further into the era of separate spheres in the nineteenth century than is
suggested by Davidoff and Hall.38
The volume of writing on middle-class and propertied women is small by
comparison with writing on women’s place in the workforce – whether waged or
unwaged – which has dominated studies of the economic position of women.
Introduction 7
The development of capitalism has been seen primarily in terms of industrial
capitalism, the force that created the industrial revolution and restructured the
working lives of lower-class men and women, imposed time discipline, wage
dependence, urbanisation and new attitudes to skills, as well as changes in social
and family relationships. Following Alice Clark’s book of 1919 and Ivy Pinch-
beck’s of 1930, historians of women in Britain have divided into pessimists who
see the industrial revolution as having caused a deterioration in women’s posi-
tion, and optimists, who see it as having created the conditions for women’s
emancipation.39 Works of gender history primarily treat women as participants
in household economies or as subjects of capitalist employers.40 The labour
history background of many historians of post-industrial-revolution women’s
work, and the wider influence of socialist feminism, has focused their attention
on women as employees, and their relations with employers and with men in the
workplace. There is a consensus that women were essential to the process of
industrialisation and that its effects had different consequences for men and for
women.41
But there is little in the literature that touches upon women who put their
money into capitalist enterprises, whether as large-scale investors or as working
women looking for a return on their savings. Studies of savings have tended to
concentrate on friendly societies and the cooperative movement and such small-
scale schemes as Christmas clubs.42
Coverture and women’s real and personal property

Married women under English common law were prevented by the legal doc-
trine of feme coverte (coverture) from owning land (real property), but widows
and spinsters (as feme sole) owned it on exactly the same terms as men.43 Per-
sonal property (rents, mortgage income, stocks and shares, jewellery, etc.) were
also subject to the husband’s control. Only pin money was the wife’s own,
though in practice household goods and linen were treated as the wife’s property
(paraphernalia). There were, as we shall see, a variety of ways in which cover-
ture could be circumvented and by the time of the Married Women’s Property
Act in 1870 which abolished coverture in England and Wales, these were very
widely used. It was not, however, until the Married Women’s Property Act of
1882 that married women acquired over their property the same rights as women
without husbands.44 The effects of the Acts have been much debated but it seems
that the disposition of married women’s wealth was significantly affected by
them. Until the first Act, women were more likely to hold real property than per-
sonal property; although neither they nor their husbands had free disposal of the
real property. Women who married after 1870 (the first to whom the Act
applied) held much more of their property as personal property – savings and
investments – over which they now had a suitable degree of control.45 A further
effect was that many more women had to make wills. A subject for future
research must be a comparative study of the investment decisions of women
before and after the Married Women’s Property Act.
At the beginning of the period to be studied in this book, dowries or marriage
contracts were usual. Under these, property passed from the bride and/or her
family to the husband in return for legally enforceable provision for widowhood.
Amy Louise Erickson has demonstrated convincingly that marriage settlements
were widely used, and not solely by the rich and landed, to reserve part of the
estate to wives personally (separate estate) or to provide a jointure (maintenance
for widowhood beyond the custom of dower which gave a widow a life interest
in one-third of her late husband’s real property).46 Separate estate developed as a
way of preserving the wife’s family’s interest in property and was often used on
remarriage by widows with children.47 Although married women’s separate
estate was not recognised under English common law it was recognised by
Chancery which did not acknowledge the existence of coverture.48
Provision for widowhood was not necessarily provision for old age; in eight-
eenth- and nineteenth-century Britain there were many young widows: the
single-parent family was as common as it is today but for the reason that mar-
riages were abbreviated by the early death of one of the parents (divorce was
virtually impossible). And single-parent families were more likely to have
female than male heads not least because widowers showed a more marked pref-
erence for remarriage.49
In 1833 the custom of dower, intended to provide for widows, was abolished.
In practice it had already been superseded by many varieties of trust and by
various Acts of Parliament that allowed men to dispose of their personal estates
by their wills, notwithstanding the custom of setting aside certain portions for
widows and children.50 Of particular concern, given that many widows had to
bring up young children, was an assured income. By the nineteenth century
separate estate had to be managed by trustees and was for the sole use of the
wife.51 The trust, including the marriage settlement, continued in popularity
throughout the nineteenth century, even to the point, as Chantal Stebbings sug-
gests, of being an integral part of Victorian society, used by ‘gentlemen, clerks
in holy orders, butchers, printers, merchants and yeomen [who] were typical of
the range of middle-class settlors’, as well as by landed aristocrats.52 Morris has
concluded that trusts ‘took women out of active participation in the economy’
because they were made dependent on income from capital which was managed
by trustees.53 But the terms of trusts varied: the life tenant’s ability to influence
the trustees’ behaviour might be ‘imperative’ rather than merely ‘discretionary’;
Morris himself quotes the example of a widowed Leeds woman in the mid nine-
teenth century writing regularly to her trustees about her investment and loans
and the quality of the latest railway share issues.54
The Victorian trust, which might be testamentary or inter vivos, was a con-
tinuation of the forms of marriage settlement and jointure developed to circum-
vent the terms of dower. Testamentary settlements often took the form of a fund
with income to the widow, and the remainder to the children. The inter vivos
trust was often a marriage settlement, typically a capital sum of between £2,000
and £10,000 invested in, for example, consolidated bank annuities with the
income devolving on the survivor, then to the issue of marriage as appointed, or
Introduction 9
vesting when they reached the age of 21 or married.55 There was the continuing
risk that the widow might find herself in financial distress as her growing off-
spring made increasing demands on her, and she might need to change her
investment behaviour accordingly. Blackwood’s magazine in 1876, for instance,
described the plight of the widow left ‘with £5,000 and a rising family’ com-
pelled to move the money from government or railway loans in the hope of a
higher return from ‘more highly priced loan stocks which are the refuge of the
widow, the clergyman and the reckless’.56
Real property (land) was not subject to coverture, but a wife could not alter,
rent or dispose of land or buildings without her husband’s consent. Until 1898
no real property was included in English probate valuations, which means that it
is almost impossible to estimate how much land women owned or how much
income they derived from it.57 In the 1870s and 1880s John Bateman published
lists of the 2,500 landowners with 3,000 acres and an income of more than
£3,000 a year: of these, women made up about 5 per cent.58 The social cachet
that attached to landownership was of less significance for women than for men;
for many the possession of land was merely an interlude in its transmission from
one man to another. During the period of this study the price of land rose but its
yield fell. In 1700 the usual price of land was 20 years’ purchase, i.e. 20 times
its annual yield of 5 per cent. Despite the increase in other investment opportun-
ities in the eighteenth century, demand for land remained high but, with less
land available to buy, the price rose to 30 years’ purchase, giving a yield of less
than 3 per cent.59 By the late nineteenth century the instability of the estate
market, as a result of war and the introduction of Death Duties in 1894, made
land a much less attractive option unless it had potential for mineral extraction
or industrial development or was in a neighbourhood where urban development
was possible.
The significance of landownership also changed over the period. The wealth
of eighteenth-century peers was held primarily in land rather than stock or
government debt.60 With the greater safety of mortgages and loans on personal
bonds, the development of the capital market and the fall in the interest rate,
landowners borrowed on the security of land. So women’s income derived from
land (normally from settlements made to landowners’ daughters and widows)
was increasingly commuted into securities bought on loans secured on land.61
For the longer term, such people more commonly put money into mortgages that
were secure and yielded a higher return than land.62 The decline in the amount of
government stock available in the mid nineteenth century (a consequence of the
country not being at war) meant that there was a greater interest in equities: in
the 1820s chiefly insurance, gas, water and canal companies; in the 1830s and
1840s in railways.63 An expanding range of homes for money included govern-
ment funds, bonds of foreign and colonial governments and foreign railways.64
Alongside the wealthy landowners was a growing class of well-off people
whose estates were made up primarily of personal property. From 1714 the
usury rate in England – the rate of return on mortgages, bonds and private debts
– was limited to 5 per cent. Government debt, however, was not constrained by
this regulation, nor were rent charges or interest on land.65 Government debt
generally provided a lower rate of return but it was more secure and more liquid
than private debt and lacked the disadvantages of landowning.
Charting women’s presence in finance

Women generally constitute between 5 and 15 per cent of the total population of
businesspeople, investors, bank customers or financial decision-makers dis-
cussed in this volume.66 However, a common finding is that although the value
of women’s participation in different kinds of economic life tends to be lower
per capita than that of men, there seem to be few, if any, economic spheres from
which women were completely absent. The authors see women as agents in
financial affairs despite the legal and social disabilities under which they found
themselves.
To manage their finances women needed knowledge, and the processes by
which they acquired and applied it form one of the themes of the volume. In
England, share prices were published in the newspapers from the late seven-
teenth century; more specialist services were provided by the development of a
business press.67 Although there have been studies of how business professionals
learned to use emerging institutions – the stock market and banking – none has
addressed the question of how non-professionals in general and women in
particular acquired and applied knowledge of these new vehicles.68 The extent
and range of women’s financial presence makes it quite clear that they had this
knowledge, though how far they exercised it themselves, rather than through
bankers, brokers and trustees is hard to estimate. During the nineteenth century
the amount of financial information available in the press expanded to match the
increase in investment opportunities – by 1824 there were 624 joint-stock com-
panies – and by the 1840s a new kind of financial journalism aimed at middle-
class family readers joined the specialist press.69 While newspapers for the
general reader included money columns, specialist newspapers such as The
Railway Bell and London Family Newspaper, 3 January 1846, included a
‘Column for the Fair Sex’ with ‘Fashions for the Week’.70 Prospectuses for new
financial products started to mention women, and their presence at investment
company meetings was noted as, for example, at the annual meeting of the
Fourth City Mutual Investment and Building Society in 1869 and the Oxford
Building and Investment Company in 1883.71
While knowledge was available to women, they were nevertheless regarded as
at risk of making terrible mistakes in financial matters. The early stock market
was presented as an alternative form of work for middle-class women, but as an
extension of gaming for upper-class women.72 It was taken for granted that men
speculated, though few took the risks described by Anthony Trollope’s character
Auguste Melmotte. Melmotte was supposedly based on the company promoter
Baron Grant (1830–99) who exploited the gullibility of clergy, widows and other
‘small yet hopeful investors’, and with the proceeds built the largest private
mansion for its time in London which was demolished by his creditors in 1883.73
Introduction 11
There are a number of methodological problems arising from the fact that it is
usually very much harder to obtain detailed information about women’s finances
than men’s, especially for earlier periods. Married women’s money was com-
monly inseparable from their husbands’ and, while there are a good many
women’s account books and wills, it is often difficult to reconstruct from them
either the whole amount or the constitution of the entire portfolio of money and
property owned by the account-keeper. Many women’s finances were conducted
through trusts or male agents, which makes it even harder to detect the composi-
tion and value of their holdings. Nevertheless, it will be apparent that the authors
of the chapters in this volume have used a wide variety of different kinds of
source, and both quantitative and qualitative methods, to explore women’s finan-
cial activities.
The majority of the women who form the subject of these chapters were unmar-
ried or widowed. As some of the chapters show, married women could evade some
of the restrictions placed on their ownership of property and their management of
wealth, but for most of the period covered by this book it is difficult to recover
much detail about their financial activities. Both spinsters and widows were likely
to be poorer than their male counterparts. Many widows had only a life interest in
property which at their death would return to the late husband’s family. Since the
property usually went to the widow’s children this was not necessarily an excep-
tionable arrangement, but it certainly limited widows’ freedom of action and can be
seen as an extension of the convention of feme coverte.
Women and account-keeping

A connection between women’s ability to run their own businesses and to make
or at least understand their own investments is provided by their understanding
of accounting. It is clear that women from the Middle Ages onwards were accus-
tomed to keep records of household expenditure and were assisted in doing so
by advice books. Christine de Pisan wrote in the fifteenth century of the need for
women to supervise their revenues and expenses, not hesitating to enquire for
details of their agents and paymasters, and reviewing their records.
Wives should be wise and sound administrators and manage their affairs
well. . . . They should have all the responsibility of the administration and
know how to make use of their revenues and possessions. . . . [A wife] ought
to know how much her annual income is and how much the revenue from
her land is worth . . . and try to keep to such a standard of living as their
income can provide and not so far above it that at the year end they find
themselves in debt.74
Advice books, manuals of husbandry and housekeeping all preached the virtues
of thrift and keeping accounts. The themes remain similar from the seventeenth
to the twentieth centuries. The Marquis of Halifax, after offering lengthy guid-
ance about religion and husbands, remarked in his advice to his daughter that
The art of laying out money widely, is not attained without a great deal of
thought; and it is yet more difficult in the case of a wife, who is accountable
to her husband for her mistakes in it: it is not only his money, his credit too
is at stake.75
More or less contemporary with him, Hannah Wolley emphasised the importance
of writing, arithmetic and accounting in girls’ education.76 A ‘banker’s daughter’
in 1863 published A Guide to the Unprotected exhorting women to keep accounts
and likening those who did not do so to someone at sea without a chart.77 The
author of works on jam-making and housecraft also published in 1903 a manual of
financial advice for women containing instructions on how to read a company
prospectus and the difference between ‘safe’ and ‘speculative’ investments.78
In the household economies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
women were close to the world of work and to the finances of business.
Ingrained habits of accounting owed their origins not only to a belief in prudent
financial management but also to the exercises in spiritual accounting and self-
examination that were such an important part of the worlds of godly men and
women in the seventeenth century. Amanda Vickery, writing about middle-class
women in the eighteenth century, devotes a chapter to their ‘Prudent economy’.
They had to be active as managers, needing to keep extensive written records
about purchases, stores and wages; in a genteel household, with a staff of up to
ten the norm, these were important expenses to control.79 Such account-keeping
was part of what Vickery calls ‘the exercise of power’, and played a major social
and economic role for women who were not in the world of waged work. Finn
points out the extent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to which diaries
and autobiographies dealt with exchanges of goods and money – purchases,
loans and gifts: ‘Like novels, diaries and autobiographies trace their genealogy
to the account book, and share that genre’s preoccupation with calculations of
the individual’s fluctuating balance of personal debits and credits.’80 The separa-
tion between household and money-making activities that took place with indus-
trialisation for men was much less sharp for women.
Women’s lives: expectations and work c.1700–c.1950

This volume covers a period not normally considered as a whole by historical
demographers of England, who divide it at 1851 with the appearance of the first
reliable national census data. Until that year, population history relies primarily
upon baptism, marriage and burial registers for the Church of England, supple-
mented after 1837 by civil registration of births, marriages and deaths. Although
we present below a brief account of the population changes over the period
1700–1950, it is important to remember that it was only from the middle of the
nineteenth century that knowledge of these figures had an impact upon either
human behaviour or policy-making.
There is a complicated connection between demographic trends and human
behaviour. We all, for example, recognise that there is a greater likelihood that
Introduction 13
we will survive to the age of 90 than our grandparents. But for at least half the
period covered by this book there were no national statistics for births, deaths or
life expectancy. People’s behaviour was influenced by the life events that over-
took those around them. It was observable that many children did not survive to
adulthood, that many parents died leaving young families. Time-honoured
custom, reinforced by the law, made provision for widows. (A widower, by
virtue of the marriage taking place, already had the right to his deceased wife’s
property unless there was a settlement.) Families recognised the unpredictability
of life events but there is little evidence that families planned for particular con-
tingencies. Life insurance companies began operations in the late seventeenth
century but taking out a life insurance policy was regarded as a kind of gambling
and relied upon very rough and ready estimates of risk.81 However, by the
middle of the nineteenth century, Victorian social statistics derived from the
census began to influence policy-makers and thus people’s behaviour.
Throughout the period covered by the book women’s life expectancy was
greater than men’s by a couple of years. Overall life expectancy at birth for men
and women together rose from mid-30s in 1701 to early 40s in 1871 (Wrigley
and Schofield’s figures do not distinguish between men and women).82 Figures
compiled later show that for those born in 1841, male life expectancy at birth
was 39 years, female 42 years; for those born in 1901 it had risen to 51 and 58
years of age respectively; and from age 58 in 1901 female life expectancy rose
to age 72 in 1931.83
The chances of death in childhood or young adulthood were very much
greater before the early twentieth century; generally it is reasonable to say that if
a woman survived tuberculosis in her teens or 20s, her first pregnancy and late
pregnancy she had a reasonable expectation of living to at least 60.84 It is worth
dwelling on these statistics because many of the women who are the subjects of
chapters in this book were unmarried or widowed; with life-expectancy figures
such as these there were many young widows. However, it is wrong to assume,
because the average life expectancy at birth was low, that people’s lives were
somehow accelerated and that they acquired the qualities of old age faster than
people do nowadays.
Marriages in England in 1700 conformed to a pattern common to north-
western Europe: plebeian women frequently left home in their early or mid-
teens and worked in farms or households, usually in some form of domestic
service, saving money until they married in their mid-20s. Higher-status women
brought money or property from their family to the marriage. Men were nor-
mally about 18 months older than the women they married. The mean age of
marriage for both men and women fell during the eighteenth century from late
20s and by the early nineteenth century it was down to the early 20s with a
significant number of marriages taking place between people in their teens.85 In
the second half of the nineteenth century the age rose to 25–26 and it continued
to rise until the 1920s.86 A high age of marriage means that even a poor woman
is likely to have some property when she marries, savings from her paid work
rather than a dowry from her family. A lower age of marriage tends to mean that
poverty is a much greater problem in early married life when children are being
born and the wife cannot undertake paid work.
Demographers note that a high age of marriage is often accompanied by a
high proportion of people never marrying.87 In the 1690s, 16–18 per cent of
people of marriageable age did not marry, by comparison with 5–7 per cent in
the late eighteenth century. Around 10 per cent of the population in the early
nineteenth century never married, a figure that rose to 20 per cent in the second
half of the century when the age of marriage began to rise.88 The 1851 census
and subsequent censuses drew attention to fact that unmarried women were
more numerous than unmarried men and that their numbers were rising.89 The
low rate of nuptiality between 1871 and 1911 meant that the proportion of
never-married women increased relative to the proportion of widows.90 There
were marked regional variations: in Hampstead, a prosperous middle-class
London suburb, in 1861 less than 28 per cent of women were married, compared
with 64 per cent in the working-class district of Poplar.91 The number of
‘surplus’ women continued to rise during the twentieth century, from 1.3 million
in 1911 to 1.7 million in 1931. Between 1914 and 1950 the incidence of mar-
riage rose continuously, the shortage of husbands for women of the generation
to marry during or soon after the First World War making surprisingly little
difference.92
Though the Victorians wrote as if the ‘surplus women’ question was an
entirely new social problem, spinsters were not a novelty; the census merely
made the numbers visible, creating something of a moral panic, which perhaps
says more about male attitudes to unattached women than about demographic
realities.93 Politicians, policy-makers and commentators, working on the
assumption that a ‘natural’ gender balance in the population was parity of
numbers of men and women, and comparing England with settler societies in the
United States and the British colonies where men greatly exceeded women in
number, sought ‘solutions’ to the ‘problem’. Unmarried lower-class women
were assumed to have gainful employment in factories and domestic service, so
it was believed that the ‘surplus’ of women was predominantly middle-class.94
The lack of employment for middle-class women created concern about how the
‘thousands and thousands of destitute educated women [who] have to earn their
daily bread’ could survive.95 But, though single women were seen by their
contemporaries as ‘doomed to an unhappily penniless and lonely existence’, the
1881 census report showed that the numbers of unmarried woman were highest
in towns which had substantial middle-class and leisured population.96 These
middle-class women without husbands had necessarily to take an interest in
financial matters.
For radicals, such as Anna Jameson, Barbara Leigh-Smith and Harriet Mar-
tineau, the answer to the ‘surplus women’ problem was to improve female edu-
cation, extend the range of occupations open to women, and raise the wages paid
to women (since routinely they received less than men for the same work), thus
enlarging the very restricted opportunities open to middle-class women to take
gainful employment and lead satisfying lives outside marriage. Conservatives,
Introduction 15
widely represented in the press, looked to ways of increasing marriage opportun-
ities and emigration to reduce the numbers of unmarried women and retain the
culture of domesticity. They treated women who had no husbands as having
‘failed’.97
Until around 1870, married women might expect to have between six and
seven live births; from 1870 a dramatic decline began so that the average
number of births to a woman by 1940 was just over two.98 Teenage pregnancies
were very uncommon, as were illegitimate births for much of the period,
though children could not necessarily be expected to grow up in a two-parent
family as death and desertion took their tolls. Levels of infant mortality were at
their highest in the first half of the eighteenth century, remaining pretty con-
stant until the end of the eighteenth century. Infant mortality did not diminish
substantially until about 1900, after which it declined precipitously.99 A decline
in family size has considerable implications for the role that women may play
in the workforce.
Most women who had an occupation in the eighteenth century engaged in
unwaged work, as members of a household that, certainly until the later years of
the century, was a significant economic unit as a farm or workshop in which the
members of the household played different roles according to their sex, age and
capabilities. The most significant form of independent economic activity open to
women was to run a business. The process of industrialisation from the late
eighteenth century is seen as separating home and workplace and cutting off
women from the world of waged work except for a period between childhood
and marriage. However, until well into the twentieth century the most significant
form of waged work for women was domestic service, an occupation that in
many ways replicated the working relationships of the family or household busi-
ness. Most women working in such conditions had little money to dispose of
beyond their immediate needs; younger women saved in anticipation of mar-
riage, but the sums involved rarely gave rise to the need for any special kind of
financial services.
Before the inclusion of occupational categories in the census, it is almost
impossible to estimate the numbers of women engaged in waged work and even
after that it is probable that there was considerable under-recording of married
women’s paid work. However, it is possible to chart a general decline in
women’s participation in the paid workforce from the early nineteenth century,
though this was not uniform by region, occupation or across time.100 Women did
not work on equal terms with men and wages and benefits were virtually never
equal. Changes in the Poor Law, in nuptiality and family size, in migration and
employment patterns may well have played their part. But what contributed to a
further decline in the number of women in paid work from roughly 1880 to 1930
is much harder to estimate.101
The earliest pensions for women were paid by charities, by parishes under the
old Poor Law and by friendly societies, and were for the relief of poverty.
During the nineteenth century large organisations such as the railways, utilities
companies and banks introduced superannuation schemes for men (men in
public employment had had pensions since the seventeenth century), but few
women were entitled to occupational or contributory pensions in their own right
as employers assumed that they would spend only a limited period of their lives
in paid employment.102 The universal provision of benefits for workers is a
feature of the twentieth century: state pensions were introduced in 1909, but
they were means-tested, for the over-70s, and were conceived of as a supple-
ment to other funds rather than income to live on. Even after the 1925 Pensions
Act widened the scope of provision with a statutory contributory scheme, and
lowered the pensionable age to 65, women often found it difficult to keep in
employment until they were eligible for a pension.103 Women’s exclusion meant
that in an era when men’s needs were met by pension schemes, there was a con-
siderable population of women who needed to concern themselves with financial
matters and with the management of their funds for income if they were unable
to work.
An article published in 1930 in the Financial Review of Reviews, an influ-
ential investment periodical, considered that there was a need for investment
products aimed specifically at women investors.
There are few women workers, beyond the period of youth, who are not
haunted with the spectre of a time when infirmity and old age will overtake
them . . . unfortunately, there are many [women] who are either careless or
constitutionally incapable of control of money, and to this class a permanent
investment of a safe kind would be a boon.104
Opportunities for building up funds included insurance, savings funds and

investment. Lucy Yates, writing in 1908, recognised that women ‘do not insure
as they should do, that is, they are more chary of doing so than men’ because of
the obstacles set by insurance companies – rates calculated on large sums
(£1,000); quarterly or annual premiums unsuitable for women with fluctuating
incomes; a medical examination; and other formalities.105 By the 1920s,
however, some insurance companies were offering insurance products specifi-
cally for women, such as the Prudential Assurance Company’s ‘Everywoman’
policy, aimed at single working women, which paid out on marriage or at term if
the holder remained single.106
Two women writing during the First World War commented that women had
been impelled into financial responsibility by the absence of male relatives to
advise them and that War Loan promotion had made its impression on them:
The War Loans have brought to the individual notice of women sound
schemes for the investment of their money, the prospectuses of which . . .
were simply and clearly written, with the particular aim of interesting and
attracting the embryo investor. Indeed, many women received their first
lesson in investment from these prospectuses, which patriotism compelled
them to study, and the interest thus aroused will not entirely disappear after
the War.107
Introduction 17
The link with War Loan and War Savings Certificates, which were issued
between 1916 and 1918, was perpetuated in Post Office Savings Certificates that
were deliberately targeted at less affluent savers through War Savings Associ-
ations located in ‘churches, shops, social groups, clubs, [and] men’s and
women’s organizations’.108 By June 1929, 918 million certificates had been sold,
representing a cash investment of £720 million. Allowing for conversions and
withdrawals, the balance outstanding at that date was still £483 million. During
the early twentieth century, Post Office and savings banks accounts multiplied.
The Post Office Savings Bank had 9,818,000 active accounts and the balance
due to depositors at the end of 1928 was £288,690,000, and there were 119 dif-
ferent trustee savings banks with total amounts due to depositors at 28 Novem-
ber 1928 of £159 million plus £5 million surplus funds.109
It appears that in the early twentieth century the number of women investing
in financial securities increased. The Economist study of 1938, which examined
investment in unit trusts, found that among savers, ‘nearly one-quarter were
described as spinsters, rather more than a sixth as married women . . . while one
out of every nine was a widow’.110 Hartley Withers, a prolific financial journalist
and commentator in the inter-war years, described ‘a new class of savers and
investors’ who were responding to a new market, with rapid ups and downs in
the level of company formations and a vogue for fixed interest securities.111 For
Withers, women brought to this new market ‘that wide-eyed sceptical curiosity
that makes women so formidable’ in their interventions.112 Sargant Florence, 20
years later, quoted a Financial Times study published in 1949 which found that
the proportion of women shareholders in 40 British companies of all sizes varied
between 61 per cent and 20 per cent, averaging 40 per cent of all single accounts
and 8 per cent of joint accounts.113
The development of women’s financial activity in the twentieth century – the
interaction of new educational and employment opportunities, state support and
savings schemes and investment products – is a story that largely remains to be
told. What is evident, however, is the continuity over the period covered by this
book – the extent to which women needed to deal with the same preoccupations
of low income and widowhood, and the uncharted willingness of many of them
to do so through investment.
Interdisciplinary work
Feminist economics has developed out of a belief that ‘Economics has been
more impervious and more resistant to women’s realities and women’s concerns
and more resistant to change than other social sciences’.114 Feminist economists
have turned to such disciplines as anthropology, psychology and sociology to
understand how beliefs and ‘sense of need’ may be formed outside the confines
of the rational economic man of neo-classical economics.115 In particular, they
have looked to history to show how institutions and beliefs may change over
time and, more particularly, to social history and to women’s history as models
for how women and gender relations may be integrated into the discipline.
Authors of the chapters in this volume come from departments of history,
geography and economics and schools of business, management and accounting,
drawing on approaches from these disciplines and from women’s and gender
history. The chapters range across a variety of historical sub-disciplines from the
econometric and cliometric to the social and cultural and draw on both quantita-
tive and qualitative data. It has been a feature of work on this subject that there
has been a remarkable convergence of interest from so diverse a range of subject
areas.
The contributions here demonstrate how gender offers a different point of
view from which to study the world of finance, business and accounting. The
doyenne of gender history, Joan Scott, warns historians not to perpetuate the
exclusion of women by establishing a separate women’s business history.116 As
she points out, gender is present in business but is not part of the dominant nar-
ratives. Supposedly dealing with the neutral world of markets, they portray an
overwhelmingly male world. Business history is concerned with progressive
development rather than with the messy and temporary arrangements which
characterise so much of women’s business. These points are just as applicable to
finance and accounting. The aim of this volume, then, is not simply to insert
women into these histories and to document their agency in business, finance
and accounting, but to use gender to explore economic practices and relation-
ships in the world of money.
The chapters demonstrate how resourceful women were, in a variety of
places and at different times, despite legal, economic and social disabilities.
English women seem to have had greater freedom than their German counter-
parts in the eighteenth century; the effects of the Married Women’s Property
Acts in England, Scotland and the United States seem to have been different. A
subtext in many of the chapters is the development of business life from the
household (in which women might readily play a part, though the extent of their
activity is unmeasurable) to the separate workplace/workshop/business premises
in which they made and sold goods and conducted business. This change seems
to have coincided with the development of more formal credit instruments, of
banks and of joint-stock companies and government debt. Women, who had
been an important source of personal credit in pre-industrial societies, making
individual arrangements with debtors for the payment of interest and the repay-
ment of capital, became ‘customers’ for ‘financial products’. Differences in eco-
nomic development between the nations and territories examined here also tell a
story, as do variations in the use of dowries and formal financial arrangements
made by families on behalf of their female members.
Perhaps the one universal feature of all the women’s financial and economic
activity reviewed in this volume is that it was smaller than comparable activity
for men. Their per capita ownership of stock, businesses and land was normally
less in value than men’s per capita ownership and the constraints under which
they practised were greater. But what also comes over very clearly is those areas
where the record is silent about women’s economic activity – sometimes it is
silent about men’s activity as well. Nevertheless, the chapters tell their own
Introduction 19
stories of women’s activity and engagement with the economic worlds of which
they were a part.
The chapters are arranged broadly chronologically and we have added intro-
ductions to the legal background of women’s financial activity in England in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and in the United States in the nineteenth
century. Many of the chapters originate from the special issue on women,
accounting and investment of Accounting, Business and Financial History 16
(2006), and from the sessions on Women’s Financial Decisions: their Wealth,
their Decisions, their Activity 1700–1930, held at the International Economic
History Association meeting in Helsinki in 2006. The editors and authors are
grateful for permission from Routledge (Taylor & Francis) to reproduce material
first published in the journal.
Notes
1 W.D. Rubinstein, Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain since the Industrial
Revolution, 2nd edn, London: The Social Affairs Unit, 2006, p. 38.
2 Rubinstein, Men of Property, p. 319.
3 Rubinstein, Men of Property, p. 320.
4 Spectator, 16 November 1872, pp. 1454–6.
5 J.G.A. Pocock, ‘The mobility of property and the rise of eighteenth century soci-
ology’, in J.G.A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History: Essays on Political
Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985, p. 114; Catherine Ingrassia, ‘The pleasures of business and
the business of pleasure’, Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 24, 1995,
reprinted in Ross B. Emmett (ed.), Great Bubbles: vol. 3 The South Sea Bubble,
London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000, pp. 324–30; Catherine Ingrassia, Authorship,
Commerce and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century England, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1998, p. 2; E.J. Clery, The Feminization Debate in
Eighteenth-Century England: Literature, Commerce and Luxury, Basingstoke:
Palgrave, 2004, p. 56.
6 Martha C. Nussbaum, ‘Emotions and women’s capabilities’, in Martha C. Nussbaum
and Jonathan Glover (eds), Women, Culture and Development: A Study in Human
Capabilities, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, pp. 360–1.
7 Nussbaum, ‘Emotions’, p. 306.
8 Richard Dale, The First Crash: Lessons from the South Sea Bubble, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2004, p. 3.
9 Anne Laurence, ‘Women investors, “that nasty South Sea affair” and the rage to spec-
ulate in early eighteenth-century England’, Accounting, Business and Financial
History 16 (2), 2006, pp. 245–64; Ann Carlos and Larry Neal, ‘Women investors in
early capital markets 1720–1725’, Financial History Review 11, 2004, pp. 197–224;
Janette Rutterford and Josephine Maltby, ‘ “The widow, the clergyman and the reck-
less”: women investors in England 1830–1914’, Feminist Economics 12, 2006, pp.
111–38.
10 England and Wales was the first territory to admit women as chartered accountants.
In 1967 the New York Stock Exchange admitted its first woman member.
11 Joan Thirsk, ‘The history women’, in M. O’Dowd and S. Wichert (eds), Chattel,
Servant or Citizen: Women’s Status in Church, State and Society, Irish Historical
Studies 19, Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, 1995, pp. 1–2.
12 David Itzkowitz, ‘Fair enterprise or extravagant speculation: investment, speculation
and gambling in Victorian England’, Victorian Studies 45 (1), 2002, pp. 121, 126;
Mary Poovey, ‘Writing about finance in Victorian England: disclosure and secrecy
in the culture of investment’, Victorian Studies 45 (1), 2002, p. 18.
13 Until well into the nineteenth century, single women were not reliably distinguished
from married women by title: ‘Mrs’ could be used of unmarried as well as married
women. It is still difficult to establish the marital status of women with the title
‘Lady’.
14 Ingrassia, ‘The pleasure of business and the business of pleasure’, p. 318.
15 The London Journal, 30 April–7 May 1720, p. 2.
16 Malcolm Balen, A Very English Deceit: The Secret History of the First Great Finan-
cial Scandal, London: Fourth Estate, 2002, pp. 72–3.
17 John Carswell, The South Sea Bubble, rev. edn, Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1993, pp. 8,
119.
18 P.G.M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development
of Public Credit 1688–1756, London: Macmillan, 1967, pp. 267, 282.
19 Alice Clare Carter, ‘English public debt in the eighteenth century’, 1968, reprinted
in Alice Clare Carter, Getting, Spending and Investing in Early Modern Times,
Assen, Netherlands: Van Goram, 1975, p. 139.
20 Amy Louise Erickson, ‘Coverture and capitalism’, History Workshop Journal 59,
2005, pp. 1–16. English common law was in force in Wales, Ireland and in many
British colonial possessions. Scotland used Roman (civil) law but was influenced by
common law.
21 Married Women’s Property Acts were passed in 1848 in New York; 1870 and 1882
in England and Wales; 1879 in New South Wales; 1881 in Scotland; 1872 and 1884
in Canada, for example. In states of the United States influenced by Spanish civil
law, married couples had property in common.
22 Peter Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family
Life in London 1660–1730, London: Methuen, 1989.
23 Earle, Making of the English Middle Class, pp. 146–7.
24 John Habakkuk, Marriage, Debt and the Estates System: English Landownership
1650–1950, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, p. 489.
25 B.A. Holderness, ‘Credit in a rural community 1660–1800’, Midland History 3,
1975, pp. 94–116; B.A. Holderness, ‘Credit in English rural society before the
nineteenth century’, Agricultural History Review 24, 1976. R.G. Griffiths, ‘Joyce
Jeffreys of Ham Castle: a seventeenth-century business gentlewoman’, Transac-
tions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society new series 10, 1933, pp. 1–32;
B.A. Holderness, ‘Elizabeth Parkin and her investments 1733–66: aspects of the
Sheffield money market in the eighteenth century’, Transactions of the Hunter
Archaeological Society 10, 1973, pp. 81–7; Bernard Elliott, ‘An eighteenth-
century Leicestershire business woman: the Countess Mary Migliorucci of Nevill
Holt’, Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society Transactions 61,
1987, pp. 79–82; W.C. Jordan, Women and Credit in Pre-Industrial and Develop-
ing Societies, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 1993; R. Tittler,
‘Money lending in the West Midlands: the activities of Joyce Jeffries 1638–1649’,
Historical Research 67, 1994, pp. 249–63.
26 Judith Spicksley, ‘ “Fly with a duck in thy mouth”: single women as sources of
credit in seventeenth-century England’, Social History 32, 2007, pp. 187, 195.
27 James Steven Rogers, The Early History of the Law of Bills and Notes: A Study of
the Development of Anglo-American Commercial Law, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1995, p. 99.
28 Spicksley, ‘Single women as sources of credit’, p. 201.
29 Margaret Hunt, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender and the Family in England,
1680–1780, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996, p. 22.
30 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the
English Middle Class 1780–1850, rev. edn, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 277–9.
Introduction 21
31 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. xxvii.
32 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 195.
33 Details of these women may be found in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biogra-
phy. Women could be declared bankrupt if they were either widows or spinsters, or
if they were married women with separate estate arrangements.
34 Christine Wiskin, ‘Urban businesswomen in eighteenth-century England’, in Rose-
mary Sweet and Penny Lane (eds), Women and Urban Life in Eighteenth-Century
England: ‘On the Town’, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003, pp. 87–110; Hannah Barker and
Karen Harvey, ‘Women entrepreneurs and urban expansion: Manchester
1760–1820’, in idem pp. 111–30; Alison Kay, ‘Small businesses, self-employment
and women’s work-life choices in nineteenth-century London’, in D. Mitch, John
Brown and Marco H.D. Van Leeuwen (eds), Origins of the Modern Career, Alder-
shot: Ashgate, 2004, pp. 191–206; Nicola Phillips, Women in Business 1700–1850,
Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006; Hannah Barker, The Business of Women: Female
Enterprise and Urban Development in Northern England 1760–1830, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006.
35 Beverly Lemire, ‘Peddling fashion: salesmen, pawnbrokers, tailors, thieves and the
second-hand clothes trade in England, c.1700–1800’, Textile History 22, 1991, pp.
67–82; Beverly Lemire, ‘Petty pawns and informal lending: gender and the trans-
formation of small-scale credit in England, c.1600–1800’, in Kristine Bruland and
P.K. O’Brien (eds), From Family Firms to Corporate Capitalism: Essays in Busi-
ness and Industrial History in Honour of Peter Mathias, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1998, pp. 112–38.
36 Earle, Making of the English Middle Class, p. 168.
37 Margot Finn, ‘Women, consumption and coverture in England, c.1760–1860’,
Historical Journal, 39, 1996, p. 704; Wiskin, ‘Urban businesswomen in eighteenth-
century England’, p. 89; Barker and Harvey, ‘Women entrepreneurs and urban
expansion’, p. 114.
38 For a discussion about the relative merits of fire insurance records, trade directories
and census data for providing information about businesses owned and run by
women see Barker, The Business of Women, pp. 42–54. For critique of Davidoff and
Hall, see Simon Morgan, A Victorian Woman’s Place: Public Culture in the Nine-
teenth Century, London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007, pp. 2–3.
39 Alice Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century, with an introduc-
tion by Amy Erickson, London: Routledge, 1992; Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers
and the Industrial Revolution 1750–1850, London: Frank Cass, 1969. The literature
on women’s work in England from the seventeenth century onwards is enormous,
but almost all of it refers back to Clark and Pinchbeck.
40 See, for example, Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Gender in History, Oxford: Blackwell,
2001, pp. 65–77. The extensive further reading considers gender and class, gender
and work, notes that there has been little work on other aspects of gender and eco-
nomic life, and ignores the idea of women as owners of capital. Katrina Honeyman’s
exemplary Women, Gender and Industrialisation in England 1700–1870, Bas-
ingstoke: Macmillan, 2000, considers women as workers and employees rather than
as employers or mobilisers of capital.
41 Honeyman, Women, Gender and Industrialisation, p. 15.
42 Nicola Reader, ‘Female friendly societies in industrialising England 1780–1850’,
University of Leeds PhD thesis, 2005.
43 Erickson, ‘Coverture and capitalism’, pp. 1–16.
44 Lee Holcombe, Wives and Property: Reform of the Married Women’s Property Law
in Nineteenth-Century England, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983, p. 201.
45 Mary Beth Combs, ‘Wives and household wealth: the impact of the 1870 Married
Women’s Property Act on wealth-holding and share of household resources’, Con-
tinuity and Change 19, 2004, p. 148.
46 Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England, London:
Routledge, 1993, p. 226.
47 Amy Louise Erickson, ‘Property and widowhood in England 1660–1840’, in Sandra
Cavallo and Lyndan Warner (eds), Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern
Europe, Harlow: Longman, 1999, p. 147.
48 Susan Staves, Married Women’s Separate Property in England 1660–1833, Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990, pp. 18–24.
49 Margaret Pelling, ‘Finding widowers: men without women in English towns before
1700’, in Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner (eds), Widowhood in Medieval and
Early Modern Europe, Harlow: Longman, 1999, p. 46.
50 The Act of Parliament of 1692 allowed inhabitants of the province of York to
dispose of their personal estates by their wills, and similar Acts were passed in 1696
for Wales, and in 1725 for the City of London. Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes,
p. 209; Statutes at Large, 4 Gulielmi & Mariæ, c.2; Statutes at Large, 7 & 8 Gulielmi
III, c.38; Statutes at Large, 11 George I, c.18.
51 Phillips, Women in Business, p. 41.
52 Chantal Stebbings, The Private Trustee in Victorian England, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2002, pp. 5, 6.
53 R.J. Morris, Men, Women and Property in England 1780–1870: A Social and Eco-
nomic History of Family Strategies amongst the Leeds Middle Classes, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 372.
54 Stebbings, Private Trustee, p. 80; Morris, Men, Women and Property, p. 314.
55 Stebbings, Private Trustee, p. 10.
56 Quoted in George Robb, White-Collar Crime in Modern England, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1992, pp. 29–30.
57 Rubinstein, Men of Property, p. 238. Only since 1926 has all real property been
included in the valuation.
58 John Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland, 4th edn,
London: Harrison, 1883. Bateman’s lists published in 1876, 1878, 1879 and 1883
were compiled from statistics collected by the government from parish valuation
lists. (David Spring, introduction to Bateman, reprinted by Leicester University
Press, 1971, p. 10.) Some 43,000 owners of more than 100 acres of land were identi-
fied, which would suggest that there were in the region of 2,000 women who owned
more than 100 acres.
59 G.E. Mingay, English Landed Society in the Eighteenth Century, London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1963, pp. 38–9.
60 Dickson, Financial Revolution, pp. 258, 281.
61 Mingay, English Landed Society, pp. 36–8.
62 Habakkuk, Marriage, Debt and the Estates System, p. 490.
63 Morris, Men, Women and Property, p. 362.
64 Habakkuk, Marriage, Debt and the Estates System, p. 492.
65 Gregory Clark, ‘Debts, deficits and crowding out: England 1727–1840’, European
Review of Economic History 5, 2001, p. 406.
66 They were about 5 per cent of the owners of businesses in eighteenth-century
provincial towns (Wiskin, ‘Urban businesswomen in eighteenth-century England’,
p. 91); about 5 per cent of those who owned more than 3,000 acres of land and had
incomes of £3,000 (Bateman, The Great Landowners); around 10 per cent of the
customers of Hoare’s Bank (Laurence, ‘Women investors’, p. 250).
67 Larry Neal, The Rise of Financial Capitalism: International Capital Markets in the
Age of Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 17–18; Natasha
Glaisyer, The Culture of Commerce in England 1660–1720, Woodbridge: Royal
Historical Society Studies in History, new series, 2006, p. 5.
68 Ann Carlos, Jennifer Key and Jill Dupree, ‘Learning and the creation of stock
market institutions: evidence from the Royal African and Hudson’s Bay Companies,
Introduction 23
1670–1700’, Journal of Economic History 58, 1998, pp. 318–44; Peter Temin and
Hans-Joachim Voth, ‘Banking as an emerging technology: Hoare’s Bank
1702–1742’, Financial History Review 13, 2006, pp. 149–78.
69 Poovey, ‘Writing about finance’, p. 18.
70 Sarah J. Hudson, ‘Attitudes to investment risk amongst West Midland canal and
railway company investors, 1760–1850’, University of Warwick PhD thesis, 2001,
p. 180.
71 Daily News, London, 19 November 1869; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 21 April 1883.
72 Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce and Gender, p. 35.
73 William Amos, The Originals: Who’s Really Who in Fiction, London: Jonathan
Cape, 1985, p. 350; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Michael Reed,
‘Baron Grant’.
74 Christine de Pisan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, translated and with an intro-
duction by Sarah Lawson, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985, p. 130.
75 George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, The Ladies New-Years Gift, or Advice to a
Daughter, 2nd edn, London, 1688, pp. 86–7.
76 Hannah Wolley, The Compleat Servant-Maid, London, 1677, cited in Amy Louise
Erickson, ‘Possession – and the other one-tenth of the law: assessing women’s
ownership and economic roles in early modern England’, Women’s History Review
16, 2007, p. 377.
77 A Banker’s Daughter, A Guide to the Unprotected in Everyday Matters Relating to
Property and Income, London: Macmillan, 1863, p. 18.
78 Lucy H. Yates, The Management of Money: A Handbook of Finance for Women,
London: Horace Cox, 1903.
79 Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter, New Haven, CT and London: Yale
University Press, 1998, pp. 127, 134.
80 Margot Finn, The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture
1740–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 64.
81 Geoffrey Clark, Betting on Lives: The Culture of Life Insurance in England
1695–1775, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999, p. 7.
82 E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield, The Population History of England 1541–1871: A
Reconstruction, London: Edward Arnold, republished Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
83 Pat Thane, ‘Old women in twentieth-century Britain’, in Lynn Botelho and Pat
Thane (eds), Women and Ageing in British Society since 1500, Harlow: Longman,
2001, pp. 208, 479.
84 David Coleman and John Salt, The British Population: Patterns, Trends and
Processes, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 52–3; Anne Laurence,
Women in England 1500–1760: A Social History, London: Weidenfeld and Nicol-
son, 1994, p. 28.
85 Wrigley and Schofield, Population History, p. 255; Andrew Hinde, England’s Popu-
lation: A History since the Domesday Survey, London: Hodder Arnold, 2003, p. 188;
E.A. Wrigley, R.S. Davies, J.E. Oeppen and R.S. Schofield, English Population
History from Family Reconstitution 1580–1837, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997, p. 140.
86 Michael S. Teitelbaum, The British Fertility Decline: Demographic Transition in the
Crucible of the Industrial Revolution, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1984, p. 98; Martin Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain,
1914–1999, 2nd edn, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000, p. 223.
87 Wrigley and Schofield, Population History, p. 265.
88 Wrigley et al., English Population History, p. 195; Hinde, England’s Population,
p. 188.
89 Judith Worsnop, ‘A re-evaluation of the “problem of surplus women” in nineteenth-
century England’, Women’s Studies International Forum 13, 1990, p. 22.
90 N. Tranter, Population since the Industrial Revolution; The Case of England and
Wales, London: Croom Helm, 1973, p. 105, quoted in Robb, White-Collar Crime,
pp. 29–30.
91 R. Woods, The Population of Britain in the Nineteenth Century, London: Economic
History Society, 1992, p. 42.
92 Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement, p. 222.
93 Pat Jalland, ‘Victorian spinsters: dutiful daughters, desperate rebels and the trans-
ition to the new women’, in Patricia Crawford (ed.), Exploring Women’s Past,
Sydney and London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984, p. 130.
94 Worsnop, ‘A re-evaluation’, p. 23.
95 Bessie Rayner Parks, Essays on Women’s Work, London: Alexander Strahan, 1865,
p. 79.
96 Philippa Levine, ‘ “So few prizes and so many blanks”: marriage and feminism in
later nineteenth-century England’, Journal of British Studies 28, 1989, p. 151.
97 Worsnop, ‘A re-evaluation’, pp. 24–6.
98 The rise in the population in the eighteenth century was the result of more people
marrying and having children rather than families becoming larger. Wrigley and
Schofield, Population History, p. 254; Simon Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender in
Britain 1860–1940, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 1.
99 Robert Woods, The Demography of Victorian England and Wales, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 247; see also Kate Fisher, Birth Control, Sex
and Marriage in Britain 1918–1960, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
100 Sarah Horrell and Jane Humphries, ‘Women’s labour force participation and the
transition to the male breadwinner family 1790–1865’, Economic History Review
n.s. 48, 1995, p. 105.
101 Jane Humphries, ‘Women and paid work’, in June Purvis (ed.), Women’s History in
Britain 1850–1945: An Introduction, London: UCL Press, 1995, pp. 93, 100.
102 Deborah Simonton, A History of European Women’s Work: 1700 to the Present,
London: Routledge, 1998, p. 251; Pat Thane, Old Age in English History: Past
Experiences, Present Issues, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 85, 194,
236–7, 243–5, 326.
103 Treasury Committee on Pensions for Unmarried Women: Minutes of Evidence on
the Complaints which are made as to the Position of Unmarried Women under the
Contributory Pensions, London: HMSO, 1938, para 434.
104 A. Wright, ‘The State and the small investor’, Financial Review of Reviews, January
1930, p. 35.
105 Lucy H. Yates, A Handbook of Finance for Women, London: Horace Cox, 1908, p. 62.
106 London: The Prudential Archive.
107 J. Greig and M. Gibson, ‘Women and investment’, Financial Review of Reviews,
June 1917, p. 175.
108 Helen Fraser, Women and War Work, New York: G. Arnold Shaw, 1918. Available
online: www.gutenberg.org/files/14676/14676–8.txt (accessed 11 June 2007).
109 R.K. Bacon, The Small Investor’s Handbook, York: The Yorkshire Post, 1934, p.
33; Wright, ‘The State and the small investor’, p. 33.
110 Quoted in Barnard Ellinger, The City: The London Financial Markets, London: P.S.
King and Son Ltd, 1940, p. 278.
111 Hartley Withers, The Quicksands of the City and a Way through for Investors,
London: Jonathan Cape, 1930, p. 18; A. Essex-Crosby, ‘Joint-stock companies in
England 1890–1930’, University of London M.Comm. thesis, 1938, p. 137.
112 Withers, The Quicksands of the City, p. 28.
113 P. Sargant Florence, Ownership, Control and Success of Large Companies, London:
Sweet and Maxwell, 1961, p. 179.
114 Michèle A. Pujol, Feminism and Anti-Feminism in Early Economic Thought, Chel-
tenham: Edward Elgar, 1992, p. 2.
Introduction 25
115 Rebecca M. Blank and Cordelia M. Reimers, ‘Economics, policy analysis and
feminism’, in Marianne A. Ferber and Julie A. Nelson (eds), Feminist Economics
Today: Beyond Economic Man, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003,
p. 16.
116 Joan Scott, ‘Comment: conceptualising gender in American business history’, The
Business History Review 72, 1998, p. 248.
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2 Women and finance in eighteenth-
century England
Anne Laurence
This brief section gives some of the common financial and legislative back-
ground to the chapters on the eighteenth century. At this time by far the most
important occasions for the transmission of wealth for women were marriage
and inheritance. Dowries or marriage contracts accompanied marriages of
people of quite modest means with the intention of providing for widowhood. In
England, unlike many other European countries, there was no direct relationship
between dowry (the property a woman brought with her at marriage) and dower
(the provision made for a widow), though a marriage contract made either
before or after the marriage might establish such a connection. One of the most
important characteristics of the period was the growing importance of wealth in
forms other than land, which meant that women were increasingly likely to
bring money or securities as a dowry or as part of a marriage contract, and were
increasingly likely to inherit money and securities and to have to manage them
for survival.
The early part of the period in England is often described as ‘the financial
revolution’ and is taken to be synonymous with the creation of the National
Debt in 1693 and the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694. To manage the
debt, the government experimented with a variety of different mechanisms such
as Exchequer Bills, annuities, lottery tickets and debt for equity swaps. By 1718
the high cost of the public debt, especially of long-term annuities paying 7 per
cent interest, led the South Sea Company, a chartered trading company, to
suggest that it undertake another debt-for-equity swap; a mechanism used with
the Bank of England in 1694 and the East India Company in 1708 when annu-
ities were exchanged for stock in the company. In addition to swapping public
debt for South Sea company equity (which it did in three tranches), the South
Sea company issued four new share subscriptions. During the spring and early
summer of 1720 not only did South Sea company prices soar (though they
started to fall in mid-August and ended the year at a price similar to that in
January 1720), but so also did all other equity prices.
Although the South Sea Bubble is identified as the moment when a wider
public became involved in the stock market, in truth, wealthy non-landed people
had already been buying and selling stock for some years. The difference that
the South Sea scheme seems to have made is that it increased activity in the sec-
Women and finance in eighteenth-century England 31
ondary market, allowing some investors to make money on the trading of shares.
Government use of the burgeoning secondary market for equity points to the
importance of the characteristics of that market. Transparent pricing made secu-
rities that were more readily negotiable than government debt. In addition, the
process of selling government annuities was extremely laborious by comparison
with transferring stock. Beyond the market, the growth of deposit banking for
private customers made it easier for out-of-town customers to take part in the
market. This growth had come about because of the greater legal security of bills
of exchange and promissory notes given by Acts of 1698 and 1704.
In addition to a spot market, the stock market by 1720 had developed many
of the characteristics associated with modern markets: a complex system of
loans and a market in options and futures. These developments, as well, perhaps,
as the anonymity of the market – as much as the ramping up of prices in 1720 –
brought much market trading into disrepute. Barnard’s Act of 1734 attempted to
prohibit dealing in options and futures.
Apart from the whole question of coverture (discussed in the Introduction to
this volume), two particular aspects of the law affected women’s capacity to be
active in the market. In theory, the disposition of personal property (rents, mort-
gages, income from loans, dividends) became a husband’s at the moment that a
woman married. Marriage contracts and women’s separate estate were mechan-
isms for denying husbands control over married women’s property, but the law
failed to keep up with the development of new financial instruments. Income
from rents or mortgages paid to married women became the husband’s, as did
the income from securities. But, unlike rents and mortgages, which were secured
on land that belonged to someone else, the stock itself belonged to the woman.
Until the early nineteenth century it was believed that stock could be reduced
into the husband’s possession only if it were actually redeemed.1 Latterly it was
believed to be his if it were transferred into his name. It is not clear what actual
effect this had on married women’s capacity to operate independently, but it
took several test cases to clarify the matter in the nineteenth century.
A second feature of the law was the existence of the right of feme sole mer-
chant (or feme sole trader) in London and some provincial cities. This was
intended to allow a woman to run a business in her own right without her
husband incurring liability for her trading debts. By the nineteenth century, for
this to be enforced, a female trader had to prove that her husband played no part
in the business at all, but the provision had the advantage that the woman was
liable for debts only to the extent of her separate assets.2 In general, even in the
earlier period, this right seems to have been used more as a mechanism to
protect against possible bankruptcy than as a means to allow married women
commercial freedom.
Notes
1 W.S. Holdsworth, A History of English Law, 9 vols, London: Methuen, 1925, vol. 7, p.
542. Securities carried the added advantage that, until the Napoleonic wars, dividends
32 A. Laurence
were not taxed (P.G.M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the
Development of Public Credit 1688–1756, London: Macmillan, 1967, p. 253).
2 Nicola Phillips, Women in Business 1700–1850, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006; pp.
41, 44.
Bibliography
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3 Women in the city
Financial acumen during the South Sea
Bubble
Ann M. Carlos, Karen Maguire and Larry Neal
Gone are the days when a woman was dependent on a man for a financially
secure future. They are single handedly creating their own money-wise ways.
Women in all positions of life – single, married, divorced, full-time workers,
stay-at-home moms – are playing a bigger role in managing their (and their
family’s) finances – and they’re winning.1
Introduction
A quick online search on the term ‘women investor’ will provide a list of
resources specifically directed at women. This includes sites with advice for
women and even firms with financial advisers marketing themselves specifi-
cally towards women. The quotation above comes from one such site. North-
west Mutual takes a particularly historical perspective, arguing that, unlike in
the past, women now can be the arbitrators of their own financial destiny and
furthermore, they argue that women today are financially able and astute in
their financial operations. The view that women securing their own financial
destiny is something new is, in part, what this chapter seeks to dispel. We
show that not only were women involved in capital markets from their incep-
tion but that women showed considerable financial acumen and profited from
such investments, even to the point of making money while men as a group
lost money.
The view that women were financially able and active in their own financial
matters is one that runs counter to the perception of women’s financial depend-
ency on men, whether father, husband, brother or uncle. Running in tandem is a
perception of early stock markets as gambling devices complete with moments
of speculative frenzy and hysteria. The behaviour and actions of those involved
in such markets has important consequences not only for how we view the
development of early stock markets but also, and perhaps even more import-
antly, how we understand women’s historical financial dependence or independ-
ence. This chapter examines women’s participation in the London stock market
during a period of heightened activity, that of the South Sea Bubble in 1720, and
explores the extent of financial acumen shown by those women in their trading
activity. We focus on two specific stocks: shares in the Bank of England which
34 A.M. Carlos et al.
can be considered a blue-chip or safe investment, and shares in the Royal
African Company which was a very risky stock.
Using actual stock transfer records for both of these companies, we explore
market activity by all women who bought or sold shares in these two companies
across the year 1720. We find that as a result of their speculations in the market,
women as a group enjoyed capital gains. The distribution of such gains,
however, was highly unequal. Some women made money and some lost. Some
even made a considerable amount of money. When we compare men and
women’s trading activity in the relatively more stable Bank of England stock,
again we find that some men made money and some lost but, in contrast to
women, men as a group lost money. Thus the market not only provided an
avenue for financial gain and independence for some women but also women’s
conduct in the market speaks more generally to the financial acumen of women
as a group.
With the emergence of joint-stock companies in seventeenth-century Europe,
secondary markets for their securities slowly came into being. These stock
markets, then as now, provided a mechanism by which original purchasers of
company stock could resell their claims to other savers. Knowing that they can
acquire liquidity whenever they require it, the original lenders are more willing
to lend in the first place. Secondary buyers are also more willing to buy,
knowing they too can resell these claims if necessary. Secondary markets,
however, cannot play these roles unless there are a variety of individuals in the
market with different savings objectives or time horizons.2 If everyone wants
only to buy or if everyone just wants to sell, there is no market. Disparate timing
of purchases and sales is a necessary condition for a secondary market, but
timing is not the whole picture.
Capital markets create opportunities for investors in a number of different,
though interrelated, ways. These assets provide the possibility of financial gains
that may come from selling shares for more than the purchase price. Also, shares
purchased on these secondary markets provide a potential income stream
through the payment of dividends. Because they are transparently priced and
liquid, these shares can also be used as collateral for investment or business. Of
course, if everyone in the stock market simply wants to receive regular divi-
dends indefinitely, there is little incentive to trade and therefore less opportunity
for capital gains. As mentioned above, diversity in the market is important.
Despite what would appear to be beneficial attributes of a stock market, in
many of the contemporary writings from the end of the seventeenth through the
eighteenth century, the stock market is portrayed as a gambling facility. A
contemporary poem from 1700 captures these sentiments, not merely equating
the buying of shares with that of ‘childish’ toys, but financial activity itself with
madness.
The Coffee-man leaves Chocolate, Tea, Coffee,

To know what price for Bank-Stock and East-Indie
The Lady pawns her Plate and Jewels
Women in the city 35
To buy some shares in Bank, or Old or New.
The young Heir mortgages his House and Lands,
To purchase Childish Toys at Jonathan’s.
That for the prospect of uncertain Gain

Loses his Time and Substance in the main.
If these Men be not mad, pray tell me whence
Is Madness; these have lost both Wit and Sence.3
This view of the market appeared to have been confirmed with what many saw
as the speculative excesses of the South Sea Bubble in 1720. We believe that
secondary markets in securities should not be dismissed as mere gambling
devices, even at the outset of the eighteenth century, but rather represent a major
financial innovation. Here we investigate market activity by one set of
actors, women, and use their actions to speak to women’s financial acumen
across 1720.
Women’s financial independence

As was noted in the first section, discussions of women’s financial activity in the
early modern period have to be embedded in women’s economic, social and
legal position in a society. A woman’s primary role was to take care of the
household and children, so women were generally described in terms of marital
status: wife, widow or spinster. Discussion of women’s capital-market activity,
therefore, takes place in the context of ownership of assets. Because English law
did not differentiate between men and single women, whether spinster or
widow, any single woman could legally own property, sue or be sued, and have
an independent legal identity. Although circumscribed in their options, some
women could and did have income.
With the advent of the capital market, there was now another financial avenue
open to women. By the beginning of the eighteenth century the emerging stock
market in London had become increasingly available for individual use.4 At least
to some degree, and perhaps even to a very large degree, the stock market was
anonymous. Although some contemporaries viewed the emerging capital market
as a gambling device whereby inexperienced women (though not exclusively
women), having lost their common sense, would sell their ‘plate and jewels’ in a
fruitless quest, dissipating their inheritance, dower or other lump sum, Ingrassia,
in her portrayal of commerce and gender, argues that ‘stock-jobbing allows the
women to transcend, however, briefly, constraints on their activities and increase
their knowledge, discretionary income, and power’.5 Ingrassia has questioned
the implications of such speculative behaviour in cultural and social terms.6 Here
we question the specific activities of women in the capital market. How did
women stockholders, as a group, manage their assets? The newly emerging
capital market added to the array of financial instruments now available for
women to use on their own behalf. Instead of lending money to small
businesses, women could buy stock in publicly traded companies. The passive
receipt of dividends that was possible with shareownership could have provided
women with a stream of income. At the same time, shareownership allowed
women the potential for active management of their money and for capital gains
from such investment activity.
The Royal African Company and the Bank of England

The Royal African Company received a royal charter in 1672 giving it a legal
monopoly of English trade along the coast of Africa from modern-day Senegal to
Angola and between Africa and the West Indies. As a joint-stock company, it
raised its capital through the sale of shares. At the time the Royal African
Company received its charter, it was the second largest of the English joint-stock
companies after the East India Company. But by the time of the South Sea
Bubble in 1720, the Royal African Company was a shell of its former self. The
wars of the 1690s severely disrupted its trade which, in conjunction with the
opening of the African coast to licensed traders, led to a loss of profitability.7
The charter called for a paid-up capital of £100,000 sold in £100 denomina-
tions, where £100 was the book value of a single share.8 In 1697, the Company
had a book value of the capital stock of £1,101,050.9 However, by 1712, it was
essentially bankrupt with a share priced at £2 on a book value of £100. As a result,
it underwent a major financial reorganization, dramatically writing down the exist-
ing capital stock and exchanging all bonds outstanding for shares.10 As a result of
the reorganization, the book value of the capital stock of the Company was written
down to £451,350. The share price rebounded to £60 but then stabilized in the £20
range from 1715 to 1720, standing at £24 at the beginning of 1720.11
The pattern of dividends mirrors the pattern of stock prices and the
Company’s financial circumstances. Although small dividends were paid
between 1702 and 1707, thereafter no further dividends were paid and there was
little expectation of any future dividends being paid.12 Then, in April 1720,
perhaps hoping to benefit from a rising market, the Royal African Company
offered a large new stock issue to the value of £1,569,600; almost four times the
value of the existing stock. In order to obtain agreement for a new issue, the
senior shareholders were promised a dividend of 10 per cent in April 1721. No
dividend was promised on the newly issued stock. To differentiate between the
existing shares and the new issue, we label the existing shares ‘senior’ and the
new issue ‘engrafted’.13 The difference in dividend payments between the senior
and engrafted stock led to different market prices for these shares once the two
shares’ prices were recorded in the financial press (see Figure 3.1). Thus, on the
eve of the South Sea Bubble, the Royal African Company was a trading
company whose shares basically carried only the possibility of speculative gains
or losses. The issue of the engrafted stock in May 1720 did nothing to change
the fundamental structure of the company. It is this purely speculative nature of
an investment in this company that makes it an interesting case study for an
analysis of the financial acumen of women investors.
275
250 Ps
225 Pe
200 BOFE
175
Share price
150
125
100
75
50
25
0
01/01/1720
16/01/1720
31/01/1720
15/02/1720
01/03/1720
31/03/1720
15/04/1720
30/04/1720
15/05/1720
30/05/1720
14/06/1720
29/06/1720
14/07/1720
29/07/1720
13/08/1720
28/08/1720
12/09/1720
27/09/1720
12/10/1720
27/10/1720
11/11/1720
26/11/1720
11/12/1720
26/12/1720
Date
Figure 3.1 Prices of Royal African Company senior shares, Ps, and engrafted shares, Pe
and Bank of England shares (BOFE) (source: John Castaing, The Course of
the Exchange, London: 1720).
In contrast to the Royal African Company, the Bank of England must, espe-
cially by 1720, be considered the blue-chip stock of the period. The Bank of
England came into existence in 1694 as a joint-stock company. It had an initial
capital stock of £1.2 million. By 1710 the book value of the capital stock was
£5,559,995, which remained unchanged during the next decade. By 1700, the
market price of a share already above 100 rose from 123 in 1701 to roughly 150
at the beginning of January 1720. Again in contrast to the Royal African
Company, the Bank of England paid regular dividends twice yearly.
We analyse the financial acumen of those women who invested in shares in each
of these two very distinct companies over the year of the South Sea Bubble period
of 1720. This period is differentiated from other years by the sharp rise and fall of
share prices. This fluctuation in pricing, initially driven by the financial needs of the
post-war British government, provides a dynamic period to study market participa-
tion among all groups, including women. The price of Bank of England shares
listed in the financial press show that it started the year at 150, rose to 180 in May
and 250 in June, falling back to 147 on the last day of the year. The market price of
Royal African Company senior stock was 24 in January, rising to 50 in March and
60 in April. It then hit a high of 195 in early June. By September, the price had
fallen back to 60 and ended the year at 45. The first listing in the financial press for
the engrafted stock does not occur until the end of May when the price was 95. It
rose to a high of 163 and ended the year at 35. As is still the case today, the timing
of transactions matters; buying high and selling low will result in financial loss and
the converse financial gain. We now explore the extent of women’s market activity
in each of these companies during this Bubble year and ask to what extent women
as a group showed financial acumen with regard to the market?
Women in the stock market
All joint-stock companies kept careful record of who owned their stock.14 The
data used here come from the transfer books of the Bank of England and of the
Royal African Company for 1720 and from John Castaing’s Course of the
Exchange. The transfer ledgers document the date of transfer, the name of seller
and of buyer, and the book value of shares transferred. In the Bank of England
ledgers, the clerks also noted occupation and address. As the transfer ledgers
provide both first and family name, for most people this gives a unique identi-
fier.15 Any discussion of financial acumen by individuals or of capital gains or
losses must begin with an analysis of the pattern of transactions. We begin with
the Bank of England and then describe the pattern for the Royal African
Company.
Bank of England stock

Over 1720, there were roughly 6,844 transactions with an average book value of
£871.30.16 Narrowing our focus to those cases in which a woman was a seller or
a buyer, we find there were 623 transactions in which a woman was listed as
seller and 537 listed as buyer. The book value of their transactions comprised 13
per cent of the total value of transactions. Of course, any individual could have
multiple transactions. Thus in these 6,844 transactions, there were only 2,233
unique sellers and 2,304 unique buyers of Bank stock, of which women made up
18 per cent (406) of unique sellers and 16.3 per cent (366) of unique buyers. In
sum, there were 577 unique women as either buyers, sellers or both. We cannot
say if this is large or small, but it shows that women were represented in the
market. Women shareholders sold £417,120 book value of shares and purchased
£371,480 book value; with an average sale of £658 and an average purchase of
£675. As might be expected, value per transaction is lower than the average
including men. Yet despite the inequality in income distribution and women’s
poorer access to land and other forms of credit, some women did hold large
portfolios of this financial asset and had access to capital.
Using information on social or marital status from the Bank of England
ledgers, we categorize women as nobility, spinster, widow or wife. We might
expect that access to capital would be different for members of the nobility.
Women’s transactions by value and number and social and marital status is
shown in Table 3.1. Given legal restrictions, the majority of women were
unmarried, either spinsters or widows. Of the wives listed, four sellers were
Dutch and five buyers were foreign. Thus, spinsters and widows were the main
actors in the market but two-thirds were in the market only once, as shown in
Table 3.2, as was also the case for men. While the other third was more active,
there does not seem to be any evidence here of what the literature called ‘specu-
lative excess’. There were six women with more than six sales and two with
more than six purchases. One of these was Johanna Cock who had 29 sales.
Johanna Cock was, in fact, a broker or market maker in Bank of England stock
and the thirteenth largest buyer of Bank stock in 1720. The size of individual
transactions is shown in Table 3.3. The most common book values of shares
transferred were £500 and £1,000 block. What is important to note from this
table is that the market was capable of subdividing a single share and transac-
tions did take place at less than a £100 book value. The smallest transaction was
a sale of £6 book value by Prudence Thorold to Thomas Westley, another major
broker.
Women were involved in the market for Bank stock. But how did these
women fare? Were they indulging in speculative excesses and dissipating their
capital or were they able to use the market for financial gain? While we cannot
say that each woman was making her own decision to buy or sell, there is no
reason to believe that women were not buying and selling on their own behalf.
In order to measure women’s financial performance during the Bubble, we cate-
gorize women by their level of activity. Thus, we have five groups of women:
women who only sold; only bought; were net buyers; net sellers; or whose book
value of sales and purchases were equal. For each, we have the book value of
shares involved, date of transfer and the market price of Bank stock on that date.
Bank share price is given in Figure 3.1. While the price rises and falls over the
Table 3.1 Women’s transactions by value and number by social and marital status in
Book value of shares Number of transactions

■
Sellers Buyers Sellers Buyers
Nobility 38,532 20,830 34 21

Spinster 145,264 132,430 231 245
Widow 217,969 203,388 323 259
Wife 15,355 7,000 35 12
Total 417,120 363,648 623 537
Source: Bank of England transfer books, 1720, AC28/1545–1554.
Table 3.2 Number of unique women sellers and buyers by number of transactions in
Number of transactions Sellers Buyers
1 276 264
2 88 69
3 19 21
4 11 8
5 6 2
6+ 6 2
Total 406 366

Table 3.3 Number of transactions by women sellers and buyers by block size transferred
in Bank of England stock
Book value of shares (£) Sellers Buyers
<100 21 12
100 59 71
101–199 16 10
200 64 58
201–399 49 33
400–499 36 19
500 185 185
501–999 38 32
1,000 127 155
1,001–1,999 21 10
2,000 27 22
2,000+ 15 17
course of 1720, there are occasions when the price falls during a rise and rallies
during a fall. Thus gains or losses will depend on the price on the date of pur-
chase and on the date of sale.17
Aggregating across the experiences of each individual woman, we find that
women made money. With the market price of Bank shares starting the year at
150 and ending at 147, women traders on aggregate did better than those who
passively held their shares. As a trading group, their net position was £24,264
across 576 women.18 Men as a group lost –£44,971.19 There were, however,
gainers and losers. Within each category of women, whether sellers only or
buyers only, or those with multiple net trades, some made money and some lost.
If we focus only on those women who sold and bought the same book value of
shares, their within-year net position is the difference between the market price
on the purchase and the market price of the sale. The 65 women in this group
were net gainers to the amount of £14,759. But there were some losers: 20 of
these women lost money.
The transfer ledgers, as detailed above, clearly show that women were active
in the market for Bank of England shares during the Bubble and we estimate that
these women as a group had financial gains from their actions. Given that most
women were in the market only once, there does not appear to be any great spec-
ulative frenzy. At the same time, Bank of England stock was the least risky of
the shares in the market. We now explore women’s activities in the market for
Royal African Company stock, which essentially in today’s terms had junk-
stock status or was below investment grade.
Royal African Company stock

In estimating financial gains and losses for women in the market for Royal
African Company (RAC) stock, we begin with activity in the senior stock and
then in the engrafted stock, and treat these as two separate stocks.20 In January
1720, there were 4,500 senior stocks potentially available for trade. Across the
year, there were 1,100 transactions with an average book value of £600. In total
there were 603 buyers and 583 sellers. When we focus on women, there were 59
buyers and 44 sellers with 103 transactions. Women constituted 8.46 per cent of
buyers and 7.37 per cent of sellers with an average purchase of £417 and an
average sale of £437. Although we again find a female presence in this market, it
is at a level lower than in the Bank of England market. This might speak of a
greater level of risk aversion by women or greater conservatism.
Using the same methodology as in our estimates of financial gains and losses
in Bank stock, we determine the financial position of each woman and aggregate
over the group. For those who only sold or only purchased, we take their posi-
tion relative to the beginning or end of the year. The remarkable rise and fall in
the share price created an opportunity for net gains. But as in Bank stock, neither
the rise nor decline was uniform. Again see Figure 3.1, where we show the
market price for the senior stock and for the newly engrafted stock discussed in
the next paragraph. Timing was everything. Those who only sold had financial
gains of £179 per person, or £5,910 in total. The 29 women who only purchased
this senior stock lost money as did five of the six women with multiple pur-
chases. Their aggregate net loss totalled –£8,225, or –£205 per women. The five
women who were net sellers had gains of £326 per head. What we find in
summary is that aggregating over all women who were in the market for senior
Royal African Company shares, women as a group essentially broke even
trading in these shares.
In April 1720, the directors authorized an offering of £1.59 million book
value of stock, or 15,696 new shares. There was a total of 4,336 transactions
from April to December for this engrafted stock. In contrast to the more senior
stock, more women were involved. There were 223 buyers involved in 483
transactions, or 11 per cent of total transactions. Of those who bought stock in
this offering, only 83 sold. Overall there were 309 purchases and 174 sales. The
average book value of purchases, £654, was larger than the senior stock. The
records suggest that there were at least 29 women belonging to the nobility rep-
resenting 13 per cent of the group, whereas they comprised 11 per cent for the
senior stock. Of these women, 20 still held at least some of their stock at the end
of the year. Table 3.4 gives the pattern of transactions.
Estimating financial gains and losses for the women shareholders of
engrafted stock is more complicated than for either the Bank stock or the senior
stock. The Company minutes note that purchasers paid for these shares by
instalment, which was common. Ignoring the time discount that lowered the
present value of the cost of a share, the price was either £17 or £22 per £100
book value.21 The Company sold shares from the beginning of May; however,
the first published price came only on 28 May. Because so many transactions
occurred in May, the pricing of stock for May is crucial. We use two pricing
rules. The first assigns the 28 May price to all transactions in May. The second
takes the initial offered price and increases that incrementally to the £95
Table 3.4 Transactions by women in senior and engrafted stock by month for Royal
African Company
Senior (#) Engrafted (#)

■
Purchase Sale Total Purchase Sale Total
1719 1 2 3 0 0 0
1720 January 0 3 3 0 0 0
February 1 4 5 0 0 0
March 16 9 25 0 0 0
April 8 4 12 0 0 0
May 3 2 5 89 7 96
June 18 8 26 48 51 99
July 6 4 10 53 33 86
August 2 5 7 36 18 54
September 4 5 9 27 11 38
October 0 0 0 28 19 47
November 1 0 1 18 28 46
December 0 0 0 10 7 17
1721 7 6 13 1 1 2
Total 67 52 119 310 175 485
Source: Royal African Company, The National Archives, Kew, England, Transfer Books T70/198,
199, 200, 201, 202.
recorded at the end of May. Overall gains or losses for women (and indeed also
for men) depend critically on which of these two pricing rules is used. Consider-
ing that the engrafted stock ended the year at £35, using the first pricing rule dra-
matically reduces the number of dates when the market price is above £95.
Using the second rule, we increase the number of such dates. So a woman who
purchased on 2 May and held her shares would end the year with paper losses
under the first rule and paper gains under the second.
Again, within nearly every categorization of women, some women made
money and some lost. Under the first pricing scenario where all transactions in
May are valued at the 28 May market price, over the seven months from May to
December, women had market losses of –£66,135, or –£318 per woman.
However, this pricing scenario should be considered the absolute upper bound
on the level of capital losses. Not only have we excluded women who were
recorded only as selling (because we do not have a listing of the purchase), but
this pricing rule definitely overstates the actual transaction price of many May
transactions. Under what we consider to be the more realistic pricing rule, we
again have women who gain and lose, but the number of women who lose
declines. When we aggregate over all women, we now find that as a group they
experienced financial gains of £4,030, or £19.10 per head. So even in this
market for a highly volatile share, women as a group, under what must be con-
sidered the more reasonable pricing rules, make money.
Conclusion
Widows, especially, were a source of capital for small investors in that they lent
out their money. Such activities also left them open to default by their borrow-
ers. The emergence of a secondary market for shares created another avenue to
financial security for women with assets. The purchase of relatively risk-free
securities meant that women could now live off the dividend stream. But it
equally meant that they could participate more actively in the market in a quest
for capital gains. The South Sea Bubble was a period of heightened financial
activity measured by the value of capital stock that changed hands or by the
number of people involved in the market. Given these metrics, it is not difficult
to understand contemporary descriptions of the market as frenzied or the period
as a time when the world went mad. Madness, frenzy, gambling or even hysteria
all suggest a lack of control and an environment in which one’s assets would be
lost or dissipated. Our analysis of women’s financial performance in this market
goes some way to attenuating these views.
Women were active participants in the stock market over the course of the
Bubble. At least some women were taking advantage of this new financial
innovation. Research on the role of gender in the tech bubble of the 1990s notes
not only that women made financial gains but that they did better than men.22
From our evaluation of women’s financial acumen in Bank of England stock,
women investors as a group gained financially from their trading activities in
this stock. Indeed, as in the tech bubble, they did better than their male counter-
parts. It has been argued that for the tech bubble these gains came about because
women were more conservative than men. While we cannot speak of a dif-
ference between female and male strategies in Bank stock per se, women’s
activity in Bank of England stock was considerably higher than in Royal African
Company stock. Yet even in the more risky Royal African Company stock,
women as a group again showed financial acumen.
Notes
1 Northwest Mutual website: www.nmfn.com/tn/learnctr-articles-page_wi_conquer_
finance (accessed 4 April 2007).
2 Secondary markets in securities, as in any resale market, obviously need formal insti-
tutions to enforce contracts and property rights and informal institutions that enable
participants to trust each other without elaborate contracts or constant litigation. The
formal institutions were already in place in England by 1689 and the informal institu-
tions were in place by 1720.
3 Edward Ward, The Picture of a Coffee-House, or, the Humour of the Stock-Jobbers,
London, 1700, p. 14.
4 Ann M. Carlos, Jennifer Key and Jill Dupree, ‘Learning and the creation of stock-
market institutions: evidence from the Hudson’s Bay and Royal African Companies,
1670–1700,’ Journal of Economic History 58 (3), 1998, pp. 318–44.
5 Catherine Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century
England: A Culture of Paper Credit, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998,
p. 34.
6 Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce and Gender, p. 34.
7 Ann M. Carlos and Jamie Brown Kruse, ‘The decline of the Royal African Company:
fringe firms and the role of the charter’, Economic History Review 49 (2), 1996, pp.
295–317.
8 The book value of £100 provides an index against which to measure the market price.
9 William R. Scott, The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-
Stock Companies to 1720, 3 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol. 2,
1910, p. 32.
10 In fact, because there was at this time no legally defined mechanism for doing so, it
was very difficult to wind up a chartered joint-stock company.
11 Scott, Constitution and Finance, vol. 2, pp. 28–35.
12 Scott, Constitution and Finance, vol. 2, pp. 33–35.
13 In an agreement dated 7 April 1720, one Joseph Taylor paid £75,696 for the whole
issue. Thus, Joseph Taylor bought the issue at 4.82 per cent of its book value, or he
paid £4.8 per £100 book value and the Company received £75,696 as a new cash
infusion. As stock was sold in units of £100 book value, there were now 15,690 new
or ‘engrafted’ shares available for sale in the market.
14 This was needed for dividends and for voting at the annual general meetings.
15 Common names such as Mary Cooke or John Smith are the exception. However,
given that most people were in the market only once, this is not a serious problem.
16 In other words, the book value of the capital stock turned over completely.
17 For a more complete discussion see Ann M. Carlos and Larry Neal, ‘Women
investors in early capital markets, 1720–1725’, Financial History Review 11 (2),
2004, pp. 197–224.
18 We did not include Johanna Cock or a widow who received a large block on the death
of her husband in July and continued to hold.
19 See Ann M. Carlos and Larry Neal, ‘The micro-foundations of the early London
capital market: Bank of England shareholders during and after the South Sea Bubble,
1720–1725’, Economic History Review 59 (3), 2006, Table 6, p. 517.
20 For a more complete discussion see Ann M. Carlos, Karen Maguire and Larry Neal,
‘Financial acumen, women speculators, and the Royal African Company during the
South Sea Bubble’, Accounting, Business and Financial History 16 (2), 2006, pp.
219–43.
21 The minutes give the instalments as 5 per cent payable on 1 June, 5 per cent payable
on 1 September and 7 per cent payable on 1 December. Included in the Minute Book
of the General Court on an undated loose sheet was a statement of an up-front
payment of 5 per cent.
22 See Brad M. Barber and Terrance Odean, ‘Boys will boys: gender, overconfidence,
and common stock investment’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116 (1), 2001, pp.
261–92.
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Bank of England Archives, London

Transfer Books 1720 AC28/1545–1554.
National Archives, Kew, London

Royal African Company: Minute Book of the Court of Assistant T70/90; Minute Book of
the General Court T70/101; Transfer Books T70/198, 199, 200, 201, 202.
4 Women, banks and the securities
market in early eighteenth-
century England1
Anne Laurence
This chapter is, above all, about women’s agency, about their participation in the
stock market, their increasing use of banks and the implied political choices in
those activities. The understanding of women’s political action, as a result of 20
years of research into both women and the relations between men and women,
has led to an extension of our understanding of the political world beyond that of
the male ‘political nation’ to include women’s influence, patronage and the
informal politics of locality, church and corporate bodies.2 This chapter explores
a further manifestation of women’s participation in the politicised world of
early-eighteenth-century England, especially during the period of the South Sea
Bubble.
This chapter is concerned with women investors in the South Sea Bubble of
1720 and the role that one particular bank played in facilitating their participa-
tion. The daring swap of government debt for equity in the South Sea Company
and the share issues that accompanied this, the rapid inflation in share prices in
the first half of 1720 and the ensuing collapse have become a byword for a
stock-market boom and bust. Historians of the Bubble have been much ham-
pered by the destruction of the South Sea Company’s share registers, so the cus-
tomer ledgers of Hoare’s Bank that record its customers’ purchases and sales of
stock, lottery tickets and government debt, dividend and interest payments on
stock, and prizes from the lottery are a valuable source for the investment activ-
ities of private individuals at the time of the South Sea Bubble. The use of a
bank was itself a novel activity – banks had until the late seventeenth century
largely taken mercantile customers and dealt in loans and money transfers rather
than serve as deposit banks. But by no means all banks acted for customers in
this way. So this chapter considers the investments made by women customers
of Hoare’s Bank and the way in which their participation in the market was
facilitated by the bank. The investment choices made by the bank’s customers
give some credence to Bruce Carruthers’s arguments about the politicisation of
the market, so the chapter concludes with a consideration of the role of politics
in the finances of Hoare’s Bank customers.
Women, banks and the securities market 47
Women and investment
Attitudes to women’s investment behaviour have been contradictory: in the
eighteenth century, women were taken as the prime example of those affected
by the fever that swept up the population during the South Sea Bubble; later
commentators have tended to treat them as conservative investors, choosing
stock backed by the government for its supposed safety, the Bank of England
over the other chartered companies, and annuities and bonds over stock.3 Stock
investment was seen as ‘suitable for patriotic and prudent gentlemen, but ill-
advised and dangerous for women’, though it was patriotic to buy government
debt.4 Women were believed to lack judgement and to be gullible enough to be
duped by unscrupulous brokers and jobbers.5 It has long been assumed, too, that
women were primarily interested in investment income rather than in trading
gains. However, recent work on women and finance, stimulated by the interest
in female agency, has shown that women were not passive participants in the
market, but traded for profit and made active, and not always risk-free, invest-
ment choices.6
It has been clear for some time that women were significant holders of credit
in early modern England. In her study of single women in early modern
England, Amy Froide shows how ‘never-married women served an important
economic role as property holders, rentiers and as private and public moneylen-
ders’.7 She also shows how lending was professionalised with the greater use of
formal instruments by both single and widowed women to make interest-bearing
loans to a variety of borrowers – acquaintances, kin and urban corporations.8
Women were, by the time of the Bubble, a significant proportion of the
investing community. In the absence of share registers it is impossible to know
for certain whether they invested in disproportionate numbers in the South Sea
Company. Hoppit argues that only 6 per cent of the investors of the initial South
Sea Company subscription in 1720 were women. However, since a significant
proportion of stock was owned by people whose government annuities had been
converted into South Sea stock under the debt-for-equity swaps, the proportion
of women owners (as opposed to purchasers) may well have been higher since
women constituted 20 per cent, for example, of the owners of 1707 government
annuities, though the value of their holdings was only 9 per cent of the total.9
We know that in 1723 women were about 20 per cent of the proprietors of South
Sea stock, owning 12 per cent of the company’s value.10 Carlos and Neal have
shown that women who traded in Bank stock during the period of the Bubble
made positive capital gains. They have also found that women increased as a
proportion of the total number of investors in the Bank of England and that the
proportion of capital they held grew.11
Apart from the stock market, investors could buy government debt which had
the advantage of security but the disadvantage that it was not readily liquid.12
Short-term government debt had expanded greatly during the 1690s, mainly
through anticipating revenue from Customs, Excise, Land Tax, Malt Tax and
other taxes.13 There was also a system of raising loans on military and naval
48 A. Laurence
supply; Navy Bills paid a good rate of interest but were difficult to assign and
therefore not very liquid.14
During the early years of the eighteenth century the number of taxes on
which short-term loans were raised for the government was considerably
reduced in favour of long-term loans. After the conclusion of the war with
France in 1713, the government required less money and funds were raised
principally on the Land and Malt Taxes. Dickson notes that between one-quarter
and one-third of the lenders to the Land Tax loans were women, though their
investment amounted to a smaller proportion.15
One of the most significant vehicles for government debt from 1694 was the
lottery. A succession of lottery issues offered tickets that paid an annuity with
prizes of either a larger annuity or a cash sum. The prices of lottery ‘blanks’ (i.e.
lottery tickets without prizes, paying only the basic interest) were quoted in the
newspapers alongside the prices of stock on the Bank of England, and the East
India, South Sea and Royal African Companies.16 The attraction of lotteries was
not simply the chance of winning, but the assured returns and the fact that
lottery tickets could be bought without the intervention of discredited stock-
jobbers; women seem to have made up at least one-third of the owners of the
earlier state lottery tickets.17 The secondary market in tickets meant that at least
some of the initial sum was recoverable. The disproportionate involvement of
women in the lottery gave rise to almost one-third of the owners of 5 per cent
government annuities of 1717 being women since this had originated in the lot-
teries of 1711–12.18
The role of land as an investment for women is extremely difficult to estim-
ate and real property was not normally included in financial settlements for
women. However, on Lawrence Stone’s figures for the increasing number of
landowners leaving no son to succeed, one would expect there to be a rising
number of women who controlled land.19 While many women, from widowed
aristocrats to aged servants, received incomes for life from land, one of the fea-
tures of the eighteenth century was the increasing use of mortgages and loans to
buy annuities or stock to provide income for dependants, leaving the landowner
with greater freedom to manage his property.20 Judith Spicksley’s figures of
bequests in the diocese of Lincoln from fathers to eldest or only daughters
show that, by the 1690s, cash was far and away the most important inheritance
for women.21
Hoare’s Bank and its customers

From 1708, when an Act of Parliament removed the limit of 100 on the number
of registered stockbrokers, brokers’ and jobbers’ numbers expanded (the distinc-
tion between the two roles was rather less clear-cut in the early eighteenth
century than it subsequently became, and there were also a good many people
dealing in stock on behalf of others who were not registered).22 The widely held
prejudice against brokers and jobbers expressed in 1721 by George Berkeley
arose from the view that industry was the only true way to wealth, because ‘pro-
jects for growing rich by sudden and extraordinary methods, as they operate vio-
lently on the passions of men, . . . must be ruinous to the public’.23 Not everyone
shared his views, for a newspaper reported in 1720 that ‘Stock-jobbing is now
become so laudable, that many great ladies forsake their tea, cards and chat to go
to Change Alley.’24
The development of stockbroking, combined with the use of letters of attor-
ney, made it possible for people outside the City of London not only to own
securities, but to buy and sell them. Originally, purchases of shares had to be
registered in person at the company offices by the new owner. These new
devices made it possible for absentees to buy and sell securities, opening up the
markets to investors outside the City of London. At the same time, improved
negotiability of bills and notes made it possible for private individuals to use
banks more easily. The coincidence of these developments meant that Hoare’s
Bank, in Fleet Street, London, was able to develop a clientele of wealthy and
well-connected out-of-town customers. Partners of the bank offered advice on
investment, and were involved as jobbers and brokers, buying and selling stock
both on their own account and for their customers, of whom about 10–12 per
cent were women.25
Partners and customers of Hoare’s Bank had strongly held high-church and
Tory views. Many of the customers were kin and included such well-known
Tories as members of the Finch and Hastings families, and high-church activists
such as Robert Nelson. The bank acted for the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and various bodies
associated with the charity schools movement. Temin and Voth are inclined to
see these connections as the bank’s assurance for the solidity of their customers,
but given the novelty of private banking, it seems more probable that the pres-
ence of a wealthy and well-connected clientele was a selling point to attract new
customers and an advertisement of the bank’s solvency.26
Women customers of Hoare’s Bank

Evidence of the investments of Hoare’s Bank customers comes from two
sources: from the bank’s deposit ledgers and from the correspondence of six of
its women customers. Plainly, the wealth of customers and their political and
religious complexion means they cannot be taken as a proxy for the investing
public, but this is unique evidence for relatively large numbers of women.
There are two series of deposit ledgers for the early eighteenth century. One,
designated by letters, contains the accounts of customers whose business took up
one or more double-page spreads in the ledger, often with five or ten transac-
tions a month. An especially active customer might have several double-page
spreads in one ledger, but because clerks carried on until the pages were full, the
accounts might not be on consecutive pages. As the books were filled up seri-
ally, ledgers covered overlapping periods of time. The second series, designated
by numbers, contains the accounts of people who did very little business with
the bank, often only a single encashment of a bill; some of these may have been
50 A. Laurence
people who just had little use for banking services, others must have done their
main business with other banks.
The ledgers record customers’ purchases and sales of a variety of investments
through the bank, chiefly stock, bonds and annuities in the chartered companies;
receipts of dividends and interest from stock, bonds and annuities in the char-
tered companies (in the case of bonds it can be difficult to distinguish between
interest paid and maturity; there were few sales as most bonds were very short
term); payments of interest from loans on Tonnage, Excise, Navy Bills, sur-
vivorships and the like; and occasional purchases, sales and income from
smaller companies. What they do not reveal is stock purchases, sales and divi-
dend payments made through an intermediary; land purchases and sales and
income from lands (probably because they were dealt with through individuals
whose names cannot be identified from the ledgers); purchase and sale of
government debt in the form of Navy Bills, Excise, tonnage, etc.; purchase of
stock in small companies and in insurance companies; much about personal
loans and bonds; sales in options and futures (which were permitted until the
Act of 1734 which put an end to much of the secondary speculation in stock); or
transfers of government annuities into South Sea stock (the basis for much of the
activity in the South Sea Bubble).27 In addition, there is no trace of foreign-
exchange dealings or of investments in foreign companies such as the Missis-
sippi scheme or the Dutch East India Company.
Women, chiefly widows and spinsters, made up around 12 per cent of the
bank’s customers in the early eighteenth century and over the period the total
number of customers rose. A few married women had accounts jointly with their
husbands. Table 4.1 shows all the women’s accounts and a sample of men’s, and
illustrates how the number of women making extensive use of the bank (Ledgers
F and G) grew over the period 1719–24, but that the number of women making
occasional use of the bank (Ledgers 21–4) declined. Almost half the women
who did extensive business were active in the stock market and the proportion
increased over the period of the South Sea Bubble. The increase in their stock-
market participation was by the same percentage as the increase in men’s stock-
market participation, though from a lower starting point. The proportions of
women occasional users who participated in the stock market were lower and
increased over the period, though more gradually.28 What is difficult to explain
is why the percentage of occasional men users who participated in the stock
market was normally less than half that of the women occasional users. One pos-
sible answer is that a substantial number of these men did their main business
somewhere else: Sir George Caswall and Sir George Savile were MPs (and
Caswall had very considerable financial interests); Jonathan Gurnell was a
Quaker financier; Dudley North was the wealthy son of the financier of the same
name; Henry Cornelisen was a son-in-law of one of the partners of Hoare’s
Bank; and Jabez Collier was a lawyer. Savile was heir to the Marquis of
Halifax’s fortune and must surely have needed more than occasional banking
services. Another possible answer is that the bank made a point of providing
brokerage services for women customers.
Table 4.1 Proportions of Hoare’s Bank customers with stock in chartered companies or
lottery tickets
Dates Female (%) Male (%)a
Ledger F 1719–24 46 [6/13] 60 [9/15]

Ledger G 1720–4 56 [15/27] 70 [14/20]
Ledger 21 1718–22 22.5 [30/133] 9 [14/155]
Ledger 22 1719–23 25 [31/126] 14 [18/130]
Ledger 23 1720–4 28 [28/100] 10 [11/113]
Ledger 24 1721–5 31 [30/98] 11 [14/129]
Source: Hoare’s Bank customer ledgers.

Note
a Sampled by taking every eighth account in the ledgers.
Figures 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 show for all women customers the numbers of trans-
actions involving the different companies, how significant trading in South Sea
Company stock was, how the lottery declined in importance (though after the
1720s there were fewer new lotteries) and how the women customers of Hoare’s
Bank showed no preference for supposedly safe Bank stock. Purchases of stock
in general exceeded sales, especially in the case of the South Sea Company,
where the number of interest payments indicates that people held on to the stock.
The women with active banking records showed themselves keen to divest
30
25
20 South Sea
East India
15 Bank
10 Lottery
Royal African
5
0
Ledger F Ledger G Ledger 21 Ledger 22 Ledger 23 Ledger 24
Figure 4.1 Number of women’s stock and lottery purchases through Hoare’s Bank
1718–25.
30
25
South Sea
20 East India
15 Bank
Lottery
10
Royal African
5
0
Figure 4.2 Number of women’s stock and lottery sales through Hoare’s Bank 1718–25.
52 A. Laurence
160
140
120 South Sea
100 East India
80 Bank
60 Lottery
40 Royal African
20
0
Figure 4.3 Number of women’s dividend and interest payments and lottery prizes though
Hoare’s Bank 1718–25.
themselves of East India stock as numbers of sales exceeded numbers of pur-

chases. If we can equate women who did little business with the bank with
having little financial knowledge, we can see how significant the lottery was for
them as a source of income and how it seems to have been replaced by the South
Sea Company.
The correspondence of the Hastings sisters – Lady Betty Hastings the heiress
and her four impoverished half-sisters – with their friend Mrs Bonnell in London
reflects very clearly the patterns shown by the ledgers.29 Lady Betty’s account
records are in the alphabetical series of ledgers, the other women’s in the num-
bered series. Lady Betty bought and sold stock, holding on to little of it for any
length of time, her aim apparently to make a capital sum from the South Sea
Company share issues of 1720 rather than to generate income, since she had
£3,000 a year from her Yorkshire estates.30 Her half-sisters, who were taking a
much greater risk than she, bought stock in the South Sea Company in 1720,
when the price was declining, and despite their losses held on to it, two of them
continuing to hold it until the 1750s.31 One of them, Frances, pondered selling
her East India stock in the autumn of 1720, hearing that its price was falling.32
But is the same story told by the value of the transactions of the bank’s
women customers? Figures 4.4, 4.5 and 4.6 show the pre-eminence of South Sea
stock, especially for the women who were most financially active, and that
women were buying more often in amounts of smaller value (as one would
expect with the collapse in the value of South Sea stock). The fact that the sales
are not greatly below the purchases in value suggests that few of these women
made massive losses. The less financially active women seem to have had a
greater spread of investments, but seem to have sold most of them when prices
were very low. The pattern of dividend payments from the South Sea Company
suggests, too, that a good many women, having bought the stock decided to
hang on to it for income. Ledger 22 probably contains the largest number of
accounts for the period when the South Sea Company was not paying dividends.
The total number of purchases increased but their individual value decreased,
as one might expect with the total decline in the stock market after the South Sea
Bubble, likewise, there was a rising number of sales but each sale was of a
£20,000
£15,000 South Sea

East India
£10,000 Bank
Lottery
£5,000 Royal
African
£0
Figure 4.4 Value of women’s stock and lottery purchases through Hoare’s Bank
1718–25.
£20,000
£15,000 South Sea

East India
£10,000 Bank
Lottery
£5,000 Royal
African
£0
Figure 4.5 Value of women’s stock and lottery sales through Hoare’s Bank 1718–25.
£4,000
£3,500
£3,000 South Sea
£2,500 East India
£2,000 Bank
£1,500 Lottery
Royal
£1,000
African
£500
£0
Figure 4.6 Value of women’s dividends and interest payments and lottery prizes through
Hoare’s Bank 1718–25.
declining value. However, the rise in number and value of interest payments
from the South Sea Company suggests that customers were right to hold on to
their stock. The rising value of payments of East India Company dividends sug-
gests that many already owned East India stock in 1718 and were simply adding
to it by their purchases in the early 1720s.
How can we account for the overwhelming preference for South Sea stock
when Bank of England stock would seem to have been a safer bet? It is difficult
not to conclude that Hoare’s Bank was instrumental in encouraging, advising or
54 A. Laurence
facilitating the purchase of South Sea stock. The Hoare family had a connection
with the company and, unlike the other chartered companies which tended to be
dominated by Whig interests, the South Sea Company was a predominantly Tory
enterprise. Temin and Voth have demonstrated that personally the partners of
Hoare’s Bank did very well from the South Sea scheme and that their customers,
as measured by the bank’s loan books, also did well.33 It is particularly noteworthy
that the women customers who had the greatest predilection for South Sea stock
were those who did the greatest amount of business with the bank, who had closest
contact with the partners and who shared their political and religious views.
Politics and the market

Bruce Carruthers has argued that parts of the early-eighteenth-century market
were politicised, that is to say that investors did not simply judge where to put
their money on the basis of safety, the value of returns or ease of access, but
according to value judgements related to the affiliations of investor and the per-
ceived politics of the investment. One group of debtors – the government –
created a financial constituency with an interest in the government’s survival
while creditors had a financial interest in the ability of the government to repay
its debts. He believes that market transactions were embedded in a highly politi-
cised social context and that political considerations could outweigh financial
considerations in people’s decisions to buy and sell.34
Dickson notes that short-term loans on Land Tax seem to have been relat-
ively unpolitical, while long-term government borrowing – the government
annuities that were partly exchanged for equity in the South Sea Company in
1720 – was highly politicised.35 David Stasavage argues that government credi-
tors after 1688 were chiefly Whigs because Tories tended to be more closely
aligned with landed interests, people who generally disliked taxation which was
a necessity if government debt was to be repaid.36 Susan Staves’s work on
women investors and the possibilities of voting as shareholders has led her to
conclude that women holders of stock were ‘uninterested in ideology, [prefer-
ring] collecting and distributing presents (or bribes), and developing connections
for their family interests’.37
In a separate literature, Elaine Chalus has demonstrated how women were
‘functioning members of the political world’, a part of the political life of the
nation in a society that was becoming more politicised as the ‘rage of party’
spread.38 As ‘disenfranchised members of the extra-parliamentary nation’ they
were, nonetheless, political actors.39 Parliament met more often and for longer as
the eighteenth century progressed, creating a penumbra of friends and relations
of parliamentarians whose lives were closely bound up with the politics of the
day. Unfortunately, while she looks forward to the nineteenth century, she says
little about the period before 1760. Nor does Susan Kingsley Kent in her Gender
and Power in Britain 1640–1990.40 But the world of familial contacts and
patronage existed in the early eighteenth century and was one in which women
played a full part, even if the strength of party divisions was less.
The evidence presented here on the investment patterns of the women cus-
tomers of Hoare’s Bank suggests that women were self-conscious investors,
especially those who did a substantial amount of business with the bank. But it
also suggests that if we accept Carruthers’s thesis of the politicisation of the
market, which certainly seems to be borne out by the preferences of Tory cus-
tomers of a Tory bank for a Tory company, women were not just financial
agents but making political choices as well. The disproportionate preference for
the South Sea Company’s shares over those of the other moneyed companies
and the level of purchases and sales does not indicate a population of passive
investors waiting for their dividends.
Notes
1 I am grateful to the partners of C. Hoare and Co. for permission to use their archives
and to their archivist, Pamela Hunter. This chapter draws on Anne Laurence, ‘Women
investors, “That nasty South Sea affair” and the rage to speculate in early eighteenth
century England’, Accounting, Business and Financial History 16, 2006, pp. 245–64,
and on the paper ‘Women, banks and the securities market in early eighteenth century
England’, given at the International Economic History Association conference held in
Helsinki in 2006.
2 For example, Adrian Wilson has shown how politicised was the world of charity hos-
pitals in the eighteenth century in ‘Conflict, consensus and charity: politics and
provincial charity hospitals in the eighteenth century’, English Historical Review 111,
1996, p. 604.
3 P.G.M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development
of Public Credit 1688–1756, London: Macmillan, 1967, pp. 256, 268–9.
4 S. Staves, ‘Investments, votes and “bribes”: women as shareholders in the chartered
national companies’, in H.L. Smith (ed.), Women Writers and the Early Modern
British Political Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 269.
5 Staves, ‘Investments, votes and “bribes” ’, p. 270.
6 Ann Carlos and Larry Neal, ‘Women investors in early capital markets 1720–1725’,
Financial History Review 11, 2004, pp. 197–224; David R. Green and Alastair Owens,
‘Gentlewomanly capitalism? Spinsters, widows, and wealth holding in England and
Wales, c.1800–1860’, Economic History Review 56, 2003, pp. 510–36; Josephine
Maltby and Janette Rutterford, ‘ “She possessed her own fortune”: women investors
from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century’, Business History 48,
2006, pp. 220–53 and Janette Rutterford and Josephine Maltby, ‘ “The widow, the cler-
gyman and the reckless” – women investors in England 1830–1914’, Feminist Eco-
nomics 12, 2006, pp. 111–38, as well as the special issue of Accounting, Business and
Financial History 16, 2006, have all considered aspects of women’s investment.
7 Amy Froide, Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 115.
8 Froide, Never Married, pp. 134–6.
9 Dickson, Financial Revolution, p. 268.
10 Julian Hoppit, ‘The myths of the South Sea Bubble’, Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society 6th series, 12, 2002, p. 150; Dickson, Financial Revolution, p. 282.
11 Carlos and Neal, ‘Women investors’, p. 214.
12 Kenneth J. Weiller and Philip Mirowski, ‘Rates of interest in eighteenth century
England’, Explorations in Economic History 27, 1990, p. 6.
13 Gregory Clark, ‘Debts, deficits and crowding out: England 1727–1840’, European
Review of Economic History 5, 2001, p. 409.
56 A. Laurence
14 Weiller and Mirowski, ‘Rates of interest’, p. 6; Dickson, Financial Revolution, pp.
399–401.
15 Dickson, Financial Revolution, pp. 343, 358, 424.
16 Malcolm Balen, A Very English Deceit: The Secret History of the South Sea Bubble
and the First Great Financial Scandal, London: Fourth Estate, 2002, pp. 16, 34, 35;
C. L’Estrange Ewen, Lotteries and Sweepstakes: An Historical, Legal and Ethical
Survey, London: Heath Cranton, 1932, p. 163; Anne L. Murphy, ‘Lotteries in the
1690s: investment or gamble?’, Financial History Review 12, 2005, p. 232.
17 Murphy, ‘Lotteries in the 1690s’, pp. 241, 242; Dickson, Financial Revolution,
p. 282.
18 Murphy, ‘Lotteries in the 1690s’, p. 242.
19 In the later sixteenth century, 26 per cent of landowners left no son; by the eighteenth
century this figure was 63 per cent. Lawrence Stone and Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone, An
Open Elite? England 1540–1880, abridged edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1986, p. 63.
20 Ann Carlos, Karen Maguire and Larry Neal, ‘Financial acumen, women speculators,
21 Judith Spicksley, ‘Usury legislation, cash and credit: the development of the female
investor in the late Tudor and Stuart periods’, Economic History Review 61, 2008,
p. 282.
22 S.R. Cope, ‘The stock exchange revisited: a new look at the market in securities in the
eighteenth century’, Economica 45, 1978, pp. 2–3.
23 George Berkeley, An Essay Towards Preventing the Ruine of Great Britain, London,
1721, pp. 5, 6.
24 The Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, 26 March 1720, p. 1563.
25 Ann Carlos, Jennifer Key and Jill Dupree, ‘Learning and the creation of stock market
institutions: evidence from the Royal African and Hudson’s Bay companies,
1670–1700’, Journal of Economic History 58, 1998, pp. 320, 340; Frank T. Melton,
Sir Robert Clayton and the Origins of English Deposit Banking, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1986, p. 216; Peter Temin and Hans-Joachim Voth, ‘Riding
the South Sea Bubble’, American Economic Review 95, 2004, p. 1657.
26 Peter Temin and Hans-Joachim Voth, ‘Banking as an emerging technology: Hoare’s
Bank, 1702–42’, Financial History Review 13, 2006, p. 178.
27 Cope, ‘The stock exchange revisited’, pp. 8–9.
28 These figures differ from those published in Laurence, ‘Women investors’, because
they disaggregate men and women and the basis of the sample is different, but the
general tale they tell is similar.
29 Laurence, ‘Women investors’, pp. 251–9; Anne Laurence, ‘Lady Betty Hastings, her
half-sisters and the South Sea Bubble’, Women’s History Review 15, 2006, pp. 534–6.
30 For a detailed analysis of her trading, see Laurence, ‘Women investors’, pp. 251–5.
31 Laurence, ‘Women investors’, p. 256.
32 National Library of Ireland, Smythe of Barbavilla Papers, MS 41,580/11, Frances
Hastings to Jane Bonnell, 7 September 1720.
33 Temin and Voth, ‘Riding the South Sea Bubble’, pp. 1658, 1666.
34 B.G. Carruthers, City of Capital: Politics and Markets in the English Financial
Revolution, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 5–6. But see Larry
Neal’s criticisms that without price data the results are unsatisfactory. Economic
History Review 50, 1997, pp. 560–1.
35 Dickson, Financial Revolution, p. 425.
36 David Stasavage, Public Debt and the Birth of the Democratic State: France and
Great Britain 1688–1789, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 6.
37 Staves, ‘Investments, votes and “bribes” ’, p. 278.
38 Elaine Chalus, ‘Elite women, social politics and the political world of late eighteenth
century England’, Historical Journal 43, 2000, p. 671; eadem, Elite Women in
English Political Life, c.1754–1790, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005.
39 Chalus, ‘Elite women, social politics’, p. 672.
40 Susan Kingsley Kent, Gender and Power in Britain 1640–1990, London: Routledge,
1999. Susan Whyman, however, has looked at women of the Verney family and their
role in early-eighteenth-century politics. Susan Whyman, Sociability and Power in
Late-Stuart England: The Cultural World of the Verneys 1660–1720, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999, especially chapter 6.
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institutions: evidence from the Royal African and Hudson’s Bay companies,
1670–1700’, Journal of Economic History 58, 1998, pp. 318–44.
Carlos, Ann, Maguire, Karen and Neal, Larry, ‘Financial acumen, women speculators,
Carruthers, B.G., City of Capital: Politics and Markets in the English Financial Revolu-
tion, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Chalus, Elaine, Elite Women in English Political Life, c.1754–1790, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 2005.
Chalus, Elaine, ‘Elite women, social politics and the political world of late eighteenth
century England’, Historical Journal 43, 2000, pp. 669–97.
Clark, Gregory, ‘Debts, deficits and crowding out: England 1727–1840’, European
Review of Economic History 5, 2001, pp. 403–36.
Cope, S.R., ‘The stock exchange revisited: a new look at the market in securities in the
eighteenth century’, Economica 45, 1978, pp. 1–21.
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Survey, London: Heath Cranton, 1932.
Froide, Amy, Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford
Green, David R. and Owens, Alastair, ‘Gentlewomanly capitalism? Spinsters, widows,
and wealth holding in England and Wales, c.1800–1860’, Economic History Review
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58 A. Laurence
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5 Women investors and financial
knowledge in eighteenth-century
Germany
Eve Rosenhaft
Any attempt to survey the bases for women’s financial activity in eighteenth-
century Germany faces a serious problem of evidence. This is to some extent a
consequence of the relatively limited historiography. Business historians in
Germany have been slow to adopt the kinds of cultural analysis that have
enabled the dissection of gendered representations and practices and made
women’s financial activity visible in Britain.1 Similarly, the vision of the eight-
eenth century as a key period in the emergence of a consumer society, which has
been central to historical understanding of changing attitudes to money, savings
and investment, has only recently been taken up in the German historiography –
in spite of the pioneering conceptual work done by German social theorists on
this very theme earlier in the twentieth century.2
To some extent, of course, the silence of the historical literature reflects the
relative unimportance of the eighteenth century in German economic develop-
ment. We have to look hard in the German sources to find the kinds of
representations of the world of goods and commerce that permeate English
popular culture in the same period, and there are good reasons for this. It was
only in the nineteenth century that the effects of political fragmentation were
overcome and the kind of dynamic could develop in both the industrial and the
financial sectors that would make the notion of the ‘popular investor’ (of either
sex) conceivable.3 Accordingly, what work there is on women in modern busi-
ness in Germany has focused on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and on
women’s roles as company directors and managers or in family firms.4
There is a paradox here, though. If the eighteenth century has been of little
interest to ‘mainstream’ economic history, it has a central place in German femi-
nist historiography. In particular, the decades between 1750 and 1850 have been
identified as a watershed in the emergence of modern gender relations, as the
discursive construct of a polarity of gender characters established itself and was
deployed to underpin an institutionalised concept of separate spheres.5 In the
German context, this has been associated specifically with the emergence of a
new administrative and service middle class, whose ethical self-consciousness
stamped the culture of the period and carried within it significant potential for
social and institutional innovation. It is among these middle-class men and
women, who typically defined themselves as without heritable property and
60 E. Rosenhaft
reliant on the careful management of money incomes for their survival, that we
would (and do) seek the first generations of ‘modern’ investors. But while the
project of elaborating and critiquing the ‘separate spheres’ thesis has produced
some excellent case studies of middle-class family life, these have emphasised
affective and domestic relations and made little or no reference to financial prac-
tices and strategies.
It could even be argued that one of the earliest insights of German feminist
historiography has acted as a brake on research into women and finance. Under
historical regimes of gender guardianship (Geschlechtsvormundschaft), women
were formally denied the status of legal persons, the key precondition for under-
taking any kind of business in their own right. Husbands typically enjoyed the
right of disposal over property that their wives brought into the marriage. The
economic disability of married women was perpetuated in the Civil Code of the
new empire at the end of the nineteenth century, with particular reference to
middle-class (non-labouring) households, and the responsibility of a married
woman to prioritise her family and household duties over economic activity
remained fixed in West German law until the 1970s. For a long time, then, a
kind of knowingness about what women could not do prevailed among histor-
ians. This has begun to give way to grounded knowledge about the extent of
variation over time and space in the character and application of
Geschlechtsvormundschaft and the variety of inheritance practices in what was,
after all, a highly variegated politico-legal order, and the many ways that famil-
ies found to provide a degree of independence for women within marriage and
after the death of their husbands.6
This more nuanced picture is the result not least of finding women as eco-
nomic actors in history and asking how, after all, it was possible for them to act.
It remains the case that at this stage in the development of the field the evidence
is scattered and often anecdotal, and more suggestive than definitive. One text
produced early in the century is evidence, if such were needed, of women’s
capacity to acquire and apply financial knowledge. This is the autobiography of
Glückel von Hameln, a Jewish merchant’s daughter born in Hamburg in 1646/7.
In Glückel’s circles, money was equally central to the business of the world and
to the business of maintaining family and friendship networks. In the elaborate
genealogical account that opens the book, each coupling is assessed in terms of
the balance between the size of the dowry (settled on either bride or groom) and
the quality of the match, each family dispute in terms of the court costs. Glückel
delights in the story of her grandmother who saved her allowance and lent it out
at interest in order to amass 200 Reichstaler with which to repay her son-in-law
for looking after her in her old age (a gift which he honourably returned to her
with a supplement of 100 Reichstaler). An important feature of the account is
that as an adult woman at least Glückel could always say where the money had
come from and why. Her husband traded in precious stones, and having taken an
active role in the business she displays a knowledge not only of the trade itself
but also of the credit instruments and forms of investment (including the primi-
tive speculative practice of pawning inventory in anticipation of a rise in its
Women investors in eighteenth-century Germany 61
market price) available in her day, of different currencies and of the financial
implications and risks of entering into business partnerships. When her first
husband died, deliberately entrusting the management of his estate and the chil-
dren to her rather than appointing an administrator, she was neither surprised to
find herself responsible for the repayment of substantial debts nor at a loss as to
how to pay them. A sale of the remaining inventory at carefully calculated prices
brought in enough to cover the debts and provide a substantial capital, most of
which she lent out at interest. Her second husband’s bankruptcy and the way it
was managed climax her account of her maturity and old age.7
Glückel’s affinity for money matters bespeaks a quite specific cultural and
historical context. The absence of a clear distinction between financial and
familial transactions (or between money and emotion as mediators of intimate
relationships) was a feature of all social relations in the early modern period that
retained its rationale in merchant and agrarian households well into the nine-
teenth century and also (in the form of the arranged marriage and the dowry) had
a particular tradition and tenacity in German Jewry.8 In terms of the forms and
sources of knowledge on which she relied, too, Glückel’s activity can be seen as
period-specific and relatively bounded. She was socialised into the technologies
and knowledges specific to her family’s ‘trades’ and gained information through
local and personal networks. Her investment activity was similarly limited to the
exploitation of local opportunities for the manipulation of credit. In this respect
she was not different from early modern rural or artisan women who supple-
mented their productive earnings by engaging in money-lending, and who could
display a keen awareness of the formal and customary limits on interest that
constrained their earning power.9
Women of the salaried middle classes were equally dependent on local net-
works and sources of information in their investment behaviour and probably
remained so throughout the century. It is clear that unmarried women were
expected to rely on the management of cash for their livelihoods beyond any
direct support they could receive from family members. This was particularly
true of widows, where the expectation – perhaps more often expressed than met
– was that they would be able to live from the interest on a capital sum reserved
by contract at marriage or fixed on them by their husband (in the form of a
legacy or jointure) or their father (in the form of a dowry).10 As a result, invest-
ment of one kind or another was central to the lives of these women. Personal
credit, on both a small and a large scale, was an important source of income. In
the university town of Göttingen, for example, a disproportionate number of
lenders in the first half of the century were women. Widows, including the
relicts of professors and officeholders disposing over large sums, were respons-
ible for some 70 per cent of the funds lent, most of them against collateral in the
form of real estate.11 Women with money to spare also took advantage of the
opportunity available in most territories of depositing capital with the city or
state treasury against interest payments.
Upon learning in 1796 that the state treasury in Hanover, in which she had
invested 6,000 Reichstaler, was reducing its interest rate, one Louise Barth
62 E. Rosenhaft
complained of ‘how hard it is to get a good return on one’s money these days’.12
This a reminder that while this kind of investment relied in the first instance on
local and familiar forms of knowledge, dependence on investment income
placed women in a position of being alert to new opportunities. There is evid-
ence in Germany as elsewhere of the power of women’s expanding investment
activity and their demand for new kinds of financial services to drive both insti-
tutional and cultural innovation – in a kind of tacit contribution to economic and
social modernity.13 When and how far did they begin to participate self-
consciously in financial ‘modernity’ by actively seeking new kinds and new
sources of knowledge? When were they able to look beyond information that
was case-specific and transmitted through personal networks and in the form of
familiar practices (‘I know what “investing” means and want only to know what
the best opportunities are within my social and geographical sphere’), and seek
to gather potentially useful information on a ‘speculative’, impersonal basis by
inserting themselves into supra-local communication streams (‘I want to know
what it means to invest [nowadays], and what kinds of opportunities there are or
might be – to be found or to be made’)? The possibility of a shift of this kind is
implicit in the burst of innovation in commercial practices and communications
that characterised the eighteenth century, even in the backwaters of provincial
Germany.14 The evidence we have suggests that German women were relatively
slow to gain access to the public and media spaces where innovation took place.
Over the course of the century, however, middle-class women were able to use
the opportunities provided by an increasingly information-rich environment to
identify and respond to changing conditions for investment.
One place to look for widening circles of financial knowledge is the years
1718 to 1722, what might be called the ‘breakthrough moment’ of a modern
culture of speculative investment. These witnessed the South Sea Bubble and
its continental prelude, the Mississippi Scheme, through which the Scotsman
John Law attempted to establish a paper-money regime in France on the basis
of stock issues against a project for the settlement and exploitation of colonial
territories in America. What characterised both these cases and impressed
contemporaries was that the passion for buying and selling stock rapidly
spread to people of all classes and both sexes – a dubious democratisation that
took material form in the close association between speculative activity and
public places, Exchange Alley in London and the Rue Quincampoix in Paris.
The presence of both men and women in these spaces, like the independent
evidence of women acting as stock traders as well as purchasers, bespeaks
women’s participation in information networks that equipped them with the
requisite knowledge both of the market and of the product. These networks
were clearly formal and supra-regional as well as informal and local, since
both the South Sea and Mississippi events generated a mass of periodical and
pamphlet literature.15
The German lands were not unaffected by the waves set off in London and
Paris, but such evidence as we have so far suggests that the impact was limited.
The news-sheets published in the principal German cities served as ‘shop
windows’ for the events in foreign capitals, though the bulk of what they carried
was more in the nature of gossip and sensation than useful knowledge. Of the
German publications about the Mississippi project, there is one that appears to
have been written for potential investors; it contains a simple but relatively
detailed account of what stocks are and how they are bought and sold. Its author,
Paul Jacob Marperger – a prolific populariser of economic knowledge –
included in his comments an implicit critique of the provincialism of the
Germans:
To be sure, all that glitters is not gold, but on the other hand not all
Columbian projects are to be rejected out of hand, even if many a one who
is at home only within his own four walls cannot grasp this.16
Clearly, at this stage speculation was still a business for professionals in

Germany. According to press reports, it was ‘money men’ from Hamburg (the
commercial and overseas trading centre) and Leipzig (a market and banking
centre) who had invested in South Sea and Mississippi shares.17 The great
bubbles found a little echo in a brief episode of the summer of 1720, when a
group of Hamburg merchants began to sell stock in a new insurance company;
the anxious city fathers of Hamburg brought the project to an end within six
weeks. In the meanwhile, a lively speculative trade had developed. As soon as
the issue was announced, trading began ‘on the Exchange, [in] the Ratskeller,
the Retailers’ Company and other well known taprooms and coffee houses’;
from six in the morning to past midnight over four consecutive days there was
‘hardly any trade on the exchange except in stock’.18 Here we also find evidence
of information circulating at a supra-regional level; in creating a new kind of
insurance scheme, the Hamburg traders were reported to have acted in emulation
of Dutch entrepreneurs. The trading venues enumerated here, though, are the
familiar loci of exchange between men of the economic and political establish-
ment; there is little sign of the democratic free-for-all embodied in the visions of
Exchange Alley and the Rue Quincampoix.
By the same token, it appears that any increase in speculative activity did not
extend to women outside of very specific, largely elite circles. Of the individuals
on record as trading in South Sea shares, 29 were based in the German lands (15
in Berlin, three in or near Hamburg, eight in Hanover and three in other loca-
tions), and of these, six were women.19 As with most of the investors named,
there is reason to suppose that their involvement in this speculative venture was
the result of family connections that linked them to international commercial
and information networks. Thus the two investors based in the city of Hamburg
(one of them a woman) had English names, while the bulk of the Berlin
investors, including two of the women, had French names and were probably (in
one case certainly) members of the refugee Huguenot community that had been
settled in Berlin since 1685. The Huguenots pioneered the development of
modern financial institutions in Prussia, not least because of their continuing
connections with financial centres all over Europe – including, of course,
64 E. Rosenhaft
France.20 The relatively large contingent based in Hanover comprised members
of established families who had made their careers in service to the territorial
administration and/or the royal court; that is, they were particularly well placed
to be aware of developments on the London Stock Exchange and likely to be
interested. The South Sea investor Catharina Margarete Hinüber was one of
these.21
A final category of female investor is represented by Countess ‘Margaret
Gertrud Lippe’. This was very probably Margaret Gertrud von Oeynhausen
(1698–1726), daughter of George I by his mistress the Duchess of Kendal and
daughter-in-law of Countess Johanna Sophie of Schaumburg-Lippe. Johanna
Sophie was lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Wales, Caroline of Ansbach.
Here we have reached the nodal point in a network of communication among
elite (royal) women that certainly transmitted financial news. The question of
how far the participants were interested in useful knowledge, though, remains an
open one. The involvement of the Princess of Wales and her associates in South
Sea trading is well established. The diary of Mary Countess Cowper, lady of the
bedchamber to the Princess, reveals Countess Cowper herself as a woman with
intimate knowledge of the intrigues both political and financial associated with
the South Sea Bubble, and at home with the jargon (at least) of stock prices and
interest rates. She writes knowingly in April 1720 of Walpole’s plans for
making up a shortfall on South Sea income through the purchase and resale of
insurances, and reports further that part of Walpole’s politico-financial strategy
was to buy South Sea stock in the names of both the Prince and the Princess of
Wales, so that by May the Princess had a personal investment in the scheme. But
Countess Cowper also takes occasion to comment on the relative innocence of
the Germans: ‘Bernstorff, nor Bothmar, nor none of the Germans, knew of this
except the Duchess of Kendal, whom English Money and an English Title had
made true to the English Ministers.’22
The impression of the relative innocence of the Germans in financial affairs is
reinforced by the evidence of the correspondence between the Princess of
Wales, Johanna Sophie Schaumburg-Lippe, and the German princess who was
closest to the Mississippi scheme. This was the Duchess Elisabeth Charlotte
d’Orléans, daughter of the Elector Palatine. As the mother of the Duke of
Orléans, regent of France and the man principally responsible for promoting and
instituting Law’s financial schemes, she could hardly have been closer to the
Mississippi scandal, and she observed Law’s activities with interest and, ini-
tially, some enthusiasm. Moreover, her letters show that she was well aware of
events in London; she reported and commented spontaneously about these
matters to all of her wide circle of correspondents, and her letters to Johanna
Sophie and the Princess of Wales indicate that the conversation was not a one-
sided one. But the leitmotif in all of her letters is incomprehension. Thus in
August 1719 she wrote to her half-sister Louise, ‘For the last six days there’s
been nothing new here except lots of financial business, which I can’t tell you
about, for I do not understand it’; while 15 months later, as both London and
Paris were in turmoil, she observed:
I’m willing to bet the King in England will have a great deal of trouble to
bring the South Sea business to a good end. I see how it goes here with the
accursed Mississippi. I have such an aversion to all this stuff that I have for-
bidden my people ever to speak about this or about the constitution in my
presence. I understand neither the one nor the other, but they are both as
abhorrent to me as a purge.23
Visiting London two generations later (in 1786), Sophie von la Roche displayed
a similar ingenuousness about the role and function of the Bank of England. The
Bank was one of the obvious attractions for an educated Anglophile tourist, and
her published diary describes in considerable detail the building and the people
within it, going about their various activities ‘paying in bank-notes, handing out
money in exchange for paper, or taking the former and giving the latter’, weigh-
ing and transporting gold. But the emphasis is on the gold which materialises
both the possibilities of wealth and its perils (what comes spontaneously to mind
for her is the ‘miserable plight of the blacks who extract it’).24 This is of interest
not least because Sophie von la Roche was an entrepreneur herself; the author of
extremely popular sentimental fiction and one of the first women writing in
German to earn her living as an author, she also published a series of short-lived
women’s magazines.25 In this sense, her own work was implicated in the devel-
opment of the periodical press that was at the centre of the eighteenth century’s
information revolution and that certainly contributed to heightening awareness
and knowledge of financial affairs. And it is accordingly unlikely that she was as
indifferent to money matters as her sketch of the Bank of England implies,
though her moralising ambivalence does seem more characteristic even of late-
eighteenth-century Germans than of British contemporaries.26
As early as the 1720s, intelligencers in major cities like Hamburg carried list-
ings of London share prices alongside those of commodity prices and exchange
rates, but this was ‘back-page’ information for specialists.27 By the 1780s, one of
these, the Hamburgischer Correspondent, had achieved a circulation that was
significant by international standards and gave it the character of a ‘national’
newspaper, and at the same time financial affairs had penetrated its reportage
and advertising sections. Similarly the high-circulation monthly Politisches
Journal, first published in 1781, featured narrative reports on new joint-stock
enterprises and share issues (such as those of the new Danish trading companies)
that presumed a basic understanding of the nature of stock trading and the rela-
tionship between share prices and the wider economic and political scene.28
Women (particularly widows) of the commercial classes literally had a hand in
the circulation of printed information, since they were prominent as sellers of
books and news-sheets. That middle-class women were active readers too is well
attested, not least by the success of Sophie von la Roche and other women
writers and publishers.
Publications designed for women largely eschewed anything that might be
described as financial information, focusing instead on literature, entertainment
or useful knowledge – including popular science. And the extent of women’s
66 E. Rosenhaft
participation in the formal networks through which print information circulated
– lending libraries, reading societies and the like – remains a surprisingly under-
researched area. But while it seems clear that women were not encouraged to
read the kind of journals that carried financial news, it seems equally clear that
women and girls of the educated classes had access to such literature at home,
through the subscriptions or library borrowing of their menfolk.29
From mid-century, then, there is evidence that women’s financial knowledge,
like their investment behaviour, was beginning to extend beyond the opportun-
ities afforded by familiar local relationships and networks – even if their access
to information was often mediated by male relatives or acquaintances. The still
very limited evidence we have on middle-class men’s stock-market activity
shows wives aware of and contributing to investment decisions. Balthasar
Münter, a German clergyman resident in Copenhagen who invested heavily in
the Danish trading companies in 1782 and reported his rising and falling for-
tunes to his son in Germany, also recorded his wife’s reactions to the vicissi-
tudes of the market.30
A more popular innovation in the realm of financial ‘products’ in the second
half of the century was the publicly recruiting widows’ fund (a kind of proto-life
insurance scheme promising survivors’ pensions in perpetuity against the
payment of regular contributions during the husband’s lifetime), and the history
of the largest of these funds provides some insight into what women knew and
how they came to know it.31 The Calenbergische Witwen-Verpflegungs-
Gesellschaft was founded in Hanover in 1766–7, and invited subscribers from
all over Europe; by 1781 over 5,000 married couples had joined. In principle,
only married men were to be subscribers and only their widows the beneficia-
ries. Here, too, though, both the records of the fund and the publicity that sur-
rounded it (and other similar foundations) show that the decision to invest was
often made jointly by the husband and wife. Moreover, in spite of its founders’
intentions, the Calenberg opened up a space for women’s independent financial
initiative, not least because of the way its operation depended on maintaining a
constant flow of information. Its managers began by advertising for new sub-
scribers in the periodical press and through printed prospectuses, and continued
to keep existing subscribers informed through the publication of semi-annual
reports; reprinted in the principal regional intelligencers, these Avertissements
also provided a shop-window for prospective subscribers. A further point of
contact between the fund and its members was a group of agents based in
Hanover, who were responsible for corresponding with both subscribers and
pensioner widows who lived outside the city. They were expected to report to
their clients at least twice a year, carrying on their business by post – and this
included the widows. Agents mailed the widows their pension instalments, along
with the printed Avertissements, and the widows posted back their receipts.
These agents were mainly notaries by training; although officially sub-
contracted to the fund, they received fees from the subscribers and widows, and
over the 15 years during which the fund flourished they developed an identity
closer to that of a financial adviser, priding themselves on their familiarity with
each couple and each widow on their books. It is possible that the agents also
visited their clients, and also that some men acted as agents in other localities on
a formal or informal basis.
Certainly, word of mouth and personal recommendation played a role in
spreading knowledge about the fund and who was a member. Accordingly, we
find women responding and intervening independently at each stage in the
development of the fund. Among the first members of the public to express an
interest in the new fund in 1766 was a widow who wrote hoping to be allowed to
invest in a pension for herself. And when, in 1781, the fund was threatened with
collapse, pensioner widows mobilised in self-defence against the prospect of a
drastic cut in their pensions. The methods they used were relatively traditional –
petitions and lawsuits; as such they continued to depend on the mediation of
male professionals and relatives. But there is no reason to doubt that the 568
women who appear as signatories to the documents between 1781 and 1789 –
often naming one of the Calenberg agents as proxy – were sufficiently informed
about the business to know what they were doing. Similarly, while there remains
a very wide field for research both on the eighteenth-century scene and on the
question of continuities and discontinuities in middle-class investment experi-
ences from the ‘backward’ eighteenth to the bustling nineteenth century, there is
every reason to be optimistic that there is more evidence of women’s active
engagement with sources of financial knowledge waiting to be unearthed.
Notes
1 See, for example, the exchanges between Toni Pierenkemper, Manfred Pohl and Peter
Borscheid in the Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 1999–2001; Hartmut
Berghoff, Moderne Unternehmensgeschichte. Eine themen- und theorieorientierte
Einführung, Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004 – with a very limited acknowledgement of
women and gender issues.
2 Heidrun Homburg, ‘Werbung – “eine Kunst, die gelernt sein will”. Aufbrüche in eine
neue Warenwelt 1750–1850’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1997, pp. 11–52;
Reinhold Reith and Torsten Meyer (eds), Luxus und Konsum. Eine historische
Annäherung, Münster: Waxmann, 2003; Michael Prinz (ed.), Der lange Weg in den
Überfluss. Anfänge und Entwicklung der Konsumgesellschaft seit der Vormoderne,
Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003. The locus classicus is Werner Sombart, Luxus und
Kapitalismus (1913).
3 Coleen Dunlavy has undertaken detailed research on shareholding in German rail-
ways in international comparison, for example ‘Corporate democracy: stockholder
voting rights in nineteenth-century American and Prussian railroad corporations’, in
Lena Andersson-Skog and Olle Krantz (eds), Institutions in the Transport and Com-
munication Industries: State and Private Actors in the Making of Institutional Pat-
terns, 1850–1990, Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1999, pp. 33–60.
4 For example, Robert Beachy, ‘Profit and propriety: Sophie Henschel and gender man-
agement in the German locomotive industry’, in Robert Beachy, Béatrice Craig and
Alastair Owens (eds), Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe.
Rethinking Separate Spheres, Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006, pp. 67–80; Chris-
tiane Eifert, ‘Deutsche Unternehmerinnen und die Rhetorik vom “weiblichen
Führungsstil” nach 1945’, Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 50, 2005, pp.
17–35.
68 E. Rosenhaft
5 For a survey of the history of this thesis in the German historiography and critical
approaches to it, see Marion Gray and Ulrike Gleixner (eds), Gender in Transition:
Discourse and Practice in German-Speaking Europe 1750–1830, Ann Arbor, MI:
University of Michigan Press, 2006.
6 See most recently Nicole Grochowina and Hendrikje Carius (eds), Eigentumskulturen
und Geschlecht in der Frühen Neuzeit (= Comparativ 15/4), Leipzig: University of
Leipzig, 2005; Robert Beachy, ‘Women without gender: commerce, exchange codes
and the erosion of German gender guardianship, 1680–1830’, in David R. Green and
Alastair Owens (eds), Family Welfare: Gender, Property and Inheritance since the
Seventeenth Century, Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004, pp. 195–216.
7 Denkwürdigkeiten der Glückel von Hameln, trans. and ed. Alfred Feilchenfeld, 1923,
reprint Bodenheim: Philo, 1999, pp. 20–9, 43, 75f, 87–9, 181, 280–2.
8 Marion Kaplan, The Making of a Jewish Middle Class, New York: Oxford, 1991, pp.
88f. On women in merchant families, see Daniel A. Rabuzzi, ‘Women as merchants
in eighteenth-century northern Germany: the case of Stralsund 1750–1830’, Central
European History 28, 1995, pp. 435–56. On the property nexus in family relations,
specifically in the countryside, see David Warren Sabean, Property, Production and
Family in Neckarhausen, 1700–1870, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
9 Sheilagh Ogilvie, A Bitter Living. Women, Markets, and Social Capital in Early
Modern Germany, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 241f; see also Sabean,
Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen.
10 Stefan Brakensiek, Fürstendiener – Staatsbeamte – Bürger, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
and Ruprecht, 1999, p. 248; Silvia Möhle, Ehekonflikte und sozialer Wandel. Göttin-
gen 1740–1840, Frankfurt a. M. and New York: Campus, 1997, p. 92.
11 Norbert Winnige, ‘Vom Leihen und Schulden in Göttingen. Studien zum Kapital-
markt’, in Hermann Wellenreuther (ed.), Göttingen 1690–1755: Studien zur
Sozialgeschichte einer Stadt, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1988, pp.
252–320. See also Möhle, Ehekonflikte, p. 94; Karl Heinrich Kaufhold, ‘Die
Wirtschaft in der frühen Neuzeit: Gewerbe, Handel und Verkehr’, in Christine van
den Heuvel and Manfred von Boetticher (eds), Geschichte Niedersachsens: Politik,
Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft von der Reformation bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhun-
derts, Hanover: Hahn, 1998, pp. 351–636, especially 564–74. For international com-
parators, see Beverly Lemire, Ruth Pearson and Gail Campbell (eds), Women and
Credit. Researching the Past, Refiguring the Future, Oxford and New York: Berg,
2001.
12 Louise Barth to the Treasury Committee of the Calenberg Estates, 30 March 1796,
Niedersächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Hannover, Dep 7B, no. 385, p. 7.
13 Eve Rosenhaft, ‘Did women invent life insurance? Widows and the demand for finan-
cial services in eighteenth-century Germany’, in Green and Owens, Family Welfare,
pp. 163–94; Judith Spicksley, ‘Usury legislation, cash, and credit: the development of
the female investor in the late Tudor and Stuart periods’, Economic History Review
61 (2), 2007, pp. 277–301.
14 Eve Rosenhaft, ‘Hands and minds: clerical workloads in the first “information
society” ’, in Aad Blok and Greg Downey (eds), Uncovering Labour in Information
Revolutions, 1750–2000, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
2003, pp. 13–43.
15 For the South Sea Bubble, see Chapters 3 and 4 in this volume. For a brief outline of
the Mississippi project, see Peter M. Garber, Famous First Bubbles. The Fundamen-
tals of Early Manias, Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2000, pp. 91–103; the classic account in
English of the popular response is Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions
and the Madness of Crowds, 1841, reprint Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1995,
pp. 1–44.
16 Paul Jacob Marperger, Kurze Remarques über den jetziger Zeit weitberuffenen
Missippischen Actien-Handel in Paris [. . .], Dresden: Marperger, 1720; the quota-
tion is from p. 5 of a Fortsetzung (supplement), bound together with the main
publication.
17 Schlesischer Nouvellen-Courier (Breslau), 1 July 1720; Curieuse Anmerckung über
den Staat von Franckreich [. . .], Leipzig: n.p., 1720, p. 3v.
18 Schlesischer Nouvellen-Courier (Breslau), 29 July 1720, appendix. Cf. Friedrich
Plaß, Geschichte der Assecuranz und der hanseatischen Seeversicherungs-Börsen,
Hamburg: Friederichsen, 1902, pp. 123–38.
19 Personal communication from Ann Carlos; cf. Ann Carlos and Larry Neal, ‘Women
investors in early capital markets 1720–1725’, Financial History Review 11, 2004,
pp. 197–224.
20 Jürgen Wilke, ‘Der Einfluß der Hugenotten auf die gewerbliche Entwicklung’, in G.
Bregulla (ed.), Hugenotten in Berlin, Berlin: Union, 1988, pp. 227–80.
21 On the Hinüber family, see Hartmut von Hinüber, ‘ “die wahre Intention unsers
allergnädigsten Königs” – Das Profil der hannoverschen Familie v. Hinüber’,
Berichte aus dem Heimatland 2007, available online: www.heimatbund-
niedersachsen.de/Hinuber_Ausstellung_1_.pdf (accessed 21 December 2007).
22 Diary of Mary Countess Cowper, ed. Spencer Cowper, London: John Murray, 1865,
pp. 144f, 158.
23 Briefe der Herzogin Elisabeth Charlotte von Orléans aus dem Jahre 1719, ed. W.L.
Holland, Tübingen: Laupp, 1877, p. 223; Briefe der Herzogin Elisabeth Charlotte von
Orléans aus dem Jahre 1720, ed. W.L. Holland, Tübingen: Laupp, 1879, p. 339. See
also Elisabeth Charlotte d’Orléans, Briefe an Johanna Sophie von Schaumburg-Lippe,
St. Ingbert: Röhrig, 2003, especially nos. 39, 42, 43. Cf. Dirk van der Cruysse,
Madame Palatine, Princesse européenne, Paris: Fayard, 1988, pp. 593–8.
24 Sophie in London 1786, being the Diary of Sophie v. la Roche, ed. and trans. Clare
Williams, London: Jonathan Cape, 1933, pp. 164f.
25 See Jeannine Blackwell, ‘Sophie von La Roche’, in James Hardin and Christoph
Schweitzer (eds), Dictionary of Literary Biography: The Age of Goethe, New York:
Bruccoli, Clark and Gale, 1990.
26 Heidrun Homburg, ‘Fortuna und Methode. Überlegungen zu einer Kulturgeschichte
von Geld und Reichtum in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Vierteljahrschrift
für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 92, 2005, pp. 16–30.
27 See, for example, Hamburger Relations-Courier (Hamburg), 6 August 1720.
28 Politisches Journal (Altona), 7 July, 9 September, 18 October 1782. Cf. Jeremy D.
Popkin, ‘Political communication in the German Enlightenment: Gottlob Benedikt
von Schirach’s Politische Journal’, Eighteenth-Century Life 20, 1996, pp. 24–41.
29 Ulrike Weckel, Zwischen Häuslichkeit und Öffentlichkeit. Die ersten deutschen
Frauenzeitschriften im späten 18. Jahrhundert und ihr Publikum, Tübingen:
Niemeyer, 1998; Moira R. Rogers, Newtonianism for the Ladies and Other Unedu-
cated Souls, New York: Lang, 2003; anecdotal evidence in Dorothea Friderika
Baldinger, Versuch über meine Verstandeserziehung, Offenbach: Weiss und Brede,
1791, reprinted in Magdalene Heuser, Ortrun Niethammer, Marion Roitzheim-Eisfeld
and Petra Wulbusch (eds), ‘Ich wünschte so gar gelehrt zu werden’, Drei Autobiogra-
phien von Frauen des 18. Jahrhunderts, Göttingen: Wallstein, 1994, pp. 7–24, here
p. 16.
30 The correspondence is in the Danish Royal Library, Copenhagen, file NKS, 520–8o.
31 For the following, see Rosenhaft, ‘Did women invent life insurance?’; Rosenhaft,
‘Hands and minds’; Eve Rosenhaft, ‘Secrecy and publicity in the emergence of
modern business culture: pension funds in Hamburg 1760–1780’, in Anne Goldgar
and Robert I. Frost (eds), Institutional Culture in Early Modern Society, Leiden: Brill,
2004, pp. 218–43.
70 E. Rosenhaft
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Beachy, Robert, ‘Profit and propriety: Sophie Henschel and gender management in the
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Grochowina, Nicole, and Carius, Hendrikje (eds), Eigentumskulturen und Geschlecht in
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Geld und Reichtum in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Vierteljahrschrift für
Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 92, 2005, pp. 16–30.
Homburg, Heidrun, ‘Werbung – “eine Kunst, die gelernt sein will”. Aufbrüche in eine
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72 E. Rosenhaft
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6 Accounting for business
Financial management in the
eighteenth century1
Christine Wiskin
In a recent article, Josephine Maltby and Janette Rutterford argued that more
work was needed on ‘the part played by accounting and bookkeeping in
women’s lives’. They acknowledged the existing canon but considered that there
was room for a ‘deepening understanding’ of what being able to do accounts
meant to women in both the past and nowadays.2 This chapter is an attempt to
widen the subject by discussing how women in business learned about money
management and how to avoid (or not) the more common mistakes. In short, to
consider what bookkeeping might have meant to businesswomen in past times.
Following this, and in order to offer a response based on real-life examples to
Maltby and Rutterford’s enquiry, the accounting practices of three Georgian
businesswomen will be examined. The case for the existence of independent
women in business in the eighteenth-century British Isles is now well-
established.3 We know where and when women ran what sort of businesses and
it is evident that women were far more commercially active, and in a wider
range of trades, than has been suggested by Davidoff and Hall. Indeed Hannah
Barker’s claim for the centrality of businesswomen in the urban consumer boom
of the late Georgian period challenges the dominance of domestic ideology
argued for in Family Fortunes.4
From the later seventeenth century onwards, at least in England and Wales,
the processes of bookkeeping and accounting represented a new way of looking
at the world, whereby logic and reason could be used to enumerate daily transac-
tions and predict the financial future. Reliance on divine intervention or the
advice of fortune tellers became less prevalent.5 However, deciding where we
should place women in this changing intellectual world presents problems. Mar-
garet Hunt argues for a female presence that equates to a ‘mark of [their]
respectability’, whereas Davidoff and Hall believed accounting to be a ‘quintes-
sentially masculine skill and prerogative’, while Beverly Lemire asserts that, in
the home, bookkeeping became the ‘paradigm of family discourse’, an intellec-
tual and emotional site shared by men and women.6
In this chapter, and in order to appreciate the economic climate in which
women in business kept their books, there are some introductory points to be
made about eighteenth-century commercial life. It was orthodoxy that success in
business or trade rested on two things: good trade credit and good books. Let us
74 C. Wiskin
begin by looking at the former, which was usually discussed by contemporary
commentators in terms of the male user. This gender-based assumption rein-
forces the notion of women’s restricted role in the economy. It takes for granted
that women’s use of credit was largely consumer-based, limited to household
expenditure or, in the case of the female labouring poor, to combining it with all
sorts of petty trading, much of it bordering on illegality.7 Gender-based ideas
about credit have also tended to conceal the presence of ‘middling sort’ busi-
nesswomen in retailing, where many were to be found selling the new, semi-
luxury goods and services of the age. However, it would be too simplistic to
discuss this as women selling to women in some sort of eighteenth-century
home-shopping experience. These female shopkeepers maintained a presence in
the public world of commerce, operated from fixed premises and held substan-
tial stocks.8 Female shopkeepers had many male customers, too, and, as Margot
Finn has shown, the demand for the new consumer goods came as much from
men as from women.9 Furthermore, to understand how businesswomen were
incorporated into the world of trade credit, it has to be remembered that manu-
facturers, producers and traders in these new items wanted to reach as wide a
market as possible and would sell on credit to whomever would stock them, irre-
spective of their sex. Differences in the credit terms they were offered or
received in these deals depended not on their gender but on their reputation for
reliability, how promptly they paid and the size of their orders.10 When it came
to settling up, both sexes faced the same problem: how to pay on time while
maintaining sufficient cash for other current and future commitments. What was
the case in retailing was also true for businesspeople in other sectors of the
economy. ‘Punctual payments’ kept the commercial world afloat but behind this
piece of confident alliteration lay complex webs of financial management, per-
sonal relations and individual circumstances. Credit was a boon to those in busi-
ness provided they used it wisely, on the one hand enabling them to buy more
stock, on the other to offer credit terms to customers, in the hope of increasing
turnover.11 Sadly, dealings on credit could turn into a nightmare; there was the
pitfall of trading on too small a capital, of buying more than could be paid for, or
offering generous terms to customers who had little or no intention of paying
their bills. Handled well, credit might lead to prosperity or even, for a very lucky
few, to a fortune; disgrace, bankruptcy, even the debtors’ prison awaited those
businesspeople who could not control its management.
A solution to deal with this Janus-like phenomenon was advocated by
contemporary commentators: it was to keep an accurate and up-to-date record of
all business dealings, thereby being able to pinpoint when debts were due, to
whom, and for how much. This could then be compared with potential income,
the assumption being that the former would not exceed the latter on any particu-
lar date. If it were likely to, adjustments would have to be made – more deals on
credit, perhaps, or greater pressure put on tardy customers. Craig Muldrew has
demonstrated that ‘accounts’ were kept in all sorts of ways in early modern
England: tally sticks, chalk marks on a wall, oral testimonies backed up by a
reputation in the local community for honesty and fairness.12 Although they
Accounting for business 75
were based on reckoning that did not need formal knowledge of written quantifi-
cation, these were systems that worked. However, by the eighteenth century,
many of these methods were deemed old-fashioned and inadequate to cope with
an expanding and much more sophisticated economy, and it became a common-
place that good written records were the most desirable way of knowing what
was happening in one’s business. The prognosis was dire if one failed to do so.13
Given the growing ethos of quantification, some familiarity with accounts and
bookkeeping seems to have been assumed among those engaged in business. It
was thought to be more reliable than traditional ways of keeping tabs on things
and was perceived to be indispensable when supervising clerks and
workpeople.14 Increasing literacy and the exponential growth of the book trade
in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries meant there were plenty of self-
help manuals urging their readers to accept the utility of written financial records
and to take up the practice.15 Most of the texts advocating the benefits of written
financial records were directed to a male readership; occasionally an author
pointed out that a businesswoman who could not do accounts was fair game for
any unscrupulous person who could.16 Possibly here was an emotional, as well
as economic, worry. Early death, leaving a widow with young children, was a
very real fear for businessmen and traders in this period. The grieving widow
might abandon her good sense and judgement in the face of her bereavement,
which would make her vulnerable to the approaches of plausible fortune
hunter(s), willing to step into the shoes and bed of the late husband. All that he
had worked for and the affection he had known were in danger of being requisi-
tioned by an outsider because coverture would have granted the property of the
remarrying widow, including all she had inherited from her first husband, to her
second. This was a challenge to the foundation of the familial, economic and
sexual unit the first husband had created.17 On the other hand, as supporters of
women’s literacy, numeracy and bookkeeping argued, instruction in these sub-
jects would provide widows, daughters and other female relatives with the
wherewithal to resist such blandishments, if they needed them.
Sidney Pollard maintained that business proprietors also learned bookkeeping
and commercial skills by formal training but when we consider women in busi-
ness, his view seems less well-founded. The education of Georgian girls tended
to be a haphazard process, dependent on their parents’ inclinations and status.
Some young females went to school either, if from the middle ranks, to receive a
‘polite’ education, tailored to meet society’s expectations for them of matrimony
and motherhood, or, if from the lower-middle ranks or from the deserving sec-
tions of the labouring poor, to be trained for work. Instruction in schools
included simple arithmetic that, unlike mathematics, did not threaten the existing
gender order, and accounts and bookkeeping were an ideal vehicle for teaching
it.18 However, formal schooling played a relatively small part in the education of
most girls and young women. They might, for instance, have been taught at
home, which was where Catherine Morland, the impressionable heroine of
Northanger Abbey was tutored in accounts by her clergyman father. Girls
growing up in a business household were likely to have learned, at the very
76 C. Wiskin
least, the rudiments from family members. Many young women learned how to
keep the books at work, as part of an apprenticeship or some other form of on-
the-job training, or through marriage to a trades- or businessman. Instruction in
accounts, whether for the household or work, or both, also seems to have been
part of the socialising of girls and young women, a step on the way to the
responsibilities of adulthood. Being able to cast up accounts, therefore, fulfilled
both cultural and economic functions. That it was widely taught for a variety of
reasons among the elite and non-elite suggests that its objectives went beyond
the solely pedagogical.
Instruction in keeping accounts was one thing, proficiency was quite another.
Provided the motivation was present, it was not too difficult to keep a daily note
of transactions carried out and money received and spent, but turning this into a
form of financial record comprehensible to both its author and any interested
third party required patience and accuracy. Despite instruction by an impeccable
source, the fictional Catherine Morland, for example, achieved only limited
mastery of the subject.19 There has been recent scholarly interest in women’s
numeracy and, as Nicola Phillips and others have shown, there were literate and
numerate eighteenth-century women sufficiently adept to record their getting
and spending of money. Women’s personal writings have been fruitful sources
about their household expenditure. Compiled for household purposes, these
itemise purchases, prices, amounts, suppliers, recipients of gifts. Household
diaries and accounts have also been analysed to explain consumption practices
and record changes in fashion. In many instances, comments by their authors
made it clear that sales and purchases were linked to personal events, reciprocity
was frequently as important as monetary exchange; it was the dynamics of
domestic life, as much as monetary transactions, that were being recorded.20 For
the nineteenth century, Stephen Walker argues for contemporary beliefs in
women’s ‘unique’ aptitude for doing accounts, their attention to detail and accu-
racy being rooted in their domesticity.21 These examples go some way to answer
Maltby and Rutterford’s enquiry, although focus on domestic and household
accounting still leaves unanswered questions about the place of bookkeeping in
the lives of women in business. In the world of the family firm, it is evident that
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, wives, daughters and other female
relatives still kept the books. This was unpaid work, part of their contribution to
the family enterprise.22 And this was despite Defoe’s satirical comments that the
newly acquired desire among the middle ranks for social mobility meant that its
womenfolk now thought casting up accounts was ungenteel.23 Other women,
forced onto the labour market by circumstances, had to commodify their literacy
and numeracy in order to earn a living from clerical work or bookkeeping; prob-
ably it was a very modest means of subsistence but it was one by which they
might retain a modicum of respectability. The piecemeal examples of such cleri-
cal work suggest that in no way did women threaten male hegemony over these
salaried occupations.24
So far we have established some ways in which to respond to Maltby and
Rutterford. Because of its association with education and training, being able to
cast up accounts was part of the rites of passage from childhood to womanhood.
In the guise of personal accounting, it provided a place where women could
explore the connections between their financial and emotional relationships, and
where the links between women, money, and how they enumerated it, were
complex and subjective, based on sentiment as much as rationality. In more
mundane terms, bookkeeping skills gave women an economic justification for
their existence, and might be exchanged either for bed, board and support in the
family enterprise or traded for wages in the world of paid work. Women in busi-
ness on their own account might well have seen bookkeeping in all or some of
these ways, but there was much more to it than that because of the many advan-
tages of well-kept books for commercial purposes. Writing down transactions,
calculating debts due and owing, anticipating future income and liabilities and
allowing for contingencies were all ways of keeping order and exercising discip-
line over the finances of the enterprise and providing information that could be
used productively. Unfortunately, discussion of what this might have meant to
businesswomen in the past is hampered by the paucity of sources. Account
books and other written records prepared by women in business for commercial
purposes in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are few and far
between, despite Beverly Lemire’s argument that many account books, both per-
sonal and business, authored by men and women, have survived.25 Differences
in the archival experiences of scholars can be partly explained by the nature of
the material. Many of the examples Lemire cites combine the mixture of finan-
cial recording and self-expression already discussed in this chapter, whereas
records kept principally for commercial purposes by businesswomen in the long
eighteenth century are difficult to find and, where they exist, are often incom-
plete. Generally, evidence of accounting for business purposes by the female
entrepreneur has to be sought in records kept by others. These ‘others’ were both
male and female, including customers, who wrote down their dealings with
women shopkeepers or kept the bills they submitted and the letters they
exchanged, and male suppliers from whom businesswomen bought their stock.
Sometimes a businesswoman can be traced through court records, the reiteration
of the circumstances that occasioned the legal dispute giving information about
how she conducted her enterprise.26
How should today’s historian assess and evaluate such material? What might
it add to our understanding of the significance of accounting and bookkeeping to
businesswomen in the past? In an attempt to resolve some of these issues, the
business practices of three particular women are examined more closely. The
primary sources used cover the spectrum of business archives: correspondence
and various types of books of account, found in diverse and geographically dis-
persed locations. Because of this, discussion of the three women’s accounting
methods has had to be judged by results – success in business being believed to
have resulted from good bookkeeping, the opposite leading to failure. The three
subjects are Eleanor Coade (1733–1821), Charlotte Matthews (1759–1802) and
Jane Tait (in business 1827–1828), who were, respectively, a manufacturer, a
financier and a dressmaker. As far as their marital status was concerned, they
78 C. Wiskin
were respectively the never-married, the previously married and the soon-to-be-
married. They were able to operate as they did because, as single women, they
were free from the legal restrictions imposed on wives; as ‘femes sole’, they
could make contracts and have them enforced against them.
An outsider’s opinion of the Artificial Stone Manufactory set up, owned and
operated by Eleanor Coade is to be found in correspondence between Sir
William Chambers and Horace Walpole.27 Walpole believed Coade had over-
charged him for the gateposts he ordered from her but she would not back down.
Why else would Walpole have gone through an informal arbitration, delegating
Chambers to negotiate with her agent? Aristocrats, after all, were notorious for
procrastination when it came to paying to paying their bills. Coade might have
been desperate for the money; clearly, she refused to be put off. She was also
confident of the rightness of her case, supported by her well-kept books which
she showed to both negotiators. Walpole had left the minutiae of the case to an
impressed Chambers who found little to question. Her response rested on the
robustness of her costing, a process whereby well-established workplace
methods could be measured, recorded and calculated in objective terms.
Coade was a spinster businesswoman, whereas Charlotte Matthews was a dif-
ferent but much more familiar type, the entrepreneurial widow, who continued
the enterprise set up by her late husband. Charlotte Marlar was 16 when she
married William Matthews, a banker and merchant, in 1776, and like so many of
her female contemporaries, marriage provided her with an excellent commercial
education as she seems to have become William’s unofficial apprentice after the
knot was tied. As Mrs Matthews, she metamorphosed from a young girl into a
supportive and hard-working spouse, who revelled in spending long hours in the
counting house. As a business widow, she made a formidable figure with an
impressive clientele for her banking and bill-broking business. We know some-
thing, but not all, of her methods from ledgers at the Bank of England that
record her account there from 1793 to 1799 and from the surviving part of her
correspondence with the Birmingham partnership of Boulton & Watt. Boulton &
Watt, however, was but one of many of Charlotte’s customers and the names of
major London merchant houses and traders recur in the pages of her account at
the Bank of England. This clientele was remarkable – prosperous, ambitious,
well-connected – and unlikely to give quarter to those they deemed weak. The
ten years during which she ran this high-risk finance business on her own were
extremely difficult ones: the country was at war with France, there were very
poor harvests, unrest at home and economic crises, but Charlotte was still in
business, financing Boulton & Watt and dealing with her other customers up to
her death in 1802. All this speaks volumes about her industry and her aptitude
for business that also depended on her skills in keeping accounts and managing
her credit position.
The third subject is the ‘about-to-be-married’ Jane Tait who was a dress-
maker and milliner in Liverpool – a much more typically ‘feminine’ business
which ought, given its international customers and credit, to have been success-
ful, but was not. Bankruptcy records compiled by her creditors tell a sorry tale of
missed opportunities and poor credit management. In turn this suggests that she
did not keep good records. Even if her books were adequate, she failed to follow
up effectively the leads to which they ought to have pointed. Tait’s behaviour
suggests an unfocused attitude to business. Her creditors were able to quantify
her liabilities, implying that she had kept some sort of tally but, for whatever
reason, she failed to act upon that information.28
Returning to the wider question of what keeping accounts meant to women in
the past, the process of achieving, at the very least, a modest proficiency in
bookkeeping involved multiple objectives. It could shape girls and young
women into useful adults, preparing them to take on the role of spouse and help-
mate. This had many practical applications both in the home and the workplace
– the benefits of a well-run and solvent household were obvious, as was the
advantage of free clerical labour in the business. This was inherently a support-
ing role where it was taken for granted that women acquiesced in a male-
dominated society. A woman’s possession of adequate skills in accounts also
carried with it the hope of a modicum of protection against gold-diggers in the
event of the death of the male household head, an aspiration that similarly
denied agency to the socialised female. All in all, it taught girls what society
expected of them.
When it came to using the knowledge gained from this training, its socialis-
ing component could be further played out. Paid work doing accounts or book-
keeping gave the literate and numerate woman what society expected for her –
scant job security, poor pay and very limited hopes. On the other hand, the
unwaged wife who acted as domestic bookkeeper was also expected to conform;
she answered to her husband for household expenditure, the act of submitting
the account book or books to him to check underlining her subordinate status.
As Lemire has shown, tensions could arise here; each week or month the house-
hold was gripped by suspense: would the wife be praised for the excellence of
her records and household management or castigated for her sloppiness? If
everything was in order, she could bask in her husband’s approval, but the books
might not balance, and even if they did, the figures might not match the cash in
hand, and the scene was set for domestic dramas. The household account book
could be a source of hostility and ill-feeling, but we should not cast it aside as
merely being evidence of female submission because it could give women other
ways of interacting with money, by articulating in words and figures much more
than the dispassionate process of quantification inherent in bookkeeping. In
many instances, it was in their records of domestic spending that women could
revisit in positive ways relationships and life experience alongside listing
pounds, shillings and pence to produce narratives that combined the objective
with the highly subjective.29
Bearing in mind what has already been said about problems with the primary
sources, it is difficult to speculate on how businesswomen might have lived out
the experience of bookkeeping. Eighteenth-century commentators placed a
premium on good accounting and doing so was believed to be a way of trying to
make sense of their increasingly commercial world as age-old ways of doing
80 C. Wiskin
business, based on reciprocity and community values, were being replaced by a
much more hard-nosed ethos. Traditions, however, did not vanish overnight and,
as Philips argues, sentiment in the form of reciprocity still had a part to play in
some otherwise commercial exchanges. There was ‘a degree of mutual support’
in the business relations between the Durham gentry woman, Judith Baker, and
two women spinners. This was, however, a very traditional type of women’s
work and other businesswomen who supplied Baker with the new consumer
goods of the period submitted far more impersonal and objective accounts that
were models of best bookkeeping practice.30
We would not hesitate to attribute feelings of personal satisfaction, achieve-
ment and pride to businessmen whose bookkeeping conformed to accepted
norms, but the fragmented nature of the sources suggests that caution has to be
used when considering businesswomen. Bookkeeping served the commercial
aims of the entrepreneurial spinster or widow but this assumption leaves unan-
swered the question of how far the whole area of ‘accounts’ meant more to them
than just rows of figures on a page.
Sentiments have to be deduced, if they can be deduced at all, from what is
available. This involves reading between the lines in the hope that the infer-
ences drawn will be appropriate. We have the lists of debts due and debts out-
standing that were compiled by Jane Tait’s male creditors from which to
deduce what bookkeeping might have meant to her, and it does not seem to
have been a great deal. We may, of course, be judging her too harshly; her
business operated among local, national and international networks during the
financial crisis and failure of many provincial banks in the 1820s, and assump-
tions about her accounting proficiency are, perforce, based on the reports of
those to whom she owed money, hardly the most objective of observers. On
the other hand, the published ‘literary’ output of Eleanor Coade was impres-
sive for an eighteenth-century woman in business. She was a self-promoter,
announcing new products and events in the national press, as well as produc-
ing trade cards, brochures and catalogues.31 In the custom of the time, the text
is in the third person, which produces a sense of authorial detachment. When,
in the 1799 Coade’s Gallery, she mentions individuals who helped in the
success of the Manufactory, she lists the most important male designers and
artists who worked for her but is silent on her own contribution. Similarly,
there is very little introspection in Charlotte Matthews’s correspondence with
Boulton & Watt. She tells them what they want to hear – of her efforts on their
financial behalf.32
Why such reticence? Girls were brought up to expect a life of marriage and
children, where emotional attachment was focused on kin, the home and, prob-
ably, the family enterprise. Family life, particularly if tied up with business, can
be full of tensions and hostility but the devil you know is usually preferable to
the unfamiliar one. The situation was difficult for women without close kin. Cir-
cumstances forced them to be reliant on their own efforts, reflections on the
emotional significance of what they were doing was probably a luxury few had
the time to afford. Furthermore, in an economic climate of stiff competition and
fears of industrial and commercial espionage, it was unwise to write down
information of a personal nature in case it fell into the wrong hands.
There was also a tension between the need of the single businesswoman to
keep her own books and the assumption of submission implicit in the teaching of
accounts to girls and women. Instruction was predicated on the belief that
accounts kept by women would, in the majority of cases, be overseen by men,
whereas spinsters and widows became their own bosses, a situation with the
potential to challenge the gender order. The spinster in business appeared to be
relatively independent. However, she had only herself to rely on and was prob-
ably under greater pressure to make sure her accounts were well-kept and accur-
ate. This was because she could never be certain when she would be called upon
to defend her right to lines of credit as Jane Tait discovered or, as Eleanor Coade
found out, to justify her prices and methods. The shortcomings in Tait’s financial
management suggest that sentiment and business did not go well together if they
were not focused on the enterprise itself. Her forthcoming marriage seems to
have meant more to her than a future in commerce, she was not channelling her
emotional life into the business, and certainly not into her bookkeeping regime.
On the other hand, the desire for financial stability seems to have been the rock
on which the marriage of Charlotte and William Matthews was built. The discip-
line, which included well-kept books and scrupulous management of trade credit,
that such stability demanded had been internalised by Charlotte to such an extent
that her business did not fail when she alone became responsible for it. As her
story shows, the influence of male figures did not die with them, lessons learned
at an impressionable age were long-lasting. If it is not too fanciful, we might also
speculate that the bankruptcy and death of Coade’s father encouraged his daugh-
ter to follow a risk-averse strategy of order and regularity in her own business
life. Her approach paid off when dealing with Walpole and his representative, for
Eleanor’s skill in bookkeeping enabled her to defend her position in an exchange
made unequal by gender and status. Walpole’s social position was unassailable
and Chambers was a man ‘on the up’ as well as being very widely travelled and
educated. Attention to detail and small print were clearly Coade’s métier and who
could blame her if she felt vindicated by the outcome. She could also be proud
that the Manufactory enabled her to live independently.
Depending on her circumstances, the businesswoman widow might have
been able to draw on family support or she may have had to be self-reliant; she
may have had to fend for herself and her minor children but whatever her posi-
tion, she too had to get it right. Assuming she had had sufficient experience of
bookkeeping during her husband’s lifetime, she should have been able to do so.
The well-trained businesswoman widow now had the chance to assert herself,
either explicitly or more cautiously, drawing on both interpersonal skills that
marriage fosters and sympathy for her bereaved state. It was acceptable and
uncontroversial. It is tempting to assume that business life, including the niceties
of well-kept books, gave succour to Charlotte Matthews during a childless mar-
riage and widowhood. Directing her energies in that way could be read as a sub-
stitute for family life if it were not that she had many friends and a social life
82 C. Wiskin
outside the counting house. On the other hand, she drew satisfaction from her
achievements, from a job well done, as in the case of her financing of the
1797–1799 regal copper coinage.33
It could be argued that, by equating survival in business with proficiency in
bookkeeping, leading to prosperity and happiness, is reductionism worthy of a
commercially minded Candide. As the case studies presented here have shown,
businesswomen in the long eighteenth century did not live in the best of all pos-
sible worlds nor were they in those solely of their own making. As a sex, women
were expected to defer to male authority but events meant that many had to live
much more independent lives. Some may have deliberately avoided matrimony,
others found themselves unexpectedly single. Whether they took up business
from choice or necessity, the future of their enterprises depended on their efforts
and these can be judged in concrete terms of success or failure. Thus, in the end,
judgement by results is what we are left with. It is far harder to pin down what
the processes of bookkeeping and accounting meant to women in business on a
personal level. They could certainly experience settling down to write up the
books, often at the end of a long and tiring working day and in the knowledge
that it would not be a good idea to put off the task until tomorrow; this called for
considerable investment of time and energy. For the successful, and by exten-
sion committed, businesswoman, a job well done, achievement measured by
results, probably satisfied more private yearnings.
Notes
1 An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Accounting, Business and Financial
History 16 (2), 2006.
2 J. Maltby and J. Rutterford, ‘Editorial: women, accounting and investment’, Account-
ing, Business and Financial History 16 (2), 2006, pp. 133–142, especially pp. 136,
140.
3 E.C. Sanderson, Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh, Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1996; Margaret Hunt, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender and the
Family in England 1680–1780, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996,
ch. 5; M. Berg, ‘Women’s property and the Industrial Revolution’, Journal of Inter-
disciplinary History 24, 1993, pp. 233–250; C. Wiskin, ‘Urban businesswomen in
eighteenth-century England’, in R. Sweet and P. Lane (eds), Women and Urban Life
in Eighteenth-Century England ‘On the Town’, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003, pp.
87–110; H. Barker, The Business of Women: Female Enterprise and Urban Develop-
ment in Northern England 1760–1830, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp.
54–71; N. Phillips, Women in Business, 1700–1850, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press,
2006, p. 101.
4 Barker, The Business of Women, pp. 9–10 and chs. 2, 3, 4.
5 L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle
Class 1780–1850, London: Routledge, 1992, pp. 201–205; Hunt, The Middling Sort,
p. 58.
6 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, pp. 201–205; Hunt, The Middling Sort, p. 89; B.
Lemire, The Business of Everyday Life: Gender, Practice and Social Politics in
England, c. 1600–1900, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005, p. 203.
7 P. Lane, ‘Work on the margins: poor women and the informal economy of eight-
eenth- and nineteenth-century Leicestershire’, Midland History 22, 1997, pp. 85–99.
8 Wiskin, ‘Urban businesswomen’, pp. 106–109.
9 M. Finn, ‘Men’s things: masculine possessions in the consumer revolution’, Social
History 25 (2), 2000, pp. 133–155.
10 C. Wiskin, ‘Businesswomen and financial management: three eighteenth-century case
studies’, Accounting, Business and Financial History 16 (2), 2006, p. 43.
11 P. Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class, London: Methuen, 1991, pp.
115–118.
12 C. Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations
in Early Modern England, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998, pp. 63–64.
13 Earle, Making of the English Middle Class, pp. 114–115; D.A. Kent, ‘Small business-
men and their credit transactions in early nineteenth-century Britain’, Business
History 36 (2), 1994, pp. 47–64.
14 S. Pollard, The Genesis of Modern Management: A Study of the Industrial Revolution
in Great Britain, London: Edward Arnold, 1965, p. 215; Hunt, The Middling Sort, p.
58; Lemire, The Business of Everyday Life, pp. 190–192.
15 Hunt, The Middling Sort, p. 43.
16 D. Cressy, ‘Literacy in context: meaning and measurement in early modern England’,
in J. Brewer and R. Porter (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods, London:
Routledge, 1993, p. 309.
17 Barker, The Business of Women, pp. 142, 145–146.
18 P.C. Cohen, ‘Reckoning with commerce: numeracy in eighteenth-century America’,
in Brewer and Porter, Consumption and the World of Goods, p. 322; Cressy, ‘Literacy
in context’, p. 309.
19 J. Austen, Northanger Abbey, chapter 1.
20 A. Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England,
London: Yale University Press, 1993, pp. 74–80, pp. 165–169; Lemire, The Business
of Everyday Life, pp. 200–205; Phillips, Women in Business, pp. 102–103.
21 S.P. Walker, ‘Philanthropic women and accounting. Octavia Hill and the exercise of
“quiet power and sympathy” ’, Accounting, Business and Financial History 16 (2),
2006, p. 173.
22 G. Crossick and H.-G. Haupt, The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe 1780–1914: Enter-
prise, Family and Independence, London: Routledge, 1995, pp. 96, 103.
23 Daniel Defoe quoted in I. Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution,
London: Frank Cass, 1930, reprinted 1981, p. 283.
24 J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783,
London: Unwin Hyman, 1989, p. 68; Pollard, The Genesis of Modern Management,
p. 138.
25 Lemire, The Business of Everyday Life, p. 195.
26 Barker, The Business of Women, pp. 101–104; Hunt, The Middling Sort, pp. 140–141.
27 W.S. Lewis (ed.), Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, Vol. 41, Part II, Miscellaneous
Correspondence, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980, pp. 227–228.
28 Wiskin, ‘Businesswomen and financial management’, pp. 149–151.
29 Lemire, The Business of Everyday Life, pp. 206–212.
30 Phillips, Women in Business, pp. 117–119.
31 N. Valpy and A. Kelly, ‘Advertisements for artificial stone in the Daily Advertiser’,
Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle 12 (3), 1986, pp. 206–223; A Descriptive
Catalogue of Coade’s Artificial Stone Manufactory at Kings Arms Stairs, Narrow
Wall . . . with prices affixed, London, 1784; Coade’s Gallery or Exhibition in Artificial
Stone, Westminster Bridge Road, London, 1799.
84 C. Wiskin
Bibliography
A Descriptive Catalogue of Coade’s Artificial Stone Manufactory at Kings Arms Stairs,
Narrow Wall . . . with prices affixed, London, 1784.
Northern England 1760–1830, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Berg, Maxine, ‘Women’s property and the Industrial Revolution’, Journal of Interdisci-
plinary History 24, 1993, pp. 233–250.
Brewer, J., The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783,
London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.
Coade’s Gallery or Exhibition in Artificial Stone, Westminster Bridge Road, London, 1799.
Cohen, P.C., ‘Reckoning with commerce: numeracy in eighteenth-century America’, in
Brewer, J. and Porter, R. (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods, London: Rout-
ledge, 1993, pp. 320–34.
Cressy, D., ‘Literacy in context: meaning and measurement in early modern England’, in
Brewer, J. and Porter, R. (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods, London: Rout-
ledge, 1993, pp. 305–19.
Crossick, G. and Haupt, H.-G., The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe 1780–1914: Enterprise,
Family and Independence, London: Routledge, 1995.
Davidoff, L. and Hall, C., Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class
1780–1850, London: Routledge, 1992.
Earle, P., The Making of the English Middle Class, London: Methuen, 1991.
Finn, M., ‘Men’s things: masculine possessions in the consumer revolution’, Social
History 25 (2), 2000, pp. 133–155.
Hunt, Margaret, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender and the Family in England
Kent, D.A., ‘Small businessmen and their credit transactions in early nineteenth-century
Britain’, Business History 36 (2), 1994, pp. 47–64.
Lane, P., ‘Work on the margins: poor women and the informal economy of eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century Leicestershire’, Midland History 22, 1997, pp. 85–99.
Lemire, Beverly, The Business of Everyday Life: Gender, Practice and Social Politics in
England, c.1600–1900, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005.
Lewis, W.S. (ed.), Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, Vol. 41, Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1980.
Maltby, J. and Rutterford, J., ‘Editorial: women, accounting and investment’, Accounting,
Business and Financial History 16 (2), 2006, pp. 133–142.
Muldrew, C., The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in
Early Modern England, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998.
Phillips, N., Women in Business, 1700–1850, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006.
Pinchbeck, I., Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, London: Frank Cass, 1930,
reprinted 1981.
Pollard, S., The Genesis of Modern Management: A Study of the Industrial Revolution in
Great Britain, London: Edward Arnold, 1965.
Sanderson, Elizabeth, Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh, Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1996.
Valpy, N. and Kelly, A. ‘Advertisements for artificial stone in the Daily Advertiser’,
Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle 12 (3), 1986, pp. 206–223.
Vickery, A., The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England, London:
Yale University Press, 1993.
Walker, S.P., ‘Philanthropic women and accounting. Octavia Hill and the exercise of
2006, pp. 163–94.
Wiskin, C., ‘Businesswomen and financial management: three eighteenth-century case
studies’, Accounting, Business and Financial History 16 (2), 2006, pp. 143–61.
Wiskin, C., ‘Urban businesswomen in eighteenth-century England’ in Sweet, R. and
Lane, P. (eds), Women and Urban Life in Eighteenth-Century England ‘On the Town’,
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003, pp. 87–110.
7 Women and wealth
The nineteenth century in Great Britain
Lucy A. Newton, Philip L. Cottrell,
Josephine Maltby and Janette Rutterford
This short chapter sets out some of the major features of the regulatory, legal
and demographic framework of the period that were crucial for the investment
activity of women during the nineteenth century. Its aim is to provide a context
for the studies that follow which trace the effects of this regime on various kinds
of women’s investment behaviour in different parts of Great Britain. It concen-
trates on three key areas that led to increased opportunities for female invest-
ment: changes in company legislation; the Married Women’s Property Acts; and
changes in the types of security available. We address each of these in turn.
Company formation
Developments in legislation regulating corporate formation during the nine-
teenth century were vital for both businesses and investors. Piecemeal changes
to the law before 1856 gradually gave potential investors some safeguards. The
greatest innovation occurred in 1856, when a nominal registration process for
forming limited-liability companies was introduced, allowing those with funds
to invest in companies with greater safety (because their risk was limited to the
amount invested) while enabling businesses, in theory, to draw upon a wider and
deeper capital market than had hitherto been available. This introduction begins
by exploring the background to this important development, whose impact is
explored in subsequent chapters.1
Before 1856 business enterprises had been legally constituted in one of
three ways: as private partnerships, as unincorporated companies or as corpo-
rations established by either an Act of Parliament or a royal charter. Establish-
ing a corporation – a company that had the privilege of limited liability – was
difficult and expensive to achieve before 1856. Pressure to reform company
law had been developing since the late eighteenth century, and became greater
with the problems arising from unincorporated companies having to obtain
some of the corporation’s legal capacities in a piecemeal fashion through indi-
vidual private Acts.
Arguments for reform were bolstered by, on the one hand, corporate enter-
prises’ successes in fields such as insurance and canal building and, on the other,
the expanding securities market. Between 1803 and 1811 the number of quoted
Women and wealth 87
securities more than doubled.2 The legal environment for business finally began
to change with the ‘Bubble’ Act’s repeal in 1825 (6 Geo. IV, c. 91). The process
of application for corporate status was still time-consuming and expensive, but
by 1844 there were approximately 970 unincorporated companies in existence.3
The repeal of the ‘Bubble’ Act proved to be the first in a series of gradual
changes in company law. The Banking Co-partnerships Act of 1826 (7 Geo. IV,
c. 46) permitted in England and Wales the creation of joint-stock banks – unin-
corporated companies with more than six partners and freely transferable shares
– outside a 65-mile radius of London (Charing Cross). The mid-1830s trade
boom witnessed the founding of railway companies, banks, mines and insurance
companies, and £20 million shares were offered by 41 companies to the public
during 1835.4 The 1837 Companies Act gave to the Board of Trade the power of
incorporating companies, and over the ensuing 17 years 93 applications for
incorporation were approved.5
The widening of sources from which capital could be drawn led to issues of
share rigging and stock jobbery. Parliament became increasingly concerned with
joint-stock company fraud and established a committee in 1841 to examine the
question. It reported in 1844 and set the framework for immediate legislation –
the Act for the Registration, Incorporation and Regulation of Joint Stock Com-
panies (7 & 8 Vict. c. 110). The Act defined a joint-stock company as ‘a com-
mercial partnership with more than 25 members or with a capital divided into
freely transferable shares’. During the 11 years that the 1844 Act was in force,
910 unlimited joint-stock companies were registered in England and Wales: in
insurance (219 companies); gas and water (211); markets and public halls (85);
shipping (46); and petty lending (41). Only 106 English and Welsh manufactur-
ing concerns were registered, among which the largest group was 13 cotton
companies.6
Shareholders in such companies still shouldered the risk of unlimited liabil-
ity, whereas legislation had been passed in France, Ireland, Italy and the United
States that limited the liability of company members. Concerns were therefore
growing about the protection of British investors’ interests. Supporters of
limited liability argued that it would encourage middle- and working-class
investors – the ‘industrious classes’ – to find a productive outlet for their
savings.7 This class was taken to include women. According to a supporter of
the new legislation, ‘Women, and other, persons, not capable of actively engag-
ing in trade, should possess safe channels of investment, which were at the
moment closed against them’.8 On the other hand, opponents feared that limited
liability would lead to fraud, or excesses through the formation of ‘bubble’ com-
panies or even gambling; ‘the creation of limited companies could always speak
of the destructive whirlwind of speculation’.9 They pointed to the extremes of
the promotional booms in the 1820s, 1830s and 1840s, and the scandalous activ-
ities of promoters, as portrayed by Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843).10
Yet, both joint-stock and limited companies were formed during the first half
of the nineteenth century, and many operated successfully. By 1800, over 100
Acts had been passed for the formation of corporate canal enterprises.11 Railway
88 L.A. Newton et al.
companies were also very large-scale operations. Following the successes of
pioneering concerns, such as the Liverpool & Manchester, the promotion and
construction of railways occurred in ‘mania’ waves from the mid-1830s to the
mid-1840s and railway shares became a popular form of investment. It has been
estimated that total railway share capital amounted to £126 million by 1847,
much of which had been subscribed through provincial financial centres. Both
Hunt and Reed have argued that ‘railway mania’ gave rise to a national securi-
ties market.12 Following the legislation of 1826, bank shares became a popular
form of investment for the Victorian middle classes.13 Shares were traded on the
London and newly formed provincial stock exchanges,14 further stimulated by
the development of a specialist financial press.15 Canal, railway, insurance and
banking companies provided an experience of share purchasing and ownership
for middle-class investors.
All this created a favourable climate for the 1855 Limited Liability Act (18 &
19 Vict. c. 133), which allowed the creation of limited-liability companies, fol-
lowed by the 1856 Joint Stock Companies Act (19 & 20 Vict. c. 47), which
became part of the consolidating 1862 Joint Stock Companies Act and which
introduced freedom of incorporation on the basis that there should be ‘free trade
in capital’. The era of modern corporate development and investment had begun.
English company law had become the most liberal in Europe.16 Shannon esti-
mates that London registrations of limited companies between 1856 and 1883
amounted in total to 20,521 (London being the main place of registration).17 As
discussed below, the number of survivors was far fewer: less than half of this
number is estimated to have survived to 1885.
Married Women Property Acts

Under English law, both spinsters and widows had the same property rights as
men. Married women, however, were treated differently. English common law
before 1870, under the doctrine of coverture, treated the married couple as one
economic unit, and the husband controlled both his property and all the personal
assets introduced by the wife before or after the wedding. ‘Personal assets’
included clothes, money, jewellery and investments. Real property continued to
be in the wife’s legal ownership during her marriage, but the husband acquired
control of it. This meant that he was entitled to receive the rental income, and the
wife could not dispose of her real property (sell, mortgage or rent it out) without
his permission. A deserted wife could find herself completely destitute if her
husband chose to remove all the property and continue to take all the income to
which he was legally entitled, as with Hester Dethridge who was driven to kill
her husband in Wilkie Collins’ Man and Wife. Thus, married women’s (lack of)
property rights could be seen as part of their marital rather than their economic
situation. The first steps to alter the situation were made in Brougham’s 1857 Bill
which attempted to give the same property rights to married as to single women,
but this was overtaken by legislation about their rights on the breakdown of mar-
riage. Some saw the 1857 Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act as a substitute
Women and wealth 89
for these proposals, to the extent that it gave the same property rights to judi-
cially separated or divorced women as were enjoyed by single ones.18 It was the
Married Women’s Property Act 1870 (MWPA 1870) that granted all married
women ownership rights – but these applied only to some types of asset that
they acquired after marriage. These were principally inheritances and earnings
from employment or skill and from some kinds of investment. The main kinds
of investment earnings affected by the MWPA 1870 were those from govern-
ment annuities; savings banks; public funds/stocks; fully paid shares in limited
companies; industrial, provident, friendly, building and loan societies; and life
insurance policies. The 1870 Act had a number of limitations. It did not give
wives ownership rights over real property. It did not cover certain assets brought
into the marriage – in particular savings brought into the marriage were not pro-
tected if they had not been applied to one of the above assets. It required
husband and wife to make an agreement as to the ownership of any assets that
were acquired later by the wife, so that a wife whose husband did not agree to
her separate ownership of assets was no better off after 1870. Nevertheless, it
has been argued that the MWPA 1870 had an important effect on women’s
investment behaviour, and in particular that it made women prefer financial
investments to real property because of their enhanced rights over the former.19
But it was not until the Married Women’s Property Act 1882 that wives who
married after 1 January 1883 acquired the same ownership rights as single
women and men, irrespective of the date of their acquisition of property and the
types of property acquired.
Female investments
We have seen how legislation concerning companies and married women
increased women’s investment opportunities during the nineteenth century. In
this section, we consider which investments they could choose.
Women had to make investment choices both before and after limited liabil-
ity was introduced. As discussed in earlier chapters, women had been active
investors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.20 They had invested in the
joint-stock companies before the change in company law in 1856.21 Recent
research has emphasised the collective importance of female investors to indi-
vidual companies and to equity markets in general.22 An examination of a large
sample of national joint-stock companies during the first half of the nineteenth
century has revealed that only 12 per cent had no female shareholders. Although
they were in the minority of shareholders in any one company, the overall scope
of their investments has been found to be higher than previously thought.23
From the beginning of the nineteenth century (and earlier) women had
selected Consols (British government stocks) and stock in long-established
trading concerns such as the East India Company; investments which were
highly marketable while providing a regular, quarterly income.24 Women gained
some significance as shareholders in joint-stock banks and railways as the first
half of the nineteenth century unfolded.25 They tended to increase their levels of
investments as these companies became more established and their record for
stability and profitability more proven.26 Some women took the opportunities
presented by the new legislation but, as before, they tended to display a cautious
attitude to new financial securities. Their prudence was well founded. Following
the previous practice of banks and railway companies, the first limited com-
panies tended to have shares of a large denomination on which only a fraction
was called up, to create the problem of what was called ‘unlimited limited liabil-
ity’ in the mid-1860s.27 High levels of uncalled capital meant that those with
savings could invest a small amount of money in partly paid shares that, poten-
tially, involved a high risk and thus shareholders could assume levels of liability
beyond their means. This left a shareholder without the protection on their
investments that the Companies Acts had attempted to ensure.28 Furthermore,
most of the early limited-liability companies that were successfully established
(about one in three of those registered) subsequently only had brief lives, of
three years or so.29
This overall picture for England and Wales is confirmed by regional studies.
In the case of 86 limited companies established in Sheffield between 1855 and
1885, females without a stated income-generating occupation supplied only 3
per cent of their aggregate paid-up capital.30 But, although it can be argued that
they were only a minority of shareholders in the new limited companies, women
were present in them, and their numbers increased. As the century progressed
and limited companies were perceived as a more established and less risky form
of investment, with fewer and fewer companies partly paid, more women chose
shares as financial assets.
Investment choices
Jefferys states that by 1885 there were 9,344 companies in the United Kingdom,
with a paid-up capital of nearly £495 million.31 Although this was still, as he
points out, no more than 10 per cent of ‘important business organisations’, it
was nevertheless a significant opportunity for investment.32 A large proportion
of British companies drew their shareholders from a small group of individuals,
often including members of the same family. This was recognised in the 1907
Companies Act (consolidated in the Companies Act of 1908), which defined the
private company as one required to have fewer than 50 shareholders, with
restricted rights to transfer shares or debentures, and unable to promote the sale
of any of its securities.
By 1914, there were nearly 63,000 limited companies in the United Kingdom
but a large part of the increase was represented by private companies. Jefferys
estimates that they made up 77 per cent of the total at that date.33 Not all private
companies were small businesses, but the fact that average issued share capital
fell by nearly one-third between 1885 and 191534 suggests that many were. The
consequence for women was the availability of a growing opportunity to invest
in limited companies. They could choose either those that were quoted on one of
a number of British stock markets or much smaller, possibly family companies
Women and wealth 91
where they were part of a network of investors who knew (and were often
related to) one another.
Ordinary shares were originally of a high nominal value, which made them
expensive investments, intended for the affluent, but as the century progressed
the nominal value dropped, making them more accessible for the less affluent
middle-classes.35 The main new feature of the market in securities in the later
nineteenth century was the growth in the importance of preference shares and
debentures, partly driven by owners choosing to retain control over companies
by holding all or the majority of ordinary shares, and partly by the demand for
fixed-interest securities offering a higher yield than did government bonds. Pref-
erence shares carried a fixed dividend, entailing a lower risk and return than
ordinaries: debentures were loan stock with a fixed interest rate, normally
secured on the company’s assets. They enjoyed a boom in popularity at the end
of the nineteenth century. Studying a sample of more than 2,500 companies,
Essex-Crosby finds that preference shares accounted for 12 per cent of capital in
1885 and 22 per cent in 1895, with the equivalent figure for debentures 26 and
40 per cent.36 Women were not obliged to choose low-risk investments, but were
encouraged to do so. According to a firm of company promoters, debentures
were aimed at ‘ladies and persons not possessed of separate sources of
revenue’,37 and married women were prevented by some companies from being
able to hold ordinary shares in their own names.
Conclusion
The later nineteenth century was a period in which married women were able to
invest in the same way as single women and widows, after the Married Women’s
Property Acts of 1870 and 1882. At the same time, a wider variety of lower-risk
investment assets became available – as well as government-loan stock, there
were now limited-liability ordinary and preference shares and fixed-interest
company debentures, offered by a widening range of public and private limited
companies. The following chapters offer insights into the working of these
factors in a variety of different contexts.
Notes
1 See Freeman et al. Chapter 8 and Newton and Cottrell, Chapter 9, this volume.
2 B. C. Hunt, The Development of the Business Corporation in England 1800–1867,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936, p. 14.
3 P. L. Cottrell, Industrial Finance 1830–1914, London: Methuen, 1980, p. 42; Hunt,
Development of the Business Corporation in England, pp. 40–45.
4 Cottrell, Industrial Finance 1830–1914, p. 76.
6 Cottrell, Industrial Finance 1830–1914, pp. 44–45.
7 Hunt, Development of the Business Corporation in England, pp. 118–123.
8 Hansard, 1854, vol. 134, 27 June: 757.
10 For an analysis of speculation and joint-stock companies as represented in novels and
the public debates surrounding these issues, see J. Taylor, Creating Capitalism: Joint-
Stock Enterprise in British Politics and Culture, 1800–1870, Woodbridge: The
Boydell Press, 2006, chapters 2 and 3.
11 Hunt, Development of the Business Corporation in England, p. 10.
12 Hunt, Development of the Business Corporation in England, pp. 105–107; M. C.
Reed, Railways in the Victorian Economy: Studies in Finance and Economic Growth,
Newton Abbot: David & Charles Ltd., 1968, pp. 182–183.
13 L. A. Newton, ‘The birth of joint stock banking: a comparison of England and New
England in the nineteenth century’, Business History Review, forthcoming.
14 J. R. Killick and W. A. Thomas, ‘The provincial Stock Exchanges, 1830–1870’, Eco-
nomic History Review 2nd series, 23, 1970, p. 96.
15 Reed, Railways in the Victorian Economy, pp. 179–183; W. A. Thomas, The Provin-
cial Stock Exchanges, London: Frank Cass, 1973.
17 H. A. Shannon, ‘The limited companies of 1866 and 1883’, Economic History Review
4, 1933, p. 290.
18 Lee Holcombe, Wives and Property, Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1983, pp. 88–109.
19 Mary Beth Combs, ‘Wives and household wealth: the impact of the 1870 British
Married Women’s Property Act on wealth-holding and share of household resources’,
Continuity and Change 19 (1), 2004, pp. 141–163.
20 See Editors’ Introduction and Chapters 3 (Carlos et al.) and 4 (Laurence), this
volume.
21 M. Freeman, R. Pearson and J. Taylor, ‘ “A doe in the city”: women shareholders in
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain’, Accounting, Business and Financial
History 16 (2), 2006, pp. 265–291.
22 For example, see the articles collected in Accounting, Business and Financial History
16, 2006.
23 Freeman et al., ‘A doe in the city’, p. 287.
24 H. V. Bowen, The Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial
Britain, 1756–1833, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, chapter 4; D. R.
Green and A. Owens, ‘Gentlewomanly capitalism? Spinsters, widows, and wealth
holding in England and Wales, c.1800–1860’, Economic History Review 56 (3), 2003,
pp. 510–536.
25 Sarah Hudson, ‘Attitudes to investment risk amongst West Midland canal and railway
company investors 1700–1850’, University of Warwick PhD thesis, 2001.
26 L. A. Newton and P. L. Cottrell, ‘Female investors in the first English and Welsh
commercial joint-stock banks’, Accounting, Business and Financial History 16 (2),
2006, pp. 315–340; M. C. Reed, Investment in Railways in Britain, 1820–1844. A
Study in the Development of the Capital Market, London: Oxford University Press,
1975; Hudson, ‘Attitudes to investment risk’. But see also J. Rutterford and J. Maltby
‘ “The nesting instinct”: women and investment risk in a historical context’, Account-
ing History 12 (3), 2007, pp. 305–327.
28 Taylor, Creating Capitalism, pp. 192–193.
29 H. A. Shannon, ‘The first five thousand limited companies and their duration’, Eco-
nomic History Review 2, 1930–3; and Shannon, ‘The limited companies of 1866 and
1883’.
30 Newton, The Victorian Economy in Transition, forthcoming, chapter 6.
31 J. B. Jefferys, ‘Trends in business organisation in Great Britain since 1856, with
special reference to the financial structure of companies, the mechanism of invest-
ment and the relations between the shareholder and the company’, London University
PhD thesis, 1938, vol. 1, p. 104.
32 Jefferys, ‘Trends in business organisation’, vol. 1, p. 105.
Women and wealth 93
36 A. Essex-Crosby, ‘Joint-stock companies in England 1890–1930’, University of
London M.Comm. thesis, 1938, p. 31.
37 Chadwick’s Investment Circular, 1874, p. 214.
Bibliography
Bowen, H. V., The Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain,
1756–1833, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Census of England and Wales 1881, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1881.
Census of England and Wales 1871, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1873.
Census of Great Britain 1851, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1852.
Combs, Mary Beth, ‘Wives and household wealth: the impact of the 1870 British Married
tinuity and Change 19 (1), 2004, pp. 141–163.
Cottrell, P. L., Industrial Finance 1830–1914, London: Methuen, 1980.
Essex-Crosby, A., ‘Joint-stock companies in England 1890–1930’, University of London
M.Comm. thesis, 1938.
Freeman, Mark, Pearson, Robin and Taylor, James, ‘ “A doe in the city”: women share-
holders in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain’, Accounting, Business and
Financial History 16 (2), 2006, pp. 265–291.
Green, D. R., and Owens, A., ‘Gentlewomanly capitalism? Spinsters, widows, and wealth
holding in England and Wales, c.1800–1860’, Economic History Review 56, 2003, pp.
510–536.
Hansard, 1854, vol. 134, 27 June.
Holcombe, Lee, Wives and Property, Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1983.
Hoppen, K. T., The Mid-Victorian Generation 1846–1886, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
Hudson, Sarah, ‘Attitudes to investment risk amongst West Midland canal and railway
Hunt, B. C., The Development of the Business Corporation in England 1800–1867, Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936.
Jefferys, James, ‘Trends in business organisation in Great Britain since 1856, with special
reference to the financial structure of companies, the mechanism of investment and the
relations between the shareholder and the company’, London University PhD thesis, 1938.
Killick, J. R., and Thomas, W. A., ‘The provincial Stock Exchanges, 1830–1870’, Eco-
nomic History Review 2nd series, 23, 1970, pp. 96–111.
Newton, L. A., The Victorian Economy in Transition, forthcoming.
Newton, L. A., ‘The birth of joint stock banking: a comparison of England and New
Newton, L. A. and Cottrell, P. L., ‘Female investors in the first English and Welsh com-
mercial joint-stock banks’, Accounting, Business and Financial History 16 (2), 2006,
pp. 315–340.
Reed, M. C., Investment in Railways in Britain, 1820–1844. A Study in the Development
of the Capital Market, London: Oxford University Press, 1975.
Reed, M. C., Railways in the Victorian Economy: Studies in Finance and Economic
Growth, Newton Abbot: David & Charles Ltd., 1968.
Rutterford, J. and Maltby, J., ‘ “The nesting instinct”: women and investment risk in a
historical context’, Accounting History 12 (3), 2007, pp. 305–327.
Shannon, H. A., ‘The limited companies of 1866 and 1883’, Economic History Review 4,
1933, pp. 290–316.
Shannon, H. A., ‘The first five thousand limited companies and their duration’, Economic
History 2, 1932, pp. 396–424.
Taylor, J., Creating Capitalism: Joint-Stock Enterprise in British Politics and Culture,
1800–1870, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006.
Thomas, W. A., The Provincial Stock Exchanges, London: Frank Cass, 1973.
8 Between Madam Bubble and
Kitty Lorimer
Women investors in British and Irish
stock companies
Mark Freeman, Robin Pearson and James Taylor
As the pilgrims came to rest on the Enchanted Ground, Mr Stand-fast, in

Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1684), told his friends of an encounter on
the road.
‘As I was thus musing . . . there was one in very pleasant attire, but old, that
presented herself unto me . . . [she] said if I would be ruled by her, she
would make me great and happy. “For”, said she, “I am the mistress of the
world, and men are made happy by me.” Then I asked her name, and she
told me it was Madam Bubble’.1
The attribution of falsehood and deception as peculiarly female vices was, of

course, commonplace. Restoration writers increasingly employed the term
‘bubble’ to indicate a deceit, or, by extension, one easily deceived and cheated.2
There may, however, have been a more specific connection between female
investors and ‘bubbling’ in stocks, to which Bunyan was alluding. This was the
emerging prominence of noblewomen in chartered trading companies. After the
Restoration, female investors become more evident, for example, in the propri-
etorships of the three African companies, the Royal Fishery Company and the
Hudson’s Bay Company founded between 1660 and 1677. The identification of
corporate investment with wealthy women became impossible to avoid during
the following decades when women were to be found in unprecedented numbers
among the proprietors of the larger corporations. Even from the scanty data cur-
rently available, it seems that not only were female investors present in numbers
at the birth of the corporate economy, but that their numbers may have grown
faster than the market itself from the 1690s to the 1720s. Of the 1,268 sub-
scribers to Bank of England stock in 1694, for instance, women comprised 12
per cent, and 17 per cent of 1,916 subscribers by 1709. Women were also found
in the other major chartered companies, including 11 per cent of subscribers to
the united East India Company in 1709 and 21 per cent of South Sea Company
shareholders in 1723.3
An increasing number of women actively traded shares. Even during the
bubble of 1720, women traded both in the safer investments such as Bank of
England stock and in the more speculative shares such as those of the Royal
96 M. Freeman et al.
African Company.4 By the first decade of the eighteenth century women’s pres-
ence in the market, and not just that of aristocratic women, was widely acknow-
ledged.5 Contemporary responses varied. There was condemnation of the moral
iniquity of female trading in stocks, and concern about the instability caused by
women as aggressive interlopers. Such concern often took the form of satires on
bubble speculation in which women played a leading role.6 Critics also por-
trayed women investors as victims of speculators and jobbers.7 The majority of
commentators argued that women had no place either in the market for shares or
in the joint-stock economy.8
Did these views change substantially between the early eighteenth and mid
nineteenth centuries? Our answer remains largely speculative. In 1845, at the
height of the railway mania, a Punch cartoon depicted a young spinster, Kather-
ine Lorimer, signing the share register of the ‘Great Didland Railway’ in the
company’s offices. She is portrayed as a vulnerable, adventurous and, by impli-
cation, foolish victim. We have argued elsewhere that the foolish but ‘knowing’,
and therefore culpable, victim of speculation became the dominant image of
female investors by the mid-Victorian period.9 Women, who were active and
independent in the management of their financial assets, continued to be per-
ceived as a threat to patriarchal relations in business and at home. The distance
travelled over nearly two centuries from the ageing witch, Madam Bubble, mis-
tress of iniquity, to young Kitty Lorimer, the ‘doe in the city’, was perhaps not
so great. Most of the range of opinions about female investment in joint stocks
had formed by the 1720s, and arguably what followed was merely a shift in
emphasis. This chapter will argue that women investors survived and multiplied,
though not without setbacks, in large segments of Britain’s expanding corporate
economy.
The datasets
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the volume and distribution of female
investment in stock companies in Britain and Ireland between 1780 and 1850,
the classic era of the first industrial revolution, and to explore some aspects of
their involvement in the governance of those companies.10 This was the time
when the joint-stock sector began to grow rapidly, after a long period of slow
growth since the end of the South Sea Bubble in 1720 and since the advent of
restrictive legislation on unincorporated stock companies in England and
Ireland. During the 1790s a boom in canal, dock, harbour and insurance promo-
tions added to the number of companies. In the 1800s another wave of promo-
tions drew the adverse attention of those in the judiciary who were interested in
upholding the validity of the Bubble Act.11 From the 1810s, despite the continu-
ing legal uncertainty surrounding unincorporated companies and the lack of
limited liability for their investors, a growing number of gas and water com-
panies, joint-stock banks (from 1826), and property, shipping, manufacturing,
mining, fishing and finance companies added to the size of the corporate
economy.12 Railway companies arrived in large numbers during the 1830s and
Between Madam Bubble and Kitty Lorimer 97
1840s. By 1840 the total capital of English joint-stock companies is estimated to
have been £210 million. Just over a decade later, the total paid-up capital of
British railway companies alone amounted to some £225 million.13
This was also the period in which, according to the historiography of separate
spheres, middle-class women – those likely to have both the wealth and interest
to invest in such business ventures – began to retreat into a world of domesticity
and patriarchy.14 One might expect, therefore, that these very public forms of
private business enterprise were increasingly closed to women with money,
unable or unwilling to attract female investors, still less benefit from their partic-
ipation in company governance. The data examined in this chapter allow us to
begin to answer questions about the trends in women’s involvement in the joint-
stock economy and, in turn, to make a modest contribution to the separate
spheres debate.
Our methodology has followed certain criteria. Our principal focus has been
to collect and analyse lists of the first shareholders investing in stock companies
(the latter defined as those with 13 or more partners and with transferable
shares) at or near the time of their foundation, that is before many shares had
been transferred by sale, assignment or inheritance.15 We have such lists for 151
companies established between 1780 and 1851. These lists have been found
either in the preambles to company charters of incorporation or in the schedules
attached to them, or in separately printed lists of subscribers dated from the
foundation of an enterprise. For unincorporated companies, deeds of settlement
(England and Ireland) or contracts of copartnery (Scotland), and, occasionally,
minute books have provided lists of the first shareholders.16 Given the propensity
over time for the number of shares held by women to increase, as widows inher-
ited them from their deceased husbands or daughters from their fathers, and as
established businesses attracted larger numbers of female investors, our focus on
lists of initial shareholders will understate the actual level of women’s stock
company investment at any point in time during the period 1780–1850.
Due to incomplete record survival, it is not always possible to establish when
a company was founded. In some industries, acts of incorporation might be
obtained after several years of business. This was most notably the case in the
gas industry, where most companies began as unincorporated ventures and then
sought incorporation, sometimes after a delay of a decade of more. In other
sectors this was less of a problem. Canals, railways, dock, harbour, bridge and
water companies were almost all established by public Acts of Parliament. By
contrast, most insurance companies, joint-stock banks and miscellaneous stock
companies in property development, finance and manufacturing remained unin-
corporated in this period, so their private constitutional documents, such as
deeds of settlement, provide the dates of their foundation.
For a number of firms we also have shareholders’ lists from various dates
after the company foundation. This is the case for 14 of the 151 companies with
initial shareholders’ lists noted above, plus another 40 companies that were
either established before 1780, or for which we have not located a list of first
shareholders, or for which the date of foundation is not known. Altogether,
therefore, we have data on 191 companies (151 + 40). For 21 of these we have
more than one list for different dates, so that we can follow changes in share-
ownership over time, although in no case do we have an annual time series. Our
data, however, allow us to say little about women’s trading in stocks. Share
transfer books have seldom survived for the hundreds of stock companies estab-
lished between 1780 and 1850. In any case, a detailed analysis of the transac-
tions of individual proprietors is beyond the scope of this chapter. We can,
however, draw conclusions from the data about who was investing and about the
scale of that investment over time and by sector, and also draw general infer-
ences about the objectives of investment.
Finally, our focus has been on compiling new data hitherto unused by historians.
The datasets described below exclude all shareholders’ lists dating from before
1780 and after 1850, regardless of source, and all numbers on women’s shareown-
ership produced by other authors, regardless of their date and provenance.17
Two datasets have been constructed on the above principles. The first con-
tains 229 data on women as a proportion of shareholders for 191 stock com-
panies covering the period 1780–1851.18 We exclude from our count of
‘women’s shares’ shares held jointly by women and men, but we include shares
held by executors on behalf of deceased women, and we count shares held
jointly by more than one woman, and those held jointly by a woman and her
children, as one female shareholding/shareholder. Altogether this dataset com-
prises 63,840 shareholders, of whom 8,011 were women. It also covers a diverse
range of sectors across the joint-stock economy. As well as companies in
banking, canals, railways, gas and insurance, we have 19 bridge, road and tunnel
companies, 11 property companies of different types, seven shipping and five
dock and harbour companies, plus a few water, fishing and manufacturing con-
cerns. We also have sufficient data from Scottish and Irish companies – 31 and
17 companies respectively – to begin to explore differences in women’s invest-
ment across the three nations.
The second dataset, which overlaps with the first and derives from the same
sources, contains data on women’s investment as a percentage of share capital or
of subscribed shares. There are 110 observations from 80 companies. This
dataset is smaller because many shareholders’ lists recorded only names and not
details of shareownership. Nevertheless, we can say that, together, both datasets
represent the largest exploration of stock-company investment hitherto under-
taken for the British Isles during the first Industrial Revolution.
Results
Figure 8.1 presents all 229 data on the percentage of women among the share-
holders of 191 companies. Figure 8.2 extracts from this dataset the percentages
from the 151 shareholders’ lists that date from company foundations, in order to
compare exactly like with like. The trend lines follow a similar path in both
charts: a modest increase in the percentage of female shareholders during the
1790s, some reversal during the decade after 1815, and then around 1830 the
beginnings of a growth that accelerates through the 1840s. Overall, what we see
are two phases. The first, lasting until the 1820s, was marked by persistently low
levels of female participation in stock companies, mostly under 15 per cent. The
second, beginning after 1830, was characterised by the growth in average female
shareownership to much higher levels than before. The main effect of Figure 8.2
is to remove some of the higher values seen in Figure 8.1, particularly for the
period 1780–1815. In every one of the 53 new stock companies in our sample
that were established before 1815, women constituted less than 15 per cent of
initial subscribers to a share issue. It is possible that the late eighteenth century
and the first decade of the nineteenth century marked a historic low point in
women’s joint-stock investments in relative terms. While women comprised 15
per cent of East India Company shareholders in 1712, by the 1750s this figure
had risen to 32 per cent. Thereafter, women declined as a proportion of East
India stockholders to 13 per cent in the later eighteenth century, before recover-
ing slightly to around 17 per cent in 1818 and 1830.19
Figures 8.1 and 8.2 indicate that the recovery in women’s participation as
shareholders began around 1830 and picked up pace in the railway era. Recent
research, although only examining a handful of companies, suggests that this
increase continued throughout the rest of the century, stimulated by the growing
surplus of single women in the population seeking to secure an income, the
spread of limited liability, the removal of legal restrictions on married women’s
property, the decline in share denominations, and the greater availability of fully
paid-up shares and of lower-risk preference shares and debentures. Women
accounted for between 33 and 48 per cent of shareholders in the Ulster Bank
40
35
30
25
Percentage
20
15
10
0
1780 1785 1790 1795 1800 1805 1810 1815 1820 1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850 1855
Year
Figure 8.1 Women as a percentage of shareholders in British and Irish stock companies,
1780–1851 (sources: see text).
Note
n = 229 observations for 191 companies. Trend line is a 4th order polynomial.
35
30
25
Percentage
20
15
10
0
1780 1785 1790 1795 1800 1805 1810 1815 1820 1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850 1855
Year
Figure 8.2 Women as a percentage of first shareholders in new joint-stock companies,

Britain and Ireland, 1780–1850 (sources: see text).
Note
n 151. Trend line is a 4th order polynomial.
between 1877 and 1914, nearly one-third of the shareholders in Martin’s Bank
in 1891 and the Bank of Liverpool in 1894, and 28 per cent of the shareholders
in the Prudential Assurance Company in 1898.20 These figures are at or beyond
the top end of the range in our dataset.
Examining pairs of shareholders’ lists between different dates for individual
companies provides some insight into whether women’s participation commonly
grew over time. We can calculate women as a proportion of shareholders for 21
companies with 37 pairs of data between various dates in the period 1780–1850.
Percentages declined in only six of the 37 pairs of data. For most companies at
most times the number of women grew as a proportion of shareholders, albeit at
a barely perceptible annual rate of less than half of 1 per cent (the average was
0.28 per cent). Figure 8.3, which regroups the data in Figure 8.1 by decade,
more clearly illustrates, however, that the development of women’s shareowner-
ship was non-linear. The coefficients in Figure 8.3 also reveal that the range of
female per caput shareownership across the dataset widened considerably during
the canal mania of the 1790s, and during the boom of the 1820s when joint-
stock enterprises were being launched in new or different industries such as util-
ities, shipping and property development.21 Thus, the low averages shown for
the 1790s and 1820s were accompanied by the biggest differences between com-
panies in women’s shareownership. As the range of investment opportunities
multiplied, some stock companies were clearly more attractive to female
investors than others. After 1830 the coefficients decline as the range of female
shareownership across the corporate economy narrowed.
25 1.0
0.9
20 0.8
0.7
Coefficient of variation
15 0.6
Percentage
0.5
10 0.4
0.3
5 10 29 16 21 43 69 41 0.2
0.1
0 0.0
1780–9 1790–9 1800–9 1810–19 1820–9 1830–9 1840–51
Year
Figure 8.3 Women as a percentage of shareholders in British and Irish stock companies,
by decade (sources: see text).
Note
n 229 observations for 191 companies. Mean % charted in the bars, coefficients in the line. n is
shown in the bars.
Figure 8.4 shows women’s percentage share of share capital in 110 data for
80 companies. The average of all data in Figure 8.4 is 6.6 per cent, compared to
12.5 per cent in Figure 8.1. Thus, female proprietors were, on average, almost
twice as important to their companies in terms of numbers than in terms of their
shares. The trend in Figure 8.4 is similar to those in Figures 8.1 and 8.2, though
rather more pronounced. The sharper increase in women’s share of joint-stock
capital during the 1790s and early 1800s, compared to the trend line in Figure
8.1, suggests that during this period wealthier women, or at least those making
larger investments, were joining stock companies. The reverse was the case
during the 1820s, when the trend in women’s share of capital falls more
markedly than the proportion of women among shareholders. This suggests that
from this period the growing number of female shareholders were buying, on
average, smaller amounts of the capital of the companies that they were invest-
ing in. This inference is supported by the data in Table 8.1 which, for a subset of
74 companies, compare the average size of women’s shareholdings with the
overall average shareholding by decade.22 The ratio peaked during the 1830s,
and continued to be high during the following decade, suggesting that women
comprised an increasing proportion of small investors entering the equity market
during the railway era.
Tables 8.2 and 8.3 show the proportion of women as shareholders and the
proportion of women’s share capital by sector. The presence of women was
minimal in fishing, shipping, bridge, dock and insurance companies, while it
35
30
25
Percentage
20
15
10
0
1780 1785 1790 1795 1800 1805 1810 1815 1820 1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850 1855
Year
Figure 8.4 Women’s share of share capital in British and Irish stock companies,
1780–1851 (sources: see text).
Note
n 110 observations for 80 companies. Trend line is a 4th order polynomial.
Table 8.1 Ratio of average female shareholdings to overall average shareholdings, by

decade and by sector
No. of companies No. of observations Mean of ratios
1780–9 6 6 1.66
1790–9 9 9 1.46
1800–9 7 7 1.86
1810–19 6 8 2.31
1820–9 18 20 1.43
1830–9 31 34 2.46
1840–51 12 15 2.00
Banks 2 2 1.31
Canals 13 22 1.72
Gas 13 14 1.82
Insurance 13 16 1.82
Railways 14 16 2.69
Shipping 7 11 1.59
Other 13 18 2.28
Sources: see text.
was most visible in gas and canal companies and joint-stock banks. Altogether,
just 38 of the 229 shareholders’ lists (17 per cent) in Table 8.2 named no female
shareholders. The coefficients, however, modify the picture. While the average
insurance company had relatively few women, some companies in the sector had
quite a number. There was also considerable variation in women’s participation
Table 8.2 Women’s per caput investment in joint-stock companies by sector, 1780–1851
No. of No. of No. of No. of Mean % Coefficient Correlation Correlation

companies observations women shareholders variation x time x size
Banking 29 33 5,514 29,318 18.8 0.46 0.02 0.40

Gas 27 30 251 2,364 10.6 0.87 0.20 0.02
Canals 38 48 1,241 12,425 10.0 0.75 0.40 0.09
Railways 23 28 469 7,151 6.6 0.77 0.05 0.08
Docks, harbours 5 5 27 437 6.2 0.48 –0.28 0.09
Property 11 11 41 699 5.9 1.02 0.63 –0.21
Shipping 7 12 64 1,682 3.8 0.69 –0.13 –0.07
Insurance 21 27 264 7,480 3.5 0.96 0.29 0.16
Bridges, roads, tunnels 19 19 23 892 2.6 1.08 0.17 0.13
Other* 11 16 117 1,392 8.4 0.85 0.51 –0.02
Total 191 229 8,011 63,840 12.5 0.63 0.29 0.35
Scottish companies 31 38 2,514 16,869 14.9 0.61 0.41 0.39
Irish companies 17 22 357 4,243 8.4 0.63 0.28 0.85
Sources: see text.

Note
* Other comprises three water companies (three observations), four manufacturing companies (nine observations), three fishing companies (three observations), one
finance company (one observation). An ‘observation’ is defined as a single list or count of shareholders at a particular date.
Table 8.3 Women’s share of share capital in joint-stock companies by sector, 1780–1851
No. of companies No. of observations Mean (%)
Banking 3 6 17.2
Gas 12 14 8.2
Canals 14 23 9.6
Railways 14 16 3.7
Shipping 7 11 2.9
Insurance 16 21 2.6
Other* 14 19 7.4
Total 80 110 6.6
Scottish companies 11 16 6.1
Irish companies 7 10 4.5
Sources: see text.

Note
* ‘Other’ comprises six property companies (six observations), three dock companies (three obser-
vations), three manufacturing companies (eight observations), one fishing company (one observa-
tion), one finance company (one observation). An ‘observation’ is defined as a single list or count
of shareholders at a particular date. ‘Mean percentages’ (column 4) show the averages of women’s
percentage shareholdings in each sector.
in gas, bridge and property companies. None of the four cemetery companies in
our dataset, for example, had women shareholders.
The correlations in Table 8.2 are not particularly insightful. The results for
Scottish and Irish companies, however, are interesting. The former, comprising
largely data from banks, shipping, railway and gas companies, reveal a level of
female investment – 15 per cent of all shareholders – that is above the average
for the dataset as whole. By contrast, women did not flock to Irish companies in
large numbers, and, when they did, as the bottom row of Table 8.2 shows, there
was a tendency for them to invest in the largest companies. Thus, while the
Hibernian Bank had 103 women among its 533 proprietors in 1844 (19.6 per
cent), and the Grand Canal had 54 women among 445 proprietors in 1842 (12.1
per cent), the majority of Irish companies in our dataset had few female share-
holders or none at all.
Table 8.1 reveals that the widest gender gaps in average shareholding were to
be found in railway companies and the narrowest in banks, canals and shipping.
Wealthier male investors in railways appeared to have left their female counter-
parts behind, especially in the 1840s. A decline in the average share denomina-
tions, and the removal of limitations on the number of shares that individuals
could own, may help account for the increasing differential between male and
female shareholding in the railway sector, even as the base of the shareholder
population expanded.23 Low share denominations with unlimited liability
became a central concern in the debate over limited liability in Britain from the
1840s through to the Overend Gurney crisis of 1866. Large nominal shares, with
a substantial proportion of each share unpaid, had been regarded by some as the
bedrock of the unlimited liability regime and a guarantee of ‘respectable’, rather
than impecunious, investment. The concern about a Kitty Lorimer putting her
money into the Great Didland Railway was closely related to other non-
gendered concerns about small, insubstantial and uninformed investors entering
the share market.24 In the following section we discuss the identity of women
investors and their role in the companies in which they owned shares.
Women’s shareownership – access to shares and

proprietorial rights
Many women’s shares were held in family clusters – up to 50 per cent in some
companies. Among the most notable examples are the five Kirwan women of
Drumcondra, each holding two shares in the Hibernian Bank in 1844, while in
Scotland there was the entirely female Mutter clan of Wester Melville, Lass-
wade, near Edinburgh – one married woman and six spinsters – who together
held 17 shares in six different Scottish banks in 1846.25 Another variant of
family shareownership was the Ross household, of Berbice Cottage, Inverness,
whose members held between them five shares in the Caledonian Bank, namely
John Ross, gentleman, in his own name, three shares in the names of his chil-
dren, and one share held in the name of Margaret Robertson, the children’s live-
in nursery maid. Some wives held shares outright in their own name. Thus ‘Mrs
S. J. Glen, spouse of Reverend J. Glen, Portobello’ owned a share in the Royal
Bank of Scotland in 1846. Scots women also frequently held shares in the form
of both liferents and fees, which gave them the use of the shares during their
lifetime, with the fiar(s) receiving the share upon their death or at the end of a
stipulated term.26 Many women, of course, had an interest in shares over which
they had no direct control or access. Husbands held shares for their wives in
trust, fathers for their daughters, brothers for their sisters.27 For married women
such trusteeships could be related to a marriage contract, and the existence of
such trusts for separate use helped extend the rights of feme sole to wives in
England under equity law.28 Shares might also be held by a third party where a
woman’s share had been assigned to creditors, though the records do not usually
make it clear who was responsible for the assignment.29 Women also frequently
held shares belonging to others as their trustees or executors. Indeed, under
English law even feme coverts and minors could be appointed as executors.30
Moreover, a widow enjoyed the legal right to administer her husband’s estate if
he died intestate, and there are plenty of examples in our dataset of widows in
both England and Scotland holding shares in this way.31
Thus, there were various means by which women became involved indirectly
in the joint-stock economy through the mediation of others within and outside
the household or the immediate family circle. The overwhelming majority of
women in our dataset, however, were widows and spinsters who held shares
directly in their own names. The sources listed occupations for a very small
number of these and their married counterparts. The analysis of 2,586 female
shareholders in 19 Scottish banks in 1846, for example, revealed only 44 women
with named occupations.32 Traditional ‘female trades’ – food and tobacco, dress
and clothing, domestic service, and inn-keeping and hostelry – accounted for
most of these, but among the women who owned Scottish bank shares there was
also an engraver, a farmer, a painter and a stock maker. Female shareownership
reached down through the classes to three domestic servants and the nursery
maid, Margaret Robertson of Inverness, noted above. This diverse configuration
of working women among Scottish bank shareholders resembled the situation at
the Great Western Railway in 1837, where female proprietors included servants,
small retailers, a lodging-house keeper and a cordwainer.33
Although we do not know of a single instance in which a woman served as a
director or executive officer of a stock company, there were generally few dis-
criminatory or even gender-specific regulations passed by British and Irish stock
companies in this period. Indeed, by virtue of their shareholdings many women
were eligible to stand for election as directors and governors of such companies,
including the Bank of England and the South Sea Company.34 There were some
obstacles but seldom outright exclusion of women from company governance.
Restricting women’s rights as proprietors was not widespread. Although a tiny
number, such as the Aberdeen Fire and Life Assurance Company in 1825,
explicitly barred married women from owning shares, it was far more common
for a woman upon marriage to be required to inform companies of her change of
status and for her shares to be re-registered in her husband’s name.35 In other
companies, almost certainly a minority, women were discouraged from buying
shares, particularly where the board was seeking ‘active’ or ‘eligible’ investors
who would promote the business. This seems to have been especially the case in
shipping and insurance.36 A few companies, such as the Salop Fire Office and
the Aberdeen Fire and Life Assurance Company, denied their female sharehold-
ers any right to vote in board elections, but this was highly unusual. It was far
more common to make a general constitutional provision for voting by proxy.37
In the dataset for our larger project on corporate governance, 437 out of 514
companies (85 per cent) provided for proxy voting.38 Of these, 65 restricted
proxy voting to certain groups of shareholders, notably women, minors and all
proprietors living at a distance, but this was commonly presented as a right of
which such groups could take advantage. Of course, the proxy vote could be
regarded as a device to encourage ‘respectable’ women to stay away from occa-
sionally turbulent and crowded meetings in which heated words might be
exchanged. Only 15 of the 437 companies, however, compelled women share-
holders to vote by proxy. Ten of these were Scottish companies, including
several banks established in the 1830s. A few Scottish companies, such as the
Aberdeen Gas Light Company (1824), also barred women from acting as proxy
voters for others.
Generally, however, proxy voting was offered to women, not as a compul-
sion, but as an alternative to voting in person, and this model became more
widely accepted during the first half of the nineteenth century. The Companies
Clauses Consolidation (Scotland) Act of 1845 allowed proxy voting for all
shareholders as the default position for companies thereafter incorporated by Act
of Parliament.39 Throughout the period, however, there was a widespread accep-
tance that women might take part in general meetings, although they were not
necessarily expected to. For the corporate governance project, we have collected
data on shareholders’ attendance at general meetings from the minute books of
nearly 40 companies. There is unambiguous evidence of women attending and
voting in the meetings of several companies, for instance the Moray Firth &
London Steam Packet Company in 1824, the Preston Gas Company in 1828 and
the London & Edinburgh Shipping Company in 1818, 1835 and 1836. Elsewhere
women voted in person or by proxy, for example, at the meetings of the Leaming-
ton Priors Gas Light Company in 1842 and 1843 and the Sheffield New Gas
Company in 1842.40 There was an incentive in the latter company for every share-
holder, regardless of gender, to turn up in some shape or form, as a sixpence-per-
share fine was levied for non-attendance.41 Such incentives were not uncommon.
In most companies at most times, however, female shareholders seldom exer-
cised their rights, including those not discussed here, such as the right to inspect
company accounts. Women were never entirely invisible in the governance
process in most companies, but they participated in shareholders’ meetings
infrequently and in small numbers. Their presence at such meetings, therefore, is
difficult to interpret as normative, although the evidence in the opposite direc-
tion is also not substantial or compelling. What can be said with some certainty
is that the great majority of stock companies placed few, if any, internal regula-
tory barriers in the way of female proprietors availing themselves of the same
rights as their male counterparts.
Conclusions
The above analysis points to a number of conclusions about women’s participa-
tion in stock companies during this period. Women’s joint-stock investments
were more widespread than previously thought. Only 36 out of 191 companies
in our dataset, fewer than one in five, had no women shareholders at some point.
The data, however, confirmed the received view that married women made up
only a tiny proportion of female shareholders. The great majority were widows
and spinsters, some of them active in business in their own right in a diverse
range of occupations that extended far down the social ladders of the employed
and self-employed.
Notwithstanding the propensity in all companies for women’s shareowner-
ship to grow slowly over time with widowhood, the average proportion of
women shareholders remained low, at around 7 per cent, during the late eight-
eenth century, increased during the first two decades of the nineteenth century,
fell back in the 1820s, and then grew again to 17 per cent in the 1840s. The three
shareholders’ lists in our dataset in which women accounted for over 30 per cent
of names – those of the Ayr Gas Company, the Bank of Scotland and the Royal
Bank of Scotland – all date from 1846–7. Even higher percentages of women
shareholders may have become more common during the second half of the
nineteenth century.
As the proportion of women investors fell during the 1790s and again during
the 1820s, wealthier women appear to have entered the booming market for new
promotions, for the gender gap, long entrenched in the major public stocks,
between the average shareholdings of men and women, fell substantially.42
Moreover, the rising coefficients in Figure 8.3 suggest that in both periods
women became more discriminating in the companies they chose to invest in.
One might reasonably speculate that their larger average investments, relative to
their male counterparts, were a reflection of higher status and may have allowed
these women to draw on more specialist investment advice.
This pattern, however, was reversed in the periods during which women’s
participation levels as shareholders rose. The coefficients of variation between
companies fell and the gender gap in average shareholdings increased. The
railway era, with its burgeoning financial journalism, appears to have swelled
the ranks of small female investors, and wealthier women became less promi-
nent in many stock companies. By the 1840s women shareholders were, on
average, twice as important numerically to their companies than when measured
by the size of their investments.
Finally, the sectoral data in Tables 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3 suggest that, as the joint-stock
economy became more diverse during the course of the industrial revolution, some
types of company proved more attractive to women than others. Women investors
were commonly found in joint-stock banks, canals and gas companies, pointing to
‘clustering’ in favoured investments similar to the clustering observed by historians
in certain ‘women’s trades’ – food, retail, clothing and textiles – during the period.43
That said, we found the highest variations in the levels of women’s participation
among insurance, property and bridge companies, or, to put it another way, in these
industries the propensity for women to invest was least predictable.
The data examined in this chapter demonstrate not only the persistence of
women investors in the joint-stock economy, but also their increasing numbers
over the long term. While there was some clustering of women’s investment by
industry, there is no strong evidence of ‘separate spheres’ for male and female
shareholders, still less for the idea that women were driven out of the equity
markets by any new ideology that made female investment, or indeed active
female participation in stock company governance, unacceptable. Thus our
results generally support recent attempts to question the separate spheres
concept, and the arguments for the continued visibility of women in finance and
business in nineteenth-century Britain.44 Women shareholders were certainly not
‘at the heart’ of the financial or business life of joint-stock companies, but they
had a persistent and recognised presence in the corporate sector of the first
industrial economy, one that was slowly growing in significance beyond the
tired stereotypes of a Madam Bubble and a Kitty Lorimer.45
Notes
1 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965, pp. 361–2.
2 Cf., for example, the many references to ‘bubbles’ and ‘bubbling’ in the context of
both women and money in William Wycherley, The Country Wife: A Comedy,
London: Thomas Dring, 1675.
3 P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development
of Public Credit, 1688–1756, London: Macmillan, 1967, pp. 256, 268, 282.
4 Ann M. Carlos, Karen Maguire and Larry Neal, ‘Financial acumen, women specula-
tors and the Royal African Company during the South Sea Bubble’, Accounting, Busi-
ness and Financial History 16 (2), 2006, pp. 219–43; Ann M. Carlos and Larry Neal,
‘Women investors in early capital markets, 1720–1725’, Financial History Review
11, 2004, pp. 197–224.
5 Davenant, Charles, Reflections upon the Constitution and Management of the Trade
to Africa, London: John Morphew, 1709, p. 40.
6 Anon, Exchange Alley: or the Stock-Jobber . . . Turn’d Gentleman. A Tragi-Comical
Farce, London, 1720, preface. On this theme, see Catherine Ingrassia, ‘The pleasure
of business and the business of pleasure: gender, credit and the South Sea Bubble’,
Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 24, 1995, pp. 191–210; Susan Staves, ‘Invest-
ments, votes, and “bribes”: women as shareholders in the chartered national trading
companies’, in H. L. Smith (ed.), Women Writers and the Early Modern Political
Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 259–78; John Carswell,
The South Sea Bubble, London: Cresset Press, 1960, pp. 121, 126, 144.
7 Cf. Thomas Foxton, Jesina: or, Delusive Gold. A Pastoral, Lamenting the Misfor-
tunes of a Young Lady of Quality, Ruined by South-Sea Stock, London: E. Curll,
1721; Archibald Hutcheson, Four Treatises Relating to the South-Sea Scheme and
Stock, London, 1721, preface.
8 Anon, ‘A caveat against bubbling, written in the year 1732’, in Essays and Letters on
Various Subjects, London: J. Brotherton, 1739, pp. 115–23; Thomas Mortimer,
Everyman his own Broker: or, a Guide to Exchange-Alley, second edition, London: S.
Hooper, 1761, preface.
9 Mark Freeman, Robin Pearson and James Taylor, ‘ “A doe in the city”: women share-
holders in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain’, Accounting, Business
and Financial History 16 (2), 2006, pp. 265–91. We also noted, however, that this
victim image could often be non-gender specific. Cf., for example, the ‘deluded mul-
titudes’ of ‘men, women and children’ investing in railway shares, in Thomas
Mulock, Railway Revelations: Being Letters on the Subject of the Proposed Direct
London and Manchester Railways, London: George Vickers, 1845, p. 4.
10 This chapter is based on a larger research project we are conducting into the corporate
governance of British stock companies, 1720–1844, supported by a grant from the
Economic and Social Research Council (UK), award number RES 000 230096 (see
www.corporategovernancehistory.org.uk). We are most grateful for this support.
11 Ron Harris, Industrializing English Law: Entrepreneurship and Business Organi-
zation, 1720–1844, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 236–41.
12 On the legal difficulties for companies in Scotland, see Mark Freeman, Robin Pearson
and James Taylor, ‘ “Different and better?” Scottish joint-stock companies and the
law, c. 1720–1845’, English Historical Review 122, 2007, pp. 61–81.
13 Harris, Industrializing English Law, pp. 194–6; Ranald C. Michie, The Global Securi-
ties Market: A History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 92.
14 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the
English Middle Class, 1780–1850, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
15 This definition draws upon Charles Munn’s distinction between unincorporated Scot-
tish copartneries with more than 13 partners and ordinary partnerships with fewer.
The larger copartneries, Munn argues, were most likely to have an elected committee
to run their day-to-day affairs and thus to experience a separation of powers between
managers and proprietors. Incorporated and unincorporated English stock companies
can also be distinguished from small partnerships in this way. C. W. Munn, ‘Scottish
provincial banking companies: an assessment’, Business History 23, 1981, pp. 19–41.
16 The full references to sources are too many to give here, but are available from the
authors on request.
17 These include shareownership data on canals (S. J. Hudson, ‘Attitudes to investment
risk amongst West Midland canal and railway company investors, 1760–1850’, Uni-
versity of Warwick PhD thesis, 2001; J. R. Ward, The Finance of Canal Building in
Eighteenth-Century England, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), banks (Lucy
Newton and Philip L. Cottrell, ‘Female investors in the first English and Welsh com-
mercial joint-stock banks’, Accounting, Business and Financial History 16, 2006, pp.
315–40), gas companies (J. F. Wilson, Lighting the Town: A Study of Management in
the North West Gas Industry, 1805–1880, London, 1991), and railways (M. C. Reed,
Investment in Railways in Britain, 1820–1844: A Study in the Development of the
Capital Market, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).
18 The term ‘data’ is used in this chapter as one observation (percentage statistic) calcu-
lated from a single list of shareholders; 229 ‘data’ thus relates to the percentages cal-
culated from each of the 229 lists of shareholders. A dataset is a collection of such
data.
19 H. V. Bowen, The Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial
Britain, 1756–1833, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 107–8; Bruce
G. Carruthers, City of Capital: Politics and Markets in the English Financial Revolu-
tion, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996, p. 158.
20 Graeme Acheson and John Turner, ‘The impact of limited liability on ownership and
control: Irish banking, 1877–1914’, Economic History Review 59, 2006, pp. 320–46;
Josephine Maltby and Janette Rutterford, ‘ “She possessed her own fortune”: women
History 48, 2006, pp. 220–53. We are grateful to these authors for pre-publication
copies of their papers.
21 All correlations are of the Pearson product moment type.
22 Table 8.1 comprises 99 data on average shareholdings for the 74 companies for which
we can make this calculation.
23 Mark Freeman, Robin Pearson and James Taylor, ‘The politics of business: joint
stock company constitutions in Britain 1720–1844’, in A. Carreras and M. Kipping
(eds), EBHA 2004: Proceedings from the 8th Annual Congress of the European Busi-
ness History Association, Barcelona, CD-Rom, 2005.
24 James Taylor, Creating Capitalism: Joint-Stock Enterprise in British Politics and
Culture, 1800–1870, Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006, pp. 192–3.
25 Hibernian Bank, Proprietors of Hibernian Bank Stock, 1st November 1844, National
Library of Ireland, Ir 332 H4; Anon, A List of All the Names, Classed in Alphabetical
Order, Contained in the Printed Lists of Proprietors of the Bank of Scotland, Royal
Bank, and British Linen Company; and in the Returns of the other Banks in Scotland,
Edinburgh: John Johnstone, 1846.
26 Registers of Scotland, Legal Manual, 2004, online edition, chapter 39: www.ros.gov.
uk/foi/legal/text/ch39.htm, accessed 18 April 2007.
27 Examples from 1846 include a share in the Edinburgh & Glasgow Bank held by
‘Robert Gibson, secretary, Scottish Equitable Assurance Society, Edinburgh, as
trustee for Mrs Joanna Gibson, his spouse’, the eponymous R. C. Nisbet, curator in
Banff, holding a share in the National Bank of Scotland ‘for his daughters’, and a
share in the Edinburgh & Glasgow Bank held by ‘Duncan Lamond, brewer, Edin-
burgh, as trustee for his sister, Miss Mary Lamond’. Anon, List of all the Names.
28 Janelle Greenberg, ‘The legal status of the English woman in early eighteenth-century
common law and equity’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 4, 1975, pp. 171–81.
One Scottish example was the share in the Caledonian Bank held by ‘John Mac-
dougall, Connage Cottage, and Others, trustees for Isabella Macdougall or Stevenson,
under her marriage contract’. Anon, List of all the Names.
29 One example is the share in the Bank of Scotland held by ‘the Mercantile Life Assur-
ance and Guarantee Association, assignees of the liferent interest of Mrs Helen
Thomson, relict of James Thomson, W.S.’ Anon, List of all the Names. In this case
the share was possibly assigned as a further security for an annuity or a loan on a life
insurance policy.
30 ‘All persons are capable of being executors that are capable of making wills, and
many others besides; as feme-coverts, and infants’. Anon, The Laws Respecting
Women as they Regard their Natural Rights or their Connections and Conduct,
London: J. Johnson, 1777, book 2, p. 250.
31 In 84 per cent of the wills of married men in Stockport, 1800–57, the testator’s wife
was appointed executor or trustee. Alistair Owens, ‘Property, gender and the life
course: inheritance and family welfare provision in early nineteenth-century
England’, Social History 26, 2001, pp. 299–317.
32 Calculated from Anon, List of all the Names.
33 Freeman et al., ‘ “Doe in the city” ’, p. 270.
34 Bank of England, A List of the Names of all such Proprietors of the Bank of England
who are Qualified to Vote; South Sea Company, A List of the Names of all such Pro-
prietors of the Capital Stock of the Governor and Company of Merchants Trading to
the South Seas . . . who are Qualified to Vote . . . on Tuesday, Twenty-ninth of January
1805.
35 Aberdeen Fire and Life Assurance Company, Contract of Copartnery, 1 November
1825 (printed D. Chalmers and Co., Aberdeen, 1826), Edinburgh University Library,
Special Collections Department, FAct pamphlet file.
36 Examples include the Leeds & Yorkshire Assurance Company (1824), the London &
Edinburgh Shipping Company (1809), and the Aberdeen Leith and Clyde Shipping
Company (date of establishment unknown). Robin Pearson, Insuring the Industrial
Revolution: Fire Insurance in Great Britain 1700–1850, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004, p.
243 (for the Leeds & Yorkshire); London & Edinburgh Shipping Company, Contract
of Copartnery, 1 December 1809, National Archives of Scotland, GD301/58/3;
Aberdeen Leith and Clyde Shipping Company, Minute Book, 1816–24, General
Meeting 4 June 1816, Aberdeen University Library, Historic Collections, Ms 3697.
37 In eighteenth-century England, in the absence of any specific reference to proxy
voting in a company’s constitution, the right to vote by proxy does not seem to have
been recognised at common law. Samuel L. Williston, ‘History of the law of business
corporations’, Harvard Law Review 2, 1888, p. 158.
38 The proxy voting data are discussed more fully in Mark Freeman, Robin Pearson and
James Taylor, Shareholder Democracies? Corporate Governance in British Business
before 1850, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming.
39 8 Vict. (1845) c. 17.
40 Leamington Priors Gas Light Company, Resolution Book, General meetings, 15
November 1842, 23 November 1843; Sheffield New Gas Company, Minute Book,
General meeting 26 September 1842.
41 Sheffield New Gas Company, Minute Book, General meeting 31 July 1822.
42 Carruthers, City of Capital, p. 156; Bowen, Business of Empire, p. 106.
43 Hannah Barker, The Business of Women: Female Enterprise and Urban Development
in Northern England, 1760–1830, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 62–6.
44 Amy L. Erickson, ‘Coverture and capitalism’, History Workshop Journal 59, 2005,
pp. 1–16; Staves, ‘Investments’.
45 Barker has recently argued, using data from trade directories, that businesswomen
were ‘at the heart of commercial developments in northern towns’. Barker, Business
of Women, p. 42.
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Anon, A List of all the Names, Classed in Alphabetical Order, Contained in the Printed
Lists of Proprietors of the Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank, and British Linen Company;
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Anon, Exchange Alley: or the Stock-Jobber . . . turn’d Gentleman. A Tragi-Comical
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Carlos, Ann M., Maguire, Karen and Neal, Larry, ‘Financial acumen, women speculators
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Carswell, John, The South Sea Bubble, London: Cresset Press, 1960.
Davenant, Charles, Reflections upon the Constitution and Management of the Trade to
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Davidoff, Leonore and Hall, Catherine, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English
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9 Female investors in the first
English and Welsh commercial
joint-stock banks1
Lucy A. Newton and Philip L. Cottrell
Introduction
During the mid-1850s several commentators noted the frequency of females,
particularly widows and spinsters, among the shareholders of metropolitan and
provincial banks.2 The attractiveness of these institutions’ shares to women,
especially those who had no stated income-generating occupation, was that they
offered a safe and profitable outlet for their savings.
Bank shares had become ‘blue-chip’ investments by the mid-1850s through
joint-stock banks having become relatively stable institutions. Joint-stock
banking had developed following the Banking Co-partnerships Act of 1826 (7
Geo. IV, c. 46), which permitted in England and Wales beyond a 65-mile radius
of London (Charing Cross) the creation of banks with more than six partners and
freely transferable shares. By the early 1840s, weaker ‘corporate’ banks had
ceased business, whereas the Joint Stock Banking Act of 1844 checked
markedly the pace of joint-stock bank formation – only 12 new ‘corporate’
banks were to be established during the next 13 years.3 The number of joint-
stock banks consequently stabilised at around 100 during the mid-nineteenth
century. Furthermore, their market position was aided by the continuing decline
of private banking.4 As the ‘corporate’ banks matured, they attracted increas-
ingly larger volumes of deposits, became more profitable and, thus, their man-
agements were able to distribute larger dividends to shareholders.
Although joint-stock banks had become more robust by mid-century, their
shares could still be risky investments. The 1826 Act had permitted joint-stock
banks to be legally constituted only as unlimited companies. It also became the
practice of bank directors to provide depositors with further security by calling
up merely a fraction of the nominal value of their respective institution’s shares.5
The risks for shareholders had been even greater during the late 1820s and
1830s due to the formation of joint-stock banks being then a novel development.
An element of risk remained in the mid-century since English and Welsh joint-
stock banks continued to fail – a total of 22 between 1844 and 1861.6
This chapter considers in general terms the women who invested in joint-
stock bank shares during the first half of the nineteenth century despite the risks
this entailed. The discussion is based upon an analysis of the shareholders of 20
116 L.A. Newton and P.L. Cottrell
joint-stock banks established variously between 1827 and 1836, both at the time
of their respective foundation (original subscriptions) and 20 years later. Our
findings show that there was greater share ownership by women at this later
date, demonstrating that female shareholders became more numerous as joint-
stock banks developed to be more proven institutions. Women were generally
more prepared to invest in shares as the associated risks decreased with the
passage of time.
Early joint-stock bank promotions

This chapter examines 20 of the joint-stock banks formed under the 1826 Act’s
provisions. All were successful institutions in that each survived to become a
constituent of a ‘Big Five’ clearing bank of the post-1918 era.
Seven banks in our sample were formed before 1834 (see Table 9.1), and
were groundbreaking institutions. Indeed, some were founded immediately
following the 1826 Act’s passage. All were local unit banks (that is banks
without branches), except the Huddersfield Banking Co., the management of
which opened three offices soon after its promotion in 1827. The earliest joint-
stock banks generally had relatively small paid-up capitals – £17,500 in the case
of the Halifax Joint Stock Bank, and £20,000 in the cases of both the Bradford
and Cumberland Union. The other 12 banks in our sample were established after
1834 (see Table 9.2), of which three were conversions of private houses (Coven-
try & Warwickshire Banking Co., Halifax & Huddersfield Union Bank, and
Sheffield & Rotherham Banking Co.), one a ‘district’ bank (Wilts & Dorset
Banking Co.), and one a metropolitan bank (London Joint Stock Bank).
Attempting to found a joint-stock bank before the early 1830s was innovative
since it was an untried and untested venture. Its promoters faced suspicion from
the public and fierce opposition from private bankers, with whom the bank
would compete. The new joint-stock banks’ managements had to struggle stren-
uously to consolidate their reputations and gain acceptance within local
communities.7
Despite opposition, joint-stock bank promotions averaged four a year
between 1832 and 1836. Many businessmen successfully established banks in
order to meet their immediate local communities’ financial demands. Joint-stock
bank formations increased from August 1833, following the threat of greater
regulation being lifted and clauses being introduced into the Act renewing the
Bank of England’s charter that widened the business they could undertake.8
Between 1833 and 1835, joint-stock bank foundations averaged ten a year and
peaked during the ‘promotion mania’ of 1836, when 59 joint-stock banks were
established.9
Over the mid-1830s, founders of joint-stock banks were able to capitalise
upon the pioneering institutions’ successes. These included the payment in 1833
of dividends of between 6 and 10 per cent and share-price premiums ranging
from 20 to 80 per cent. By 1836, dividends had reached between 6.5 and 12.5
per cent, and there were premiums of 5 to 66 per cent on bank shares.10
The first commercial joint-stock banks 117
Female subscriptions to bank promotions
The extent of female participation in the capitals of joint-stock banks formed
both before and after 1834 was broadly the same (see Tables 9.1 and 9.2).
Overall, women numbered fewer than one in ten among the subscribers to the
shares of the various banks in our sample that were established before 1834.
Women in the Cumberland Union Bank comprised 13 per cent of its sharehold-
ers, whereas in the cases of the Halifax Joint Stock Bank and the Bank of West-
morland they only made up 2 per cent. The proportions of female shareholders
in banks formed either before or after 1834 are broadly similar. They were even
less significant in terms of the monetary value (paid-up capital) of their collect-
ive holdings, mirrored in terms of the average value of their holdings (by paid-
up capital). Furthermore, the value of the average female holding was half to
two-thirds the average value of all shareholdings in banks formed both before,
and after, 1834.11
Were women reluctant or timid subscribers during the early development of
joint-stock banking in England and Wales? Not necessarily. Joint-stock banking
was usually taken up by local commercial and industrial groups to meet their
own credit needs. Consequently, great care was taken to ensure that shares were
allotted to those most likely to enhance their embryonic institution’s future busi-
ness. Some shares were allocated on the condition that their holder would open
an account with the bank, thereby explicitly generating business for the new
institution. This meant that it was unlikely that women would be sought, or wel-
comed, as shareholders. All in all, bank managements’ share allocation
decisions necessarily favoured men over women.
What were the characteristics of female investors in new joint-stock banks?
Where it is possible to identify female occupations from the sources consulted, it
shows the presence of female traders and manufacturers among the banks’ pro-
prietors. Their occupations reflect the typical involvement of women in business
during the first half of the nineteenth century. They include participation in the
hospitality sector (inn-keeping, hotel-keeping, victuallers); the clothing and
footwear industries (dressmaker, milliner, draper, shoemaker, currier); retailing
(bookseller); and education. A few were engaged in manufacturing (varnish and
metal manufactures), reflecting the industrial character of the bank’s locality. It
is possible that acquiring shares in a joint-stock bank improved these female
subscribers’ access to credit since some bank managements subsequently gave
preference to shareholders’ applications for facilities.12
However, the vast majority of women who were initial subscribers to new
joint-stock banks did not state an income-generating occupation, being, rather,
‘gentlewomen’, or spinsters, wives or widows. They comprised between 72 and
100 per cent of the female shareholders in 19 banks in our sample. The one
exception is the Halifax Joint Stock Bank; only 64 per cent of its female share-
holders did not have a stated income-generating occupation. Overall, our results
correspond with Gilbart’s findings regarding London joint-stock banks’ share-
holders, for which the largest increase between 1845 and 1855 was spinsters.13
Table 9.1 Subscriptions to bank shares, 1827–18331
Bradford Huddersfield Cumberland Halifax Barnsley Bank of Bank of Average

Banking Banking Union Joint Stock Banking Liverpool Westmorland 1827–
Co. 1827 Co. 1827 Banking Bank 1829 Co. 1831 1831 1833 1833
Co. 1829
Number of female shareholders 8.70% 8.40% 12.70% 1.70% 5.30% 16.20% 2.20% 7.90%
as a % of all shareholders
Value of shares held by women 7.90% 4.10% 6.70% 1.60% 5.30% 10.40% 1.60% 5.40%
as a % of the aggregate value of
shares subscribed
Average value of women’s £193.75 £74.90 £56.96 £87.50 £5.90 £264.01 £16.88 £99.90
shareholdings
Average value of all shareholdings £214.57 £153.04 £108.12 £95.96 £10.42 £411.45 £61.10 £150.66
Sources: HSBC Group Archives (HSBCGA): Bradford Banking Co., 1827: B1 deed of settlement, 1 June 1827; Cumberland Union Banking Co., 1829: G1, deed of
settlement, 1829; Huddersfield Banking Co., 1827 and 1847: H24, share register and transfer book, 1827–1890; Barnsley Banking Co., 1831 and 1851: A4, share
ledger, 1832–1896; Bank of Westmorland, 1833 and 1853: C12, share ledger, 1833–1880. Lloyds TSB Group Archives (LTSBGA): Halifax Joint Stock Bank, 1829:
5354, deed of settlement, 1829. Barclays Bank Group Archives (BBGA): Bank of Liverpool, 1831: 310/152, share register.
Note
1 This sample excludes the Yorkshire Bank refounded 1843–1844.
Table 9.2 Subscriptions to bank shares, 1835–18361
Coventry & Liverpool Birmingham County of Coventry Halifax & London North & Sheffield & Sheffield & Swaledale & Wiltshire & Average
Warwickshire Union & Midland Gloucestershire Union Huddersfield Joint South Wales Hallamshire Rotherham Wensleydale Dorset 1835–1836
Banking Banking 1836 Banking Co. Banking Union Banking Stock Bank Bank 1836 Banking Co. Banking Banking Co. Banking
Co. 1835 Co. 1835 1836 Co. 1836 Co. 1836 1836 1836 Co. 1836 1836 Co. 1836
Number of female 10.90 7.10 2.60 11.00 8.70 3.80 3.20 7.40 3.40 9.80 9.40 10.30 7.30
shareholders as a %
of all shareholders
Value of shares held 5.50 4.00 1.90 2.50 4.70 1.60 1.70 4.90 2.30 5.00 2.20 6.20 3.50
by women as a % of
the aggregate value
of shares subscribed
Average value of 41.88 275.00 45.00 176.92 108.70 111.67 172.70 19.57 69.20 575.78 28.57 91.30 143.02
women’s shareholdings
(£)
Average value of 82.41 498.00 61.82 777.94 200.48 272.85 318.70 29.56 100.80 1,172.17 123.37 144.27 315.19
all shareholdings (£)
Sources: BBGA: Swaledale & Wensleydale Banking Co., 1836 and 1856: 388/705, share register. HSBCGA: Birmingham & Midland Bank, 1836 and 1856: AA1
deed of settlement and share register; Coventry Union Banking Co., 1836: AB2, deed of settlement, 6 May 1836; London Joint Stock Bank, 1836: 592/01, share
ledger, vol. 1; North & South Wales Bank, 1836: M132, Proprietors’ stock ledger; Sheffield & Hallamshire Banking Co., 1836: AM48, list of share transfers.
LTSBGA: County of Gloucestershire Banking Co, 1836: Book no. 1954, deed of settlement, 26 July 1836; Coventry & Warwickshire Banking Co., 1835: File no.
7013, deed of settlement, 1835; Halifax & Huddersfield Union Banking Co., 1836: File no. 5924, deed of settlement, 1 July 1836; Liverpool Union Banking Co.,
1835: book no. 3544, Proprietors’ ledger No. 1, 1835–1847; Wilts & Dorset Banking Co., 1836 and 1853: Book number 3177, Shareholders’ register, 1835–1853.
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Archives (RBSGA): Sheffield & Rotherham Banking Co., 1836 and 1863: SR/79, deed of settlement, 1 July 1836 and SR/147014000,
Register of proprietors, 1863–1899.
Note
1 This sample excludes the Yorkshire Bank refounded 1843–1844.
Wives do not feature prominently in the banks’ share registers, being present
among the proprietors of merely five banks and, collectively, contributed very
little capital. This corresponds with the very minor role of wives’ investments in
early English railway companies so that, for instance, only 12 appear in the 1837
list of London & Birmingham shareholders.14 The absence of married women
shareholders was due to the legal position of their assets. From the early thir-
teenth century until the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870, English
common law held that property owned by a single woman was lost, or rather
transferred, to her husband upon marriage.15 The 1870 Act prevented married
women owning partly paid shares in their own names, and joint-stock banks typ-
ically issued such shares. This particular bar persisted until the 1882 Married
Women’s Property Act.16 Before 1870 it was possible for married women to
hold shares ‘indirectly’ through trusts. Their trustees were often their fathers, or
their brothers or other male relatives. For example, in the case of the Hudders-
field Banking Co., William Dickinson of Holmfirth held the five shares of Mrs
Mary Kilner of Huddersfield in trust. However, some bank prospectuses made it
clear that subscriptions from wives would not be accepted.17
The ways that spinsters and widows became shareholders is difficult to deter-
mine. One possibility is that they were related to males that either had estab-
lished a bank or were among its first shareholders. A list of the Bank of
Westmorland’s initial shareholders shows that five women had the same
surname as one of its directors – Harrison – but several men also shared this
name.18 Greater certainty comes with unusual surnames, so that there are
stronger grounds for linking the holding of 30 shares in the Barnsley Banking
Co. of Florence and Mary Cordeaux with those of Thomas Scales Cordeaux and
John Cordeaux, jnr, both local linen merchants. It is also clear that the holdings
of the female Rawsons arose from the conversion of their family’s private house
into the Halifax & Huddersfield Union Bank.
Other family connections can also be found. A feature of female subscrip-
tions to shares of banks being founded was that of siblings acting together. Mary
and Agnes Hodgson, spinsters of Liverpool, made investments of £1,775 and
£1,525, respectively, in the Bank of Liverpool. Similarly, Amelia and Jane Hors-
fall of the Ladies Academy, Wakefield, each acquired ten shares of the Barnsley
Banking Co.
Female bank shareholders

Although in most cases women did not have a major presence among the initial
shareholders of joint-stock banks established over the decade following the
passage of the 1826 Act, contemporary commentary points to them being more
prominent at the mid-century.19 This is confirmed when the share registers are
examined for the nine banks in our sample for which they are available 20 years
after their respective establishment (see Table 9.3). The data in Table 9.3 are dif-
ferent from those displayed in Tables 9.1 and 9.2, in that the shareholders in the
latter were original subscribers whereas those in the former were holding stocks
Table 9.3 Ownership of bank shares by women, 1847–1864
Huddersfield Barnsley Bank of Wilts & London Swaledale & Sheffield & Birmingham Yorkshire Average
Banking Co. Banking Co. Westmorland Dorset Joint Wensleydale Rotherham & Midland Banking Co.
1847 1851 1853 Banking Stock Banking Co. Banking Co. 1859 1864
Co.1853 Bank 1856 1856 1856
Female shareholdings as a 17.10 8.80 10.30 13.60 30.30 21.10 7.90 15.32 20.20 16.07
% of all shareholdings
Value of shares held by 10.30 7.30 23.30 10.00 17.40 11.50 3.00 6.76 11.80 11.26
women as a % of the
aggregate value of shares
subscribed
Average value of 10 525 121.76 199.10 379.50 188.55 139.43 591.76 461.43 290.70
women’s shareholdings (£)
Average value of all 440.06 464.71 167.92 271.70 660.00 321.44 367.86 1,482.52 663.90 537.79
shareholdings (£)
Sources: Swaledale & Wensleydale Banking Co., 1836 and 1856: 388/705, share register. HSBCGA: Huddersfield Banking Co., 1827 and 1847: H24, share register
and transfer book, 1827–1890; Barnsley Banking Co., 1831 and 1851: A4, share ledger, 1832–1896; Bank of Westmorland, 1833 and 1853: C12, share ledger,
1833–1880; London Joint Stock Bank, 1836: 592/01, share ledger, vol. 1; Birmingham & Midland Bank, 1836 and 1856: AA1 deed of settlement and share register;
Yorkshire Banking Co. 1844 and 1864 – HSBCGA: X49, Representatives’ register. LTSBGA: Wilts & Dorset Banking Co., 1836 and 1853: Book number 3177,
Shareholders’ register, 1835–1853. RBSGA: Sheffield & Rotherham Banking Co., 1836 and 1863: SR/79, deed of settlement, 1 July 1836 and SR/147014000, Regis-
ter of proprietors, 1863–1899.
in companies with dividend records. Twenty years after their establishment,
these banks were proven institutions, and their share registers clearly show an
increase in the participation of women. In particular, our results for the London
Joint Stock Bank support The Economist’s observation in 1856 that a large
number of shareholders in metropolitan joint-stock banks were female; in its
case 30 per cent of shareholders, who collectively held 17 per cent of the capital.20
The size of individual female stakes in joint-stock banks had increased by
mid-century. The average number of female shareholdings per bank had risen to
16 per cent of all holdings from 7–8 per cent when the institutions were pro-
moted two decades before. The average collective stake of female shareholders
by value (in terms of paid-up capital) had increased to 11 per cent from 3–5 per
cent. Furthermore, the average female holding had risen to £290 from
£100–£112 during the 1820s and 1830s.
Our sample of nine banks (comprising share registers dating, variously, from
between 1847 and 1864) confirms contemporary observations that female share-
holders in banks were significant. The occupational data for these banks’ share-
holders are robust, and show that the females among them were overwhelmingly
those without a stated income-generating employment. The lowest proportion of
such female shareholders is 97.2 per cent. A few wives again appear but the
principal female holders of these institutions’ capital 20 years after their respec-
tive foundations were spinsters and widows.
How had more females become bank shareholders by the mid-century, and why?
There is some evidence that women inherited shares from their husbands, fathers or
other male relatives; for instance, among the Barnsley Banking Co.’s proprietors,
Samuel Hirst held five shares in 1831, whereas by 1851 he was no longer on the
register but Hannah Hirst of the same address owned five shares.21 Apart from inter-
generational and inter-spouse transfers, there is the possibility of purchases through
either some form of secondary market or the acquisition of shares when banks sub-
sequently raised further equity capital. What motivated such purchases?
Mid-nineteenth-century investment opportunities for women

Some general ‘push’ and ‘pull’ forces can be identified to account for the
increasing take-up of bank shares by women as the years passed, and joint-stock
banking became firmly established.
Dividends (‘pull’)
The importance of dividends was mentioned in our introduction. The returns to
shareholders of some of the banks in our sample during the mid-1840s and the
mid-1850s are displayed in Tables 9.4 and 9.5. By 1844, the banks in our sample
that were established in the 1820s would have had a dividend history of just
under 20 years and by 1854 just under 30 years. Those banks established in the
1830s from our sample would have had a 10- or 20-year dividend history in
1844 and 1854, respectively.
Table 9.4 Bank shares: prices and dividends, 1844
Bank Share price Capital paid up Dividend

(£) per share (£) (%)
Bank of Liverpool 23 15s. 12 10s. 10

Barnsley Banking Co. 19–20 15 8
Birmingham & Midland Bank 6–15 5 8
Bradford Banking Co. 60 30 12.5
County of Gloucestershire Banking Co. 26 25 5
Coventry Union Banking Co. ‘About par’ 6 5s. 5
Cumberland Union Banking Co. 40 20 10
Halifax Joint Stock Bank 15 15 5
Halifax & Huddersfield Union
Banking Co. 15 10 ‘20s. per share’
Huddersfield Banking Co. 24 10 12.5
Liverpool Union Banking Co. 11 15s. 10 8
London Joint Stock Bank 14 10 6
North & South Wales Bank 7 10 4
Sheffield & Hallamshire Banking Co. 3 10s. 4 7.5
Swaledale & Wensleydale Banking Co. 5 10
Source: Bankers Almanac, 1845.
In 1844, only the North & South Wales Bank was distributing a dividend of
less than 5 per cent. It had been badly affected by the 1836 crisis, resulting in
losses of £54,000, and dividends were not distributed during several subsequent
years.22 Conversely, the London Joint Stock Bank by 1844 was regularly paying
a 6 per cent dividend.23 In 1854 no bank in our sample was distributing a divi-
dend of less than 5 per cent; the North & South Wales Bank was paying 6 per
cent, the Bank of Westmorland as much as 18 per cent and the Cumberland
Union £41 on each of its shares. Furthermore, rising dividend records were
becoming established. For example, the Birmingham & Midland paid 8 per cent
from 1839, 9 per cent in 1845, 10 per cent from 1846, 12 per cent in 1855, 14
per cent in 1856, 15 per cent in 1857 and 16 per cent from 1858 (until 1864,
when it rose to 18 per cent).24 In addition, some proprietors were benefiting from
bonus payments.
Women with the capacity to invest (push)

The number of women holding shares and enjoying such dividends was, of
course, dependent upon them having the resources to invest. Female investors
came predominantly from a small but important section of society. They were
primarily unmarried women or widows who had sufficient wealth and were risk
averse to investing in equity. They have been recently identified in the work of
Green and Owens and Rutterford and Maltby.25 This specific female group
consisted potentially of those who could invest in financial securities. Their
first choice tended to be low-risk options, such as Consols or the stock of
Table 9.5 Bank shares: prices and dividends, 1854
Bank Capital paid up per share (£) Dividend (%)
Bank of Liverpool £12 10s. 8

+12s 6d per share bonus for 1853–1854
Bank of Westmoreland £10 18
Barnsley Banking Co. £15 8
+2% bonus for 1854
Birmingham & Midland Bank £50 £5 per share
Bradford Banking Co. £15 12.5
County of Gloucestershire Banking Co. £25 6
Coventry Union Banking Co. £6 5s. 5
Cumberland Union Banking Co. £30 £41 per share
Halifax Joint Stock Bank £15 8.5 or £20 per share
Halifax & Huddersfield Union Banking Co. £10 ‘20s. per share’
Huddersfield Banking £10 10
Liverpool Union Banking Co. £10 6
+ bonus of 6s per share
London Joint Stock Bank £10 10
North & South Wales Bank £7 10s. 6
Sheffield & Hallamshire Banking Co. £25 7.5%
+1.5% bonus
Swaledale & Wensleydale Banking Co. £5 8
+2% bonus
Wilts & Dorset Banking Co. £10 6
Yorkshire Banking Co. £10 10s. 6
Source: Bankers Almanac, 1855.

long-established trading and financial institutions, like the Bank of England and
the East India Company. These securities were highly marketable and provided a
regular, quarterly income.26 They were therefore attractive to women who pre-
ferred low-risk investments, an understandable attitude given that most of them
had considerably more restricted opportunities to generate income than men.27 As
these particular women became more accustomed to investing, and more experi-
enced at assessing the risks, they widened the range of their investments to
include bank and railway shares, especially as these securities became less risky.
Increasing the shareholding habit for women (‘pull’)

The preparedness of females to place their savings in securities increased, dis-
played by women acquiring railway shares. As with joint-stock banks, women
invested in these companies as they became more mature.28 There were particu-
lar increases over time in the number of women railway shareholders: in the
cases of the Stockton & Darlington from 1823 to 1844, the Newcastle & Carlisle
from 1825 to 1844 and the Great Northern of England from 1836 to 1845. Reed
concluded that women became more significant shareholders a decade or so
after a company had been formed, while being most numerous in concerns
deemed to be established and therefore low risk. Some female investors learnt
from their experiences of holding shares and invested in a number of
companies.29 Women were therefore more likely to invest in more mature and,
therefore, less risky, ventures.30
The decline in other investment opportunities for women (‘push’)

The collapse of the mid-1840s ‘railway mania’ caused a significant change in
investors’ attitudes. The activity of many of the provincial stock exchanges
established during the 1830s and 1840s declined significantly, with negative
consequences for trading in bank shares.31 Only ten English railway companies
were distributing a dividend of more than 5 per cent during the mid-1850s and,
consequently, the ordinary investor was generally only prepared to subscribe to
new railway securities if they were preference shares and debentures – invest-
ments with guaranteed returns.32 This represented a ‘push’ away from ordinary
railway equity, while increasing the ‘pull’ of bank shares, particularly in the
cases of gentlemen and females or, rather, the more risk-averse investor. The
attractions of the only other directly competing investment outlet, insurance
company shares, had also faded since only 53 of the 291 life companies pro-
jected between 1844 and 1851 were still in business in 1852/3.33
Pushed away from ordinary railway shares and the equity of life insurance
companies, gentlemen and female rentier investors34 during the 1850s were also
faced with falling proceeds on traditional saving outlets. Land was a solid
investment but returns on it were declining35 and, likewise, Consols. Some fresh
issues of Consols were made to finance Britain’s participation in the Crimean
War but the yield on them had fallen to 3.4 per cent by the mid-1850s.36
During the mid-1850s the decline of the returns on relatively ‘safe’ invest-
ment opportunities for rentiers was considered to constitute a ‘social problem’.
One solution came with the secular increase in the issue of foreign securities
from the mid-1850s.37 Another was provided by the total liberalisation of British
company law between 1855 and 1862.
The liberalisation of company law (‘pull’)

The liberalisation of company law in 1855/6 permitted the free establishment of
limited-liability companies, and was extended to banks in 1858.38 These whole-
sale changes, codified in 1862, set the context for a new era in the development
of British commercial banking. Banks featured prominently during the
company-promotion booms of the mid-1860s and early 1870s. New limited
banks were first put before the investing public in September 1861, and their
promoters frequently pointed to the dividends that bank shareholders had
enjoyed during the 1850s.39 Limited liability offered a potentially safer form of
investment.
Risks remained even on the shares of banks formed with limited liability. Many
share denominations of the joint-stock banks formed during the 1820s and 1830s
were £100 and this came to set a pattern.40 Shares of large nominal denominations
but with a high portion of uncalled capital left investors exposed to the possibility
of losses.41 The 1866 financial crisis adversely affected many shareholders through
giving rise to the problem of ‘unlimited limited liability’, only partly resolved by
the 1867 Companies Act. There was also a reluctance to reduce the denomination
of bank shares due to the fear of encouraging the ‘wrong’ sort of investor. Further-
more, uncalled capital was often left at a high level for bank managements to draw
upon it swiftly if necessary.42 The City of Glasgow Bank failure of 1878 caused a
further shock. The collapse of this unlimited bank ruined very many of its share-
holders through forcing them into bankruptcy as they were called upon to meet its
extensive debts. These substantial problems resulted directly in the passage of the
1879 Companies Act (42 & 43 Vict. c. 76). It introduced ‘reserved liability’,
adopted by bank managements dividing uncalled capital equally between that
which could be called up by the directors and that which could only be called upon
in the event of liquidation.43 The statute also required all limited liability banks to
have properly audited accounts.
The mounting bank amalgamation movement from the 1880s led to shares in
large-scale joint-stock banks becoming less risky through the growth in institu-
tions’ size and capital bases. Banks competed by extending their market pres-
ence nationwide rather than on price, the latter being subject to cartel
agreements and customary practice. Furthermore, as individual banks enjoyed
greater longevity, share capital was gradually called up. By 1874 shares in the
Birmingham & Midland Bank were fully paid up.44 More generally, company
promoters during the late nineteenth century introduced lower share denomina-
tions and lower-risk securities, such as debentures and preference shares, as
opposed to ordinary shares.45
Conclusion
Women of some wealth who controlled their means, predominantly spinsters
and widows, participated in the developing corporate capitalism of the nine-
teenth century. This investing group was not large and its members appear to
have been well aware of the risks involved. This is illustrated by the existence
and behaviour of the female investors in the joint-stock banks identified in this
study. Our evidence shows that women were prepared to invest in the shares of
banking companies that had unlimited liability, whether as initial subscriptions
or as purchasers of shares on the secondary market once the banks had become
established. The risk of being an initial subscriber to joint-stock banks was
particularly high during the 1820s and 1830s when these institutions were
untried and untested. Such risks declined somewhat as corporate banks became
established. Our research reveals that female shareholders became more numer-
ous as joint-stock banks became more proven institutions. Not only had the risk
on such investments reduced but also bank dividends by the mid-1840s were
very attractive. Dividends provided a ‘pull’ factor for women to invest in bank
shares, playing a part in developing a female shareholding ‘habit’ as the nine-
teenth century unfolded. The attraction of bank shares was increased by the
falling returns on ‘safe’ investments, such as Consols, land and railway shares.
More generally, the liberalisation of company law, 1855–62, which introduced
limited liability, provided a potentially safer environment for women to invest.
Over the nineteenth century, an increasing volume of corporate equity
became available to women who could afford to purchase it. This was an
important development for the women themselves, giving them greater choice of
profitable investment opportunities, but also for banks and other types of com-
panies seeking financial backers. Women shareholders were a minority but their
collective significance as ‘gentlewomanly capitalism’ is increasingly being
appreciated by historians.
Notes
1 This chapter draws on some of the findings of a Leverhulme Trust-funded project ‘The
constituencies of English and Welsh joint stock banks, 1825 to c.1885’. We are grateful
for the support so generously provided, and also for the very valuable assistance of the
archivists who so willingly gave of their time and informed guidance: John Booker and
Karen Sampson (Lloyds TSB Archives); Edwin Green and Sara Kinsey (HSBC Group
Archives); Jesse Campbell and Josephine Horner (formerly Barclays Bank Archives);
Fiona MacColl and Susan Snell (formerly National Westminster Bank); and Alison
Turton and Philip Winterbottom (Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)). We also wish to
acknowledge fully the generous help of Professor Josephine Maltby and Professor
Janette Rutterford. An extended version of this chapter by the authors can be found in
Accounting, Business and Financial History 16 (2), 2006, pp. 315–340.
2 J. W. Gilbart, ‘A ten years’ retrospect of London banking’, Journal of the Statistical
Society of London 18 (4), 1855, pp. 333–344; The Economist, 13 March 1856, p. 290;
B. L. Anderson and P. L. Cottrell, ‘Another Victorian capital market: a study of
banking and bank investors on Merseyside’, Economic History Review 2nd series, 28,
1975, pp. 611–613.
3 K. S. Toft, ‘A mid-nineteenth century attempt at banking control’, Revue Interna-
tionale d’Histoire de la Banque 3, 1970, pp. 149–167.
4 M. Dawes and C. N. Ward-Perkins, Country Banks of England and Wales. Private
Provincial Banks and Bankers 1688–1953, Vol. 1, Canterbury: CIB Publishing for
the Chartered Institute of Bankers, 2000, pp. 11–12, Table 2.
5 T. Joplin, An Examination of the Report of the Joint Stock Bank Committee, 2nd edn,
London: J. Ridgeway & Sons, 1837, pp. 2–3; J. W. Gilbart, A Practical Treatise on
Banking, London: Effingham Wilson, 1828, pp. 54, 56–61.
6 S. E. Thomas, The Rise and Growth of Joint Stock Banking, I, Britain to 1860,
London: Pitman, 1934, pp. 656–662, Appendix M.
7 Lucy A. Newton, ‘The birth of joint stock banking: a comparison of England and
New England in the nineteenth century’, Business History Review, forthcoming.
8 These clauses allowed joint-stock deposit banks to operate within the metropolitan
area (65-mile radius of Charing Cross) and permitted provincial joint-stock banks to
draw bills on London with a value of less than £50 and a maturity shorter than six
months. P. L. Cottrell and L. A. Newton, ‘Banking liberalization in England and
Wales, 1826–1844’, in R. Sylla, R. Tilly and G. Tortella (eds), The State, The Finan-
cial System and Economic Modernization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999, pp. 85–87.
9 R. C. O. Matthews, A Study in Trade-Cycle History. Economic Fluctuation in Great
Britain 1833–1842, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954, pp. 159–164;
Cottrell and Newton, ‘Banking liberalization in England and Wales, 1826–1844’, pp.
84, 96–102.
10 RBSGA: 574, Nottingham & Nottinghamshire Banking Co., Board of Directors
Minute Books [hereafter BDM], 8 November 1833; LTSBGA: Liverpool Union
Banking Co., Book No. 93, BDM, AGM, 3 January 1836; and, for the prospectus of
the North Wilts Banking Co., March 1836. R. S. Sayers, Lloyds Bank in the History
of English Banking, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957, p. 159 fn. 2)
11 Holdings by value, whether overall or solely those of women, were positively skewed
in their distribution for all banks, the respective median values being less than those
of the averages.
12 Newton, ‘Birth of joint stock banking’.
13 Gilbart, ‘A ten years’ retrospect of London banking’, p. 340.
14 M. C. Reed, Investment in Railways in Britain, 1820–1844. A Study in the Develop-
ment of the Capital Market, London: Oxford University Press, 1975, pp. 109 fn. 2,
116.
15 J. H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History, 3rd edn, London and Boston:
Butterworths, 1990, p. 552.
16 It was possible for a wife’s property to be held in trust before 1882, which could
protect some, or all, of her property from that of her husband, the assets in question
often having been given by a father to his daughter. It was thus possible for women to
own property under common law and, consequently, to have capital and income, and
the ability to pass these assets to their children. Widows could also use settlements to
protect resources inherited from one marriage when entering another. See L. Hol-
combe, Wives and Property: Reform of the Married Women’s Property Law in
Nineteenth-Century England, Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1983; R. J. Morris, ‘Men,
women and property’, in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), Landowners, Capitalists and
Entrepreneurs: Essays for Sir John Habakkuk, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, pp.
171–191. Others argue that trusts and settlements did little to protect a wife’s property
since it was common to make a husband the trustee. See S. M. Okin, ‘Patriarchy and
married women’s property in England: questions and some current views’,
Eighteenth-Century Studies 17 (2), 1983–4, pp. 121–138; L. Davidoff and C. Hall,
Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780–1850, London:
Routledge, 1987.
17 HSBCGA: B42/3, Bradford Banking Co., Prospectus, 22 March 1827, clause 8.
18 HSBCGA: C12, Bank of Westmorland, share ledger, 1833–1880.
19 Gilbart, ‘A ten years’ retrospect of London banking’, p. 340; Economist, 13 March
1856, p. 290.
20 The Economist, 13 March 1856, p. 290.
21 HSBCGA: A4, Barnsley Banking Co., share ledger, 1832–1896.
22 W. F. Crick and J. E. Wadsworth, A Hundred Years of Joint Stock Banking, London:
Hodder & Stoughton, 1936, 3rd edn, 1958, pp. 180–182.
23 A. D. Gayer, W. W. Rostow and A. J. Schwartz, The Growth and Fluctuation of the
British Economy 1790–1850, Vol. 1, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953, pp. 448, 450.
24 A. R. Holmes and E. Green, Midland 150 Years of Banking Business, London: B. T.
Batsford, 1986, p. 331, Appendix 4.1.
25 D. R. Green and A. Owens, ‘Gentlewomanly capitalism? Spinsters, widows, and
wealth holding in England and Wales, c. 1800–1860’, Economic History Review, 56
(3), 2003, 510–536; and J. Rutterford and J. Maltby, ‘ “The widow, the clergyman and
the reckless”: women investors in England, 1830–1914’, Feminist Economics 12
(1–2), 2006, pp. 116–118.
26 Green and Owens, ‘Gentlewomanly capitalism?’ and H. V. Bowen, The Business of
Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006, ch. 4.
27 Rutterford and Maltby, ‘ “The widow, the clergyman and the reckless” ’, p. 129.
28 Reed, Investment in Railways in Britain, 1820–1844.
29 Reed, Investment in Railways in Britain, 1820–1844, pp. 192, 202–203, 204, 209. See
also Sarah Hudson, ‘Attitudes to investment risk amongst West Midland canal and
railway company investors 1700–1850’, University of Warwick PhD thesis, 2001.
30 Rutterford and Maltby, ‘The widow, the clergyman and the reckless’, p. 129.
31 For the experience of provincial share markets, see W. A. Thomas, The Provincial
Stock Exchanges, London: Frank Cass, 1973, Ch. 2.
32 P. L. Cottrell, ‘Railway finance and the crisis of 1866: contractor’s bills of exchange and
the finance companies’, Journal of Transport History 2nd series, 3, 1975, p. 21.
33 J. H. Hartnoll, A Letter to the Rt. Hon. E. Cardwell, M. P., London: W. S. D.
Pateman, 1853, p. 6.
34 The female ‘rentier’ investor was an individual that looked for safe investment
opportunities, as identified in the nineteenth-century discourse.
35 R. A. Ward, A Treatise on Investments, 2nd edn, London: Effingham Wilson, 1852,
pp. 6, 61, 209.
36 P. L. Cottrell, ‘Domestic finance, 1860–1914’, in R. Floud and P. Johnson (eds), The
Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, II, Economic Maturity, 1860–1939,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 257; Rutterford and Maltby, ‘ “The
widow, the clergyman and the reckless investor” ’, p. 129. Many investors in Consols
held them in order to provide an annuity, i.e. a fixed annual income. Such investors
suffered as their value declined.
37 A. H. Imlah, Economic Elements in the Pax Britanica, 2nd edn, New York: Russell &
Russell, 1969, pp. 72–73.
38 P. L. Cottrell, Industrial Finance 1830–1914, London: Methuen, 1980, pp. 52–53.
39 Anderson and Cottrell, ‘Another Victorian capital market’, p. 604; P. L. Cottrell,
‘Credit, morals and sunspots: the financial boom of the 1860s and trade cycle theory’,
in P. L. Cottrell and D. E. Moggridge (eds), Money and Power, Basingstoke: Macmil-
lan Press, 1988, p. 46.
40 Crick and Wadsworth, A Hundred Years of Joint-Stock Banking, p. 86; Cottrell,
Industrial Finance, pp. 84–86.
41 J. B. Jefferys, ‘The denomination and character of shares, 1855–85’, Economic
History Review new series, 16, 1946, pp. 45–55; J. Taylor, Creating Capitalism:
Joint-Stock Enterprise in British Politics and Culture, 1800–1870, Woodbridge: The
Boydell Press, 2006, pp. 192–193; Rutterford and Maltby, ‘ “The widow, the clergy-
man and the reckless” ’, pp. 122–123.
42 Rutterford and Maltby, ‘ “The widow, the clergyman and the reckless” ’, p. 123;
Taylor, Creating Capitalism, pp. 162, 174.
43 Holmes and Green, Midland, p. 62.
44 Crick and Wadsworth, A Hundred Years of Joint-Stock Banking, p. 344.
45 Rutterford and Maltby, ‘ “The widow, the clergyman and the reckless” ’, p. 123.
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Canada Square, London, E14 5HQ.
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Bradford Banking Co., 1827 – HSBCGA: B1 deed of settlement, 1 June 1827.
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Liverpool Union Banking Co., 1835 – LTSBGA: book no. 3544, proprietors’ ledger no.
1, 1835–1847.
Wilts & Dorset Banking Co., 1836 and 1853 – LTSBGA: book no. 3177, shareholders’
register, 1835–1853.
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Archives (RBSGA), The Royal Bank

of Scotland Group plc, Regent’s House, PO Box 348, 42 Islington
High Street, London, N1 8XL.
Sheffield & Rotherham Banking Co., 1836 and 1863 – RBSGA: SR/79, deed of settle-
ment, 1 July 1836 and SR/147014000, Register of proprietors, 1863–1899.
10 To do the right thing
Gender, wealth, inheritance and the
London middle class1
David R. Green
Making provision: inheritance and the ideology of separate

spheres
In the nineteenth century the notion of separate spheres, where men earned the
money and women maintained the home, was a pervasive belief for the British
middle class.2 What happened, however, when men died? How did their widows
sustain the family in the absence of earned income and what were the implica-
tions of this for maintaining the ideology of separate spheres? All widows, of
course, faced this situation and for the working class a husband’s death signalled
a very real drop in household income. But for those who managed to accumulate
capital over the life course, a husband’s death also signalled the passage of prop-
erty, usually to his widow and children. In a legal sense, this transition heralded
the economic independence of a widow and, unless specified otherwise in the
terms of the will, she could do with her newly acquired fortune what she wished.
This situation, of course, was fraught with moral danger. Having come into
money, the widow herself acquired economic power and assumed the role of the
main household provider. This in itself posed problems for the ideological
underpinnings of separate spheres. On the one hand the power of the wealthy
widow to upset social relations became a reality, and on the other, poorly
equipped to understand the ways of money, the widow either by accident or
design, could leave her children penniless. In this case, inheritance became a
pivotal moment in the preservation of separate spheres.
To safeguard against these threats to the gendered social order and, indeed, a
man’s own reputation beyond the grave, husbands frequently dictated the terms
on which their widow could inherit their wealth. To do the right thing – to
ensure in particular that wives, children and dependent relatives were adequately
provided for after death – was a primary duty, not just for middle-class men but
for anyone with money. Reputation and respectability lived on after death in the
way that men, and to some extent women, made provisions for their dependants.
Writing the will was therefore a responsibility that defined respectability and the
failure to do so may have damned not just the beneficiaries to poverty but the
testator’s reputation as well. But making a will was not in itself enough. The
terms of the will should conform to customary expectations of the role of
134 D.R. Green
lineage and this meant, as George Eliot reminded her readers in The Mill on the
Floss, avoiding sentimentality:
To live respected, and have the proper bearers at your funeral, was an
achievement of the ends of existence that would be entirely nullified if, on
the reading of your will, you sank in the opinion of your fellow-men, either
by turning out to be poorer than they expected, or by leaving your money in
a capricious manner, without strict regard to degrees of kin. The right thing
must always be done toward kindred. The right thing was to correct them
severely, if they were other than a credit to the family, but still not to alien-
ate from them the smallest rightful share in the family shoebuckles and
other property. (Emphasis added)3
But what was the ‘right thing’ and how were the ‘shoebuckles’ to be distributed?
These issues are discussed here in the context of the provisions made by men for
their heirs in early-nineteenth-century London. Since women formed the main
beneficiaries, notably those who were left as widows, the way in which men
made provision for their wives and children provides an insight into concepts of
familial propriety and, perhaps more significantly for this book, helps under-
stand the extent of female financial autonomy that arose as a result of a
husband’s death.
The analysis relies on a sample of men’s wills proved at the Prerogative
Court of Canterbury (PCC) in 1830 that were valued at less than £10,000. In that
year a total of 2,661 men’s and women’s wills were proved in the various
London probate courts, of which 2,318 were proved in the Prerogative Court of
Canterbury. The remainder were proved in one of the several lower ecclesiasti-
cal courts that dealt mainly with small estates. Male testators accounted for
1,587 of these wills, or 68 per cent of the total proved in that court, and from this
group a one in six systematic sample was drawn for more detailed analysis
(N = 277).4
As Bob Morris has recently pointed out, wills can be seen as windows on
life.5 They provide a glimpse of family relationships, friendships and social
obligations at the point of death, when the domestic arrangements of the house-
hold – the balance between emotion, duty and property – were laid bare. As a
legal document they entailed a settling of accounts and a set of property transac-
tions between the living and the dead. Although not a formal contract per se,
nevertheless the will had many of the attributes of a contractual relationship,
particularly when executors were entrusted to make provision for beneficiaries
or instructions were issued for the disposal of property long after the point of
death. In their broader context, wills also hint at concepts of parental and filial
duty and propriety; of social roles to be performed beyond the grave and of
expectations to be performed before it. Wills therefore offer a way of unravel-
ling and understanding a set of social relationships through the disposal of prop-
erty and as such they provide a rare glimpse into the complex relationships
between money, emotion and duty.
To do the right thing 135
Beyond the broad similarities imposed by legal requirements, wills could and
did differ considerably, particularly in relation to the ways in which assets were
distributed and the conditions imposed on beneficiaries. This diversity stemmed
from the testamentary freedom which characterised English law.6 Although
natural justice might have directed that men’s property be passed to wives, chil-
dren and relatives, there was in fact little that dictated the pattern of bequests.
Other than the weak legislation relating to dower, which dealt only with the
share of a husband’s freehold land that could be claimed by a widow as of right,
a testator was free to dispose of property however he or she wished, and this tes-
tamentary freedom underpinned the variety of wishes enshrined in the will and
the diversity of conditions under which inheritance took place.7
De jure freedom, however, did not necessarily mean de facto freedom.
Though law may have allowed testamentary freedom, custom and concepts of
propriety and respectability directed otherwise. Moral considerations dictated
that men should take special care to make provision for those who could not
earn their own living, notably the sick, wives and children, but especially
daughters. Similarly the will should also take into account filial propriety and
faithful duty.8 In return, of course, wives, sons, daughters and other relatives
were expected to conform to their roles during the life of the testator. Breaches
of those roles meant risking being cut off from the will – a situation which,
although not common, was nevertheless not that unusual. When John Beedle
left his entire estate valued at £1,000 to his wife, save for 1s each to his four
children, clearly something in their behaviour had displeased him.9 In similar
fashion Joseph Pellett also cut off his four children ‘due to their base conduct
towards me’.10 The terms of the will, therefore, balanced duty and emotion
with reference to property and lineage. In other words, testamentary freedom
was exercised in the context of customary expectations by the living as well as
the dead.
Will makers and will writing

The fact that the will was primarily a document concerning the disposal of prop-
erty meant that most of the population had no need to have one drawn up, either
because of legal impediments to the ownership of assets, as was the case with
married women without any separate settled estate and children below the age of
21, or because they fell below the threshold of property ownership. In London,
persons who died with personal goods, or bona notabilia, valued at £10 or more
(£5 elsewhere), were required to have their estates proved by an ecclesiastical
court.11 Those whose estates reached these figures but who died intestate were
dealt with by administrators appointed by the probate courts. Though married
women could not make a will other than for their own settled property, widows
were reborn as civil actors on the death of their husband, capable of making
their own decisions and distributing their estate according to their own wishes.12
In 1841, for the country as a whole about 13.4 per cent of adults who died
either left wills or had administrators appointed to deal with their estates.13
136 D.R. Green
Figures for London suggest that a similar proportion of the population also left
estates that warranted probate.14 In 1850, adult deaths in London amounted to
24,706 while the number of wills under £100,000 proved in the three main
ecclesiastical courts for that year was 2,811, which suggests that at least 11 per
cent of those who died in the city left wills. If administrations are included, this
figure rises to about 13.3 per cent of those who died.15 The very small number of
estates valued above £100,000 would raise this percentage only slightly.16 This
figure corresponds very closely to that found for Leeds between 1830 and 1834
when about 13.5 per cent of those who died left a will or administration.17
These figures need to be set in the context of the size of the property-owning
class, the group that would have been in a position to leave enough wealth to
make a will or an administration necessary. Estimating the size of this group is
an imprecise science. However, based on evidence from a range of taxation doc-
uments, Schwarz concludes that the upper-income group with an average
income of over £200 formed only 2–3 per cent of the adult male population,
while the middle-income group earning between £80 and £130 comprised
between 16 and 21 per cent. The remainder consisted of the working population,
although 9–10 per cent of these were shopkeepers and another 5–6 per cent self-
employed artisans. If we include these two groups with the upper and middle
earners, between about 32 and 40 per cent of the male population in London
might have owned enough property to leave a will, with the rest of the popu-
lation mainly comprising unskilled and semi-skilled workers with little or
nothing of value when they died.18 The proportion of people leaving a will in
London needs to be seen in the context of the size of this property-owning
group. Comparing the proportion of Londoners whose estate was probated
against those who were likely to have owned property, it appears that as many as
one in three of the bourgeoisie were likely to have made a will.
In terms of occupational groupings, however, and in keeping with Schwarz’s
view of early-nineteenth-century London that ‘in any examination of the
capital’s bourgeoisie it is the shopkeeper who stands out’, what is striking about
the social make-up of male testators is the importance of dealers.19 Table 10.1
shows the occupational breakdown both for male testators in 1830 and for occu-
pied males recorded in the 1851 census. Two main groups stand out by virtue of
their relative importance. The first include those described as ‘gentlemen’,
although the precise meaning of this term is unclear. It was generally used to
denote persons with an independent income or an income from property,
although by the 1830s it had lost its traditional association with the landed
elite.20 Either way, this was clearly the wealthiest group of testators with the
average value of estates more than double that of the sample as a whole.
More significant, however, are those involved in dealing, the majority of
which were most likely to have been shopkeepers. Compared to their share of
the working population, this group was particularly important, reflecting the fact
that many retailers would have had personal property such as stock in trade and
leasehold premises that could be included in a will.21 Setting up in many
branches of retailing also required significant amounts of capital: in the 1830s,
for example, haberdashers required between £400 and £800, though a good busi-
ness could cost in excess of £1,000.22 When shopkeepers died they tended to
leave premises, stock in trade, and debts owing, as well as the goodwill that
came with an established reputation. Indeed, when valuing an estate, goodwill
was sometimes included as a separate item. Though by no means as wealthy as
gentlemen, or indeed those engaged in public service or the professions, retailers
were on a par with manufacturers in terms of the average value of their estate.
Those involved in manufacturing themselves tended to be under-represented
among testators, which reflects the large number of working-class men who
were likely to be enumerated in this category but who did not possess much by
way of personal property.23 Bringing up the end of the wealth hierarchy were
those involved in transport and building, including a handful of bricklayers,
plumbers and plasterers as well as coachmen, stable keepers and lightermen.
Wills were written and re-written to take account of changing circumstances
such as marriage and the birth of children and as such the last will and testament
merely represents an end point in an ongoing process of settling one’s estate and
disposing of one’s worldly possessions. Richard Dickson recommended that
married men should review their testamentary affairs on a regular basis, chang-
ing the terms according to altered circumstances.24 However, they tended to be
written or re-written relatively near to death – Figure 10.1 shows that nearly half
of men’s wills and 44 per cent of women’s were written within a year of probate
being granted (although women tended to write their wills earlier than men),
with nearly one in four men making a will within three months of the grant of
probate. This suggests that they frequently took the form of a final reckoning of
worldly possessions.25
There were sound legal grounds for writing or re-writing a will close to
death. For men, while marriage did not invalidate a previous will, the birth of a
child did, and for women, widowhood similarly created a need for a new will.
Changing emotional circumstances, such as rewarding faithful service, recognis-
ing friendly deeds and accepting personal responsibilities, could equally have
prompted the writing or re-writing of a will. Henry Morrell senior, for example,
wrote his will on 22 November 1828, but by the time he died in 1830 he had
added three codicils. In the first, dated 2 June 1829, he made some provision for
his son Henry, who he noted was of ‘unsound mind and unfit to be entrusted
with any property whatsoever’. The second, made on 6 November 1829, dictated
that his daughter was to have the rents of one of his houses but had no power to
mortgage or sell the property. As he approached death, Henry senior had clearly
tired of the antics of his younger namesake and the third codicil, dated 27
December 1829, noted that, having fitted Henry junior for the Swan River ‘at
very great expense’ and having previously provided money on several occa-
sions, ‘in justice to my other sons’ no more was to be given for a period of five
years. Wills, therefore, not only reflected a final reckoning but were also part of
a fluid process of reconciling social relationships and as such provide a unique
window into understanding how emotional understanding and personal duty
meshed over time with the division of property.
Table 10.1 Occupational classification of male testators in 1830 compared to 1851 census of male occupations (Booth–Armstrong classification)
Number leaving Average probated Median probate 1830 per cent of 1851 census percentage
a will with probated value (£) value (£) total wills (a) of male occupations (b)
value (number
leaving will)**
Dealing 51 (53) 1,055.8 600 26.4 13.9

Manufacturing 46 (49) 1,016.3 450 24.4 33.3
Gentleman, esquire,
independent means 43 (44) 2,572.3 1,500 21.9 1.6
Public services and
professions 26 (28) 1,929.3 1,000 13.9 11.7
Transport 10 507.0 300 5.0 11.4
Building 7 760.0 600 3.5 9.8
Others* 10 1,370.0 800 5.0 18.3
Total 193 (201) 1,476.8 800 100.1 100.0
Not specified 73 (76) 1,657.3 800
Source: (a) PROB 11 sample; See footnote 5 (b) L. D. Schwarz, London in the Age of Industrialisation, 1992, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, appendix 3,
pp. 255–58.
Notes
* Includes agriculture, fishing, breeding (4), domestic service (3), industrial service (3).
** Figures in brackets show total number leaving a will with stated occupation.
25
Men %
Women %
20
15
Percentage
10
0
Less than
30 days
30–89 days
90–179 days
6 months–
1 year
1–2 years
3–4 years
5+ years
Figure 10.1 Time elapsed between making a will and the date of probate 1830 (source:
see note 5).
Note
Men N = 277; Women N = 266.
Male provision for wives

Writing the will, however, was more than just a question of legal necessity. For
middle-class men, making a will was viewed as both a moral imperative and a
rational course of action. As Alastair Owens has noted, in writing a will men
were credited with the virtues of good citizenship, family cohesion and harmony
and high personal esteem.26 Failure to make such provision, or indeed writing a
will that was open to challenge, left the family vulnerable to the vicissitudes of
fortune rather than the certainty of provision. As Richard Dickson observed in
1830:
Could any man of sense who died without a will, return to this world to see
his family almost beggared, his children scattered on the wide world, his
business embarrassed so as to be worth nothing; how would he grieve to
think that all this confusion arose from his culpable neglect of performing
so simple a duty as that of making his will.27
Given these concerns, not surprisingly men were careful to make provision for
their families. However, questions exist over the extent of women’s proprietorial
autonomy in men’s wills. According to Owens’ work on Stockport men’s wills
between 1800 and 1857,
140 D.R. Green
it is difficult to sustain the view that the evidence presents a picture of pro-
prietorial independence and freedom among spouses of male property
owners. Indeed . . . the principal role of widows who were beneficiaries of
their husband’s will was to act as the custodians of the family estate.28
Widows often inherited property only for their natural life, or the duration of
their widowhood, at the end of which any remaining property passed to children
or other beneficiaries. Sometimes a widow’s portion was reduced on her remar-
riage, with the remaining portion being distributed to other heirs. In these situ-
ations women primarily appeared to be the vehicle for the intergenerational
transfer of property from fathers to their children. However, explanations for
this lack of proprietorial autonomy differ. On the one hand, by imposing such
conditions on the way in which widows could inherit property, it could be
argued that men were merely extending patriarchal control over property and
ensuring the rights of his children to a share of the family estate. On the other,
conditions that limited a widow’s right to possess property in her own name
could be interpreted as a way of protecting her from the loss of her rights that
would ensue were she to have remarried. Trusts could function in this fashion by
providing women with an income but vesting actual ownership of property in
the hands of appointed trustees.29
Evidence from the London men’s wills contrasts with the experience else-
where in the country. For 159 (58 per cent) of the 277 men’s wills in the sample,
the primary recorded relationship was between husband and wife. In most
instances, the wife was the residuary legatee in the sense that she inherited most
if not all of the estate and in over half these instances, as shown in Table 10.2,
she was also an executor of the will. Indeed, in the majority of cases she was the
sole executrix and as such would have had considerable control in the way the
estate was managed.
Nevertheless, the suggestion remains that despite being named as the main
beneficiary and primary executor, the terms of men’s wills were such as to limit
their widows’ autonomy to dispose of property as they wished. They may have
Table 10.2 Executor where wife was the residual legateea (N = 159)
Number Percentage
Wife 100 54.3

Child 15 8.2
Other relative 27 14.7
Friend 17 9.2
Not known 25 13.6
Total Executors 184 100.0
Source: See note 5.

Note
a The total number of wills in which a wife was mentioned was 167, but in eight of these it was
impossible to establish if the wife was the residual legatee.
benefited from the income arising from bequests, they may have been able to
make prudent use of it on their behalf and that of their children, they may have
chosen to squander it, but widows were not necessarily empowered to dispose of
their inheritance as they chose. In other words, they could make use of any
income arising from the estate but not sell or otherwise dispose of it freely. This
was an important issue since, prior to the Married Women’s Property Act of
1882, if a woman married or remarried any wealth that she herself owned, with
the exception of real estate and her own paraphernalia, became the property of
her husband.30 There were four ways that widows could avoid being placed in
this potentially difficult situation, each of which could be used independently or
in combination with the others. First, a husband could stipulate in his will that
his wife was only entitled to use some or all of her inheritance for her natural
life time or until she remarried. Second, he could establish a trust by which
wealth was controlled by a set of trustees, usually his executors, who were
responsible for investing it and paying out sums of money as required or thought
necessary. Third, he could set up an arrangement by which any wealth inherited
by a wife or daughter was for her ‘separate use’, irrespective of the wishes of
any future husband. Finally, a woman herself on marriage or remarriage could
have arranged a separate settlement that protected any property that she brought
to the new household.
Disentangling which of these strategies was used and in what combinations
depends on understanding the formal language used in the construction of wills.
Bequests were often made for a period of time – most commonly for a person’s
‘natural life’, or in the case of women for such time as a widow remained
unmarried. Men often stipulated that women were to inherit ‘absolutely’ or in
the case of a widow’s remarriage or a daughter’s marriage that their portion of
the estate was to remain ‘separate from their husband’. Bequests to children nor-
mally took place when they reached majority, commonly taken to be 21 years of
age, although marriage was sometimes the occasion when bequests were made
available. Trusts could be established by indicating in the will that the executors
or other persons were to act as ‘trustees’ or that property was given ‘upon trust’
or ‘in trust’. Such phrasing within wills therefore acts as a clue to the different
strategies used when it came to the disposal of property after death.
Evidence from other parts of the country for the first half of the nineteenth
century suggests that widows rarely inherited their husband’s estates without
encumbrances. According to Owens’ work on Stockport, only 28 per cent of
husband’s bequests were made to wives ‘absolutely’ – where they had freedom
to dispose of the estate independently.31 In Leeds, Morris notes that the figure
was even lower at about 18 per cent of men’s wills.32 Evidence from the London
sample provides a contrasting story. As Table 10.3 shows, in just over half the
wills where a wife was mentioned, no conditions appeared to be attached to her
inheritance, leaving her free to do what she wished with her portion of the estate.
In these cases, the will notes that she was granted ‘absolute’ control over the
inheritance. In some wills, vague wishes and expectations were expressed,
usually in relation to the care and provision for children, but it seemed that on
142 D.R. Green
Table 10.3 Types of provision where a wife was still alive at the time of making a will
N Percentage Average probate

value (£)
Absolute controla 95 56.9 1,000

Natural lifeb 52 31.1 1,409
Till children come of agec 5 3.0 2,420
Reducing on remarriaged 15 9.0 2,847
Total 167 100.0 1,336
Source: See note 4.

Notes
a Widow had absolute access to estate without conditions.
b Widow had income from estate for rest of her natural life but no power to dispose of estate after
death.
c Widow has access to whole estate during children(s) minority but at coming of age yielded part of
estate.
d Widow had access to estate during her natural life but this was reduced or dispensed with upon
remarriage.
most occasions widows were left to their own devices. Thomas Gill, for
example, merely stated that his entire estate was to be left to Mary Ann, his
wife, ‘towards the maintaining of my dear family and herself – to be equally dis-
posed between the whole of my family in the best manner she is able’.33
Whether this situation reflected the haste with which wills were written or a real
willingness to maintain the family business is difficult to determine. However, it
is in stark contrast to experience elsewhere and this in itself raises the question
of the extent to which London men behaved differently.
While London women appeared to be relatively free in relation to their inher-
itance, a husband’s wishes could continue well beyond the grave and in about
one-third of cases widows inherited property only for their natural life or until
any children came of age. In the latter case, adult children normally inherited a
part of the estate with the remainder left for the widow. In this situation, the
woman had rights of use but not of disposal and she merely became the vehicle
by which property was transferred to the next generation. In similar fashion,
women also inherited wealth on the condition that they remained widows, and
stood to lose part or all of their inheritance if they remarried. John Watkins, for
example, left his pub, the Lord Nelson Tavern, to his wife, Maria, on condition
that she remained a widow. In the case of her remarriage, it was to be sold and
two-thirds of the profits given to his niece and her husband. The remaining one-
third was to be invested in stocks and securities and the interest used for Maria’s
sole benefit. However, on her death the remaining assets were to be sold and
divided between the other named beneficiaries.34 Since, upon remarriage, the
property left to a man’s widow could potentially pass to the new husband, insert-
ing these kinds of restrictions took account of both the widow’s own security as
well as those of her former husband’s children or other relatives. Such con-
ditions, therefore, cannot merely be interpreted as the desire to impose paternal-
istic control beyond the grave but rather should also be seen as a way of protect-
ing a woman’s material well-being, as well as that of her children, once her
husband had died.
The motivations behind these different strategies of male provision are diffi-
cult to disentangle but one clear difference between those husbands that granted
absolute title to their wives and those that did not was the value of the estate. As
Table 10.3 shows, typically, absolute disposal tended to be associated with
smaller estates worth about £1,000.35 This figure corresponds to the value of
estates left by retailers and manufacturers, noted above.
By contrast, where the wife was only given rights of use for her natural life
the value of the estate tended to be larger, and where the will stipulated con-
ditions relating to the duration of her widowhood the average value of estates
was more than double. This higher-value group of estates was associated
mainly, though not exclusively, with testators described as gentlemen in their
will, together with professional men. This pattern matches closely Morris’s
finding for Leeds will makers in the same period.36 It may have been that com-
plexity of conditions was a function of the value of the estate, and that more
assets required more careful drafting of the will. Part of the answer could also
relate to the existence of real and leasehold property which tended to be associ-
ated with larger estates and which by their very nature were more difficult to
divide than other forms of personal wealth.37 In 27 out of the 47 instances
when the wife was alive and where some form of real or leasehold estate was
mentioned in a will, wives were given an interest in the property only for their
lifetime or until remarriage, after which the terms of the will often stated that it
was to be sold and the money invested or given to the remaining children or
other relatives. Clearly, different levels of wealth holding were associated with
different strategies of extending male control over their estates from beyond
the grave.
Another common way of controlling the way property was used after a
husband’s death was through the formation of trusts, and here, too, the amount
and composition of wealth appeared to have been important. The formation of a
trust was normally indicated in the will by the appointment of trustees or a
request that bequests were to be made ‘upon’ or ‘in’ trust. These arrangements
could be complex, as William Read’s instructions made clear. William was
described as a gentleman and when he died, leaving an estate worth £1,500, he
set up a trust made up of the sale of two houses and an income from the rents of
two neighbouring leasehold properties. The income from the trust was to be
used to support his wife and two daughters, but if his wife remarried the entire
trust was to pass to the daughters alone. On reaching the age of 21, each daugh-
ter was to have one of the leasehold properties. However, even then the daugh-
ters were only to have full use, not ownership – should they die during minority
or without children the will stipulated that their share should go to the surviving
daughter. In the event that both died under these circumstances, the estate was to
be divided equally between the testator’s brother and sister. In addition, money
144 D.R. Green
was set aside in the trust to buy 3 per cent bank annuities to provide an
income that the wife was to use for the education and maintenance of the
daughters up to the age of 21.38 Once these conditions were satisfied, any rest
and residue was to go to his wife so that she could ‘go into some little way of
business’.39 William’s aim, therefore, was to ensure that his wife had suffi-
cient income to educate his daughters, that his daughters would be in a posi-
tion to make a favourable match, and that after this his wife could maintain
herself independently.
Typically these kinds of trusts tended to be associated with larger estates, and
particularly those containing freehold or leasehold estate. The average probate
value of estates containing a trust was £2,205, compared to £1,249 for those
without such conditions, and many of the larger estates also contained mention
of real or leasehold property. Table 10.4 shows that of the 90 estates in which
real or leasehold estate was mentioned, trusts were established in at least 38,
comprising 41 per cent of the total. By contrast, where no real estate was men-
tioned, trusts were created in only 42 out of 187 wills, comprising nearly 23 per
cent of cases. Real estate, and particularly freehold, was not easily divided and a
trust was often a way of managing rental income for a range of beneficiaries as
well as keeping the property intact, as illustrated by the complex arrangements
made by William Read, noted above.
In part, the relationships between the ownership of real estate and the exist-
ence of a trust also help explain another paradox, namely that London men as a
whole did not set up trusts nearly as often as their counterparts elsewhere. In
Leeds, Morris estimated that 82 per cent of male wills that made provision for a
widow used the mechanism of a trust to protect her property from any future
husband.40 By contrast, in London trusts protecting widows were far less
common: 39 (25 per cent) out of 156 male wills in which provision was made
for a widow referred to a trust. Similarly, the use of trusts in general appeared to
be much lower in London than elsewhere. In Stockport for the period from
1800–1857, Owens noted the existence of trusts in 62 per cent of men’s and
women’s wills but here some 55 per cent of testators owned real estate.41 By
contrast, Table 10.4 shows that the proportion of London men with real estate
Table 10.4 Real estate and trusts in London men’s wills
Total Estates Number Estates Number Estates

number of with real with with a without without a
estates estate (%) trust trust (%) trust trust (%)
Real estate* 90 33.6 38 41.0 55 59.0

No real estate 187 66.4 42 22.8 142 77.2
Total 277 100.0 80 28.9 197 71.1
Source: See note 5

Note
* Includes any mention of freehold or leasehold.
was relatively low: only about one in three men specifically mentioned such
property in their wills. Trusts were similarly less common and only about 29 per
cent of London estates contained provisions for a trust. On this evidence, the
reluctance of London men to set up trusts can be explained with reference to two
concurrent processes: first, the frequency of small estates that was associated
with the profusion of small retailers and manufacturers in the capital, and
second, the relative infrequency of the ownership of real estate. The nature of
the local economy and the London land market were clearly important influ-
ences in the way that men arranged for the disposal of their estates, and as such
these factors also structured the economic opportunities of widows.
The relative freedom with which widows inherited from their husbands and
the comparatively low incidence of trusts raise the intriguing possibility that
metropolitan women were much freer than their provincial counterparts when
it came to controlling their own inheritance. Although in nearly half the
sample, women’s interest in their husband’s wealth only lasted for their life-
time or the duration of their widowhood, for the majority it seemed that inheri-
tance came without legal strings attached. Typically, the husbands of these
widows tended to be involved in retailing or manufacturing, and where this
was the case it may have been that women were actively involved in running
the family business already, alongside their spouses. Maintaining liquidity was
likely to have been of paramount concern and the lack of conditions in men’s
wills regarding their widow would have helped in this respect. Though men
could and did stipulate through their wills that widows only had a limited right
of use over property, in most cases the absence of conditions meant that the
death of a husband freed a widow to continue to maintain a business and to use
her new wealth as she chose.
Conclusion: duty, business and emotion

To do the right thing when it came to inheritance involved balancing the
demands of duty, the well-being of the family, the contingencies of business and
the concerns of emotion. As such, inheritance practices were deeply embedded
in social relationships of the family and local economic conditions and imbued
with concepts of equity and equality. In this context, to share and share alike
may have been superficially attractive but was not necessarily the only accept-
able route to disposing of property after death. This was particularly true when it
came to widows and here London men seemed to differ in their choices com-
pared to elsewhere. What was striking in London was the extent to which hus-
bands allowed their wives absolute freedom to use their estate as they saw fit,
though when the widow died, dutiful sons and daughters who were the main
carers in her own old age tended to have been favoured.42 Those higher up the
social scale, notably gentlemen and professional men, differed and tended to
create trusts and impose restrictive conditions in their wills. But the majority of
men, particularly those involved in trade and manufacturing, gave their heirs and
notably their widows a relatively free hand to do with their estate what they
146 D.R. Green
wished. Possessive individualism, therefore, and outright ownership appeared to
be the ultimate outcome of most men’s wills.
The importance of female executors also hints at the strong ties that bound
husbands and wives together in both an emotional as well as an economic sense.
This testamentary freedom and legal responsibility for women reflected the
nature of the family enterprise in the city. Firms tended to be relatively small,
with shops and workshops often based on the household.43 In this situation, the
relationship between husband and wife, and in some cases older children, was
often an economic partnership as well as an emotional one. Though a husband’s
death inevitably disrupted the running of the enterprise, nevertheless insofar as
the business was concerned the household could in many cases continue to
operate more or less successfully. This fact also helps to account for the lack of
trusts, which for shopkeepers and manufacturers could have hindered the
running of a business. Death of a husband, then, did not inevitably lead to death
of the firm and rather than divide up the estate at the point of death, it made
good sense to allow it to continue unhindered by strictly defined testamentary
restrictions.
These findings raise questions about the extent to which the ideology of
separate spheres continued beyond the grave. The expectations of patriarchy and
the outcomes in terms of provision for widows and children need to be set in the
context of the ways that family and household were embedded in the local
economy. Different positions in that economy tended to be associated with vari-
ations in the way that assets were distributed at death. At that point the ideo-
logical significance of separate spheres seemed to break down, or at least its
hold on gendered social relations was loosened. Understanding the ideology of
separate spheres and the ways that it operated in practice, therefore, needs to be
rooted in the relationships between wealth, gender and the economy in specific
locations and social contexts.
Notes
1 This chapter was first delivered as a paper at the XIV International Economic History
Conference, Helsinki, 21 August 2006, Session 83 ‘Women’s Financial Decisions:
Their Wealth, Their Choices, Their Activity 1700–1930’. I am grateful to participants
at the session for their comments and particularly to Alastair Owens for discussing his
ideas and to Craig Bailey and Michael Abate for their help in data gathering. The
editors have provided valuable advice on the contents of this chapter for which I am
also grateful.
2 There is an extensive literature on the concept of separate spheres. See, in particular,
A. Vickery, ‘Golden age to separate spheres? A review of the categories and chrono-
logy of English women’s history’, Historical Journal 36, 1993, pp. 383–414; M. L.
Shanley, Feminism, Marriage and the Law in Victorian England, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1989. For more recent syntheses of the literature, see K.
Gleadle, British Women in the Nineteenth Century, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001 and
R. Beachey, B. Craig and A. Owens (eds), Women, Business and Finance in
Nineteenth-Century Europe, Oxford: Berg, 2006.
3 G. Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, 1860, available online: www.gutenberg.org/dir/
etext04/mlfls10.txtl (accessed 21 June 2007).
4 The sample was drawn from the PROB 11 series of will registers in which the court
clerks copied the text of the wills. Probate values drawn from the PROB 12 index to
this series were attached to the sample. For a discussion of the data, see D. R. Green
and A. Owens, ‘Metropolitan estates of the middle class 1800–1850: probates and
death duties revisited’, Historical Research 70, 1997, pp. 294–311. Of the total
number of estates 89 per cent of male estates and 93 per cent of female estates were
valued at or below £10,000. Research has shown that these values provide a good
estimate of the net worth of estates. For a discussion of the net worth of estates, see
A. Owens, D. R. Green, C. Bailey and A. Kay, ‘A measure of worth: probate valua-
tions, personal wealth and indebtedness in England 1810–1840’, Historical Research
79, 2006, pp. 383–403.
5 R. J. Morris, Men, Women and Property in England 1780–1870, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2005. Strictly speaking, the will and testament were two dis-
tinct entities: the former disposed of real estate while the latter dealt with personal
property, including personal effects, cash, stocks and shares, together with the value
of leasehold property and annuities. The ecclesiastical courts only had jurisdiction
over personal property and it was this alone that was taken into consideration when
establishing the value of an estate. The ownership of land, therefore, was excluded
from the valuation of estates. The term ‘will’, as used here, is synonymous with the
will and testament as defined above.
6 As legal documents wills were required to conform to certain rules regarding their
construction. As long as they were legible and the sentiments clear, they could be
considered legally valid providing that they had been witnessed by at least two
people. Deathbed wills, including oral instructions, could also be accepted providing
they had been witnessed. However, wills were usually drawn up by a third party, pri-
marily a solicitor, and as such reflected a formal language employed as a matter of
legal convention. Over time religious sentiments receded and by the nineteenth
century they were primarily couched in secular language. The Wills Act (1 Vict. c.26)
formalised the rules regarding the validity of a will and required it to be in writing,
signed by the testator or their designee in the presence of two or more witnesses. See
Frederick Inderwicke, The Law of Wills as Administered in the Court of Probate in
England, London: William Maxwell, 1866. See also Morris, Men, Women and Prop-
erty, pp. 86–101.
7 Until 1833 a widow was entitled for life to a third of all her husband’s lands. The
Dower Act of 1833 removed that right and instead substituted the right to a jointure,
or annuity, for the widow. See E. Reiss, Rights and Duties of Englishwomen, Man-
chester: Sherrat and Hughes, 1934, 26–28. According to Lee Holcombe, by that time
dower right ‘was so rare as to be obsolete’. See L. Holcombe, Wives and Property,
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983, p. 22.
8 See Morris, Men, Women and Property, pp. 97–100.
9 PROB 11 vol. 1766 fol.71 Will of John Beedle, 15 February 1830.
10 PROB 11 vol. 1770 fol.273 Will of Joseph Pellet, 19 April 1830.
11 T. Falconer, On Probate Courts, London: Reynell and Weight, 1850, p. 5. Those
executors of estates which fell below the threshold could still seek probate but were
not required by law to do so. The laws of bona notabilia, however, were complex and
unclear even to contemporaries. See Parliamentary Papers (PP) 1833 XXII Law of
Real Property: Fourth Report (Wills), pp. 45–47. The best overall introduction to the
legal aspects of will making on which the following relies is A. J. Camp, Wills and
their Whereabouts, London: privately published, 1974, pp. ix–xl.
12 I have dealt with this aspect elsewhere. See D. R. Green, ‘Independent women,
wealth and wills in nineteenth-century London’, in J. Stobart and A. Owens (eds),
Urban Fortunes: Property and Inheritance in the Town, 1700–1900, Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2000, pp. 195–222.
13 In 1841 for the country as a whole, 16,701 wills and 6,297 administrations were
148 D.R. Green
submitted to the Legacy Duty Office. The total number of adult deaths (aged over 20
years) in England and Wales in 1841 was 171,234. See PP 1843 XXI Fifth Annual
Report of the Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, pp. 422–423.
14 The evidence presented here refers solely to wills and excluded administrations,
known as ‘admons’, concerning those who died intestate.
15 See Green and Owens, ‘Metropolitan estates’, p. 296.
16 According to the probate data for 1800 there were no more than 75 upper value
estates, comprising a very small proportion of the total recorded for that year. W.
Rubinstein’s research for the period from 1809 to 1839 shows that there were 427
London estates valued at above £100,000, an average of less than 14 per annum. In
terms of numbers, upper value estates comprised a very small number of the total that
passed through the remit of the courts. See W. Rubinstein, ‘The role of London in
Britain’s wealth structure, 1809–99: further evidence’, in J. Stobart and A. Owens
(eds), Urban Fortunes: Property and Inheritance in the Town, 1700–1900, Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2000, p. 137.
17 Morris, Men, Women and Property in England, p. 79.
18 L. D. Schwarz, London in the Age of Industrialisation, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
19 Schwarz, London in the Age of Industrialisation, p. 60.
20 See G. Crossick, ‘From gentleman to residuum: languages of social description in
Victorian Britain’, in P. J. Corfield (ed.), Language, History and Class, Oxford:
Blackwell, 1991, pp. 150–178; R. J. Morris, ‘Reading the will: cash economy capital-
ists and urban peasants in the 1830s’, in A. Kidd and D. Nicholls (eds), The Making
of the British Middle Class?, Stroud: Sutton, 1998, p. 119.
21 A similar situation existed in Stockport for the period. See A. Owens, ‘Property, will
making and estate disposal in an industrial town, 1800–1857’, in J. Stobart and A.
Owens (eds), Urban Fortunes: Property and Inheritance in the Town, 1700–1900,
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, pp. 86–88.
22 Schwarz, London in the Age of Industrialisation, p. 72.
23 See Owens, ‘Property, will making and estate disposal’, p. 88.
24 R. Dickson, A Practical Exposition of the Law of Wills, London: Sherwood, Gilbert
and Piper, 1830, p. 12.
25 Unfortunately, dates of death were not provided with the will. The interval between a
grant of probate and date of death could be several months, and therefore these
figures overestimate the lapse of time between writing the will and death. In Leeds
Morris suggests that half the wills between 1830 and 1834 were made within six
months of a testator’s death. See also Morris, Men, Women and Property in England,
p. 91; Owen, ‘Property, will making and estate disposal’, pp. 91–92.
26 A. Owens, ‘Property, gender and the life course: inheritance and family welfare pro-
vision in early nineteenth-century England’, Social History 26, 2001, p. 303.
27 Cited in Owens, ‘Property, gender and the life course’, p. 303.
28 Owens, ‘Property, gender and the life course’, pp. 309–310.
29 This debate is explored more fully in M. Berg, ‘Women’s property and the industrial
revolution’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24, 1993, pp. 233–250. See also
Morris, Men, Women and Property, pp. 101–109, 233–263; Owens, ‘Property, will
making and estate disposal’, pp. 98–101.
30 Paraphernalia included the wife’s personal clothing and ornaments. Although techni-
cally a husband owned his wife’s paraphernalia, when he died he could not dispose of
it. Similarly, although a husband owned his wife’s real estate he could not sell it
without her consent. See Reiss, Rights and Duties, pp. 21–26. See also B. Leigh
Smith, A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws Concerning
Women, London: John Chapman, 1854.
31 Owens, ‘Property, gender and the life course’, p. 310. Owens’ suggests that for Stockport
the most common strategy was for the sale of the family firm and the distribution of the
ensuring assets through a trust. See also A. Owens, ‘Inheritance and the life-cycle of
family firms in the early industrial revolution’, Business History 44, 2002, pp. 21–46.
33 PROB 11 vol. 1768 fol.169 Will of Thomas Gill, 24 March 1830.
34 PROB 11 vol. 1769 fol.224 Will of John Watkins, 20 March 1830.
35 Probate valuations do not take into account the value of real estate that was passed
directly to heirs. If the terms of the will directed that real estate was to be sold, the
value of that property was included in the probate valuations. See Owens et al., ‘A
measure of worth’, for further discussion of probate valuations in this period.
36 See Morris, Men, Women and Property, p. 108.
37 The average probate value of estates in which leasehold and/or freehold property was
specifically mentioned was £1,723 (N=90) compared to £1,417 (N=180) for the
remainder of estates for which a probate value could be established.
38 The significance of Bank of England annuities is dealt with in D. R. Green and A.
Owens, ‘Gentlewomanly capitalism? Spinsters, widows and wealth holding in
England and Wales, c. 1800–1860’, Economic History Review 56, 2003, pp. 510–536.
39 PROB 11 vol. 1767 fol.117 Will of William Read, 13/02/1830.
41 Owens, ‘Property, will making and estate disposal’, p. 93.
42 See Green, ‘Independent women, wealth and wills’, pp. 195–222. See also S. Goss,
‘Handing down the farm: values, strategies and outcomes in inheritance practices
among rural German Americans’, Journal of Family History 21, 1996, p. 200.
43 In 1851 nearly three-quarters of London firms employed fewer than five men. See D.
R. Green, ‘The nineteenth-century metropolitan economy: a revisionist interpreta-
tion’, London Journal 21, 1996, pp. 16–20.
Bibliography
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Berg, M., ‘Women’s property and the industrial revolution’, Journal of Interdisciplinary
History 24, 1993, pp. 233–250.
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Births, Deaths and Marriages, 1843.
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Camp, A. J., Wills and their Whereabouts, London: privately published, 1974.
Crossick, G., ‘From gentleman to residuum: languages of social description in Victorian
Britain’, in Corfield, P. J. (ed.), Language, History and Class, Oxford: Blackwell,
1991, pp. 150–178.
Dickson, R., A Practical Exposition of the Law of Wills, London: Sherwood, Gilbert and
Piper, 1830.
Eliot, G., The Mill on the Floss, 1860, available online: www.gutenberg.org/dir/etext04/
mlfls10.txtl (accessed 21 June 2007).
Falconer, T., On Probate Courts, London: Reynell and Weight, 1850.
Gleadle, K., British Women in the Nineteenth Century, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001.
Goss, S., ‘Handing down the farm: values, strategies and outcomes in inheritance prac-
tices among rural German Americans’, Journal of Family History 21, 1996, pp.
192–217.
Green D. R., ‘Independent women, wealth and wills in nineteenth-century London’, in
Stobart, J. and Owens, A. (eds), Urban Fortunes: Property and Inheritance in the
Town 1700–1900, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, pp. 195–222.
150 D.R. Green
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tion’, London Journal 21, 1996, pp. 9–26.
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510–536.
Green D. R. and Owens, A., ‘Metropolitan estates of the middle class 1800–1850: pro-
bates and death duties revisited’, Historical Research 70, 1997, pp. 294–311.
Holcombe, L., Wives and Property, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983.
Inderwicke, F., The Law of Wills as Administered in the Court of Probate in England,
London: William Maxwell, 1866.
Leigh Smith, B., A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws Con-
cerning Women, London: John Chapman, 1854.
Morris, R. J., Men, Women and Property in England 1780–1870, Cambridge: Cambridge
Morris, R. J., ‘Reading the will: cash economy capitalists and urban peasants in the
1830s’, in Kidd, A. and Nicholls, D. (eds), The Making of the British Middle Class?,
Stroud: Sutton, 1998, pp. 113–129.
Owens, A., ‘Inheritance and the life-cycle of family firms in the early industrial revolu-
tion’, Business History 44, 2002, pp. 21–46.
Owens, A., ‘Property, gender and the life course: inheritance and family welfare provi-
sion in early nineteenth-century England’, Social History 26, 2001, pp. 299–317.
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in Stobart, J. and Owens, A. (eds), Urban Fortunes: Property and Inheritance in the
Town 1700–1900, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, pp. 79–107.
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the Town, 1700–1900, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, pp. 131–148.
Schwarz, L. D., London in the Age of Industrialisation, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
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11 Women and wealth in fiction in
the long nineteenth century
1800–1914
Janette Rutterford and Josephine Maltby
The intersections and progressions of fictional lives that they portray are
couched within a larger pattern of interaction and exchange of which capital is
the protagonist.1
Introduction
A recurring feature of writing about the nineteenth-century novel has been the
belief that the Victorian woman was ‘the angel of the house . . . the still point in
an age of capital whose perpetual crises show no sign of waning’,2 who was
morally as well as socially detached from capitalism – in accordance with the
‘separate spheres’ model of men’s and women’s roles. This is typified by Nancy
Armstrong’s account of the novel from the eighteenth century onwards as delin-
eating a ‘specifically female curriculum’3 concerned with ‘the household, leisure
time, courtship procedures and kinship relations’.4 She sets this in opposition to
a male ‘political’ sphere whose concerns include class, status and money. Thus
female characters who engage with money, such as the Bingley sisters in Jane
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with their ‘mercenary lust’ or Blanche Ingram in
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, who is drawn to Rochester by an ‘acquisitive
urge’,5 are condemned as failing to meet a norm of femininity.
There is a growing counter-argument that finds in the nineteenth-century
novel an acute awareness of women’s economic as well as their domestic posi-
tion, and identifies women as economic actors, with all the contradictions and
anxieties that this raises. It has long been recognised that Victorian novels were
preoccupied with money – for instance, Reed’s description of speculation as a
‘familiar theme’ in early-nineteenth-century fiction6 or Poovey’s conclusion that
financial plots were thematically central to the Victorian novel.7 Henry argues
that this awareness has, however, been overshadowed by hostility to capitalism,
so that writers have been ‘blinded . . . to some important dimensions of the Vic-
torians’ interactions in the financial world’, one of which was the investment
activity of women.8
The nineteenth century was, in Britain as elsewhere, a period of major change
in financial behaviour, as new kinds of financial asset became available for
investors. It was also a period in which women’s social and economic position
152 J. Rutterford and J. Maltby
altered, at first slowly then with gathering speed. Their economic position
changed more rapidly than did their political rights, with the Married Women’s
Property Acts (MWPAs) later in the century giving all women the potential, if
not the means, to own and trade in financial assets. (These changes are outlined
elsewhere in this volume, see Chapters 1 and 7).
The pace of economic change, for men as well as for women, created ten-
sions and anxieties, about the speed with which money could be made and lost,
the arrival of a new class of business magnates and the displacement of the tradi-
tional gentry, the loss of the countryside and the growth of the new industrial
cities, as well as the destabilisation of traditional male and female roles. Searle
quotes the MP Beresford Hope warning that the MWPA would turn marriage
into a limited-liability company with two partners – one comment that can stand
for many as an example of the anxiety that change was destabilising and sub-
verting settled society.9 Nunokawa reads Victorian novels as a repudiation of
change: ‘nothing gold can stay’, with the good women of Charles Dickens’s
Little Dorrit or Dombey and Son representing a safe form of property that could
not be alienated by the market.10 But there is a growing recognition among
critics that nineteenth-century novels do not necessarily treat women as
excluded from the economic world. This chapter looks at some of the ways in
which the novels of the long nineteenth century addressed these issues, by
looking at their treatment of a number of themes: the ‘competence’ and the
threats it encountered; women as managers of money in the family and as specu-
lators; and the extent to which the notion of the ‘New Woman’ can be linked
with a different attitude to women’s finances.
The ‘competence’ and the dangers of poverty

Copeland’s 1995 study11 identifies the importance of money for women in
numerous novels by Austen’s contemporaries in the period 1790 to 1820. The
ideal is a ‘competence’, at least sufficient to ‘set the bottom line of gentility’ of
running one’s own household with a servant:
In contemporary women’s fiction, the competence ledgers are kept meticu-

lously neat, clean and balanced. No matter what the scenery or the philo-
sophy, the main plot or the subplots, the sound of adding or subtraction
makes its way to the surface, the clinking and clanking of arithmetic as each
sum finds its way into the projected competence that fate bears in its womb
for the deserving heroine.12
The calculation of the competence is directly linked to the 5 per cent return on
government stock: the only exception he identifies is in Pride and Prejudice,
where both Mr Collins and Mrs Bingley are unsure whether to apply 4 or 5
per cent.13
The competence is not always attainable. The themes of financial narratives
are altered by the impact of what Copeland calls ‘Gothic economics’ triggered
Women and wealth in fiction, 1800–1914 153
by the Napoleonic war: tax and price rises and periodic depressions that in the
novels of the period are shown as resulting in bankruptcy for men and poverty or
destitution for their dependent women. Women’s attempts to support themselves
by work – as teacher, seamstress, companion, and so on – are normally shown as
hopeless and degrading.14
Copeland suggests that themes change in response to improvements in the
economic climate: from the beginning of the nineteenth century, more of the
plots he discusses deal with the woman as manager of the household budget,
responsible for family welfare – but as a prudent consumer, not an investor, and
drawing on money provided for her, not her own funds.15 The novels of the early
century that he discusses do not include the possibility of women earning and
managing their own money.
Some of the themes identified by Copeland appear later: the precise identi-
fication of the costs of running a household, the looming threat of bankruptcy
and the role of the woman as a domestic manager. But the nineteenth century
also saw the introduction of new themes, to do with women’s economic
agency. One example of this development, we argue, is provided by Trollope,
whose industrious career as a novelist began in 1847 and continued unbroken
until his death in 1882.
The family and wealth

Michie emphasises the importance for Trollope of the Victorians’ response to
‘dramatic changes in economic practice and theory’.16 She argues that he repre-
sents ‘the economic drives and desires their culture sought to sublimate’.17 Trol-
lope’s The Way We Live Now, which appeared in 1873 towards the end of his
career, is plainly and famously a novel about the drastic impact of a new finan-
cial order on a settled society; but attention should also be given to Trollope’s
treatment of financial practice as it affects every aspect of family life in general,
and marriage in particular. The discussion that follows deals also with the novels
from the two series: the Barchester Chronicles about gentry and clerical life in
the shires, and the political Palliser novels, for which finance is also a pervasive
theme.
Inheritance, and the crucial role of primogeniture, form a key element in
many of these novels.18 Primogeniture, the favouring of the elder son over the
other sons and all daughters, was a peculiarly English fascination since it ‘was
applied more harshly in England than elsewhere in Europe’.19 A survey of
estates carried out in 1875 revealed that one-quarter of all land in England was
held by only 710 individuals.20 This was a result of two complementary forces –
primogeniture and the entail of estates. Together, their effect was not only that
the eldest son inherited, but that the father was unable to sell entailed land: it had
to be handed down intact to the heir unless he agreed to break the entail. This
might produce conflicts of interest between father and eldest son, with the
former unable to sell assets or disinherit, and the latter able to build up debts,
secured on expectations. The result might be various kinds of conflict within the
family. The father’s position is weakened – like that of Adolphus Longestaffe in
The Way We Live Now, vainly asking his son to break the entail so that he can
raise some money. Primogeniture also led to younger sons being forced to marry
money or remain single,21 as discussed below, and a large number of upper-class
daughters being made ‘redundant’ by the lack of a large enough marriage
portion. There are numerous examples of redundant upper-class women in Trol-
lope novels, for example, Lord George Germain’s four unmarried sisters in Is
He Popenjoy? and Sir Marmaduke Rowley’s eight unmarried daughters in He
Knew He Was Right.
Marriage was often the means – in real life and in novels – for rectifying
family finances. Although Trollope’s novels depict penniless women seeking
riches through marriage (for example, Arabella Trefoil in The American
Senator), it is striking that a plot often turns on a man seeking to marry money.
As the narrator in The Way We Live Now admits: ‘it is generally understood that
matters will be put right by an heiress.’ Marriage with a wealthy woman is the
strategy for maintaining ‘the proper order of things’.22 Marriage ‘often features
in fiction – as indeed it functioned in aristocratic marriage – as a means of
paying men’s debts with women’s money’.23 The clever and homely Miss Dun-
stable, whose family fortune was made from patent medicine, appears in Doctor
Thorne, Framley Parsonage and The Last Chronicle of Barsetshire. She is
bleakly aware that she is courted for money, not for breeding or looks: she com-
ments that her frizzy curls ‘always pass muster . . . when they are done up with
bank-notes’.24 Later, reflecting on her career, she talks to a friend: ‘I am a sheep
with two heads.’ Money has turned her into ‘an abortion’.25
One of the pervasive elements in the transfer of wealth within families was
the marriage settlement, used as a means of agreeing amounts brought into a
marriage by both parties and effecting or preventing redistribution of wealth.
The terms of the settlement determined such issues as provision for the wife in
the event of her husband’s death – the widow’s jointure – and for the husband
if the wife died childless. The settlement also served to protect the wife’s assets
from the husband before the MWPAs of 1870 and 1882. There were innumer-
able variations that authors assumed would be understood by their readers.
Collins, in his 1860 novel, The Woman in White, makes the heroine Laura’s
marriage settlement, arranged by the family solicitor, Mr Gilmore, central to
the plot.
I explained to her the object of a marriage-settlement, and then told her

exactly what her prospects were – marking the distinction between the prop-
erty in which she had a life-interest only, and the property which was left at
her own control.26
The settlement also pervades Trollope’s novels, almost as the consecration of

marriage. Arabella, flirting warily with Lord Rufford, tells him that his sister
would be more reserved than she has been: ‘Her cautious nature would have
trusted no man as I trusted you. Her lips, doubtless, were never unfrozen till the
settlements had been signed.’27 At the end of Doctor Thorne, the marriage is
delayed by a complicated settlement ‘and Frank himself began to make accusa-
tions that he was to be done out of his wife altogether’.28 But matters are
resolved, and Frank, who has been the penniless son of an insolvent father
‘married money and became a great man’.29
Some of Trollope’s contemporaries were critical of the importance of the role
played by the marriage settlement in his novels. A recurring theme among his
critics was that he took an unreasonably idealistic view of marriage: he was
attacked for his ‘favourite hobby of the advisableness of young people marrying
without being too careful as to their future income’.30 As a result of this, they
thought, he treated ‘wealth and station in themselves [as] somewhat con-
temptible’31 and made the families who negotiated a settlement look like money-
grubbers. This was unfair, they argued: ‘[T]he fact is that in his heart every man
knows and feels that society has real claims which no man has a right to deny.’32
The alternative reading of Trollope’s plots was that he was not a disappointed
idealist, but rather that he was prepared to admit the crucial importance of
money to the Victorian family. Mrs Oliphant, writing in Blackwood’s in 1867
took the latter view. Trollope for her was ‘the only writer we know who realizes
the position of a sensible and right-minded woman among the ordinary affairs of
the world’.33 But what Mrs Oliphant does not acknowledge, and what perhaps
shocked the critics quoted above, is the darkness of Trollope’s view – his heiress
who sees herself as ‘an abortion’, or Lizzie Eustace and Lord Fawn coldly
checking each other’s wealth before marriage. Lizzie tells her companion she
will have to ‘look very close after the settlement’, not trusting ‘any lawyer to
give away my property’. She announces proudly that ‘He’ll find out that I know
how to keep what I’ve got in my own hands’.34 The settlement implies a total
absence of trust between husband and wife.
Women are presented by Trollope as managers of family money, but in a dif-
ferent way from the theme of the woman as manager of the household budget –
the task at which, for instance, Agnes succeeds and Dora fails so miserably in
Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield. Where Copeland and his Victorian suc-
cessors showed women as domestic managers, Trollope shows them making
plans that will have enduring importance. A recurring theme for Trollope is the
organisation of financially suitable marriages, as distinct from matchmaking on
emotional grounds. Markwick and Koets both identify the role played by
mothers in Trollope’s novels in organising their sons’ weddings.35 Sisters try to
make similar plans for their insolvent brothers. Charlotte Stanhope in Barchester
Towers ‘alone prevented the family from falling into utter disrepute and
beggary’ and explains to Bertie how he is to propose to a wealthy widow.36 One
of Miss Dunstable’s female friends proposes (unsuccessfully) to her on her
brother’s behalf as he is inadequate to the task.37
Trollope does not invariably show this money management in a sinister light.
For instance, Aunt Jemima in He Knew He Was Right relents and agrees to leave
her large estate to her young nephew and niece. Miss Dunstable, once happily
married, is a helpful friend. But his treatment of women and money is more
ambiguous and ambivalent than is suggested by, for instance, Armstrong’s claim
of a ‘norm of femininity’38 that detaches women from money, or Dolin’s that the
woman in Victorian fiction was ‘held up as a powerful icon of stable property’.39
Trollope recognises that Victorian women, despite legal constraints, have access
both to money and to decision-making about it in ways that can affect them-
selves and their families for good and ill. The family is not necessarily a refuge
from economic pressures: Trollope’s novels also depict it as a potential focus
for them.
Speculation and investment

There is a growing interest in the relationship between nineteenth-century liter-
ature and the financial markets, the behaviour of investors and speculators,40 and
the extent to which, as Jonathan Rose has put it, capitalism was ‘good for Victo-
rian literature’.41 Russell has explored the relationship between fictional charac-
ters operating in the financial world and the real-world speculations, bubbles and
crashes, such as occurred in 1825, 1832, 1835, 1847, and which formed ideal lit-
erary scenarios.42 A number of popular women authors included ‘high finance’
and financial crises in their novels – for instance Mrs Catherine Gore, who wrote
The Banker’s Wife in 1843 and Dinah Mary Mulock (Mrs Craik) whose John
Halifax, Gentleman (1856) is set during the crash year of 1825.43
Speculation, ‘a game played by all classes’,44 became linked to stock markets
even before the South Sea Bubble of 1720. It was blamed on stockjobbers whose
bad reputation lasted for centuries thereafter. Shadwell’s satire The Stock
Jobbers was written in 1692; Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755 defined a stockjob-
ber as ‘a low wretch who gets money by buying and selling in the funds’; and
Thomas Mortimer published his The Nefarious Practice of Stockjobbing
Unveiled in 1810.45 This gave a poor reputation to the stock market as a whole
that lasted until well into the nineteenth century.
Women were implicated in stock-market speculative activity from the seven-
teenth century. Early female investors in companies such as the East India
Company and the Bank of England were often relatively wealthy, used to gam-
bling with their ‘pin money’ on games of chance. (See Carlos et al. and Laurence
in the present volume, Chapters 3 and 4.) By the railway mania of the 1830s the
growth in the number of companies in which shares could be bought was such as
to bring in more women risking a much greater proportion of their wealth. What
surprised contemporary observers was that the stock market did not exclude
women, who could be found in the male environment of the City at the Bank of
England regularly collecting their dividends or in company offices subscribing for
shares.46 What also shocked them was that the gentler sex could suffer as well as
men in market downturns. There was continuing moral disapproval attached to the
association of women with speculation. Unlike budgetary management, or even
marriage-making, this was financial activity outside the safe confines of the
family. It involved entry into a masculine world. A member of the Select Commit-
tee on the Married Women’s Property Bill in 1868 questioned:
whether you think it would be conducive to the happiness of married life if
a woman . . . possessed of personal attractions, was to go out into the world
and be negotiating in shares or other affairs of life with agents and people of
various classes, who might not be notorious of their high notions of what is
right.47
Stock-market activity involved an entry into a world that could not readily be
dissociated from gambling. O’Connor stresses the Victorian anxiety about the
close links between gambling and speculative investment.48 In 1876, Black-
wood’s described stock-market activity as ‘peeresses playing on their pin
money’ (emphasis added) and, as late as 1910, the Financial Review of Reviews
blamed speculation on ‘special social sets’, with the implication that these sets
were of dubious morals.49 Women were believed to be morally vulnerable
because they were ‘suited to a life of speculation . . . Speculation derives its food
from excitement and women often feed on excitement’.50
Henry argues that the distinction between speculation and investment was not
significant, ascribing it to ‘a questionable moral logic that insists on distinctions
about the amount of time we choose to leave the money in the market’.51 This
seems to be ignoring the other differences (apart from timing) that the Victorians
saw between investment (for annual income or as a repository for excess
savings) and speculation (for capital gain or the joy of gaming). In The Way We
Live Now, speculative finance is exemplified by the fraudulent Melmotte: the
women who are impressed by him are both, in different ways, presented as
morally dubious. The louche American Mrs Hurtle has a long eulogy of him as
‘a man whose hand I would kiss’, and likens him to Napoleon and Washington.52
She praises his shady railway project in similar vein: ‘I wish I was a man that I
might be concerned with a really great thing like that.’53 Lady Carbury, desper-
ate for money to support her rakish son, also hero-worships Melmotte: ‘In her
heart of hearts she worshipped wealth.’54 She excuses his sharp practice as
‘beneficent audacity’: ‘One cannot measure such men by the ordinary rule.’55
There is an interesting contrast between Trollope’s novel and Zola’s
L’Argent, a novel whose women characters of all ages and classes cover a spec-
trum of views of investment. The baronne Sandorff is a passionate speculator
who gambles ‘like a lost soul’56 while she conducts an affair with the promoter
Saccard. The Princesse d’Orviedo is a millionairess who gives away her fortune
in the course of the novel and enters a convent as a pauper – the antithesis of an
investor. There is the nightmarish Mme Mechain, ‘one of those wild and
wretched woman gamblers whose podgy hands dabble in all sorts of squalid
tasks’, who prowls the Bourse with a bag full of the shares of failed com-
panies.57 There is a cast of women, from aristocrats to servants, who lose money
on Saccard’s shares. But there is also Caroline Hamelin. She too is Saccard’s
lover, although she recognises his moral failings. For her, ‘money is the dung
heap in which tomorrow’s human race grew’.58 The book ends with her expres-
sion of confidence in the potential of money, despite the range of disasters
caused by the company failure: ‘Why should money suffer the penalty for the
dirty deeds and the crimes that it causes? Love, the creator of life, is no less
soiled’.59 As well as criticising speculation, L’Argent raises the possibility that
women can participate fully in the market and that investment is a motor for
economic growth: the English novel of the same period is far more uneasy about
women’s involvement in speculative investment.
Money and ‘new women’

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are seen as the era of the New
Woman, who began to claim independence and autonomy in every aspect of her
life – personally, politically and economically. Women’s property rights had
been enlarged by the MWPAs, and women had more freedom to earn and to go
into the market to make investments. Howard’s End shows the Schlegel sisters
as confident, affluent women from the middle class. One of the tokens of their
confidence is the assurance with which they buy shares in overseas companies,
to the horror of their elderly Aunt:
She learned, to her horror, that Margaret, now of age, was taking her money
out of the old safe investments and putting it into Foreign Things, which
always smash. Silence would have been criminal. Her own fortune was
invested in Home Rails, and most ardently did she beg her niece to imitate
her. ‘Then we should be together, dear’.
Margaret, out of politeness, invested a few hundreds in the Nottingham
and Derby Railway, and, though the Foreign Things did admirably and the
Nottingham and Derby declined with the steady dignity of which only
Home Rails are capable, Mrs Munt never ceased to rejoice, and to say: ‘I
did manage that, at all events. When the smash comes poor Margaret will
have a nest-egg to fall back upon’.60
But there is still anxiety both about the market and about women’s place in it.
Bennett’s Anna of the Five Towns finds herself the recipient of a small fortune
from her father when she reaches 21 – a portfolio made up of ‘all sorts of shares,
English and American [and] sundry properties in the Five Towns’.61 She is
clever and serious and determined to do well, yet she finds herself the cause of a
disaster when one of her tenants hangs himself because he cannot pay the rent.
Bennett does not discuss the reasons for her failure – whether they lie with her
femininity or with the intractable nature of the economic system – but they cast
a shadow over the prospects for women’s autonomy.
Sloan comments on Gissing’s ‘continued moral protest against the universal-
izing hold of money and commodity relations’ in the late nineteenth century.62
Part of the protest takes the form of a pessimistic view of women’s ability to
operate in a world in which, in Ingham’s words, ‘Everything . . . has to be paid
for and comes with a price tag’.63 The sisters of The Odd Women all struggle to
get by on low-paid jobs: their father had foolishly believed that his £1,000 insur-
ance policy would provide for all six of them.64
When one loses her job through illness, they have a crisis discussion and
decide they can live another six months on ‘seven and twopence a week for
everything’. Alice concludes:
with all the impressiveness of tone she could command. ‘We must never
intrench upon our capital – never – never! . . . If we haven’t a friend to look
to . . . then indeed we shall be glad that nothing tempted us to intrench on
our capital’.65
And they are trapped in poverty by their inability to act independently. A prac-
tical woman friend, running her own school, suggests to one of them that they
consider investing the inheritance in ‘some practical enterprise’. She ‘trembled
deliciously’ but dared not pursue the idea.66
In various forms, this pattern recurs in Gissing’s novels – the women of the
Leach family who ‘had never dreamt of undertaking household management’
so ‘all such matters were left to a cook-housekeeper’ (The Whirlpool), and
Nancy, who has to hide her secret marriage or lose her inheritance. The treat-
ment of the theme of women and money in the novels of the long nineteenth
century is not a narrative of progress, from the heroine as helpless victim to
the manager and the confident investor. Instead, the themes recur over time.
Gissing’s treatment of women’s financial status in his 1894 In the Year of
Jubilee is in some ways reminiscent of that outlined by Copeland at the begin-
ning of the chapter – they are acutely aware of what is needed for financial
survival, but they do not necessarily have the means to ensure it. They, too, are
at the mercy of ‘Gothic economics’ in the form of bereavement or financial
collapse.
Conclusion
The use of literature as a means of understanding history raises the question of
the relationship between the two – whether a novel can be treated as a reliable
transcription of what is happening, or as a text to be set among other texts (such
as statistics, Parliamentary papers, newspaper reports) and given as much or as
little credence as any other.67 Another possibility again is that the novel can be
added to a repertoire of other kinds of evidence, but with the proviso that, in
Newton’s words, it is ‘always apprehended within representation’ – to be set
against other sources, sometimes echoing them, sometimes contradicting them.68
Literature, it is suggested, offers another means of understanding women’s eco-
nomic agency, to be compared and contrasted with other kinds of evidence,
sometimes endorsing and sometimes challenging them.
The discussion offered in this chapter identifies a number of themes that have
also been recognised in historical writing about women and investment in the
nineteenth century. Women are acknowledged to be capable of managing their
own and their families’ finances, and marriage is understood as an economic as
well as an emotional transaction. This is consonant with, for instance, Walker’s
evidence of Octavia Hill and her volunteers as competent financial managers,69
or Swan’s of women as operating as independent investors.70
But there is also a current of anxiety and discomfort with women’s financial
activity, from the disasters suffered by the heroines of the early nineteenth
century to the failures that ‘New Women’ still experience when required to deal
independently with finance. What a reading of contemporary literature can add
to our historical understanding is an insight into the contradiction and unease
that ran alongside women’s financial independence in the nineteenth century.
Notes
1 F.J. Jeffrey, ‘Anthony Trollope meets Pierre Bourdieu: the conversion of capital as
plot in the mid-Victorian British novel’, Victorian Literature and Culture 31 (2),
2003, pp. 501–21.
2 J. Nunokawa, The Afterlife of Property: Domestic Security and the Victorian Novel,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 124.
3 N. Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 17.
4 Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction, p. 3.
6 J.R. Reed, ‘A friend to Mammon: speculation in Victorian literature’, Victorian
Studies 27 (7), 1984, p. 184.
7 M. Poovey, ‘Writing about finance in Victorian England: disclosure and secrecy in
the culture of investment’, Victorian Studies 45 (1), 2002, pp. 17–41.
8 N. Henry, ‘ “Ladies do it?”: Victorian women investors in fact and fiction’, in F.
O’Gorman (ed.), Victorian Literature and Finance, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007, pp. 114–15.
9 G.R. Searle, Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1998, p. 151.
10 Nunokawa, The Afterlife of Property, p. 122.
11 Edward Copeland, Women Writing about Money: Women’s Fiction in England,
12 Copeland, Women Writing about Money, p. 23.
13 Ibid.
14 Copeland, Women Writing about Money, pp. 159–212.
15 Copeland, Women Writing about Money, p. 61, p. 87.
16 E.B. Michie, ‘Buying brains: Trollope, Oliphant, and vulgar Victorian commerce’,
Victorian Studies 44 (1), 2001, pp. 77–97, 98.
17 Michie, ‘Buying brains’, p. 94.
18 For a more detailed discussion of this topic, see J. Rutterford and J. Maltby, ‘ “Frank
must marry money”: men, women and property in Trollope’s novels’, Accounting
Historians Journal 33 (2), 2006, pp. 201–31.
19 A.L. Erickson, ‘Coverture and capitalism’, History Workshop Journal 59 (1), 2005,
p. 71.
20 P.M. Laurence, Law and Custom of Primogeniture, Cambridge: J. Hall and Son,
1878.
21 For example, of the male aristocrats born between 1840 and 1859, only 68 per cent of
younger sons eventually married, compared to 86 per cent of the heirs. D. Thomas,
‘Social origins of marriage partners in the British peerage in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries’, Population Studies 26 (1), 1972, p. 101.
22 A. Trollope, The Way We Live Now, first published 1875, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1982, p. 59.
23 M. Finn, The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740–1813,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 49.
24 A. Trollope, Doctor Thorne, first published 1858, London: Penguin Books, 1991.
25 A. Trollope, Framley Parsonage, first published 1859–60, London: Penguin Books,
2004, p. 447.
26 W. Collins, The Woman in White, first published 1859, London: Collector’s Library,
2006, pp. 144–5.
27 A. Trollope, The American Senator, first published 1876–7, Oxford: The World’s
Classics, 1986, p. 465.
28 Trollope, Doctor Thorne, p. 551.
29 Trollope, Doctor Thorne, p. 556.
30 D. Smalley (ed.), Trollope: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1969, p. 209, quoting review of The Small House at Allington in Saturday Review,
May 1864.
31 Review of Dr Thorne in Saturday Review, 12 June 1858, quoted by Smalley,
Trollope, p. 77.
32 Review of Dr Thorne in Saturday Review, 12 June 1858, quoted by Smalley,
Trollope, p. 78.
33 Mrs Oliphant, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, September 1867, pp. 257–80, cited
in E.B. Michie, ‘Buying brains’, p. 82.
34 A. Trollope, The Eustace Diamonds, first published 1873, London: Penguin Books,
2004, pp. 124–5.
35 M. Markwick, Trollope and Women, London: The Hambledon Press, 1997; C.C.
Koets, Female Characters in the Works of Anthony Trollope, Gouda: T. van Tilburg,
1932.
36 A. Trollope, Barchester Towers, first published 1857, London: Penguin Books, 1994,
p. 64.
37 Trollope, Framley Parsonage, p. 297.
39 T. Dolin, Mistress of the House: Women of Property in the Victorian Novel, Alder-
shot: Ashgate, 1997, p. 7.
40 Special issues of Victorian Studies 45 (1), 2002, co-edited by C. Schmitt, N. Henry
and A. Arondekar on ‘Victorian Investment’, and a special issue of Victorian Review
31 (2), 2005, on ‘Literature and Money’ are evidence of this recent trend.
41 Cited in O’Gorman (ed.), Victorian Literature and Finance, p. 9.
42 N. Russell, The Novelist and Mammon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
43 See also P. Delany, Literature, Money and the Market: From Trollope to Amis, Bas-
ingstoke: Palgrave, 2002; Henry, ‘ “Ladies do it?” ’, in O’Gorman (ed.), Victorian
Literature and Finance, pp. 111–32; N. Henry, George Eliot and the British Empire,
44 N. Russell, The Novelist and Mammon, p. 19.
45 T. Shadwell, Epsom Wells and the Volunteers: or the Stock Jobbers, first published
posthumously 1693, Boston: D.C. Heath & Co, 1930; Johnson, Dictionary, first pub-
lished 1755, London: Penguin Classics, 2005; T. Mortimer, The Nefarious Practice of
Stockjobbing Unveiled, London: J.M. Richardson, 1810.
46 M. Freeman, R. Pearson and J. Taylor, ‘“A doe in the city”: women shareholders in eight-
eenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain’, Accounting, Business and Financial History
16 (2), 2006, pp. 265–92; ‘Dividend day’, All the Year Round, 1893, pp. 462–5.
47 Quoted by R.J. Morris, Men, Women and Property in England and Wales,
1780–1870, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 403.
48 M. O’Connor, ‘Imagining risk, sensationalizing speculation: a cultural history of the
London Stock Exchange and financial speculation’, paper presented at the Nicholson
Center for British Studies Conference: ‘Modernizing Politics?’, University of
Chicago, 21–22 May 2005.
49 Cited in J. Rutterford and J. Maltby, ‘ “The widow, the clergyman and the reckless”:
women investors in England, 1830–1914’, Feminist Economics 121 (1–2), 2006, pp.
126–7.
50 W.W. Fowler, Twenty Years of Inside Life in Wall Street, New York: Orange Judd
Company, 1880, p. 448, cited in G. Robb, ‘Women and white-collar crime: debates
on gender, fraud and the corporate economy in England and America, 1850–1930’,
British Journal of Criminology 46, 2006, pp. 1058–72.
51 Henry, ‘ “Ladies Do It?” ’, in O’Gorman, Literature and Finance, p. 120.
52 Trollope, The Way We Live Now, pp. 244–6.
53 Trollope, The Way We Live Now, p. 391.
56 E. Zola, L’Argent, first published 1891, Paris: Folio Classique, 1999, p. 63 (all trans-
lations authors’ own).
57 Zola, L’Argent, p. 57.
60 E.M. Forster, Howard’s End, first published 1910, London: Edward Arnold, 1973, pp.
11–12.
61 A. Bennett, Anna of the Five Towns, first published in 1902, London: Methuen, 1951,
p. 41. Her mother’s unadventurous portion of ‘Government stock’ is mockingly con-
trasted with her father’s choice of the ‘aristocracy of investments’, a local colliery,
railway, waterworks and brewery.
62 J. Sloan, review of Simon J. James, Unsettled Accounts, in Nineteenth Century Liter-
ature March 2005, pp. 547–50.
63 G. Gissing, The Odd Women, first published 1892, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000, p. ix.
64 Gissing, The Odd Women, p. 5.
65 Gissing, The Odd Women, pp. 19–22.
66 Gissing, The Odd Women, p. 29.
67 J. Brannigan, New Historicism and Cultural Materialism, London: St Martin’s Press,
1998, p. 84.
68 J.L. Newton, ‘ “History as Usual”? Feminism and the “New Historicism” ’, in H.A.
Veeser (ed.), The New Historicism, New York: Routledge, 1989, pp. 165–6.
69 See Chapter 12.
70 See Chapter 13.
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Trollope, A., The American Senator, first published 1876–7, Oxford: The World’s Clas-
sics, 1986.
Trollope, A., The Way We Live Now, first published 1875, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1982.
Trollope, A., The Eustace Diamonds, first published 1873, London: Penguin Books,
2004.
Trollope, A., Framley Parsonage, first published 1859–60, London: Penguin Books,
2004.
Trollope, A., Doctor Thorne, first published 1858, London: Penguin Books, 1991.
Trollope, A., Barchester Towers, first published 1857, London: Penguin Books, 1994.
Zola, E., L’Argent, first published 1891, Paris: Folio Classique, 1999.
12 Octavia Hill
Property manager and accountant1
Stephen P. Walker
Introduction
Octavia Hill (1838–1912) has been described as one the ‘great social reformers’
of the nineteenth century and ‘a name of immense prestige in the world of phil-
anthropy’.2 Hill’s innovative methods in housing management resulted in her
being identified in 1887 as one of three women who had significantly influenced
Victorian Britain.3 She was ‘the first housing reformer to reach the unskilled
working classes’,4 a leading member of the open spaces movement and a co-
founder of the National Trust.5 Octavia Hill has been lauded as a heroine of the
Victorian age who, released from the chains of domesticity, devoted herself to
improving the lives of the poor and professionalized housing management.
Not all consider Hill’s legacy in such glowing terms. Critics see her as ‘a
prime agent for the cultural imposition of bourgeois personal morality and
middle-class family lifestyles upon the hapless London poor’,6 an autocrat who
offered a localised and diversionary solution to mass overcrowding. Criticisms
of Hill the disciplinarian also point to an attribute that is the focus here – she
was reputedly ‘one of the great organizing women of the nineteenth century’.7
Hill’s reference point for proper ‘organisation’ was the world of business. She
held business in high esteem, adhered to commercial principles and considered
that its practices were character building. Among the business skills Octavia Hill
prized most was accounting. For Hill, accounting was not only a tool of financial
management, it also facilitated control of her volunteer workers, and contributed
to the governance and sympathetic understanding of her tenants. It is this aspect
of her work that features in this chapter.
Octavia Hill’s story points to the involvement of large numbers of philan-
thropic middle-class women in the performance of accounting and finance func-
tions during the nineteenth century. Her case offers insights to the perceived
limits of women’s involvement in these activities as it took them into the public
realm. Before exploring these issues and the ideals that underpinned Hill’s cal-
culative practices, it is important to establish why this eminent housing reformer
came to place so much emphasis on accounting and business methods.
166 S.P. Walker
‘Apprenticeship’ in business and accounting
Octavia Hill was born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire into a family with a strong
social conscience. She was the eighth daughter and tenth child of James Hill
(c.1800–71), merchant and banker, Owenite and campaigner for municipal
reform. Her mother, Caroline Southwood Hill (1809–1902), was an educational-
ist.8 Following James Hill’s bankruptcy and subsequent nervous breakdown the
family fractured. Caroline Hill and five of her daughters removed to Finchley.
Here they were supported by friends and Dr Thomas Southwood Smith
(1788–1861),9 Caroline Hill’s father. Southwood Smith was involved in social
reform and his revelations on sanitary and housing conditions contributed to his
grandchildren’s awareness of the plight of the poor.
Financial difficulties required that the Hill girls seek employment. Octavia,
aged 14, developed business and accounting skills as storekeeper and later as a
manager for the ‘Ladies Guild’, a craft workshop where poor women were
employed to make decorative glass and toy furniture.10 In 1856 she also become
part-time secretary to the women’s classes at the Working Men’s College,
London, assuming responsibility for bookkeeping and teaching some classes in
arithmetic.11 Octavia also assumed responsibility for the domestic finances, being
‘more and more regarded as the business man’ of the family.12 Prudent financial
management ensured that she paid off her parent’s creditors by 1861. In 1859 Hill
referred to her ‘life of calculation and routine and steadiness’.13 This involved
writing up the accounts on Saturdays and preparing balance sheets. She also
tutored in bookkeeping and when, in 1862, the Hill sisters established a small
school in Nottingham Street, London, she instilled the practice in pupils.14
Housing management
In the absence of state provision, the supply of housing for the Victorian
working classes depended on speculative building, private investment and vol-
untary initiatives. These proved inadequate given rapid population growth and
urbanisation. The problem of housing the poor was particularly acute in
London.15 Her grandfather’s interest in accommodation schemes for the working
classes together with her own observations of the living conditions of the poor
directed Octavia Hill’s philanthropic work towards housing.
Until their relationship fractured in 1877, Hill was deeply influenced by the
author, art and social critic, John Ruskin. From 1855 she was employed by him
as a copyist for his major work Modern Painters. In 1864 Ruskin inherited funds
and a year later acquired the leases of three cottages in Paradise Place, Maryle-
bone. Ruskin placed these houses, which were ‘in a dreadful state of dirt and
neglect’, under Octavia Hill’s management.16 He advised that investors might be
attracted to such schemes if a 5 per cent annual return could be secured.17 In 1866
Ruskin acquired the freehold of five other houses for Hill to manage in Freshwa-
ter Place, Marylebone and in 1870 she also assumed the management of proper-
ties in Walmer Street which housed 200 poor families. Here she inaugurated an
Octavia Hill 167
‘industrial experiment’ by establishing a workroom for women and providing
jobbing work for unemployed men.18 When properties at Barrett’s Court were
entrusted to Hill in the early 1870s she also established a savings scheme and a
working-men’s club.19 These projects reflected her strong preference for encour-
aging habits of industry, thrift and self-dependence among the poor.20
During the early 1870s Octavia Hill’s work also extended to Lambeth and
Whitechapel. At this time she managed 15 blocks, housing 2,000–3,000 tenants.
By 1877 she boasted ‘I have 3,500 tenants and £30,000 or £40,000 worth of
money under my continuous charge’.21 Two years later, she managed 20 groups
of houses or ‘courts’, and in 1882 revealed that the value of the property under
her charge had increased to £60,000.22 From 1884 the scale of her operations
was significantly increased when the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (who were
responsible for the estates of the Church of England) entrusted her with the man-
agement of properties in London.
Octavia Hill’s approach to accounting

On assuming the management of a ‘court’, Hill evicted defaulting and immoral
tenants and made the property habitable. She insisted on ‘extreme punctuality
and diligence’ in the payment of rent. Rental income was applied to the payment
of rates and insurances and generating the required 5 per cent return to property
owners. Any surplus was utilised for repairs and improvements to enhance the
living environment of tenants.23 Hill often suggested that, while there was never
a shortage of capital to invest in properties under her management, expansion
was constrained by a shortage of trained volunteer workers.24 To alleviate this
she also appropriated 5 per cent of the value of rents collected for the training of
volunteer workers. One such volunteer, Augusta Maclagan, provided the follow-
ing insight to the working of Hill’s collection system:
My work was to go out every Monday, directly after breakfast, armed with
a bag, a book and an ink bottle slung round my neck and call on every
tenant for the week’s rent . . . I had to go round again on Thursdays to look
up any tenants who were out on Monday and pay my collection each week
to the treasurer.25
As an increasing number of properties fell under her management, the

scrutiny of books and preparation of accounts occupied more of Hill’s time. In
addition to the accounting involved in managing ‘courts’, she was also treasurer
of organisations such as the Kyrle Society and the Southwark Cadet Corps. She
later extended her accounting practices to the National Trust.26
Her correspondence reveals Hill’s attention to accounting and treasuryship.
In addition to frequent meetings to review accounts, she maintained constant
communication with those at various sites on account-keeping and transactions
processing. She was anxious that accounts be punctually and accurately written
up in ink and was vigilant about periodic closing of the accounts and reconciling
168 S.P. Walker
the books of local managers to her own central records. She was keen to ensure
that cash flow was managed, transactions were properly authorised and vouched,
regular audits performed, expenses incurred for legitimate purposes and appro-
priately allocated to operations. She was conscious that the timing of year-end
transactions had an impact on the presentation of the annual accounts and that
balances of unspent funds might affect future donations. She recognised the dis-
tinction between capital and revenue items but required assistance with some of
the bookkeeping involved. On occasion she considered herself more prudent
than the auditors.27
Octavia Hill’s accounting practices had a number of ideological foundations.
First, in accord with contemporary prescriptions,28 she perceived regular
accounting as pivotal to the achievement of order and method. The management
of her properties was highly organised and the tasks performed by her volunteers
were strictly defined. Procedures for the collection and accounting for rent were
carefully codified. By 1879 she had arranged the printing of a supply of ‘the
various collecting books, rent books, order books and forms’. Attention to order-
liness was also revealed by Hill’s determination that the accounting system
would not be disrupted by her absence through ill health, and ultimately her
death.29 Continuity in record-keeping was also to be applied by Hill’s volunteers.
One of them, Augusta Maclagan, recalled that ‘Every worker, amateur or paid,
was bound to leave her work and books in such a state that a stranger could pick
up their threads with ease.’30
The second feature of Hill’s accounting regimen was its foundation on hierar-
chical accountability and control. It has been observed that ‘With neither “fellow
workers” nor tenants could there be any doubt about who was in charge’.31 Hill
perceived that she was accountable to property owners and volunteer workers
were strictly accountable to her. Given that properties were ultimately entrusted
to her, Hill was adamant that ‘the supervision of all and the passing of accounts
rests with me’.32 In the absence of a wage relation between Hill and most of her
housing workers, the periodic presentation and scrutiny of accounts became an
important instrument for reinforcing control. This was particularly the case as
her capacity to maintain a personal, day-to-day involvement diminished with the
expansion and spatial dispersal of housing work. Consequently the rent and
tenants books of the various properties were periodically ‘presented and care-
fully examined’ at Hill’s house in Marylebone Road.33 During later years the
periodic scrutiny of accounts became ‘a formidable affair’ for less competent
volunteers.34
There was a decidedly militaristic tone to the manner in which Hill com-
manded her regiment of volunteers and held them accountable. They referred to
her as ‘General’ and she referred to them as lieutenants or ‘seconds in
command’.35 The General, of course, was in turn accountable to ‘the great Com-
mander of all things’.36 Effective hierarchical control through accounting
depended on competent bookkeeping by volunteers in the field. Hill provided
formal training in the subject and expressed such disdain at deficient accounting
that some volunteers withdrew their labour. Lewis relates:
Octavia Hill 169
In 1892, a Miss Pawl apparently broke down when put in charge of the
accounts in Deptford and left suddenly . . . She [Hill] checked through all
her workers’ books with them, offering a running commentary which some,
like Mary Clover, who became secretary of Girton College in 1903, found
useful. Others must have found it devastating.37
Third, Octavia Hill’s approach to accounting was conditioned by an aversion

to indebtedness. The Victorians prescribed accounting as a preventative to insol-
vency, the consequences of which had been singularly illustrated to Hill by her
father’s bankruptcy. Caroline Hill noted that as household manager her daughter
‘never incurred a debt, she never in her whole life borrowed a penny’.38 Octavia
her daughter associated the ill-management of money with ‘a rottenness at the
heart’.39 These values were extended to her philanthropic work. Hill assured one
of her donors that ‘We never authorize expenditure till we have funds, I don’t
believe in the advisability of incurring debts’.40 Neither did she favour the exten-
sion of credit to tenants.
Fourth, Octavia Hill was the embodiment of the notion, propagated in
didactic literature, that women were uniquely suited to perform accounting func-
tions involving the accurate processing, inscription and monitoring of myriad
small transactions. Contemporaries observed her ‘extraordinary mastery of
detail’ to the extent that she could lose sight of the bigger picture.41 Hill assumed
that if the detail was attended to, the wider success of her schemes was
assured.42 Meticulousness in accounting provided ‘a power of perfection’.43
Relatedly, Octavia Hill pursued a vigorous assault on insufficiency of data,
inaccuracy and error. In 1876 she wrote ‘I . . . abhor and detest unbalanced
uncompared books, and I feel wretched till these are absolutely proved to agree .
. . or the mistakes hunted down’.44 Conversely, she was thrilled when presented
with accounts that were expertly kept.45 Hill was censorious when volunteers
failed to achieve the perfection in accounting she expected. She was most morti-
fied on the rare occasions where she failed to live up to her own standards. In
June 1888 she lost a cheque. She wrote:
I am dreadfully ashamed of myself. I thought I had given the 5£ cheque to

Miss Ironside ages ago. She says I did not, and she is most exact. That
being so it must have got in with some papers some how with which it has
no connection . . . I have not a notion where to look even . . . I never lost any-
thing of the kind in my life and expect it to turn up some day in an appar-
ently carefully sorted packet! I am so sorry to give both you and Mr Praed
this trouble. (Emphasis in original.)46
A fifth dimension of Octavia Hill’s approach to accounting was its foundation

on notions of stewardship and trust. Contemporary accounting prescriptions
emphasised that the presentation of accounts by an agent to a (male) principal
was necessary to reveal the competent management of assets and nurture trust.47
Hill actualised this notion through regular accounting to the proprietors of
170 S.P. Walker
houses she managed and by external reporting to those who assigned charitable
donations to her. She perceived accounting as a duty of ‘faithful stewardship’.48
Her comprehension of agency and stewardship was informed by Christian think-
ing. With her volunteers she assumed responsibility for the ‘bits of God’s earth,
which He has entrusted to them’.49 In relation to property owners she perceived
herself as having a charge to keep.50 From a more earthly perspective she also
recognised that accounts were a useful vehicle for disclosing the progress of her
work – how property was improved under her care.
Trust also defined her relation to the owners of the property she managed. It
is worth noting that it was Hill who suggested the name National Trust.51 She
nurtured the trust of property owners and fulfilled her responsibilities as their
steward by the quarterly or biannual submission of financial accounts and
vouchers.52 The obligation to account was emphasised by the undertaking to
secure a 4–5 per cent return on investment and was essential in the many cases
where the proprietor was a stranger to her.53
The most visible demonstration of Octavia Hill’s determination to give
accounts of her stewardship and reveal how she had ‘fulfilled the trust’ of those
who committed funds to her management was the (almost) annual production of
Letters to My Fellow-Workers. These narrative reports on progress in housing
management and other aspects of Hill’s work were printed and distributed pri-
vately from 1872 to 1911. While property owners received regular financial
accounts, the increasing numbers who donated funds for Hill’s personal disposal
among the poor could scrutinise the ‘balance sheets’ contained in the Letters.
She likened her increasingly dispersed supporters to ‘a large company united in
a common work’.54 As the head of this ‘company’ Hill distributed an annual
report (her Letters) to those who provided the resources to conduct her philan-
thropic activity.
A sixth characteristic of Hill’s accounting was an emphasis on knowledge
gathering and discipline. In accordance with her individualised approach, Hill
assumed that betterment could only be achieved by focused, small-scale
housing schemes where the predicaments of each family were understood and
addressed. Tenants were to be ‘governed’ and ‘ruled’ in order to lift them out
of poverty and pauperism.55 To achieve this, one had to know the character and
habits of each of them. She therefore amassed comprehensive knowledge of
the ‘whole circumstances’ of each case.56 It was through ‘accurate and abun-
dant knowledge’ and ‘continuous watchfulness’ that discoveries were made as
to how to assist the poor.57 This surveillant approach was actualised through
the weekly collection and recording of rent and the compilation of folio
volumes in which detailed information about tenants was recorded – their
number, occupation, income and a monthly history.58 Observations and
inscriptions were the basis for deciding whether the appropriate response in
each case was assertive discipline or sympathetic assistance. Moreover, Hill
perceived the process of monitoring rentals and information gathering as
enabling because it encouraged tenants to adopt habits of regularity, economy
and independence.59
Octavia Hill 171
Accounting and gendered spheres
The activities of women such as Octavia Hill in voluntary work and social reform
seemingly contradicted the notion of separate spheres. Hill’s performance of
accounting functions and attitudes towards finance help chart the limits of her
apparent departure from the private domain. Although housing management pro-
jected Hill into the public arena, her practices represent an extension of domestic-
ity and were constrained by recognition of the limits of female influence.60
Hill was influenced by the concept of gendered spheres as articulated by her
mentor, Ruskin. She was one of the few women who appear to have ‘actually
lived up’ to his ‘chivalric fantasies’.61 Ruskin accepted that while women’s
attributes of order and caring were most obviously applicable in the home, they
should also be utilised beyond it to benefit the wider community and enhance
national virtue. In this way women could be elevated from mere housewives to
‘queens’.62 Indeed, Hill referred to her volunteers as ‘queens as well as
friends’,63 and perceived that ‘national life is but an extension of family life’.64
As her foray beyond the domestic illustrated, gendered spheres were informed,
but not exclusively defined, by the public and private worlds. Hill considered
that there were boundaries within the public sphere beyond which women
should not venture. For example, she objected to female suffrage on the grounds
that men and women have ‘different gifts and different spheres’ and engagement
in politics would divert women from the public ‘out-of-sight, silent work’ of
caring that emanated from the performance of homely functions.65
Likewise, Octavia Hill accepted a gendered division of labour in the perform-
ance of accounting functions. She considered that the veiled routine of detailed
bookkeeping and accounting, particularly as it related to the home and housing,
was suited to women. Finance and the performance of higher accounting func-
tions involving deliberation and judgement, such as audit, she perceived as
men’s work. When she required advice on accounting, as opposed to assistance
in account-keeping, Hill turned to a man.66 One such advisor was Sydney
Cockerell, a friend who worked in the City. Cockerell reviewed her accounts,
and advised on accounting issues and the preparation of financial statements.67
Together with William Shaen, her solicitor, Cockerell also advised Hill on per-
sonal investments. In May 1876 she sought their opinion on whether to sell or
retain £700 of Russian Bonds. She confessed her uninformed approach to such
matters, anxiety about speculation and disdain for ‘meddling with things of
which I know nothing’. She referred to her preference:
to have money in things (like this house) which I control, know about, and
can calculate about myself, or in other good things managed by capable
people I know: or else to take the best advice I can get, obey it literally, and
with a quiet mind let things take their course.68
Although she lauded the merits of bookkeeping to her female volunteers, Hill
perceived limits to their capacity as accountants. When overwork and mental
172 S.P. Walker
strain prompted a withdrawal from housing management in 1878, Hill arranged
the audit and supervision of accounts by ‘several gentlemen’ who reported
directly to the owners of property. She explained: ‘The auditors are gentlemen
accustomed to business, and the management of money. They do easily accounts
which many ladies find difficult, they see clearly the safe and wise thing to do
about money.’69 Thenceforth the accounts of donations entrusted to her personal
care were audited by Hill’s male rather than female associates.
Thus Octavia Hill’s work was essentially rooted in the ‘familial and
domestic’.70 In her Letter to My Fellow-Workers of 1881 she stated that housing
management was women’s work: ‘Ladies must do it, for it is detailed work;
ladies must do it, for it is household work; it needs moreover, persistent
patience, gentleness, hope.’71 Hill’s assumption about the gendered nature of
work was illustrated in her correspondence and speeches. In October 1896 she
specifically sought a ‘gentleman’ for the position of part-time Secretary to the
National Trust. Among the traits displayed by the ideal applicant were ‘accurate
habits of business’.72 In response to a suggestion that the position might be filled
by a woman, Hill retorted that she had never considered that prospect. She
added: ‘Personally I should not be in favour of the appointment of a lady . . .
there is a good deal of the work which would be far better done by a man.’73 In
1907 she advised that a ‘nice motherly woman of the right character, encouraged
by the owner, and backed up by a husband in good work’ was a better caretaker
of houses than a man because ‘She deals much best with the cleaning of stairs,
shewing rooms, and all the numerous household matters on which good manage-
ment depends’.74
Conclusions
A number of studies have begun to render visible the existence of large numbers
of women in nineteenth-century Britain who performed a variety of accounting
functions. While women were excluded from the new profession of accountant,
they were engaged in accounting as clerks, household managers, managers of
businesses and as bookkeepers, especially in retailing and distribution.75 The
case of Octavia Hill indicates another hitherto-shrouded field of accounting
activity performed by women – philanthropy. One authority in 1893 estimated
that half a million women were substantially engaged in voluntary endeavour.76
While men dominated the governance of most charitable organisations in Victo-
rian Britain, women made a considerable behind-the-scenes contribution,
particularly in the detailed work of day-to-day visiting, money raising and col-
lecting. Women were also involved in financial management and accounting as
treasurers or secretaries of charities and their committees.77
Women’s engagement in accounting-related voluntary work benefited the
poor through direct involvement and the impact of individuals such as Sarah
Martin and Beatrice Webb (née Potter) on social policy.78 It also contributed to
the advancement of women themselves. Although rooted in contemporary
domesticity, visiting the poor ‘gave women a taste of power outside their own
Octavia Hill 173
homes’.79 For Prochaska, philanthropy was ‘the leisured woman’s most obvious
outlet for self-expression’.80 Women’s demonstration of competence in philan-
thropic work was also important to their later entry to paid work in the caring
professions,81 particularly housing management where accounting featured as a
significant skill.82
Experience in accounting gained through philanthropic work also appears to
have been valuable to the women’s movement. Margaret W. Nevinson
(1858–1932), a leading member of the Women’s Freedom League and Treasurer
of the Women Writers’ Suffrage League (1908), had been a volunteer rent col-
lector in Whitechapel. Unfamiliar with accounting, she struggled to reconcile
physical cash with the rent books. However, she recalled that:
in a few months I became an expert, and learnt to count money and add up
columns with the rapidity of a bank clerk. This accomplishment has been of
the greatest use to me since, especially when the Suffrage movement made
great demands upon women to act as treasurers used to handling large sums
of money and keeping accounts.83
Notes
1 An extended version of this chapter can be found in S.P. Walker, ‘Philanthropic
women and accounting. Octavia Hill and the exercise of “quiet power and
sympathy” ’, Accounting, Business and Financial History 16 (2), 2006, pp. 163–94.
2 J. Perkin, Victorian Women, London: John Murray, 1993, p. 216; D. Owen, English
Philanthropy 1660–1960, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 387.
3 G. Darley, Octavia Hill, London: Constable, 1990, p. 256; N. Boyd, Three Victorian
Women who Changed their World. Josephine Butler, Octavia Hill, Florence Nightin-
gale, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
4 A.S. Wohl, ‘Octavia Hill and the homes of the London poor’, The Journal of British
Studies 10 (2), 1971, 105–31.
5 E. Moberly Bell, Octavia Hill. A Biography, London: Constable & Co. Ltd, 1942, pp.
220–39.
6 J. Harris, ‘Victorian values and the founders of the welfare state’, Proceedings of the
British Academy 78, 1992, pp. 165–82; P. Malpass, ‘Octavia Hill, 1838–1912’, in P.
Barker (ed.), Founders of the Welfare State, London: Heinemann, 1984, pp. 31–6.
7 G.F.A. Best, Temporal Pillars, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964, p. 288.
8 K. Gleadle, ‘Hill, Caroline Southwood (1809–1902)’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford University Press, available online: www.oxforddnb.com/view/
article/60328 (accessed 23 November 2004).
9 R.K. Webb, ‘Smith, (Thomas) Southwood (1788–1861)’, Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, Oxford University Press, available online: www.oxforddnb.
com/view/article/25917 (accessed 23 November 2004).
10 Moberly Bell, Octavia Hill, p. 25.
11 Darley, Octavia Hill, pp. 54–7.
13 C.E. Maurice (ed.), Life of Octavia Hill as Told in her Letters, London: Macmillan
and Co, 1913, p. 131.
15 J. Burnett, A Social History of Housing, London: Routledge, 1986, pp. 54–96,
140–87.
174 S.P. Walker
16 O. Hill, Homes of the London Poor, London: Macmillan and Co, 1883, p. 18.
17 Moberly Bell, Octavia Hill, pp. 72–7; J.N. Tarn, Five Per Cent Philanthropy: An
Account of Housing in Urban Areas Between 1840 and 1914, Cambridge: Cambridge
18 O. Hill, ‘Miss Hills report of the Walmer Street District’, in Rev. W.H. Fremantle,
Pastoral Address and Report of the Charities for the Year 1870, London: privately
printed, 1870, pp. 29–38; O. Hill, Further Account of the Walmer Street Industrial
Experiment, London: George Pulman, 1872.
19 Moberly Bell, Octavia Hill, pp. 132–40.
20 Hill, ‘Miss Hills report’, pp. 29–38; O. Hill, ‘A few words to fresh workers’, Nine-
teenth Century 26 (CLI), 1889, pp. 452–61.
21 Maurice, Life of Octavia Hill . . . in her Letters, p. 348.
22 Report from the Select Committee on Artizans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings, British
Parliamentary Papers, VII, 1882, 235, p. 171.
24 O. Hill, Letter to My Fellow-Workers, to which is Added Account of Donations
Received for Work amongst the Poor, London: privately printed, 1897, p. 5.
25 Memorials of Augusta Maclagan, 1836–1915, Vol. II. Unpublished manuscript in the
care of Ianthe Maclagan ([email protected]), pp. 340–2.
26 Darley, Octavia Hill, p. 304.
27 DMisc 84/1 Letters from Octavia Hill to Miss Schuster, City of Westminster
Archives Centre, 10 St Ann’s Street, London; DMisc 84/2 Letters from Octavia Hill
to Sir Sydney C. Cockerell, 1887–1912, City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10
St Ann’s Street, London; DMisc 84/3 Letters from Octavia Hill to Sydney J.
Cockerell, 1871–1912, City of Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St Ann’s Street,
London.
28 S.P. Walker, ‘How to secure your husband’s esteem. Accounting and private patri-
archy in the British middle class household during the nineteenth century’, Account-
ing, Organisations and Society 23 (5–6), 1998, pp. 485–514.
30 Memorials of Augusta Maclagan, 1836–1915, Vol. II, p. 342.
31 D. Owen, English Philanthropy 1660–1960, p. 389.
32 O. Hill, Letter Accompanying the Account of Donations Received for Work Amongst
the Poor, London: privately printed, 1874, p. 4.
35 Hill, Letter Accompanying the Account of Donations, 1874, p. 12; E. Southwood
Ouvry, Extracts From Octavia Hill’s ‘Letters to Fellow-Workers’ 1864–1911,
London: Adelphi Book Shop, 1933, p. 47.
36 Hill, Letter Accompanying the Account of Donations, 1877, p. 10.
37 J. Lewis, Women and Social Action in Victorian and Edwardian England, London:
Edward Elgar, 1991, p. 65.
39 DMisc 84/2, item 94.
40 DMisc 84/1, item 2.
42 R.H. Bremner, ‘ “An iron scepter twined with roses”: the Octavia Hill system of
housing management’, Social Service Review 39 (2), 1965, pp. 222–31.
43 Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, Vol. II, Minutes of Evid-
ence, British Parliamentary Papers, XXX, 1884–5, 4402, p. 297.
44 DMisc 84/3, items 27, 28.
45 Maurice, Life of Octavia Hill . . . in her Letters, pp. 233, 240.
46 DMisc 84/2, items 52, 55, 159.
47 Walker, ‘How to secure your husband’s esteem’, pp. 485–514.
Octavia Hill 175
48 O. Hill, Letter to My Fellow-Workers, to which is added Account of Donations
Received for Work Amongst the Poor, London: privately printed, 1893, p. 3.
50 O. Hill, Letter to My Fellow-Workers, to which is added Account of Donations
Received for Work amongst the Poor, London: privately printed, 1878, p. 5.
51 J. Jenkins, ‘The roots of the National Trust’, History Today 45 (1), 1995, pp. 3–9.
52 O. Hill, Letter Accompanying the Account of Donations, 1872, p. 1.
53 Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, Vol. II, Minutes of Evid-
ence, p. 307.
54 O. Hill, Letter Accompanying the Account of Donations, 1873, p. 9.
55 Hill, ‘Miss Hills report’, pp. 29–38.
56 O. Hill, Letter Accompanying the Account of Donations, 1876, p. 4; A.S. Wohl,
‘Octavia Hill and the homes of the London poor’, pp. 105–31.
58 Memorials of Augusta Maclagan, 1836–1915, Vol. II, p. 342.
59 O. Hill, Homes of the London Poor, London: Macmillan and Co, 1883, p. 16.
60 J. Lewis, Women and Social Action, pp. 31–3, 70; A. Summers, ‘A home from home
– women’s philanthropic work in the nineteenth century’, in S. Burman (ed.), Fit
Work for Women, London: Croom Helm, 1979, pp. 33–63.
61 A. Vickery, ‘Golden age to separate spheres? A review of the categories and chrono-
logy of English women’s history’, Historical Journal 36 (2), 1993, pp. 383–414.
62 J. Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, first published 1865, London: Dent, 1970, pp. 71–3.
63 O. Hill, Letter Accompanying the Account of Donations, 1874, p. 10, emphasis in ori-
ginal.
64 E.S. Maurice (ed.), Octavia Hill. Early Ideals, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd,
1928, pp. 225–6.
65 Times, 15 July 1910, p. 9.
68 DMisc 84/3, items 24, 32.
69 Hill, Letter to My Fellow-Workers, 1878, pp. 4–5.
70 Lewis, Women and Social Action, p. 25.
71 Ouvry, Extracts From Octavia Hill’s ‘Letters to Fellow-Workers’, p. 23.
72 DMisc 84/2, item 208.
73 DMisc 84/2, items 209, 250, 253.
74 DMisc 84/1, item 11.
75 L. Davidoff and C. Hall, ‘The hidden investment: women and enterprise’, in P.
Sharpe (ed.), Women’s Work. The English Experience 1650–1914, London: Arnold,
1998, pp. 239–93; L.M. Kirkham and A. Loft, ‘Gender and the construction of the
professional accountant’, Accounting, Organisations and Society 18 (6), 1993, pp.
507–58; Walker, ‘How to secure your husband’s esteem’, pp. 485–514; S.P. Walker,
‘Identifying the woman behind the “railed-in desk”. The proto-feminisation of book-
keeping in Britain’, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 16 (4), 2003,
pp. 606–39.
76 F.K. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1980, p. 224.
77 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, pp. 30–2, 44–72, 105–6.
78 G. Mogridge, Sarah Martin, The Prison Visitor of Great Yarmouth, London: Reli-
gious Tract Society, 1872, pp. 140–1; B. Webb, My Apprenticeship, London: Long-
mans Green and Co, 1926, pp. 230–1.
79 A. Summers, ‘A home from home’, pp. 33–63.
80 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, p. 5.
81 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, p. 222.
82 O. Hill, Management of Homes for the London Poor, London: Charity Organisation
176 S.P. Walker
Society, 1899, pp. 4–5; M. Brion, Women in the Housing Service, London: Rout-
ledge, 1995, pp. 23–42, 69–71; J.M. Upcott, Women House Property Managers,
London: Association of Women House Property Managers, 1925, p. 36.
83 M.W. Nevinson, Life’s Fitful Fever. A Volume of Memories, London: A. & C. Black,
1926, pp. 87–90.
Bibliography
Bell, E. Moberly, Octavia Hill: A Biography, London: Constable & Co. Ltd, 1942.
Best, G.F.A., Temporal Pillars, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964.
Boyd, N., Three Victorian Women who Changed their World: Josephine Butler, Octavia
Hill, Florence Nightingale, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Bremner, R.H., ‘ “An iron scepter twined with roses”: the Octavia Hill system of housing
management’, Social Service Review 39 (2), 1965, pp. 222–31.
Brion, M., Women in the Housing Service, London: Routledge, 1995.
Burnett, J., A Social History of Housing, London: Routledge, 1986.
Darley, G., Octavia Hill, London: Constable, 1990.
Davidoff, L. and Hall, C., ‘The hidden investment: women and enterprise’, in Sharpe, P.
(ed.), Women’s Work. The English Experience 1650–1914, London: Arnold, 1998, pp.
239–93.
DMisc 84/1 Letters from Octavia Hill to Miss Schuster, City of Westminster Archives
Centre, 10 St Ann’s Street, London.
DMisc 84/2 Letters from Octavia Hill to Sir Sydney C. Cockerell, 1887–1912, City of
Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St Ann’s Street, London.
DMisc 84/3 Letters from Octavia Hill to Sydney J. Cockerell, 1871–1912, City of West-
minster Archives Centre, 10 St Ann’s Street, London.
Gleadle, K., ‘Hill, Caroline Southwood (1809–1902)’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Harris, J., ‘Victorian values and the founders of the welfare state’, Proceedings of the
British Academy 78, 1992, pp. 165–82.
Hill, O., ‘A few words to fresh workers’, Nineteenth Century 26 (CLI), 1889, pp. 452–61.
Hill, O., ‘Miss Hills report of the Walmer Street District’, in Fremantle, Rev. W.H., Pas-
toral Address and Report of the Charities for the Year 1870, London: privately printed,
1870, pp. 29–38.
Hill, O., Further Account of the Walmer Street Industrial Experiment, London: George
Pulman, 1872.
Hill, O., Homes of the London Poor, London: Macmillan and Co, 1883.
Hill, O., Letter Accompanying the Account of Donations Received for Work amongst the
Poor, London: privately printed, 1872–7.
Hill, O., Letter to My Fellow-Workers, to which is Added Account of Donations Received
for Work amongst the Poor, London: privately printed, 1878–1910.
Hill, O., Management of Homes for the London Poor, London: Charity Organisation
Society, 1899.
Jenkins, J., ‘The roots of the National Trust’, History Today 45 (1), 1995, pp. 3–9.
Kirkham, L.M. and Loft, A., ‘Gender and the construction of the professional accoun-
tant’, Accounting, Organisations and Society 18 (6), 1993, pp. 507–58.
Lewis, J., Women and Social Action in Victorian and Edwardian England, London:
Edward Elgar, 1991.
Octavia Hill 177
Malpass, P., ‘Octavia Hill, 1838–1912’, in Barker, P. (ed.), Founders of the Welfare
State, London: Heinemann, 1984, pp. 31–6.
Maurice, C.E. (ed.), Life of Octavia Hill as Told in her Letters, London: Macmillan and
Co, 1913.
Maurice, E.S. (ed.), Octavia Hill. Early Ideals, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd,
1928.
Memorials of Augusta Maclagan, 1836–1915, Vol. II. Unpublished manuscript in the
care of Ianthe Maclagan ([email protected]).
Mogridge, G., Sarah Martin, The Prison Visitor of Great Yarmouth, London: Religious
Tract Society, 1872.
Nevinson, M.W., Life’s Fitful Fever. A Volume of Memories, London: A. & C. Black,
1926.
Ouvry, E. Southwood, Extracts From Octavia Hill’s ‘Letters to Fellow-Workers’
1864–1911, London: Adelphi Book Shop, 1933.
Owen, D., English Philanthropy 1660–1960, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1964.
Perkin, J., Victorian Women, London: John Murray, 1993.
Prochaska, F.K., Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1980.
Report from the Select Committee on Artizans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings, British
Parliamentary Papers, VII, 1882, 235.
Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, Vol. II, Minutes of Evidence,
British Parliamentary Papers, XXX, 1884–5, 4402.
Ruskin, J., Sesame and Lilies, first published 1865, London: Dent, 1970.
Summers, A., ‘A home from home – women’s philanthropic work in the nineteenth
century’, in Burman, S. (ed.), Fit Work for Women, London: Croom Helm, 1979, pp.
33–63.
Tarn, J.N., Five Per Cent Philanthropy: An Account of Housing in Urban Areas Between
1840 and 1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Upcott, J.M., Women House Property Managers, London: Association of Women House
Property Managers, 1925.
Vickery, A., ‘Golden age to separate spheres? A review of the categories and chronology
of English women’s history’, Historical Journal 36 (2), 1993, pp. 383–414.
Walker, S.P., ‘How to secure your husband’s esteem. Accounting and private patriarchy
in the British middle class household during the nineteenth century’, Accounting,
Organisations and Society 23 (5–6), 1998, pp. 485–514.
Walker, S.P., ‘Identifying the woman behind the “railed-in desk”: the proto-feminisation
of bookkeeping in Britain’, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 16 (4),
2003, pp. 606–39.
Walker, S.P., ‘Philanthropic women and accounting. Octavia Hill and the exercise of
2006, pp. 163–94.
Webb, B., My Apprenticeship, London: Longmans Green and Co, 1926.
Webb, R.K. ‘Smith, (Thomas) Southwood (1788–1861)’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Wohl, A.S., ‘Octavia Hill and the homes of the London poor’, Journal of British Studies
10 (2), 1971, pp. 105–31.
13 Female investors within the
Scottish investment trust
movement in the 1870s1
Claire Swan
Introduction
Recent research into the financial position of women in England points to the
lack of research into the economic position of women in Scotland in the late
nineteenth century.2 Richard Rodger acknowledges the presence of women as
mortgage lenders in Edinburgh and Claire Swan notes the appearance of female
investors in Dundee, yet both fail to develop the importance of Scottish women
as financiers.3 However, Eleanor Gordon and Gwyneth Nair have recently
attempted to analyse one section of Scottish finance in which women have
played a significant role. They have discovered that some females in Glasgow
held a significant degree of wealth and power. Their study demonstrates how
these women infiltrated the typical male ‘sphere’ and were significant property
owners, householders, businesswomen and, latterly, investors.4 Their study is a
pioneering investigation into the economic lives of Scottish females and calls for
further studies into this area of British social and economic history.
This chapter outlines the preliminary results of a wider, but as yet incom-
plete, study of female investors in Scotland.5 It considers female investment in
three Dundee investment trust companies at their reconstruction in 1879 as
examples of the overall trend of female participation in the Scottish investment
trust movement. Using the sample of three investment trusts, I examine the
numbers of female investors, the size of their investments in relation to men, and
their marital status. I conclude that by 1880 there were some independent female
investors, but that these were not necessarily single women. The property laws
in Scotland allowed wives and widows to invest in their own names and I find
that they played a significant role as investors in investment trusts. This chal-
lenges previous publications that suggest that wives had a more passive role
when it came to finance.6 This chapter also draws upon recent academic work to
determine if Scottish practices were different from those in England and Wales.
Scottish investment trusts

By the 1870s, Dundee was known as the centre for handling Scottish investment.7
At the time, Dundee was an industrial town and flourishing international port. It also
The Scottish investment trust movement 179
had a developing financial sector, but the contribution of this activity to Dundee’s
economy was subtle and is a little-discussed aspect of the town’s history. The First
Scottish American Investment Trust (FSAIT) was created by Robert Fleming in
Dundee in 1873 and was ‘the first Association in Scotland for investment in Amer-
ican railroad bonds, carefully selected and widely distributed and where the invest-
ments would not exceed one tenth of the capital in any one security.’8 John Guild,
one of the four chairmen, reported ‘while in this country you could not lend money
on first-class railway debentures at over four or four and a half per cent, in America
you could get seven per cent with the best security of this description.’9 This addi-
tional yield made the United States an attractive destination for Scottish funds.
Robert Fleming, the founder of one of the most influential London banks,
was known as the ‘father of Scottish investment trusts’.10 He was born in
Dundee in 1845 and trained as a clerk during the period of the town’s booming
jute and linen industry. He was introduced to overseas investment, and in
particular the American stock market, by his influential merchant employers and
before long was directing their finances to return lucrative profits. His particular
expertise lay in American railroad and mortgage finance which he used to create
the FSAIT.11 Following the success of this Trust, Fleming went on to establish
the Second Scottish American Investment Trust (SSAIT) in 1874 and the Third
Scottish American Investment Trust (TSAIT) in 1875. It is these three Trusts
that make up the base of this sample.
The FSAIT issued 3,000 certificates, of which 2,960 were promptly and fully
subscribed in 1873 by 494 investors. This gave the four Trustees £296,000 to
invest. Similarly, the SSAIT and the TSAIT each acquired a full capital sub-
scription of £400,000, each made up of 4,000 certificates of £100. These funds
were principally invested in railroads across the Northern and Western states of
America, but also in canal and coal and iron companies, and State and city
bonds. The investments were carefully chosen to take advantage of favourable
yields on mortgages and rate of exchange.12
The primary advantage of an investment trust is that it is an attractive method
of diversification of funds, minimising risk by spreading investments across dif-
ferent types of security. For instance, a shareholder in the FSAIT with a single
£100 certificate had an interest in 30 different carefully selected bonds. Not
more than £7 of this capital was placed in one security, and on average not more
than £3 per £100 certificate was placed in any one investment.13 Each £100 cer-
tificate holder was entitled to one vote at business meetings or by proxy.
However, although votes were extended to female investors, the votes of chil-
dren and married women had to be conducted by their representatives, in other
words, their guardian or husband.14
A second advantage of investing in an investment trust was that it provided a
professionally managed financial service accessible to investors with varied
financial experience and amount of funds.15 In addition, the expertise of fund
managers could be drawn upon to buy and sell securities at appropriate times for
maximum financial profit.16 Certificate holders were promised a fixed interest
rate. For example, the holders of Certificates in the FSAIT were promised at least 6
180 C. Swan
per cent per annum, paid half-yearly on 1 May and 1 November each year.17 The
first Coupon of £3 per FSAIT Certificate was to be paid on 1 November 1873.18
Once this had been paid, and all expenses cleared, the surplus profits were to be
placed into a reserve fund. The reserve fund was to be used to guarantee the rate of
interest, particularly in years of low, or no profit.19 The original Trusts were only to
last ten years, after which investors were to expect a full repayment of capital with
the profits divided pro rata among existing Certificate holders.20
The FSAIT was modelled on the London-based Foreign and Colonial Invest-
ment Trust, established in 1868; however, the FSAIT and subsequent Scottish
investment trusts differed from the English investment trusts in several ways.
First, Scottish investment trusts did not publish lists of their investments since
directors believed that they were too complex, both geographically and finan-
cially, as well as frequently changing. In fact, the directors of Scottish trusts
were against publishing their investments in case they were accused of political
or geographical bias and also so as not to dissuade private investors from sepa-
rately buying or selling securities that were held by the trusts.21
A second difference was that, unlike the English trusts, Scottish trust
accounts disclosed the reserve figures. Finally, and most significantly, the Scot-
tish trusts differed from English trusts by issuing short-term (terminable) deben-
tures, and they accepted temporary loans or deposits. For instance, they could
offer terminable debentures for periods of four to 16 years.22 Short-term deben-
tures appealed particularly to those investors in charge of trust funds; common
for women and children. They were popular for several reasons: first, they were
low risk and the reserve fund guaranteed a fixed rate of interest every year.
Second, the rate of interest paid was consistently higher than bank deposit rates,
although below the average debenture stock rate.23 Third, the Scottish trusts
were attractive to people with limited funds available for a short period of time;
say, for a child whose funds could be invested then released when they turned
21 years of age, or for a woman to be invested by her guardian until the time that
she was expected to marry. Lastly, Scottish trusts did not have an administration
charge, applicable under English law, for purchasing or realising the stock.24
Under the Joint Stock Company Act of 1879, any association operating with
more than 20 members for the purpose of financial gain was made illegal.25 This
meant that the three Dundee investment trusts were required to become joint-stock
companies where the shareholders had limited liability for the debts of the business.
The directors strived for minimum inconvenience during reconstruction and, to this
effect, each trust certificate was directly converted into one ordinary share. Every
certificate-holder was thus allocated an equivalent number of shares.26 Each Trust
was reincorporated as a limited company, retained a full capital subscription and
kept detailed share registers for each subsequent year thereafter. Each company had
a par value of £100 per share. In 2006, using the retail price index, this was equival-
ent to nearly £7,000.27 The share price and dividends of the three companies at the
end of the first year after reconstruction in April 1880 are detailed in Table 13.1.
The Trustees used the reconstruction as a marketing opportunity. The legality
of the new companies was emphasised; the share certificates were to be
Table 13.1 Investment trust company shares: prices and dividends for 30 April 1880 (unless otherwise stated)
ITC* Year Year Year Nominal Share Authorised Capital Dividend No. of Market Market Reserve Accumulated
incorporated reconstructed assessed share type capital £ paid up (%) securities value of value fund (£) reserve
value £ (£) listed investments of £100 fund to
(£) shares date (£)
£sd
FSAIT 1873 1879 April 1879–

April 1880 100 Ord 300,000 296,700 7.5 50 425,287 143.6.9 3,895 26,093
SSAIT 1874 1879 April 1879–
April 1880 100 Ord 400,000 400,000 8 60 588,715 147.3.6 2,711 37,289
TSAIT 1875 1879 April 1879–
April 1880 100 Ord 400,000 400,000 7 62 554,732 138.13.8 4,479 16,714
Sources: DCA, GD/EFM/SA/1/1, First Scottish American Investment Trust Company, Limited, Balance Sheet, 11 May 1880; DCA, GD/EFM/SA/2/1, Second Scot-
tish American Investment Trust Company, Limited, Balance Sheet, 1 May 1880; DCA, GD/EFM/SA/3/1, Third Scottish American Investment Trust Company,
Limited, Balance Sheet, 1 July 1880.
Note
* Investment Trust Company.
182 C. Swan
registered; and the companies were to be established on a permanent, rather than
a terminable, basis. The fixed rate of interest on the certificates was replaced by
a dividend on the shares, and, given the trusts’ previous high profits, it was
expected that future annual dividends would be higher than the interest rate pre-
viously paid on the certificates.28 One marked difference from the previous
structure was that terminable debentures and deposits were to be discontinued,
with these also being converted into shares.
Data and methodology

The Joint Stock Companies Act of 1879 made it law that all companies keep up-
to-date registers of all financial transactions. The share registers of the three trust
companies after reconstruction provide comprehensive lists of shareholders’
names, addresses, marital status and, where relevant, occupation. To be able to
collect consistent information of marital status is highly valuable since it was at
the company’s discretion whether or not they recorded this information. For
example, in the later share registers of the Prudential Assurance Company, the
only indication of the marital status of women was the title Miss or Mrs.29 This,
of course, does not allow for a distinction between married women and widows.
In these Scottish registers, on the other hand, not only does the clerk clearly
mark ‘widow’, but occasionally will supplement this with the widow’s maiden
name and full name of her late husband. This is important for understanding the
nature of her shareholding. Wives, on the other hand, were clearly noted as such
in the shareholding registers; they were always recorded with their maiden and
married names alongside the name of their husband.30
The registers exist as a ledger of all share transactions, including the date
shares were acquired, the number held and, if relevant, the date disposed of. In
addition, some shareholder entries include notes on to whom dividends were
paid and to whom the shares were transferred or bequeathed at death. These reg-
isters were regularly updated and exist as an accurate guide to the movement
and retention of shares held within each company.
This study looks at the share registers of these three investment trust companies
– FSAIT, SSAIT and TSAIT – from their reconstruction date in April 1879 for
the period of one year.31 No records of shareholders survive before this date of
incorporation, although the registers for the three companies survive until the
late 1960s.
Data have been collected for each female investor registered as a shareholder
within the year from April 1879 to April 1880. Collectively, this has created a
database of 598 female shareholder portfolios.32 There are, however, limitations
to this all-female database. Whereas significant conclusions can be drawn from
women’s holdings alone, relating to the types of women who invested, the size
of their holdings and their role within Scottish foreign investment, for certain
comparisons figures for men were required. In these cases, the numbers of male
shareholders and the total of their holdings have been manually counted and
used for some statistical analysis (see Table 13.2).
Table 13.2 Male and female investors and their shares in number and as a percentage, 1879–80*
ITC Total no. of No. held % held No. held % held No. male % of No. female % of
shares allocated by men by men by women by women investors investors investors investors
FSAIT 2,960 2,002 67.6 958 32.3 356 72.1 138 27.9
SSAIT 4,000 2,860 71.5 1,140 28.5 505 71.1 205 28.9
TSAIT 4,000 2,941 73.5 1,059 26.5 629 71.2 255 28.8
Totals 10,960 7,803 71.2 3,157 28.8 1,490 71.4 598 28.6
Sources: DCA, GD/EFM/SA/1/1, First Scottish American Investment Trust Company, Limited, Register of Members, vol. 1; DCA, GD/EFM/SA/2/1, Second Scottish
American Investment Trust Company, Limited, Register of Members, vol. 1; DCA, GD/EFM/SA/3/1, Third Scottish American Investment Trust Company, Limited,
Register of Members, vol. 1.
Note
* Where there were joint holdings these have been divided equally for the purposes of calculation.
184 C. Swan
Levels of female participation
The shareholding figures in Table 13.2 reveal that in 1879 women constituted
28.6 per cent of the investment trust shareholders, holding 28.8 per cent of the
nominal value of the shares. This is a higher level of female financial participa-
tion than Lucy Newton and Philip Cottrell found to be present in the early-
nineteenth-century English and Welsh commercial joint-stock banks, their study
finding that women comprised an average of 7.9 per cent of the shareholders
with 5.4 per cent of the stock from 1827–33, with this figure falling marginally
to 7.3 per cent and 3.5 per cent respectively in 1835–6.33 Nor is there such a
large proportion of female financial activity present in the eighteenth- or
nineteenth-century industrial companies referred to by Mark Freeman et al.,
where they find that women averaged around 10 per cent of investors in com-
panies.34 It does, unsurprisingly, bear a closer resemblance to surveys of share-
holders later in the nineteenth century. For example, Josephine Maltby and
Janette Rutterford, in a survey of three English financial companies incorporated
in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, found that women represented
between 28.4 per cent and 32.7 per cent of the number of shareholders, and held
between 16.4 per cent and 26.5 per cent of the share capital. Similarly, Graham
Acheson and John Turner, surveying investors in the Ulster Bank in 1877, found
that women made up 32.5 per cent of the shareholders, holding 26.4 per cent of
the share capital.35
Some women in my sample held shares other than their investment trust
holdings, which suggests a certain degree of financial autonomy and risk. One
such example in Dundee is Mary Ann Baxter, an extremely wealthy spinster
who had a large and impressive portfolio of local, national and international
investments and featured in the registers of the both the FSAIT and TSAIT. Her
mortgage and debenture investments ranged from local Dundee Gas Commis-
sion to the Canada Permanent Loan and Savings Company. She held over
£40,000 of local investment trust bonds, in addition to around £4,500 joint-stock
shares. Her two shares in the FSAIT and nine shares in the TSAIT were worth a
Table 13.3 Percentage of number of different types of female investors
ITC All women Of whom:
Wives Widows Spinsters Unmarried Unspecified

daughters
FSAIT 27.9 21.7 32.6 42.7 0.7 2.1

SSAIT 28.9 19.5 29.2 46.8 1.4 2.9
TSAIT 28.8 23.5 25.0 46.6 2.7 1.9
Overall 28.6 21.6 28.9 45.4 1.6 2.3
Sources: DCA, GD/EFM/SA/1/1, First Scottish American Investment Trust Company, Limited,
Register of Members, vol. 1; DCA, GD/EFM/SA/2/1, Second Scottish American Investment Trust
Company, Limited, Register of Members, vol. 1; DCA, GD/EFM/SA/3/1, Third Scottish American
Investment Trust Company, Limited, Register of Members, vol. 1.
combined value of £1,100 in 1879 and fetched £1,630, including a half-year’s
dividend, at her death in 1885. This profit of £530, accumulated in only six
years, amounts to roughly £39,000 today.36
Single women
The share registers of the three companies studied present some interesting find-
ings about the marital status of Scottish female investors, as shown in Table
13.3. Overall, spinsters were by far the largest single group of female investors,
constituting 43 per cent of the female participants in the FSAIT and almost 47
per cent in both the SSAIT and TSAIT. These figures correlate with recent
English findings where spinsters were generally found to be the largest group of
female investors.37 This not only reflects single women’s financial autonomy,
but probably also their need for secure financial assets.
Sometimes single women’s shares were provided by a male relative, as, for
example, in the case of the Stratton family. William Stratton, a restaurant owner
from Dundee, invested £200 worth of shares in the SSAIT and £200 worth of
shares in the TSAIT for his three daughters, Helen, Marion and Prudence, and
their two brothers. However, there is no evidence of similar cases. More com-
monly, a single woman’s shares were placed in the care of a local solicitor, indi-
cating little control by the female shareholder. This was the case with Jessie
Morris, whose one share in the FSAIT was held in trust with Andrew Ogilvy, a
local stockbroker. Nevertheless, it is clear that many single women were finan-
cially independent. Take the Fergusson sisters, for example. Matilda, Elizabeth
and Wilhelmina each held ten shares in the FSAIT, SSAIT and TSAIT. It is
likely that these shares were purchased for them by their father, since he himself
was a large shareholder. However, it is indicated that the ladies had some
control over their own finances as there was a mandate in each of the share reg-
isters authorising the payment of the annual dividends to be made directly into
their personal bank accounts. The shares were also held in each of their own
names, making it legally possible for them to sell or bequeath as they desired. In
fact, Elizabeth went on to buy one more share in the SSAIT before she died in
1881 leaving her shares in the charge of her brother. Wilhelmina died in 1904
and distributed her shares between her remaining siblings and their offspring,
while Matilda inherited a further nine shares from Wilhelmina’s bequest. All
siblings acted as executors of their father’s estate on his death.
Another group of spinsters that displayed a degree of autonomy over their
finances were those who were in employment.38 Of the few women who were
noted in the registers as having an occupation, most were in traditional female
roles. Within the sample of 598 women, three were schoolteachers and two were
at the same school in Dundee holding two and four shares respectively. They
may well have exchanged information and advised each other. The sample also
included two housekeepers. Interestingly, one housekeeper worked at Duncarse,
the home of one of the directors involved in all three companies, Thomas Cox.
She held six shares, well above the spinster average. One domestic servant had
186 C. Swan
two shares, a female grocer had one share and a female baker had one share. A
milliner, Janet Graham, is particularly noteworthy. She held £2,200 nominal
value in shares, indicating that she was a significant businesswoman. Janet’s
annual income from this investment, based on the 1880 dividend, would have
been a substantial £176 per year. That is equivalent to £12,289.83 today, or over
£1,000 a month in relative terms.39
There is plenty of evidence that single women invested enough in the trusts to
provide a comfortable supplementary income. One example is the Jackson
sisters from Edinburgh. Margaret and Elizabeth jointly held five shares in the
FSAIT, three in the SSAIT and two in the TSAIT. They both lived in the same
house and the annual dividend from the £1,000 nominal-value investment would
have provided a substantial annual household income amounting to £80 in 1880,
equivalent to £5,476 in 2006.40
Women often exerted their independence and financial influence by leaving
their shares to female relatives. Mary Ann Baxter, who died in 1884, had a per-
sonal estate worth nearly £300,000. Upon her death, Baxter instructed all her
heritable and movable property to be sold and converted into cash. This was to
be divided equally among her nephews and nieces. The money bequeathed to
her nephews was to be paid in cash, but the money for her nieces was to be
invested in a ‘good security or securities’ recommended by her trustees, with the
‘exclusion of the jus mariti Right of Administration and any other legal right of
the Husband or Husbands’.41 This meant that the bequests did not become the
husband’s property in the event of a niece’s marriage.
Some single women had large and varied investment portfolios. Eveline
Ogilvy held shares and debentures in a range of public companies, mostly rail-
road companies in England, India, Brazil and Canada, and extensive holdings
throughout the United States. She also had shares in various Scottish investment
trusts, including 11 shares in the TSAIT. She had interests in Colonial Govern-
ment securities in New Zealand, Queensland, Western Australia and Canada and
various scattered shares in a range of enterprises, for example, the Rio de
Janeiro City Improvement Company, the Eastern Telegraph Company and the
Consolidated Tea and Lands Company. Her assets in investment trusts
amounted to over £22,000 at her death in 1898.42 On the surface, such an
impressive and wide-ranging portfolio of investments would suggest that Ogilvy
took an active role in the selection of the trusts and distribution of her finances.
Yet, it is difficult to determine exactly to what extent large female shareholders
controlled their own assets, or whether they were simply bought on male advice.
Although spinsters were the largest investing group, they generally held
fewer shares than the typical female averages listed in Table 13.4.43 The average
nominal female holding in the FSAIT, for instance, was 6.94 shares. This was a
higher mean value than that of men, who averaged 5.62 shares overall.
However, single women’s holdings averaged 4.96 shares, smaller than the
female average overall. In the FSAIT the median holding for spinsters was three
shares and the modal holding was one share. These figures are identical to the
overall female median and modal holdings for the FSAIT, but drop to an
Table 13.4 Average numbers of shares held by male and female investors
ITC Male Female

■
Mean Median Mode Mean Median Mode
FSAIT 5.62 5 1 6.94 3 1

SSAIT 7.15 5 5 5.56 3 1
TSAIT 5.85 4 1 4.15 2 1
Sources: DCA, GD/EFM/SA/1/1, First Scottish American Investment Trust Company, Limited, Reg-
ister of Members, vol. 1; DCA, GD/EFM/SA/2/1, Second Scottish American Investment Trust
average median holding of two in the SSAIT and one in the TSAIT, below the
median and modal figures for women overall in these two trusts. The modal
holding for spinsters in all three trusts was one share, indicating that spinsters
had a ‘tail’ of small investments.44 This looks to be typical for spinsters in low-
risk financial companies; a similar result was found in England and Wales for
the same period.45
Widows
Widows were the second most significant group in the sample in terms of
numbers, comprising around 30 per cent of the female shareholders in the
FSAIT and SSAIT and 25 per cent of the female shareholders in the TSAIT, as
shown in Table 13.3. This is a marked difference from the findings of Maltby
and Rutterford, who note that widows were consistently the least significant
group in their study of English female investors during the same period.46
Undoubtedly, though, widows held a higher proportion of the shares than single
and married women, although they were perhaps largely involuntary investors,
inheriting their shares as opposed to independently purchasing them. Table 13.5
lists the total nominal values of female shareholders by marital status in pounds
sterling. It can be seen from the Scottish sample that, although spinsters collec-
tively held the largest amount of stock in the SSAIT, widows overall held the
largest amount of the stock of the three trusts. Ermin Edwards, widow of the
deceased Allan Edwards, was by far the largest independent female shareholder
in the entire sample. She inherited a huge £10,600 worth of shares in the FSAIT
from her husband on his death in 1879. Similarly, she acquired £5,100 and
£2,500 worth of shares in the SSAIT and TSAIT respectively, though these were
bequeathed jointly to her and her two sons, Kenrick and Albert.
Wives
According to Table 13.3, wives were the least significant of the major groups in
this sample in shareholding terms. This is supported by the data in Table 13.5,
188 C. Swan
Table 13.5 Total value of different types of female shareholders’ holdings (£)
ITC All women Of whom:
Wives Widows Spinsters Unmarried Unspecified

daughters
FSA 95,800 22,700 39,100 29,300 0 4,700

SSA 114,000 28,700 37,500 43,500 300 4,000
TSA 105,900 29,600 36,700 36,500 400 2,700
Total 315,700 81,000 113,300 109,300 700 11,400
Sources: DCA, GD/EFM/SA/1/1, First Scottish American Investment Trust Company, Limited, Reg-
ister of Members, vol. 1; DCA, GD/EFM/SA/2/1, Second Scottish American Investment Trust
which shows that, collectively, wives also held the least total value of stock
(excluding the ‘Unmarried daughters’ and ‘Unspecified’ categories). However,
wives consistently held a significant average amount of stock compared with the
overall averages for women shown in Table 13.4. In the FSAIT and the SSAIT,
wives typically held the same average median and modal number of shares as
women did overall, with a higher average median of three shares in the TSAIT,
compared with the average of two. In fact, the median holding for all sharehold-
ers collectively, both male and female, in the TSAIT was three shares; this sup-
ports the fact that wives were significant shareholders.
Isabella Martin was the largest married shareholder. She held 15 shares in the
FSAIT, 31 in the SSAIT and 32 in the TSAIT. Her husband, William Martin,
was also a substantial shareholder in the three companies. She, like most married
women in this sample, was related to a male investor. In trust companies in
England scholars have found that the wives with the largest shareholdings were
usually married to directors of the company concerned.47 What is unusual in the
Scottish sample is that the wives of the four directors are not significant share-
holders. In fact, only Adelaide Cox, wife of Thomas Cox, held any shares. She
had ten in each of the FSAIT and TSAIT and none in the SSAIT. Although she
held shares above the average nominal value of wives’ holdings, this figure is
insignificant in comparison to the amount that the Cox family held overall, and
she held the same amount as her spinster sister-in-law, Ellen Cox.
Legal implications
This study is concerned with the investments held by women in 1879–80, prior
to the Married Woman’s Property (Scotland) Act 1881 (MWPAS). Before the
passing of the Act, a married woman’s legal status generally meant that she was
subordinate to her husband. This was especially noticeable in terms of owner-
ship and the administration of her property.48 Of the rights and responsibilities of
the husband, gained on marriage, the most important of these was the jus mariti.
This meant that the husband acquired the right to own all of his wife’s movable
estate belonging to her at the date of marriage and anything she might inherit or
accrue thereafter, excluding any earnings, jewellery and clothing.49
To circumvent the law of the jus mariti it was possible to request that it be
renounced in an ante-nuptial marriage contract to exclude certain clauses that
could otherwise only be made dissolute by divorce.50 Alternatively, the exclusion
of the jus mariti could be requested when any bequest was made to the wife by a
third party, as Mary Ann Baxter did with her nieces. This worked for the benefit of
the woman when it came to owning or inheriting shares and other investments.
However, under Common Law, an anomaly existed that meant that the husband’s
consent was required should the wife want to dispose (or retain) her own property
as she pleased. This was known as the jus administrationis and was effectual
where the rights of the jus mariti did not apply (as in the case of heritable prop-
erty) or were excluded. The jus administrationis, therefore, disabled the wife from
administering her own property without the consent of her husband.51
However, it would be naive to conclude that no married woman owned prop-
erty until 1881.52 In fact, before 1881 Scottish wives had greater legal rights of
inheritance and legal protection over their property than their English counter-
parts. In marriage, the couple’s movable goods were merged into one fund,
albeit the husband’s, but women were still eligible for a certain degree of control
through the legal construction of a marriage contract to exclude the husband’s
jus mariti right.53 Scottish female investors took advantage of this and were thus
allowed to purchase or receive shares expressly ‘excluding his jus mariti and
right of administration’. It is understood that this could only be done through a
marriage contract, but the fact that every married female in this sample who
invested on their own did so with this clause indicates that many married women
in Scotland retained a degree of equality when it came to the joint property
within the marriage. Therefore, the notable presence of married shareholders in
this sample is significant because Scottish wives had more flexibility than Eng-
lishwomen due to variations in the laws on property. This is evident particularly
in the shareholdings of the Ulster Banks, where there are no married women
present prior to the English MWPA of 1882.54
A Scottish widow, on the other hand, was entitled to retain a fixed proportion
of the marriage estate should the husband predecease her. She was eligible for
exactly half the estate should they have had no children, or one-third if other-
wise. In death, the wife also retained the same degree of control, and her share
of the joint property was entitled to her representatives on her behalf.55
By avoiding the jus mariti in Scotland, fathers ensured that their daughters
retained their property rights when entering a marriage. Furthermore, the wife of
a wealthy man could benefit greatly by retaining a substantial share of his prop-
erty should they divorce or when he died.56 Scottish women also retained the
right to bequeath their shares as they wished after marriage. In short, the control
that wives potentially had over their investments under Scottish law was higher
than their legal entitlement suggested, and greater than was allowed to women in
England. This is not to say that some women did not make joint investments
190 C. Swan
with their husbands. Mary Turnbull of Edinburgh, for example, held four shares
with her solicitor husband David. It would appear that they had an equal
claim to these shares, although they still would have fallen under David’s
administration.
Conclusions and further research

By the late 1870s, investment trusts were a fairly popular option throughout
Britain and many investors were attracted by the promise of a safe, yet relatively
high, rate of return and the security of the buoyant reserve funds as detailed in
Table 13.1. For this reason investment trusts were considered a reasonably safe
option, so were these relatively popular investments for women? Larger compar-
ative studies have yet to conclude on this issue but it is clear from this prelimi-
nary survey that some women did have portfolios that included shares in
investment trusts, and appeared to have a certain degree of financial autonomy.
It must be remembered, however, that the three Scottish investment trusts
studied here are only a snapshot of women’s shareholdings, and the suggestions
and findings of this study are preliminary.
Between 1873 and 1900, 19 investment companies were established and/or
reconstructed in Dundee and Edinburgh.57 A study of all of these ventures is in
progress that will increase our understanding of the investment pattern of Scot-
tish women. For example, additional factors can be taken into account, such as
the geographic location of the trusts, the types of securities in the trusts’ invest-
ment portfolios, and the level of exposure to financial literature and financial
promotion made available to women in Scotland at different times. What is
more, some of the investment trust companies in the larger survey will allow a
study of their share registers at the date of incorporation, making it possible to
compare women’s investment in new and existing investment trusts along the
lines of Newton and Cottrell’s work on early English joint-stock banks.58 Thus,
the larger survey will allow a relative assessment of marital status, gender and
investors’ attitude to risk in the Scottish investment trust industry. Nonetheless,
some interesting suggestions can already be made from this study.
First, there were significant proportions of female shareholders involved in
the three investment trust companies in the preliminary study. On average,
women constituted 30 per cent of the investors, holding roughly a proportionate
amount of stock. This was in line with the numbers of women investing in finan-
cial companies in England and Ulster at the time. Further research into the busi-
ness correspondence of the trusts will show to what extent, if any, women had
an active interest in choosing investment trust shareholdings. At this point there
is no evidence to show that women held an equal proportion in the corporate
decision-making of the trusts, minutes of meetings were always addressed to
‘gentlemen’ and it was noted that decisions had to be made on behalf of the
large number of absent certificate-holders.59 This suggests that the female
investors did not play an active role in the management of their investments, but
this is not to say that they did not have control of their shares. Nevertheless,
such issues justify the need for more research into the area of women and
finance in Scotland.
By categorising women by marital status, some interesting results have been
obtained. As in England, spinsters were the largest group of female investors
with a string of small shareholdings. One possible reason for the fact that they
were relatively small shareholders could be that they had diversified portfolios,
not unlike those women in the examples given. This would reflect their financial
autonomy and also their need for secure assets. Single women had the same
financial rights as men and could have made use of these to buy, sell and
bequeath their shares as they wished, especially to other female relatives.
Widows, similarly, were in a good legal position to control their sharehold-
ings. In fact, it seems, from this study, that they acquired shares on the death of
their husband. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that widows proportionately held
the largest amount of shares in the sample.
It can be argued, however, that the most interesting discovery in the survey of
the three investment trust companies is the position of the wives as investors. On
the surface, the legal impositions that women faced prior to the MWPAS
appeared to constrain them as investors. In reality, though, the opposite was true.
Every wife in the sample took advantage of a marriage contract under Scottish
law that allowed them full financial control and this was reflected in their share-
holding values. However, it is not clear whether this marriage contract also
counteracted their loss of voting rights. Nevertheless, this provides evidence that
shows wives as investing separately from their husbands prior to the passage of
the MWPA in Scotland.
It would, of course, be interesting to see if women did make use of their
voting rights. Further research into the other investment trusts may provide evid-
ence of women who did take an active, albeit untypical, role in the company
infrastructure. A more comprehensive study incorporating the rest of the Dundee
investment trust companies that were established between 1870 and 1900 is cur-
rently being undertaken and will certainly provide a more complete overview in
this area of women’s economic agency. One major point that has come out of
this chapter is that if numbers of married women increased following the impli-
cation of the MWPAS, as they did in England and Northern Ireland, then this
could significantly change the distribution of shares among women, and possibly
the infrastructure of the trusts.
Overall, this small sample has offered suggestions about the role of women in
the Scottish investment trust movement. This basic study, based on the marital
status of female investors, opens up many other areas for the study of women’s
financial participation and relates to a host of wealth-holding studies currently
ongoing in the UK as well as internationally.60
Notes
1 A version of this chapter was presented at the XIV International Economic History
Congress, Helsinki 2006, where the comments offered were very much appreciated.
192 C. Swan
The author is grateful to Professor Janette Rutterford, Professor Margaret Walsh and
Professor Robin Pearson for sending drafts of unpublished papers. I also want to
acknowledge the generous help of Professor Rutterford, Professor Josephine Maltby
and Professor James Tomlinson in the drafting of this chapter. Thanks are also owed
to Richard Cullen, archivist at Dundee City Archives and Nancy Smith for help with
the statistics. Any mistakes are my own.
2 M. Freeman, R. Pearson and J. Taylor, ‘ “A doe in the city”: women shareholders in
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain’, Accounting, Business and Financial
History 16 (2), 2006, pp. 265–91; J. Maltby and J.M. Rutterford, ‘ “She possessed her
own fortune”: women investors from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth
century’, Business History 48, 2006, pp. 220–53; L. Newton and P.L. Cottrell,
‘Female investors in the first English and Welsh commercial joint-stock banks’,
Accounting, Business and Financial History 16 (2), 2006, pp. 315–40; J.M. Rutter-
ford and J. Maltby, ‘ “The widow, the clergyman and the reckless”: women investors
in England, 1830–1914’, Feminist Economics 12, 2006, pp. 111–38.
3 R. Rodger, The Transformation of Edinburgh: Land, Property and Trust in the Nine-
teenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 271–2; C.E.
Swan, Scottish Cowboys and the Dundee Investors, Dundee Investment in the Texas
Panhandle, A Case Study: The Matador Land and Cattle Company, Dundee: Abertay
Historical Society, 2004, pp. 13, 22.
4 E. Gordon and G. Nair, ‘The economic role of middle class women in Victorian
Glasgow’, Women’s History Review 9, 2000, pp. 791–814; they expand on this in E.
Gordon and G. Nair, Public Lives: Women, Family and Society in Victorian Britain,
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
5 This chapter serves as a pilot study for the analysis of networks in the Scottish invest-
ment trust movement. Further research into this topic, with particular emphasis on the
female participation in nine Dundee investment trusts at the end of the nineteenth
century, will be presented in my forthcoming PhD thesis, anticipated to be completed
in 2008.
6 R.J. Morris, ‘Reading wills: cash economy capitalists and urban peasants in the
1830s’, in A. Kidd and D. Nicholls (eds), The Making of the British Middle Class,
London: Alan Sutton, 1998, p. 129; G.G. Acheson and J.D. Turner, ‘The impact of
limited liability on ownership and control: Irish banking, 1877–1914’, Economic
History Review 59 (2), 2006, p. 15.
7 W.T. Jackson, The Enterprising Scot: Investors in the American West After 1873,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968, p. 21.
8 J.C. Gilbert, A History of Investment Trusts in Dundee, 1873–1938, London: P.S.
King, 1939, p. 16.
9 Dundee City Archives (hereafter, DCA), GD/EFM/SA/1/1, First Scottish American
Investment Trust Company, First General Meeting, Report to the Trustees, 18 Sep-
tember 1873.
10 W. Smith, Robert Fleming, Haddington: Whitinghame Press, 2000, pp. 2, 15–17.
11 Smith, Robert Fleming, pp. 15–17.
12 DCA, GD/EFM/SA/1/1, Second General Meeting, Report to the Trustees, 21 May
1874.
13 On average, 30 different bonds at £3 each only accounts for £90 of the £100 certifi-
cate. The remainder of the funds, less expenses, were placed in a reserve fund, which
is explained below.
14 DCA, GD/EFM/SA/1/1, First Scottish American Investment Trust Company,
Prospectus, 2 July 1873, pp. 3–4.
Prospectus, 2 July 1873, p. 1.
16 Ibid.
17 This figure of interest was estimated as an average return minus expenses and was
subject to the fluctuation of the value of American currency. It was anticipated to rise
as the Trust grew, and in fact did, to 7 and 8 per cent over succeeding years. DCA,
GD/EFM/SA/1/1, First Scottish American Investment Trust Company, Prospectus,
1873.
Prospectus, 2 July 1873, p. 2.
19 Ibid.
20 It was recommended that a certificate holder invest his or her funds for the full period,
however, it was permitted to redeem your funds at any point out of surplus income, or
reserve fund, if available. However, the intention to terminate after ten years did not
actually happen as the trusts were not legally entitled to survive for that long, as will
be explained later in the chapter.
Limited, Memorandum of Association, 1879.
22 DCA, GD/EFM/SA/1/1, First Scottish American Investment Trust Company, First
General Meeting, Report to the Trustees, 18 September 1873; this was also explained
for a similar company in G. Glasgow, The Scottish Investment Trust Companies,
London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1932, pp. 11–15.
23 A.K. Cairncross, ‘Did foreign investment pay?’, Review of Economic Studies 3, 1935,
p. 71; Gilbert, Dundee Investment Trusts, p. 6.
24 Gilbert, A History of Investment Trusts, pp. 2–3; Glasgow, Scottish Investment Trust
Companies, p. 11.
25 N. McKendrick and J. Newlands, A History of Foreign and Colonial, London: F&C,
1999, p. 50; J. Rutterford, ‘Learning from one’s mistakes? Managing risk in the
mutual fund industry, 1868–1940’, European Business History Conference,
Barcelona, 2004, p. 7.
Limited, First General Meeting: Report to the Trustees, 6 March 1879.
27 Actual figure, £6,982.86, L.H. Officer, ‘Purchasing power of British pounds from
1264–2006’, available online: www.measuringworth.com.
28 At the time of the reconstruction, all companies were flourishing with their combined
assets in excess of one-quarter of a million pounds sterling, including an 8–9 per cent
reserve fund. DCA, GD/EFM/SA/1/1, First Scottish American Investment Trust
Company, Limited, First General Meeting: Report to the Trustees, 6 March 1879.
29 Maltby and Rutterford, ‘ “She possessed her own fortune” ’, p. 13.
30 Men were never recorded with their marital status.
31 This introduces a certain degree of complexity when determining attitudes towards
investment risk since this was not the initial inception of the company, but rather their
legal reconstruction date. This means that the shareholders were only allocated their
shares based on previous holdings rather than buying them at this time. However, it
can be surmised that since the initial subscription to the trusts were for an intended
ten-year period, most of these shareholders will have already held shares before their
legal incorporation. There is no way of determining if they subscribed on the first day
that the companies were floated.
32 In the fuller database all men are included. These portfolios only include holdings of
shares in the three investment trusts, not other investments that the women may have
owned.
33 Newton and Cottrell, ‘Female investors in the first English and Welsh commercial
joint-stock banks’, pp. 28–30.
34 This dataset covers the period 1705–1886 and includes a wide range of securities.
Freeman et al., ‘ “A doe in the city” ’, p. 10.
35 Maltby and Rutterford, ‘ “She possessed her own fortune” ’, pp. 16 and 44; Acheson
and Turner, ‘Irish banking’, p. 15.
36 Her profit from these shares was probably more given the fact that she may have
194 C. Swan
purchased her stock before the date of incorporation and it was only converted in
1879. National Archives of Scotland (hereafter, NAS), SC45/31/35, Dundee Sheriff
Court, Testament of Mary Ann Baxter, 10 June 1885; Officer, ‘Purchasing power’.
38 Dundee had a large proportion of women in employment, particularly married
women, who are not proportionally reflected in this sample. A search of the census
could reveal valuable information about the financial status of women investors as
well as their marital status and class.
39 Officer, ‘Purchasing power’.
40 Officer, ‘Purchasing power’, taken at an 8 per cent dividend. Bear in mind that this is
only a section of an investment portfolio. These women could have had an impressive
portfolio providing a substantial annual income.
41 For a discussion on the significance of this, see later in the chapter. NAS,
SC45/31/35, Testament of Mary Ann Baxter, 10 June 1885, pp. 315–16.
42 NAS, SC45/31/50, Dundee Sheriff Court, Testament of Eveline Constance Maud
Ogilvy, 13 July 1898.
43 Maltby and Rutterford also found this in ‘ “She possessed her own fortune” ’,
pp. 22–3.
44 The ages of the spinsters in the register are not known and it is unclear whether this
group included adolescent daughters. Although daughters are included as a distinct
type of female investor in the tables, they were not classified as such within the share
registers. Daughters were only admitted to this group where they were registered as
dependent shareholders, with investments made on their behalf. Take, for instance,
the daughters of William Straton: the entry in the register specifically states that he
invested £200 worth of shares in the Second Scottish American and £200 worth of
shares in the TSA for his three daughters, Helen, Marion and Prudence, and their two
brothers. There were a few similar cases. (See my earlier comment about this in the
text.)
47 Freeman et al., ‘ “A doe in the city” ’, p. 7; Maltby and Rutterford, ‘ “She possessed
her own fortune” ’, pp. 18–19.
48 A.D.M. Forte, ‘Some aspects of the law of marriage in Scotland 1500–1700’, in E.
Craik (ed.), Marriage and Property: Women and Marital Customs in History,
Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1991, p. 109.
49 Married women earned the right to keep their own earned income, with the exception
of that earned in a business owned by the husband, with the Married Women’s Prop-
erty (Scotland) Act 1881. It must also be noted that this was not always to the benefit
of the husband. It included all liabilities and debts, including everything contracted
before the banns, previous husband’s funeral expenses, and responsibilities owing to
illegitimate children. W.M. Gloag and R.C. Henderson, Introduction to the Law of
Scotland, Edinburgh: W. Green & Son, 1927, p. 521; E.M. Clive and J.M. Wilson,
The Laws of Husband and Wife in Scotland, Edinburgh: W. Green & Son, 1974,
p. 288; Forte, ‘Law of marriage in Scotland’, p. 110.
50 Gloag and Henderson, Law of Scotland, p. 521; Forte, ‘Law of marriage in Scotland’,
p. 112.
51 Gloag and Henderson, Law of Scotland, p. 521.
52 Gordon and Nair, Public Lives, p. 161.
53 Clive and Wilson, The Laws of Husband and Wife, p. 286.
54 Acheson and Turner, ‘Irish banking’, p. 15. For information on the case in England,
see Maltby and Rutterford, ‘ “She possessed her own fortune” ’, pp. 14–15.
55 Clive and Wilson, The Laws of Husband and Wife, p. 286.
56 E.M. Clive, The Laws of Husband and Wife in Scotland, 4th edn, Edinburgh: Scottish
Universities Law Institute, 1997, p. 13.
57 Jackson, Enterprising Scot, p. 60.
58 Newton and Cottrell, ‘Female investors in the first English and Welsh commercial
joint-stock banks’.
Limited, First General Meeting of Shareholders, 11 March 1879.
60 In particular this relates to the ongoing ESRC-funded project on women investors in
England and Wales, 1870–1930 (RES-000-25-1435).
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Dundee City Archives

GD/EFM/SA/1/1, First Scottish American Investment Trust Company, Prospectus, 2 July
1873; Register of Members, 1–3; Minute Book, 1; Reports to Trustees, 1873, 1874,
1879; First Report of the Shareholders, 1879; Articles of Association, 1879; Balance
Sheet, 11 May 1880.
GD/EFM/SA/2/1, Second Scottish American Investment Trust Company, Register of
Members, 1–3; Balance Sheet, 1 May 1880.
GD/EFM/SA/3/1, Third Scottish American Investment Trust Company, Register of
Members, 1–3; Balance Sheet, 1 July 1880.
National Archives of Scotland

SC45/31/35, Dundee Sherriff Court, Testament of Mary Ann Baxter, 10 June 1885.
SC45/31/50, Dundee Sherriff Court, Testament of Eveline Constance Maud Ogilvy, 13
July 1898.
14 Women clerical staff employed in
the UK-based Army Pay
Department establishments,
1914–19201
John Black
Introduction
This chapter explores the role of women who were temporarily employed in the
UK Army Pay Department (APD) establishments during the First World War.
The majority of the women recruited were employed as clerks within the army
and command pay offices situated throughout the UK and Ireland. The first
incumbents were, however, unpaid volunteers who, without official permission,
assisted with the administration of reservist documentation, particularly in the
area of separation allowances at the Army Pay Office, Woolwich from August to
October 1914.2 The first women clerks were officially recruited in November
1914 for employment at the War Office Finance Branch as its parameters
expanded from two departments in 1914 to six by October 1918.3 Women clerks
were recruited as temporary civil servants and a number of seconded personnel
(both male and female) from various branches of the General Post Office (GPO)
filled the expansion. Temporary women clerks were first recruited to the various
army pay offices within the UK from January 1915, and lady superintendents
(supervisors of women clerks) one year later in January 1916. The term ‘lady
superintendent’ was the official contemporary term used by the home civil
service to describe a woman supervisor or manager. Although the lady superin-
tendents of the APD were temporary, their status and authority equalled that of a
male civilian acting paymaster (also a temporary wartime position) as well as a
commissioned APD assistant paymaster to the rank of captain.
The purpose of this chapter is to outline the needs and experiences of women
who were employed within the APD establishments during the First World War.
Their history has been neglected, being overshadowed by that of working-class
women who were employed, also on a temporary basis, in engineering and
munitions industries generally, as reflected in the histories written by Marwick,
Braybon and Thom.4 Although little research has been conducted into the role of
women employed in clerical functions during the First World War, more is
known about women in the clerical occupations before 1914. Notable are two
papers by Campbell-Kelly that focused on women who were employed on data
processing at the Prudential Assurance Company and the Post Office Savings
Bank (POSB).5
198 J. Black
Until 1914 the state was the main employer of women involved in clerical
work, and research conducted by Zimmeck focused on the expansion of clerical
work for women from 1850 to 1914, mainly within the GPO and its subsidiary
the POSB. In her thesis, Zimmeck identifies the concept of ‘intellectual’ and
‘mechanical’ processes of clerical tasks within the GPO and POSB.6 This
concept is important in the assessment of the organisation and management of
APD establishments during the First World War. However, the notion of ‘femi-
nisation’ in relation to accounting and bookkeeping7 was not evident until after
the First World War.8 The wartime role of women staff within APD establish-
ments during the Great War, as were their colleagues employed in the
contemporary munitions industry, related more to the concept of the ‘reserve
army of labour’.
Traditional interpretations of war women and work during the First World
War tend to focus on the positive effects on women.9 But this experience was
only temporary and fulfilled the reserve army of labour concept. The wartime
experiences of women working in government or in munitions did little to
change gender relations on a more permanent basis after 1918. Indeed women’s
position in the labour force during the 1920s reflected a similar position that
existed prior to 1914, a point emphasised by Braybon.10
A major function of the army pay offices and the War Office Finance Branch
during the Great War was that of administering separation and other allotments
and allowances to dependants of Army personnel. The categories of entitlement
and increasing generosity of these allowances changed dramatically between
1914 and 1919.11 The work of Pedersen12 is an important contribution to this
comparatively unknown area of Britain and the First World War, although she
does not extend her research into the mechanics of the administration of these
allowances. However, Pedersen suggests that the wartime example of separation
allowances administered between 1914 and 1919 may have been the embryo of
the future welfare state inaugurated by Beveridge in 1942.13
During the course of the war, the GPO, including the POSB, seconded female
permanent clerks to the War Office Finance Branch, mainly for duties associated
with the supervision and welfare of women clerks who were first recruited in
November 1914.14 The accounting and gender themes are closely interlinked
with military and social policy issues that arose during the First World War.
Prior to 1914 women clerical workers were segregated from their male col-
leagues,15 whereas the wartime APD establishments were integrated. Indeed they
may have represented the first gender-integrated military establishments in the
UK. This was not for any altruistic motive by the War Office; rather it was a
necessity in the efficient use of available office space. The APD commandeered
concert theatres (Blackheath and Shrewsbury); hotels (Preston); vacant military
married quarters (Woolwich and Chatham); schools, public libraries and baths
(Chatham, Nottingham and Shrewsbury); factories (Nottingham); The Royal
School of Mines, London (now Imperial College);16 and even a Freemasons’
Hall (Woolwich) – the location of which was notified in Army Order 243, July
1915 – all for army pay office accommodation. From late 1916 ‘hutments’ were
Women in the Army Pay Department, 1914–1920 199
constructed on Woolwich Common17 and on the Great Lines of the Royal Engi-
neers Depot at Brompton Barracks, Chatham for army pay office use.18 One
civilian acting paymaster, E. Harvey, who was employed in the hutments that
made up one-third of the estate of Army Pay Office Woolwich, described them
as follows: ‘ladies fair, officers bold, splendid huts but deuced cold’.19
There is little evidence in the way of primary source data relating to the APD
staff and establishment staff during the Great War. There is, however, a modest 20-
page pamphlet written by the staff of the Army Pay Office Woolwich, found in the
Library of the Imperial War Museum (IWM), called The Souvenir (IWM,
K/87465). This publication gives glimpses of the work within one of the largest
APD establishments during the course of the war, including frequent air raid drills
from 1915. There is a two-page entry relating to the first, albeit unofficial, women
volunteers who undertook clerical duties at APO Woolwich from August to October
1914. The article, written by ‘KFK’ – who otherwise remains anonymous – entitled
‘The boy-girls of 1914’, is perhaps the only surviving reference to their existence.
However, housed within the National Archives, Kew is a contemporary file record-
ing the history of separation allowances for the Army and Navy during the First
World War.20 Included in this file are copies of the three official manuals for separa-
tion allowances in the Army for 1915, 1916 and 1918. There is also a contemporary
newspaper account of the Record and Army Pay Office at Nottingham.21
Another area of primary source data consulted was a contemporary inter-
departmental report, The Report of the Committee on Army Pay Office Organisa-
tion 1919, chaired by a Treasury mandarin, J. G. Griffiths. This report was, in
essence, a record of the efficiency and performance of the army pay offices
during the Great War; nevertheless little subsequent research has been under-
taken into the role and performances of the Army Pay Services. The official
history, published in 1983 and written by a retired senior officer, contains little
about the women who worked in the APD establishments from 1914 to 1920.22
Despite this neglect, however, the employment of over 28,000 women within
the APD establishments may have been a factor in the reforms and generosity of
the allowance system as they progressed from 1915 to the end of the war in
1918. For example, Kessler-Harris23 suggests that the influence of women may
have legitimised social welfare policies. During the course of the Great War, the
military and political authorities accepted a more liberal approach, granting enti-
tlement to separation and other allowances. Common-law and cohabitation
status was accepted, as were multiple claims in relation to entitlement to separa-
tion allowances during the Great War only (for example, when a woman’s
husband and sons were in the Army, or for a mother whose children were
fathered by different men and who were now in the Army). From January 1915,
the Command Pay Office London District, Regent Street, administered multiple
separation allowance claims. Indeed the Separation Allowances Manual was
rewritten three times from 1915 to 1918 in order to accommodate rapid changes
and the scope of claimants.24 However, what, if any, was the influence of women
employed within the APD establishments between 1914 and 1920 on the
reforms of the allowance system is not fully known.
200 J. Black
Women in clerical positions to 1914
Until 1914 few women were employed in the home civil service – apart from the
GPO and POSB, which were then part of the civil service structure. The GPO had
employed women and girls since 1861, mainly as sorters, and women were also
employed within the Telegraph Department (even prior to the nationalisation of the
Department in 1871), notably as manipulators or transmitters and counter clerks.25
The reason why the GPO and its various departments employed female labour was
purely a cost-minimising exercise rather than for altruistic reasons.26
Between 1860 and 1914, however, there was a growth in demand for clerical
labour. This was met in part through the expansion of the elementary educa-
tional system after 1870 and secondary education from 1900,27 and also by the
numerous commercial and secretarial colleges that opened in provincial com-
mercial centres in the period up to 1914.28 There appeared to be few women
graduates within the growing economy who worked in clerical positions prior to
1914, and it was not until the First World War that women graduates entered
these occupations in any great numbers.29 Women could not enter the accounting
or legal professions until after 1919, although some women were temporarily
employed in accountancy firms for the duration of the war.30
Zimmeck has contributed to the history of gender division with her study of
women workers who were employed in clerical work from 1850 to 1914,
particularly focusing on the GPO and POSB. It was Zimmeck who divided cleri-
cal labour functions into two broad classifications of clerical tasks, these being
‘intellectual’ and ‘mechanical’.31 She argued that clerical functions performed
by women related to ‘mechanical’ clerical processes, the ‘intellectual’ processes
being the province of men. Most, however, were employed on ‘mechanical’
clerical functions that, over time, were downgraded, eventually being recognised
as ‘women’s work’, as described by Zimmeck:
Women clerks in the Savings Bank Department of the Post Office, which
was organised into ledger divisions, started off ‘experimentally’ in a few
divisions where the work was thought least taxing, and proceeded over
several decades to take over one division after another from the men, until
in the end they made a clean sweep and ledger work became ‘women’s
work. . . . The women to gain in quantity, the men in quality’.32
The example of the GPO and POSB and the classification of clerical functions
into ‘mechanical’ and ‘intellectual’ are important in any assessment of the
organisation and structure of the APD establishments during the First World
War and the employment of women clerks.
The role of the APD establishments in peace and war

The strength of the British Regular Army in 1914 was 110,000, plus a reserve
(including the Regular and Special Reserve) and Territorial Force element of
40,000. The APD (commissioned officers) and Army Pay Corps (APC) (warrant
officers and non-commissioned officers) totalled no more than 400 military staff
of all ranks. There were 27 fixed centre army pay offices in the UK and Ireland
in 1914. Most APOs employed only a small but all-male staff, numbering
between 20 and 30 in strength.33 The largest pre-1914 army pay office was at
Woolwich Dockyard with a total strength of 90. (By November 1918 its strength
had increased to 6,000.34) The Woolwich office was responsible for the personal
accounts of the largest logistical corps in the Army, the Army Service Corps
(ASC), as well as the two largest regiments in the Army, the Royal Field
Artillery (RFA) and the Royal Horse Artillery (RHA).
The pre-1914 army pay offices within the UK still resembled a Dickensian
counting house and the aforementioned changes in technology had yet to reach
the offices of the Army and the APD. The relatively small size of the British
Army meant that it could be administered sufficiently by what could be termed
an antiquated and outdated system. Indeed, the accounts held by the APD estab-
lishments were bound in fixed leather binders that were more reminiscent of the
mid nineteenth century and proved useless as the strength and casualty rate of
the British Army relentlessly increased from September 1914. The major source
of a paymaster’s regulations was the Manual of Military Law of 1885, King’s
Regulations for the Army, the Royal Warrant and Separation Allowances for the
Army, 1913. The frequent issues of ‘Financial Instructions for the Army’ from
the War Office Finance Branch, and monthly Army Orders from the Secretary of
State for War, supported the legal manuals for the Army. Regimental paymas-
ters (in the rank of colonel) who commanded army pay offices prior to 1914
tended to be restricted in their ability to command by rigid rules and regulations,
a point noted by the Griffiths Report when it commented that the regulations
‘appeared to have afforded the Paymaster little scope for the display of initiative
or powers of organization’.35
The paymasters were not without initiative and resourcefulness, however. For
example, once the war had started and knowing the staff shortages that faced his
pay office at Woolwich, the regimental paymaster, Colonel A. B. Church,
accepted women on a voluntary basis without authority from the War Office.36
The War Office Finance Branch and regimental paymasters were also extremely
robust in reorganising the structure of APD establishments in order to introduce
new clerical technologies, including the loose-leaf ledger system introduced in
the spring of 1915. This point is further explored later.
The army pay offices were formed under the ‘Dover’ system in 1905,37 and
administered the accounts of all soldiers within a regimental or corps system.
This system was established in the aftermath of the second Anglo-Boer War
(1899–1902), where Army administration generally had been found to be
wanting. The Dover system was the backdrop to the success of the army pay ser-
vices during the First World War. The expansion of the Army during the Great
War increased the overall duties of regimental paymasters and the functions of
army pay offices. The Dover system still prevailed, although the duties involved
extended well beyond the original conception of its architects in 1904.38 The
202 J. Black
administration of separation allowance in the pre-August 1914 army was a
simple bureaucratic affair because the Regular Army was a single man’s army,
almost a celibate organisation, a point made by Baynes. In his study of the pre-
August 1914 history of the 2nd Battalion The Scottish Rifles (the Cameronians),
Baynes also noted that the regimental married establishment recorded only two
married and accompanied officers and these represented the two most senior
officers in the battalion! Indeed, the majority of married officers and soldiers on
the married establishment were unaccompanied. Thus their spouses were enti-
tled to separation allowance. In home stations this was issued and accounted for
by the soldier’s regiment, whereas in overseas stations it was paid to the spouse
by the respective army pay office through the Post Office.39
It was the administration of separation allowances and the documentation of
the army pay books (AB 64) for recalled reservists that rapidly increased the
bureaucracy of the army pay offices from the outbreak of war on 4 August 1914.
Later, soldier allotments to next of kin expanded with the increased strength of
the Army. Married soldiers were compulsorily obliged under Military Law to
allot part of their basic pay to support a family, whether the marriage or family
was recognised by the military or not. Soldiers were only entitled to separation
allowances if they were living with their partner at the time of enlistment. Sol-
diers who had deserted their families and had enlisted had no entitlement to sep-
aration allowances. However, the Regimental Paymaster under the authority of
Military Law could make compulsory deductions from the soldier’s normal
weekly pay to support his family.40
Most reservists were married, and at the outset in September 1914 the War
Office Finance Branch made amendments in existing separation allowance rules
that both reservists and those volunteering for the New Army were entitled to
separation allowance on the day of enlistment. This meant that most married
recruits joining the New Army were entitled to these allowances from the outset
of their temporary military career, and the army pay offices were charged with
administering the system throughout the Army. The government sanctioned this
in order to attract voluntary recruitment into the Kitchener battalions for the
New Army without resorting to conscription. Indeed, the overall duties of
the wartime army pay offices increased along with the growing bureaucracy as
the war progressed. By early 1915 the duties of the army pay office had dramati-
cally changed and their workloads increased.
The deployment of women staff into the Army pay offices

from 1915 to 1920
The role of the APD (including the army and command pay offices) prior to
1914 was relatively simple, the whole of the financial wing of the Army having
undergone a testing time of retrenchment and reform with the temporary aban-
donment of the APD and APC from 1904 to 1910. The onset of total war
resulted in the urgent need for industrial as well as military expansion and
mobilisation. There was an urgent need for enormous administrative and clerical
support, as the immediate bureaucratic expansion of the financial system of the
Army caused a near-meltdown of the existing system. This necessitated the
recruitment of women into all echelons of the Army’s financial system.
The first women to be employed at an APD establishment were unpaid volun-
teers who were recruited on an unofficial basis, as occurred at the Army Pay
Office Woolwich between August and October 1914. The identities of the
women involved are not known, and the only record as to their existence is
the article ‘The boy-girls of 1914’.41 The women concerned may have been the
wives and daughters of Woolwich Garrison military officers, and the first
entered the Woolwich Office during the first days of the war.42 They assisted
with the preparation of active service pay-books with red covers for reservists of
the RFA, the RHA and the ASC: KFK in her article commented that the red dye
of the paybooks came off on their hands.43 Shortly after, as more women volun-
teered, they were put to work in the separation allowance wing which, due to the
expansion of bureaucracy, relocated to empty rooms above Woolwich Town
Labour Exchange that was conveniently located opposite the Post Office goods
depot at Woolwich Arsenal railway station.44 The War Office, however, did not
approve and ordered their removal in late October 1914. Despite this, one week
later in November 1914 the first official women clerks were recruited for duties
with the War Office Finance Branch, where they were also employed in matters
concerning separation allowances and the disposal of the effects of soldiers who
were battle casualties.45
From January 1915 the War Office began to officially recruit women clerks
on a temporary basis for employment in all APD establishments, including the
army pay offices. The decision to recruit women clerks into the army pay offices
was taken due to the increasing bureaucracy of the military system with growing
numbers of military personnel being required for duties overseas in active the-
atres of operation. This generated necessary amounts of bureaucracy relating to
records of service and entitlement of correct pay and allowances. From 1915
onwards, there were increasing numbers of women clerks employed within APD
establishments in the UK measured against the decline of male clerks from 1915
to 1920. This trend can be seen in the Appendix.
The introduction and experience of the loose-leaf ledger

system into the Army pay offices from 1915
The loose-leaf ledger system was introduced into the army pay offices during the
spring of 1915, some months after the official recruitment of women clerks. The
Griffiths Committee Report gives no information regarding the inspiration for
the introduction of the system and it is unlikely this came from the women
clerks or from the POSB. But the introduction of the loose-leaf ledger system
possibly accelerated the numbers of women clerks needed to operate the
‘mechanical’ clerical function successfully. The number of women clerks
recruited by July 1915 numbered only 479 (see the Appendix for a comprehen-
sive breakdown of APD and APC staff from 1914 to 1920). Six months later in
204 J. Black
January 1916 the number had risen to 4,556 and by July 1916 had risen to 9,304.
By January 1916, with the increasing number of women clerks now employed in
the army pay offices, lady superintendents were recruited to act as supervisors
and welfare officers for the female staff.
The innovation of the loose-leaf ledger system, as introduced into the army
pay offices, may have been the first time this system was used by the civil
service. Campbell-Kelly stated that the POSB was much more resistant to
change and was institutionally somewhat inward-looking. Campbell-Kelly’s
argument was that a major organisational change within the structure of the
institution had to take place before new technology could be introduced:
The Savings Department failed to adopt any of the new information tech-
nologies of the 1880s and 1890s – typewriters, calculating machines and
loose-leaf filing systems – until well into the 20th century. In part, this was
because the managers were unwilling to face up to major organisational
change, but it was also because there were few external pressures to mecha-
nise . . . In the United States office mechanisation was driven in large part by
an ideology of systematic management; this ideology did not make it to
Britain until after World War 1.46
Nevertheless, there is evidence that a systematic management organisational

restructuring did occur within the War Office Finance Branch and the subordi-
nate army pay offices towards the end of 1914. This came about because of the
pressure of increased bureaucracy that now prevailed upon the overall Army Pay
Services, as the Army size was expanding rapidly with the formation of Kitch-
ener’s New Army. The notion that the war begun in 1914 would be a short war,
over by Christmas, had evaporated by early November 1914 with the beginnings
of trench warfare and the first battle for Ypres as the war developed into total
world war. At the War Office Finance Branch and the APD generally, decisions
were now being made outside the pre-1914 orthodox military ‘think box’. By
the spring of 1915, the APD began to introduce loose-leaf ledgers and, over
time, other labour-saving devices were introduced. However, the Griffiths
Report only gave a short account of labour-saving devices that had been intro-
duced into APD establishments by 1918, including adding and listing
machines.47
There is evidence to show that stencil duplicators were in common use. Most
records were now typed on ‘Qwerty’ keyboard typewriters, and it would appear
from an assessment of both Admiralty and War Office files that the transition from
handwritten to typewritten correspondence occurred between the last decade of the
nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century. Photographic
evidence of APD offices during the First World War held by the Adjutant
General’s Corps Museum, and others held by the author, suggests that Burroughs
adding machines and other labour-saving devices were being used by this time.
The introduction of the loose-leaf ledger system and accompanying clerical
labour-saving devices eased the mounting accounting and bookkeeping tasks
required. This included the testing of arithmetical calculations from entries
posted to the ledger, as well as testing the arithmetic on other documents includ-
ing applications for separation allowances. The loose-leaf system included indi-
vidual files where a soldier’s personal account could be stored and maintained.
This personal file would include all documents relating to pay and any
allowances. This had not been possible with the leather-bound ledgers that
existed before 1915. The soldier’s account included a master card that was also
maintained in the ledger. All transactions and occurrences affecting the soldier
were recorded on this master card, the Army Form N (AF N) 3085. The system
allowed the army pay offices to adjust to the establishment of sections and wings
(a section focusing on about 1,000 personal accounts of a unit), as was common
with army pay offices administering infantry accounts. The system of loose-leaf
ledgers was perhaps the most important development in the administration of the
bureaucracy of the wartime army pay offices, where the personal accounts of a
massive and complex army were administered, a point noted by Griffiths:
The soldier’s account is credited monthly with his pay and allowances, and
debited with the charges notified through the medium of pay and mess
books, the acquittance roll, the hospital return, or any other legion of forms
proved to meet the exigencies of military life . . . An application may come
for the soldier making, varying or cancelling an allotment of pay to his
family. Or the Paymaster may receive from various sources of information
entailing a change in the rate of separation allowance. The great problem is
to secure the prompt and accurate embodiment of all these things in the
ledger sheets.48
Girls work! Downgrading the clerical function

The routine daily maintenance of the accounts housed in the loose-leaf ledgers
probably downgraded clerical duties associated with their maintenance to
‘mechanical’ rather than ‘intellectual’ processes. Zimmeck49 identified similar
observations in the pre-1914 POSB. The Griffiths Committee Report described
the women clerks who administered the loose-leaf ledgers in the wartime army
pay offices as compilation clerks. The compilation clerks became the engine of
the army pay office and the loose-leaf system became the central decision-
making system for the Regimental Paymaster commanding an army pay office, a
point not missed by Griffiths:
The compilation and disposal of these documents have become the

supremely important work of the office, other operations being, in a sense,
subsidiary thereto. With few exceptions every regulation that the Paymaster
has to apply touches these records, every accounting document that he
receives has to be collated with them, every incident in a soldier’s career
and every casualty in his family are reflected in them, all the Paymaster’s
correspondence turns on them.50
206 J. Black
The ‘mechanical’ and ‘downgrading’ nature of the functions required in the
daily routine of administering the ledgers by the compilers suggests that there
was a shallow learning curve, therefore women and girls whose previous
employment may have been as machine operatives and other unskilled factory
work took on the role as compiler clerks within the army pay offices very
quickly. Evidence for this relates to ongoing research focused on the Army Pay
Office at Nottingham. In other army pay offices the recruitment of women
workers possibly attracted women from all classes of society.51 The Nottingham
research, however, tends to demonstrate that the transfer of mechanical skills
from blue collar to white blouse was quick and effective both in training and
performance.52
Although the Griffiths Committee Report was complimentary regarding the
introduction of the loose-leaf ledger system, by contrast the Committee had a
poor opinion of the women clerks (compilers):
At the outbreak the breach was partly filled by clerks with commercial
experience, but the demands of other branches of the Army led to the
combing out most of these and to the introduction of female labour, much
of it of an inexperienced and inferior type, until 60 to 70 per cent of the staff
of some offices consisted of women and girls, the majority of the remainder
being men unfit for combatant service and many of them hardly fit for stren-
uous office work.53
The reason for the very unflattering comments made about women clerks who
were employed in the APD establishments during the Great War may have been
because most of them were working-class, and were employed as compiler
clerks, coming from the same social and economic background as the
contemporary munitions workers.54
The decision to recruit lady superintendents into UK-based APD establish-
ments from January 1916 was due to the shortage of manpower, both military
and civilian. The shortage of military paymasters from September 1914 was
supplemented by the recruitment of male acting civilian paymasters who were
recruited from the accounting, banking and commercial world. By the end of
1915 this source too was becoming scarce. Thus the decision was taken by the
War Office Finance Branch to recruit lady superintendents who performed
similar duties to military APD assistant paymasters and civilian acting pay-
masters. Lady superintendents were also recruited for duties in other govern-
ment departments, including the Admiralty and the Ministry of Munitions. The
role of lady superintendent included the supervision of subordinate women
clerks that were also recruited into other government departments. Zimmeck
noted that prior to 1914 women were segregated from their male colleagues at
the workplace, having separate office entrances and rest areas. She also
noted55 that women were also promoted to a supervisory role to oversee
women, girl and boy subordinates. Matters improved within the APD estab-
lishments during the course of the war and gender integration was a major
factor in the efficiency of the War Office Finance Branch and the APD estab-
lishments during the Great War.
No personal files exist of the women staff employed at the APD establish-
ments during the Great War. However, about 500 names of lady superintendents
have been discovered through a variety of sources. The first is about 12 lady
superintendents who were appointed as Members to the new Order of the British
Empire (MBE) between 1917 and 1920, and details feature in the one-off publi-
cation, Burke’s Order of the British Empire, published in 1921. Some of the
names have short biographical details.
About 250 women staff employed within APD establishments and the War
Office Finance Branch were, between 1918 and 1919, awarded what was known
as a ‘ “B” List mention’ in dispatches, appearing in The Times on 3 and 4 Sep-
tember 1918 and 4 June 1919. The names appearing in The Times were, in the
press communiqués of the day, brought to the notice of the Secretary of State for
War for valuable services rendered in connection with the war. The ‘B’ List
mentions were no more than press mentions and did not equate to a mention in
dispatches awarded by a commander-in-chief in the field within an Expedi-
tionary Force operational area. Neither was a ‘B’ List mention a prerequisite for
a higher award.56 The basic description of a recipient of a ‘B’ List mention only
records their name. Unfortunately for civilian staff employed within APD estab-
lishments, the establishment identity was not given. The recipient is recorded as
being employed within the jurisdiction of the Financial Member of the War
Office. However, the ‘B’ List mention list of names does identify some 250
women staff who were employed within the War Office Finance Branch and the
subordinate APD establishments. Again there is no identification as to the role
of the recipient, whether lady superintendent or clerk. However, the assumption
can be made that most were lady superintendents.
The employment of women into APD establishments also caused problems
for the appropriate military authorities that have not been recorded in history.
For example, the pre-1914 army pay offices were located in existing military
depots that had been constructed for an all-male population. With the deploy-
ment of women clerks, obviously sufficient toilet and other accommodation
would have to be satisfactorily installed. Even in the temporary army pay
offices, the accommodation requisitioned did not have the appropriate offices to
satisfy women clerical workers. Gay notes that the Royal Flying Corps drawing
office was located in the Royal School of Mines (an all-male institution prior to
1915) and employed 20 men and 30 women, and the Air Board was asked to
cover the expense of installing lavatories for the women.57
Final audit: ‘women, the machines that did the work’!

The mechanics of the loose-leaf accounting system allowed for pay and account-
ing records to be compiled together. The Griffiths Report noted that the soldier’s
account for pay, which included a second sheet relating to entitlement to separa-
tion and other allowances, could be attached to the original pay sheet if there
208 J. Black
was an additional entitlement. This could occur if the soldier married while in
service, or with changes in the dependant category that occurred from 1915 to
1918, such as multiple claims, common-law arrangements and parental entitle-
ment for single soldiers under 26 years of age. By this method one clerk could
administer both accounts. This system was impossible when the accounts were
kept in inflexible leather-bound ledgers as outlined in KFK’s article.58 For the
first year, 1914–15, each account for an individual soldier itemising pay, sepa-
ration allowances or other maintenance allowances, could be kept in separate
binders and indeed in separate offices within different locations. Thus the
loose-leaf pay and accounting system was a major factor in the successful
administration of pay and allowances to an ever-expanding army during the
First World War.
The Griffiths Committee observed that some 40 to 45 compilation clerks (as
named by the Griffiths Committee) could administer about 20,000 accounts, and
in larger army pay offices some 800 compilation clerks could effectively main-
tain about 350,000 accounts. The relevant entries were made in the loose-leaf
accounts through casualty notifications on slips that were coloured to identify
the type of entry to be made in the account. Other documents on casualty slips or
through regimental routine orders or hospital admission sheets notified the
soldier’s account of any admissions to hospital. The APD establishments
employed boy and girl clerks from the age of 14 (as did the POSB), and many of
the younger girls were employed as tracers. The task of tracers was to attempt to
locate a soldier’s account through the booking-in and loose-leaf systems. They
were mobile and would attempt to trace a soldier’s record. Due to the regimental
numbering system and the field commissions and transfers, soldiers accounts
and documents could be transferred from one section to another, or to another
army pay office. At the Army Pay Office in Shrewsbury, the Regimental Pay-
master employed girls from the Priory School in the town on Saturdays and in
the holidays at two shillings a day.59
In fact, neither the Griffiths Committee nor the War Office Finance Branch
appreciated that the women clerks were the cogs that made the bureaucratic pay
and financial machine of the wartime army pay office organisation run effi-
ciently. However, two Regimental Paymasters did recognise the role of women
clerical workers, and their comments appeared in The Souvenir. Colonel A. B.
Church CMG, Regimental Paymaster at APO Woolwich, made the following
point to confirm this:
The controlling of 5 million soldier accounts and almost a similar number

of those of their wives and dependants and keeping those accounts, and
making continual payments in such a manner that they would not only
satisfy the public, but in a way that would ensure that our gallant men at the
Front should have minimum concern.60
His colleague Colonel Blackburn the Regimental Paymaster at nearby APO

Blackheath commented that, ‘Women were the machines that did the work’.61
The efficiency of the Army pay services generally is reflected in the fact that
the proper payment of the Army in the field was not a major issue during the
First World War. Most of the efficiency of the Army pay services, particularly
reflected in the role of the APOs during the First World War, was due to the
women staff, of whom history has previously said little. Despite a pool of cleri-
cal labour in 1914, most had ‘no knowledge at all of Army Accounts – the mag-
nitude of the work accomplished was inconceivable’.62 The system survived and
victory was achieved in the ‘paper’ war, for at the cessation of hostilities it was
found that the books balanced, as noted by Captain J. E. Thurland APD, whose
words were recorded in the final page of The Souvenir;
Surprises,
1 The errors found 3 years ago,
2 The excellent work done in daily checking, revision and audit
3 The accuracy of accounts when finally closed.
The volume of work and the cost of running an army pay office during the First
World War can be seen from this contemporary newspaper article about the
Army Pay Office Nottingham. The Nottingham pay office was formed in 1916
to control the records and accounts of the Labour Corps that was also formed in
1916.
The Army Pay Office . . . which is the centre for the payment of the whole of
the members of the Labour Corps, their wives, dependents and children is
another triumph of organization, employing no fewer than 4,300 clerks, of
whom 1,300 are females. . . . These provide for the keeping of the large total
of 660,000 accounts, while 25,000 postal communications are received each
day. . . . Owing to the allowances granted by the Government to wives and
dependents, all the various conditions of dependency have to be investi-
gated . . . [and] . . . the weekly wage bills of the Army Pay Office in Notting-
ham is approximately £8,000.63
The women clerks, lady superintendents and other seconded women staff,
mainly from the POSB, who were employed within APD establishments, as well
as their male colleagues, were working with complex accounting, audit and legal
systems, regulated through manuals and War Office ‘Financial Instructions’ that
were constantly being amended. This was all part of the ‘black art’ of army
accounting and administration that became more complicated as the war dragged
on and where allowances became more generous and wider ranging. The APD
women also had to cope with the alien culture of a military environment, ‘Where
work was carried on by both sexes under semi-military discipline the discipline
though slightly irksome at times was new and possibly amusing to some.’64
During the post-1918 era, women generally only gained certain minimal rights
that had been previously denied to them. The prevailing paternalistic attitude
assumed that a women’s place was in the home, and where women did work it
210 J. Black
often reflected low pay and short-term contracts.65 The women who worked in
the wartime APD establishments were as temporary as the reforms of separation
allowances that had expanded in breadth and scope during the Great War. The
post-1918 GPO and Savings Bank Department still employed them, albeit on the
same conditions that existed before 1914. Inequalities in pay structures based on
gender were common in all spheres of work during most of the twentieth
century, and were accepted by employer and trade unions alike.
Women aged 30 and over were enfranchised not on the same terms as male
enfranchisement, and equal enfranchisement came only in 1928, ten years after
the end of the Great War. Under the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919
women were now allowed to enter the accountancy and legal professions,
although few did. The same was true of the higher civil service where a few
women did penetrate the higher civil service after 1920, as was the case of Hilda
Martindale, who wrote an insider’s view of women in the Home Civil Service in
1938. She praised women employed in ‘white-bloused’ government work during
the First World War, most of it in a temporary capacity for the duration of the
war only:
In the War Office much responsible work was given over to women. They
had to draft letters and prepare decisions that would bind the Department.
They were employed on responsible accounting work in the army pay
offices, in investigating disputes in connection with War Office contracts,
and in coding and decoding telegrams.66
Many women workers did find the war a genuinely liberating experience, albeit
a temporary one, including the women who were employed within the wartime
APD establishments. An example of this can be seen from the ‘Boy-Girl’ article
written in 1920, where KFK reminisced on the ten weeks spent, in the sultry
summer of 1914 with a highly emotive atmosphere, at the Separation Allowance
Wing temporarily housed at Woolwich labour exchange, with the bands daily
playing off drafts of reservists to war with martial music as they departed from
Woolwich Arsenal station:
What days of sudden but lasting friendships, of lightning impressions,

printed forever on the excited brain. Girls to whom the sight of a soldier had
been something of an event, studying paysheets with sergeants and corpo-
rals, as if born to it.67
Appendix
Growth of the numbers and categories employed within APD establishments
within the UK, 1914 to 1920 (extracts from ‘The Military Effort during the
Great War 1914 to 1920’, section 23, ‘Growth of the Royal Army Pay Depart-
ment and Corps’).
Table 14.1 Army Pay Department – strength at home 1914–20
Officers, Army Pay Civilian acting Lady

Department paymasters superintendents
1 August 1914 151 – –

1 January 1915 165 263 –
1 July 1915 167 412 –
1 January 1916 165 516 13
1 July 1916 190 541 100
1 March 1917 207 573 148
1 August 1917 227 779 139
1 October 1917 233 785 136
1 January 1918 221 774 138
1 August 1918 254 823 140
1 December 1918 251 808 130
1 February 1919 325 812 241
1 April 1919 379 1,400 279
1 August 1919 351 1,145 252
1 December 1919 306 731 108
10 April 1920 206 326 32
Table 14.2 Army Pay Corps – strength at home 1914–20
Army Pay Civilian writers, Male civil clerks Female clerks

Corps etc.
1 August 1914 585 299 – –

1 January 1915 4,176 – 1,815 –
1 July 1915 6,368 – 2,665 479
1 January 1916 5,994 – 1,752 4,556
1 July 1916 5,667 – 1,345 9,304
1 March 1917 7,693 – 959 11,920
1 August 1917 9,851 – 1,011 14,594
1 October 1917 10,761 – 990 15,119
1 January 1918 12,226 – 990 16,081
1 August 1918 11,761 – 997 17,532
1 December 1918 18,184 – 923 18,758
1 February 1919 12,906 – 3,354 25,603
1 April 1919 8,711 – 8,896 28,472
1 August 1919 5,853 – 7,679 20,434
1 December 1919 3,096 – 6,009 11,070
10 April 1920 1,760 – 4,500 4,255
212 J. Black
Notes
1 The author would like to acknowledge the kind assistance given by the following: Dr
Christine Joy, Archivist, Manchester High School for Girls; Ms Kate Perry,
Archivist, Girton College, Cambridge; Colonel J. D. Sainsbury OBE TD FSA, who
directed the author to the existence of the ‘B’ List of mention in dispatches that were
awarded to civil servants in 1918–19. The author was able to ascertain from the ‘B’
special mentions list the names of some 250 women staff employed within establish-
ments under the remit of the Finance Member of the War Office, including those
employed within APD establishments under the control of the War Office Finance
Branch.
2 The Souvenir, 1920, pp. 5–6. Imperial War Museum Library (IWM) K87/465.
3 The National Archives (TNA) WO 33/11318 – Report of the Committee on Army Pay
Office Organisation, 1919 (the Griffiths Report).
4 A. Marwick, Women at War, London: Fontana, 1977; G. Braybon, Women Workers
in the First World War, London: Routledge, 1981; D. Thom, Nice Girls and Rude
Girls: Women Workers in World War I, London: Tauris, 2000.
5 M. Campbell-Kelly, ‘Large-scale data processing in the Prudential 1850–1930’,
Accounting, Business and Financial History Journal 2, 1992, pp. 120–3; M.
Campbell-Kelly, ‘Data processing and technological change: the Post Office Savings
Bank, 1861–1930’, Technology and Culture 39, 1998, pp. 19–22.
6 M. Zimmeck, ‘Jobs for the girls: the expansion of clerical work for women,
1850–1914’, in A. V. John (ed.), Unequal Opportunities: Women’s Employment in
England 1800–1918, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986, pp. 159–60.
7 G. Anderson, The White-Blouse Revolution, Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1988; S. P. Walker, ‘Identifying the women behind the “railed-in desk”: the
proto-feminisation of bookkeeping in Britain’, Accounting, Auditing and Accountabil-
ity Journal 16 (4), 2003, p. 3.
8 J. Black, ‘War, women and accounting: female staff in the UK Army Pay Department
Offices 1914–1920’, Accounting, Business and Financial History 16 (2), 2006, pp.
195–218.
9 Marwick, Women at War.
10 Braybon, Women Workers.
11 TNA, WO 32/9316 – History of Separation Allowances and Effects.
12 S. Pedersen, Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and
France 1914–1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 79.
13 S. Pedersen, ‘Gender, welfare and citizenship in Britain during the Great War’, Amer-
ican Historical Review 95 (4), 1990, pp. 984–1006. Continuing research suggests that
the scope of separation allowances during the First World War went far beyond the
aspirations of Beveridge and his 1942 proposals. From 1906 to 1914 Beveridge was
adviser to the government on old-age pensions and national insurance. During the
First World War Beveridge was responsible for the control of manpower within the
UK.
14 TNA, WO/9316, History of Separation Allowances.
15 Zimmeck, ‘Jobs for the girls’, p. 163.
16 H. Gay, The History of Imperial College 1907–2007, London: Imperial College Press,
2007, p. 118.
17 The Souvenir, 1920, p. 15.
18 J. Black, ‘Supermen and superwomen: the Army Pay Services and the First World
War’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 84, 2006, p. 269.
20 TNA, WO 32/9316, History of Separation Allowances.
21 Nottingham Evening Post, 29 March 1918.
22 L. G. Hinchliffe, ‘Trust and be Trusted’: the Royal Army Pay Corps and its Origins,
published privately by Corps Headquarters, RAPC Worthy Down, Winchester, 1983,
p. 62.
23 A. Kessler-Harris, ‘What is gender history now?’, in D. Canadine (ed.), What is
History Now? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, p. 99.
24 TNA, WO 32/9316, History of Separation Allowances; J. Black, ‘War, women and
accounting’, p. 213.
25 M. Campbell-Kelly, ‘Data processing and technological change’, p. 2.
26 M. Campbell-Kelly, ‘Data processing and technological change’, pp. 20–1.
27 Manchester High School for Girls began a secretarial and commercial course in 1901
under the tutelage of Miss Violet Moore (Archives of Manchester High School for
Girls).
28 George Gissing noted the rise of these secretarial colleges in his novel The Odd
Women, first published in 1893. An example of such a secretarial college was Lore-
burn College, which was opened in Manchester in January 1914 and specialised in
secretarial courses for both young men and women. The curriculum was, however,
split along gender lines: young men could take courses related to senior and junior
clerical work, but not young women. The women students had to be content with
shorthand and typing courses, or typing and bookkeeping courses, although a foreign
language might be available. The gender segregation in the curriculum suggests that
the young men were being trained for more ‘intellectual’ clerical positions, whereas
the women students were being specifically trained for more ‘mechanical’ divisions
of clerical labour. (A copy of the College Prospectus of 1914 can be found in the
Archives, Manchester High School for Girls.)
29 Lilian Maud Bull (1877–1943) attended Girton College from 1895 to 1898, and taught
in independent and county secondary schools in Wales until 1918. From 1918 to 1923
Lilian was a junior administrative assistant at the War Office Finance Branch (Accounts
6, experimental cost accounts). She continued with secretarial work from 1923 until her
death in 1943 (Girton College Register 1869–1943, entry for 1895, p. 91).
30 E. Jones, Accountancy and the British Economy, 1840–1980, London: Batsford, 1981,
p. 136; K. Shackleton, ‘Gender segregation in Scottish chartered accountancy: the
development of male concerns about the admission of women, 1900–25’, Accounting,
Business and Financial History 9 (1), 1999, pp. 136–9. Dorothy Ashford (later Mrs
Clark) attended Girton College from 1910 to 1913; she gained a teaching qualification
from Cheltenham Ladies’ College in 1914 and taught first at St Paul’s Girls’ School
and then at Kirkham Grange School. From 1917 to 1919, the year of her marriage,
Dorothy worked as a cashier in a chartered accountants’ office in Birmingham. The
first woman to be admitted to any professional accountants’ body was Miss H. M.
Claridge, who was admitted to the Incorporated Society of Accountants and Auditors
in 1920, when her father was President. Miss E. Watts was admitted to the Institute of
Chartered Accountants for England and Wales in 1924 (Jones, Accountancy and the
British Economy, p. 136). However Miss Minnie Emily Moore, who was born in
1871, may have been the first woman graduate to enter the accounting profession.
Minnie attended Girton College from 1892 to 1895, graduating with a Mathematics
Tripos, 1895. Minnie became an Incorporated Accountant, being admitted as an
Associate on 19 January 1922 (Girton College Register 1869–1946).
31 Zimmeck, ‘Jobs for the girls’, pp. 158–61.
33 TNA, WO 33/11318, the Griffiths Report, para 5.
37 The name ‘Dover’ system was derived from the Army Pay Office at Dover (respons-
ible for the accounts of the Royal Garrison Artillery), where the pilot scheme was
undertaken between 1904 and 1905.
214 J. Black
38 J. Black, ‘Administering the “Dover” system of peace and war’, paper presented to
the Management History Group, Queen Mary College, University of London, 19 June
2005.
39 J. Baynes, Morale: A Study of Men and Courage, new edn, London: Leo Cooper,
1987, p. 150.
40 J. Black, ‘Supermen and superwomen’, pp. 267–8. The original source for this
information was the ‘Poor Law Officer Manual’ for 1917, p. 157. This referred to a
case of a soldier of the Essex Regiment who had deserted his family and enlisted. The
family were in the care of the Croydon Guardians of the Poor. The Guardians
appealed to the War Office for the issue of separation allowances that were denied
due to his desertion. However, the Regimental Paymaster at APO Warley made com-
pulsory deductions from the soldier’s weekly pay amounting to four shilling a week.
This allowed the release of the soldier’s family from the care of the Croydon Poor
Law Guardians.
41 The Souvenir, 1920, pp. 5–6.
42 J. Black, ‘War, women and accounting’, pp. 197–8.
44 Ibid.
45 TNA, WO 32/9316, History of Separation Allowances.
46 Campbell-Kelly, ‘Data processing and technological change’, p. 21.
51 It would appear that the majority of lady superintendents were middle class and
single or widowed, although some married lady superintendents have been identi-
fied. For example, Mrs Catherine Reid Dick (née Treadwell, later Lady Reid Dick,
1890–1981). Catherine married William Reid Dick, a sculptor, on 6 August 1914,
two days after the start of the First World War. Mrs Reid Dick became a superin-
tendent at an APD establishment in London and was mentioned in dispatches in
1918 (Times, 3 September 1918). Her husband had enlisted into the Royal Army
Medical Corps (Territorial Force) some days after his marriage and served in Egypt,
transferring to the Royal Engineers as a surveyor in 1917. He became a renowned
sculptor and designed the Menin Gate lions at Ypres and other war memorials, for
which services he was knighted in 1935. Mrs Beryl Bradford was the widow of
Captain S. B. Bradford, who died prior to 1914. Mrs Bradford was appointed MBE
in 1920 for war work that included work with the Metropolitan Police as a volun-
teer with women patrols, 1914–15; superintendent APD, 1916–19; and Women’s
Controller at the Air Ministry, 1919–20. Mrs Ada Leila Gray, superintendent Army
Pay Office York, was mentioned in dispatches (Times, 3 September 1918), and
appointed MBE (Burke’s Handbook of the Order of the British Empire, 1921, p.
223). Mrs Mary Josephine Farrant (widow from Heavitree, Exeter), senior lady
superintendent, appointed MBE in 1920. Prior to 1914, Mrs Farrant had been a
Home Office probation officer (Burke’s Handbook, pp. 184–5). One lady superin-
tendent identified from Burke’s appeared to have been working class. Miss Nellie
Hurcomb Palmer was born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire in 1877. From 1912 to
1914 Miss Palmer was the Organising Secretary of the National Union of Suf-
fragette Societies. From 1916 to 1920, Miss Palmer was a superintendent (technical
and welfare) at the Army Pay Office Exeter and was also awarded a mention in dis-
patches (Times, 3 September 1918) and appointed MBE (Burke’s Handbook,
p. 397).
52 Again, ongoing research by the author based on the temporary army pay office estab-
lished in the lace-making centre of Nottingham in 1916 suggests that the majority of
women clerks recruited were from the locality and, out of 50 traced, most had previ-
ously been employed in the hosiery and lace industries as machinists. The transition
from ‘blue-collar’ to ‘white-blouse’ work may have been the result of the expansion
of general elementary education since the Education Act of 1870.
54 Thom, Nice Girls, pp. 34–5.
56 J. D. Sainsbury, ‘The “A” and “B” lists of mentions for valuable services in connec-
tion with the war 1914–1919’, The Journal of the Orders and Medals Research
Society 17 (2), 1976, pp. 106–15.
57 Gay, History of Imperial College, p. 136 fn. 31.
59 P. E. Price, The History of Priory School 1911–1981, Shrewsbury: privately printed,
1981, p. 36.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 Nottingham Evening Post, 29 March 1918.
65 G. Braybon (ed.), Evidence, History and the Great War: Historians and the Impact of
1914–18, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2003, pp. 216–28.
66 H. Martindale, Women Servants of the State: A History of Women in the Civil Service,
London: George Allen & Unwin, 1938, p. 74.
Bibliography
Anderson, G., The White-Blouse Revolution, Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1988.
Baynes, J., Morale: A Study of Men and Courage, new edn, London: Leo Cooper, 1987.
Black, J., ‘War, women and accounting: female staff in the UK Army Pay Department
Offices 1914–1920’, Accounting, Business and Financial History 16 (2), 2006, pp.
195–218.
Black, J., ‘Supermen and superwomen: the Army Pay Services and the First World War’,
Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 84, 2006, pp. 260–80.
Black, J., ‘Administering the “Dover” system in peace and war’, paper presented to the
Management History Group Meeting, Queen Mary College, University of London,
June 2005.
Black, J., ‘The biggest bookkeeper in Britain – the Army Pay Department 1878–1920’,
paper presented to the Accounting, Business and Finance History Conference, Cardiff
Business School, September 1995.
Braybon, G. (ed.), Evidence, History and the Great War: Historians and the Impact of
1914–18, Oxford: Berghahn, 2003.
Braybon, G., Women Workers in the First World War, London: Routledge, 1981.
Campbell-Kelly, M., ‘Data processing and technological change: the Post Office Savings
Bank, 1861–1930’, Technology and Culture 39, 1998, pp. 1–32.
Campbell-Kelly, M., ‘Large-scale data processing in the Prudential 1850–1930’,
Accounting, Business and Financial History 2, 1992, pp. 117–39.
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Nisbett & Co, 1909.
Gay, H., The History of Imperial College 1907–2007, London: Imperial College Press,
2007.
216 J. Black
Gissing, George, The Odd Women, ed. Patricia Ingham, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000.
Hinchliffe, L. G., ‘Trust and be Trusted’: The Royal Army Pay Corps and its Origins,
published privately by Corps Headquarters, RAPC Worthy Down, Winchester, 1983.
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Kessler-Harris, A., ‘What is gender history now?’, in Cannadine, D. (ed.), What is
History Now? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, pp. 95–112.
Martindale, H., Women Servants of the State: A History of Women in the Civil Service,
London: George Allen & Unwin, 1938.
Marwick, A., Women at War, London: Fontana, 1977.
Nottingham Evening Post, 29 March 1918.
Pedersen, S., Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and
France 1914–1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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1981.
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with the war 1914–1919’, The Journal of the Orders and Medals Research Society 17
(2), 1976, pp. 106–15.
Shackleton, K., ‘Gender segregation in Scottish chartered accountancy: the deployment
of male concerns about the admission of women, 1900–25’, Accounting, Business and
Strachan, H., The Politics of The British Army, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004.
Thom, D., Nice Girls and Rude Girls: Women Workers in World War 1, London: Tauris,
2000.
Thompson, F., Lark Rise to Candleford, ed. Hannah Sambrook, Harlow: Longman, 1984.
Times, 3 September 1918.
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of bookkeeping in Britain’, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 16 (4),
2003, pp. 606–39.
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Girton College Archive

Girton College Register 1869–1946 WWI Card index of undergraduates’ contributions
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Loveburn Secretarial College Prospectus 1914.
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15 Women and money
The United States
Nancy Marie Robertson and Susan M. Yohn
A former colony of Britain, the United States based women’s rights to property
on a legal foundation drawn from English Common Law as well as equity law.
Such concepts as coverture or feme sole were known in the American context.
As the American legal system developed over time, at least two critical factors
differentiated it from that of England and Wales. One was the introduction of
legal ideas from elsewhere such as community property (a continental idea), and
the second was that most financial and marital laws were established at the local
and state not national level. Hence the history of American women’s relation-
ship to money varied from state to state and the more sophisticated analyses tend
to be case studies of the situation in particular states. As noted in the general
introduction, much of the work on women and money has focused on women as
wage-earning workers or on the unpaid labour of women as wives and mothers.1
In addition, in the American context, much has been written about women as
consumers.2 There is a growing literature on married women’s right to own
property, women’s ownership of business, and the possible relationship between
the two. Far less has been written about American women’s engagement with
other aspects of the economy, such as finance including banking, stocks, and
other forms of investment.
The existing literature, as well as the two chapters that follow, raise a series
of interesting questions. What was the relationship between the legal ownership
of assets and the actual control of them? Was it in women’s interest to be treated
the same as men or was their position advanced by being treated differently?
What was the relationship between the changes in women’s financial position
and their social and political status? Were women’s financial activities, includ-
ing business ownership, best understood as the consequence of their own
choices or the result of social constraints?
Married Women’s Property Acts

The right of American married women to own property was one of the critical
legal changes of the nineteenth century. The first married women’s property acts
were passed in 1839 in Mississippi, 1844 in Michigan, 1845 in Massachusetts
and in Texas. The laws were written into state constitutions in California (1849),
Women and money 219
Oregon (1857) and Kansas (1859). By 1865, 29 states had some form of married
women’s property acts. The process was not completed nationwide until the
early twentieth century. We use the umbrella term ‘married women’s property
acts’ advisedly because provisions of the laws varied from state to state and
there were possible multiple incarnations within a single state. In New York,
there were three versions: the original law was passed in 1848 and amended in
1849. Additional legislation was passed in 1850 and 1851 to ‘eliminate the gray
areas of earlier legislation’. These efforts to reform the original law culminated
in the passage in 1862 of what Norma Basch identifies as one of the boldest of
statutes – the New York Earnings Act – which ‘gave wives the right to sue and
be sued and included their wages as part of their separate estate’.3
Historians disagree over the causes and ultimate significance of married
women’s property laws and the adoption of community property laws.4 What
might be referred to as the optimistic school, as represented by Carole Shammas,
asserts that these acts ‘represented the most substantial change in women’s legal
status in 700 years of the common law’.5 The laws contributed to changes not
only in women’s economic position, but also in their social and familial roles.
Shammas observes that the ‘late nineteenth century witnessed a more rapid
increase in the divorce rate . . . than at any other time in U.S. history’ partially as
a consequence of these laws.6
Other historians are more restrained in their assessment of the impact.
Assessing New York’s laws, Basch concludes that a key motivation was the
desire of men to control the actions of other men, namely a father who wished to
see a daughter’s assets protected from an unscrupulous or incompetent son-in-
law.7 Suzanne Lebsock finds that in Virginia legislators sought to protect wives’
money from creditors in volatile economic periods. Lebsock argues against a
liberatory interpretation of the laws, writing that they were intended to protect
women rather than make them equal. In diminishing their significance, she
concurs with Mary Beard that married women’s property laws ‘merely trans-
formed generally accepted equity principles into provisions of statutes’.8 These
critics find the complexity of the marketplace demanded new laws and legal
options and that the ‘woman question’ was secondary. In addition to debating
motives, some historians question the actual impact of the laws. In practice,
wives could be pressured to defer to their husband’s wishes. Lebsock goes so far
as to suggest that, in a time of unease over social change, women may have
become more deferential.9 The connection between legal ownership and effect-
ive control (let alone equality) could be tenuous as women’s autonomy was
often elusive.
Scholars, however, agree that women at the time saw the laws as significant.
Passage of married women’s property acts was a priority of early women’s
rights advocates even before they championed suffrage. They believed that the
laws could change women’s economic capacity. Given the limitations we have
noted, one might ask why they emphasized passage of these laws. Obviously
there was a potential for financial gain, but they also believed that treating
women as equal economic actors would be the basis of women’s political and
220 N.M. Robertson and S.M. Yohn
social power. Married women’s property acts challenged the legal construct of
man and wife as one. To advocates like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the property
acts redeemed a woman ‘from her lost condition’ and meant that she was ‘no
longer a legal nonentity’.10
In hindsight, changes in property laws ironically presented women as legal
equals prior to their having the power necessary to achieve full equality. Along-
side married women’s property acts in many states were laws intended to protect
women by requiring that women be examined separately by a notary about their
wishes before signing away their property rights. In their study of legal rulings in
the second half of the nineteenth century, Stacy Braukman and Michael Ross
found that the courts, including the United States Supreme Court, increasingly
eroded this protection. In upholding the fiction of women’s equal power, the
Supreme Court forwarded a ‘new view [that] treated married women as equals and
took them seriously as commercial actors’ in cases regarding women’s property
rights. Braukman and Ross see the outcome as ambiguous in that it ‘left propertied
wives in a position that was at once less protected and less constrained’.11 At the
same time, the courts also maintained women’s dependence when they accepted
the right of a man’s creditors to his wife’s wages.12 Bottom line, the US Supreme
Court and many state courts favoured promoting the rights of creditors rather than
protecting females or promoting their effective equality.13
Women’s businesses
To support her belief in the impact of the new property laws, Carole Shammas
points to the increase in size of women’s assets over the nineteenth century;
there was, she notes, ‘more change in female wealthholding . . . between the
1860s and 1890s than had transpired in the previous two hundred years of
American history’.14 Having gained the right to own property, however, busi-
nesswomen were often stymied by limitations on obtaining credit.15 There were
also cultural obstacles. Despite the thousands of women engaged in running
businesses across the country, the reigning image of a proprietor was that of a
businessman. Historians have developed a vibrant historical literature on Amer-
ican women as proprietors, entrepreneurs and businesswomen through case
studies of individual women, specific industries and local communities.16
Particularly useful, however, is Angel Kwolek-Folland’s general survey of
women’s participation in business that provides a framework in which to place
the vast majority of the case studies.17 Her story is not one simple upward trend
but rather one with peaks and valleys. She argues that the numbers of business-
women increased but that women lost ground in the late nineteenth century as
the economy underwent a transformation from individual proprietorships to
corporate capitalism and markets shifted from local to national. Opportunities to
participate in the business world increased as large corporate structures
employed growing numbers of women as clerical, sales or support staff. Cultur-
ally, the image of the ‘business girl’ entered common parlance, but her success
overshadowed the declining possibilities for women as business owners.18
Women and money 221
For much of American history, businesswomen tended to start enterprises
related to their domestic work, including boarding-houses, clothing and
millinery, food production, laundry work, small retail stores and the beauty
industry – what Edith Sparks has called the ‘commerce of domesticity’.19 An
examination of the case studies of businesswomen suggests some additional
trends: they operated on shoestring budgets, had access to limited credit, relied
on the support of family members and other kinds of personal networks, gener-
ally remained sole proprietors, and had a relatively high failure rate. These gen-
eralizations ring true for many small businesses whether they were started by
men or women. One difference was that few women sought to grow their busi-
nesses; their ambitions were checked by modest desires for a ‘decent return on
their risk, some value for their labors, and, if not always roses, at least bread’.20
Whether women kept their businesses small because of their own choices or
because of the constraints they faced remains open for further study. Although
women had functioned as entrepreneurial capitalists, they were clearly not
visible as large-scale corporate capitalists.21 Their contribution to the develop-
ment of corporate capitalism at the turn of the century would come in their role
as investors.
Investment and finance

Even as state legislators debated married women’s property acts in ante-bellum
America, women were, in the words of Robert Wright, ‘part of the cutting edge
of national economic development’. As early as the colonial period they owned
and speculated in government bonds and debt. Popular were investments in
banks, insurance and joint-stock companies that yielded high dividends.22 By the
1880s women’s forays into the stock market were significant enough to gain the
attention of leading Wall Street figures. William Fowler, a speculator himself,
suggested that women’s virtues – hope, patience, fortitude, excitement, fancy –
were all associated with speculation.23 Fowler’s contemporary, trader Henry
Clews was less favourable in his assessment of women’s investing abilities.
Wall Street, he argued, should be off-limits to women. They did not have the
‘nature’ for speculation. They ran the risk of being ‘fleeced’. He warned them
not to speculate because they were ‘impulsive’ and ‘impressionable’. He con-
cluded that ‘it is probably only in the matrimonial line that women can become
successful speculators’.24 These comments were not trivial nor made in passing,
but represented serious social constraints upon women’s ability to participate in
the investment world. The prescriptive literature of the time advised women to
turn over management of their financial portfolios to trusted male advisors. To
date there have been no studies building on Robert Wright’s work for the later
period in America. What women did or did not do, we do not know.
Money has often been seen as something related only to the business sector.
An analysis of women and money suggests the need to look also at the ‘non-
profit’ or ‘voluntary’ sector. Wright points out that women’s benevolent associ-
ations of the early nation were engaged in the financial markets, investing in
equities to support their reform activities.25 In examining the history of women
and money, one must look at the role played by women’s voluntary associations
in training women to raise, manage, dispense and invest money.26 By the late
nineteenth century, women’s organizations advocating issues ranging from suf-
frage to Protestant missions raised millions of dollars and were a potent eco-
nomic force. Women presented these undertakings as being for social or moral
good rather than as a sign of their economic or political acumen. While the small
proprietor may not have ‘grown’ her business, the female leaders of these
reform organizations essentially operated international businesses where they
bought and sold property, invested in equities and employed thousands.
Observers at the time described these women’s voluntary efforts as paralleling
those of their male family members engaged in the corporate sector. J. P.
Morgan credited Grace Dodge, head of several national reform organizations, as
having ‘the finest business brain in the United States, not excepting that of any
man’. While Dodge’s male family members exerted their efforts in commerce
and mining, Dodge found her calling, as one biographer put it, as a ‘merchant of
dreams’.27
Historians such as Alan Trachtenberg and Alfred Chandler have analysed the
rise of a national integrated corporate order in the early twentieth century.28 This
trend was replicated among voluntary associations, with the difference being
that in this sector it was women who had built the large systematic organi-
zations. The association of reform work with notions like ‘voluntary’ or ‘non-
profit’ has blinded many historians to the large amounts of money involved.
Male leaders at the time were not so near-sighted. In the 1920s, they increas-
ingly identified female-controlled organizations as the targets for what were
essentially hostile takeovers.29 At the end of the day, women in both voluntary
and for-profit organizations were in comparable positions, relegated to a limited
number of jobs, in bureaucracies where they faced what we would come to call
‘glass ceilings’. Women were incorporated into male-dominated organizations
where they exercised little authority over the financial decisions made. Paradoxi-
cally, this decrease in women’s power came as they owned more wealth, but
management and control of that wealth was administered (and controlled) by
financial professionals.30
Notes
1 Among the many works on wage-earning women in the United States, one of the
most comprehensive remains Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage
Earning Women in the United States, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982; see
also Ava Baron (ed.), Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor,
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.
2 Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in
American Department Stores, 1890–1940, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press,
1986; Elaine S. Abelson, When Ladies Go A-Thieving, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989; and Kathy Lee Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure
in Turn-of-the-Century New York, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1986.
3 Norma Basch, In the Eyes of the Law: Women, Marriage, and Property in
Women and money 223
Nineteenth-Century New York, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982, p. 28. A
woman’s right to her earnings was more controversial than her rights to retain prop-
erty (that she held prior to marriage). This stemmed from the beliefs both that there
was a unity of interests in the marriage and that a man was the head of the household.
Therefore money that a woman earned during marriage was ‘rightfully’ the man’s to
control. Additionally, many at the time believed that a man was entitled to his wife’s
time and services (and any resulting wages).
4 A brief discussion of community property laws can be found in Carole Shammas,
‘Re-assessing the Married Women’s Property Acts’, Journal of Women’s History 6
(1), 1994, pp. 9, 11, and Stacy Lorraine Braukman and Michael A. Ross, ‘Married
women’s property and male coercion: United States’ courts and the privy examina-
tion, 1864–1887’, Journal of Women’s History 12 (2), 2000, p. 60.
5 Shammas, ‘Re-assessing the Married Women’s Property Acts’, p. 9.
6 Shammas, ‘Re-assessing the Married Women’s Property Acts’, p. 26. Family law,
like financial laws, varied from state to state.
7 Basch, In the Eyes of the Law.
8 Mary Beard quoted in Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and
Culture in a Southern Town, 1784–1860, New York: W.W. Norton, 1984, p. 84.
9 Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg, p. 86.
10 From Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s address to the Legislature of the State of New York
(1854); see Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage
(eds), History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. 1, 1848–1861, New York: Fowler & Wells,
1881, pp. 600–601.
11 Braukman and Ross, ‘Married women’s property and male coercion’, p. 75 (emphasis
added).
12 Braukman and Ross, ‘Married women’s property and male coercion’, pp. 71–72, 74.
The Supreme Court ruled in these cases because they entailed citizens of one state
suing those of another. Although the decisions were not binding on states, state courts
accepted them as legal precedent to overturn laws protecting women.
13 As suggested above, there was a fair amount of variation among states; for one
example of extreme differences in a single region (the South), see Suzanne D.
Lebsock, ‘Radical reconstruction and the property rights of Southern women’,
Journal of Southern History 43 (2), 1977, pp. 195–216.
14 Shammas, ‘Re-assessing the Married Women’s Property Acts’, p. 21.
15 Access to credit became an issue for the women’s rights movement of the late twenti-
eth century and was finally achieved with the passage in 1974 of the Equal Credit
Opportunity Act.
16 Lynn Hudson, The Making of ‘Mammy Pleasant’: A Black Entrepreneur in
Nineteenth-Century San Francisco, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2002;
Wendy Gamber, The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades,
1860–1930, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997; Kathy Lee Peiss, Hope in
a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture, New York: Metropolitan Books,
1998; Edith Sparks, Capital Intentions: Female Proprietors in San Francisco,
1850–1920, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
17 Angel Kwolek-Folland, Incorporating Women: A History of Women and Business in
the United States, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998.
18 See Angel Kwolek-Folland, Engendering Business: Men and Women in the Corpor-
ate Office, 1870–1930, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1994, for a discussion
of the growing presence and importance of women in corporate offices in the United
States and the rise of the image of the ‘business girl’.
19 Sparks, Capital Intentions, also calls it ‘commercial domesticity’.
20 Kwolek-Folland, Incorporating Women, p. 216. See Edith Sparks on the decline in
women’s proprietorships from 1880 to 1920.
21 For a general discussion of women’s ‘invisibility’ in the business history literature
and the obstacles they faced, see Mary Yeager, ‘Will there ever be a feminist business
history’, in Mary Yeager (ed.), Women in Business, 3 vols, Cheltenham: Edward
Elgar, 1999, vol. 1, pp. xi–xciii.
22 Robert Wright, ‘Women and finance in the early national U.S.’, Essays in History 42,
2000, available online: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH42/EH42.html
(accessed 29 July 2008), para 31.
23 William Worthington Fowler, Twenty Years of Inside Life in Wall Street, New York:
Orange Judd Co., 1880.
24 Henry Clews, Twenty-Eight Years in Wall Street, New York: J.S. Ogilvie Publishing
Co., 1887, pp. 443–445.
25 Wright, ‘Women and finance in the early national U.S.’, para 38.
26 For more on this subject, see Anne Boylan, The Origins of Women’s Activism: New
York and Boston, 1797–1840, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press,
2002; Lori Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and
Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States, New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1990; Susan Yohn, ‘Let Christian women set the example in their own gifts:
the “business” of Protestant women’s organizations’, in Margaret Bendroth and Vir-
ginia Brereton (eds), Women and Twentieth Century Protestantism, Urbana, IL: Uni-
versity of Illinois Press, 2002, pp. 213–235.
27 Abbie Graham, Grace Dodge: Merchant of Dreams, New York: Women’s Press,
1926, p. 328.
28 Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded
Age, New York: Hill & Wang, 1982; Alfred Chandler, Strategy and Structure: Chap-
ters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1962.
29 See Susan Yohn, ‘Let Christian women set the example’, pp. 221–225.
30 Some of this increased wealth came from women’s earnings but substantial amounts
came from inheritances.
Bibliography
Abelson, Elaine S., When Ladies Go A-Thieving, New York: Oxford University Press,
1989.
Baron, Ava (ed.), Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor, Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Basch, Norma, In the Eyes of the Law: Women, Marriage, and Property in Nineteenth-
Century New York, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982.
Benson, Susan Porter, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in Amer-
ican Department Stores, 1890–1940, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1986.
Boylan, Anne, The Origins of Women’s Activism: New York and Boston, 1797–1840,
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Braukman, Stacey Lorraine and Ross, Michael A., ‘Married women’s property and male
coercion: United States’ courts and the privy examination, 1864–1887’, Journal of
Women’s History 12 (2), 2000, pp. 57–80.
Chandler, Alfred, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enter-
prise, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1962.
Clews, Henry, Twenty-Eight Years in Wall Street, New York: J.S. Ogilvie Publishing
Co., 1887.
Fowler, Willliam Worthington, Twenty Years of Inside Life in Wall Street, New York:
Orange Judd Co., 1880.
Gamber, Wendy, The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades,
1860–1930, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997.
Women and money 225
Ginzberg, Lori, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in
the Nineteenth-Century United States, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.
Graham, Abbie, Grace Dodge: Merchant of Dreams, New York: Women’s Press, 1926.
Hudson, Lynn, The Making of ‘Mammy Pleasant’: A Black Entrepreneur in Nineteenth-
Century San Francisco, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2002.
Kessler-Harris, Alice, Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in the United
States, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Kwolek-Folland, Angel, Engendering Business: Men and Women in the Corporate
Office, 1870–1930, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1994.
Kwolek-Folland, Angel, Incorporating Women: A History of Women and Business in the
United States, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998.
Lebsock, Suzanne, The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern
Town, 1784–1860, New York: W.W. Norton, 1984.
Lebsock, Suzanne, ‘Radical reconstruction and the property rights of Southern women’,
Journal of Southern History 43 (2), 1977, pp. 195–216.
Peiss, Kathy Lee, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-
Century New York, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1986.
Peiss, Kathy Lee, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture, New York:
Metropolitan Books, 1998.
Shammas, Carole, ‘Re-assessing the Married Women’s Property Acts’, Journal of
Women’s History 6 (1), 1994, pp. 9–30.
Sparks, Edith, Capital Intentions: Female Proprietors in San Francisco, 1850–1920,
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Anthony, Susan B. and Gage, Matilda Joslyn (eds), History of
Woman Suffrage, Vol. 1, 1848–1861, New York: Fowler & Wells, 1881.
Trachtenberg, Alan, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded
Age, New York: Hill & Wang, 1982.
Wright, Robert, ‘Women and finance in the early national U.S.’, Essays in History 42,
2000, available online: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH42/EH42.html
(accessed 29 July 2008).
Yeager, Mary (ed.), Women in Business, 3 vols, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1999.
Yohn, Susan, ‘Let Christian women set the example in their own gifts: the “business” of
Protestant women’s organizations’, in Bendroth, Margaret and Brereton, Virginia
(eds), Women and Twentieth Century Protestantism, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois
Press, 2002, pp. 213–235.
16 ‘Men seem to take delight in
cheating women’
Legal challenges faced by
businesswomen in the United States,
1880–1920
Susan M. Yohn
On 28 June 1911, readers of the New York Times were greeted by the headline
‘Nellie Bly Fighting for Financial Life . . . Lost $1,400,000 by Forgery’. What
followed were the tribulations of steel-barrel manufacturer, Elizabeth C. Seaman
(known also as the ‘girl’ reporter, Nellie Bly), one more story in her three-year
legal ordeal to save the company originally built by her husband Robert that she
had made into a profitable and thriving concern. About the fraud perpetrated
against Seaman, the Times concluded: ‘That’s An Incident In A Business Where
Men Are As Kind To A Successful Woman as Wolves Are To Rabbits’.1 Two
weeks later, the New York Evening Journal, the newspaper that had formerly
employed Nellie Bly, reiterated this point when it declared about her business
problems, ‘Men That Wouldn’t Cheat Each Other . . . Seem to Take Delight in
Cheating Women’.2 These particular headlines pointed the finger at a business
milieu in which the women were marked as prey; here men were to women as
wolves to rabbits. Seaman’s drama was not exceptional but one in a series of
sensational trials which showcased the vulnerabilities of women who dared to
enter and compete successfully in the business world and financial markets.
Likewise, neither the courts nor the legal system were helpful to women’s
money-making efforts; the justice they sought proved elusive.
Nineteenth-century American women faced numerous obstacles to their
money-making ambitions. Legal reforms enabling women to control their own
money were relatively new, yet credit was hard to come by. Social mores dis-
couraged women from pursuing money-making activities even as a growing
number of women opened their own businesses. These entrepreneurial efforts
proved to be a favourite form of investment activity for American women. Few
of them, however, were able to translate their investment into businesses worthy
of note.3 So disdainful of women’s efforts were the editors of Fortune magazine
that, in 1935, they could not name even 100 women who had made businesses
that the editors could refer to as ‘brilliant successes’. They wrote of the history
of women in business, ‘Carnegies are lacking . . . success stories are few and
faint’.4 For businesswomen, ‘success’ was defined more modestly, marked, for
‘Men seem to take delight in cheating women’ 227
example, by the ability to draw an income better than the meagre wages a
woman might earn as an employee, by the number of years she was able to
sustain her enterprise, or by turning enough of a profit that she could buy real
estate. Given the lesson of courtroom trials endured by those businesswomen
who had made themselves ‘brilliant’, the vast majority of female entrepreneurs
probably deemed it prudent to keep a low profile, do a modest business and stay
on the good side of creditors and the law.
To examine how the legal challenges faced by businesswomen could deter-
mine the course of their careers and limit their economic opportunity, this
chapter focuses on three highly publicized trials that involved contemporaneous
businesswomen in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century New York City:
financier and real-estate mogul Hetty Green’s challenge to her aunt’s will; cos-
metic manufacturer Harriet Hubbard Ayer’s insanity trial; and the bankruptcy
trial of iron-goods manufacturer Elizabeth Cochran Seaman. In each case, these
women found their abilities, ambitions, achievements and their fitness called
into question. As the title suggests, many Americans recognized at the time that
these were events where gender was deployed by the women involved, as well
as by the men who participated, observed and also reported on the cases. More-
over, the courtroom served as a stage from which larger social lessons about
appropriate gender roles could be imparted. As Norma Basch has pointed out in
her work on the Married Women’s Property Acts in New York State, the adjudi-
cation process did not favour women. Women were largely excluded from the
legal profession, unable to act as advocates for one another. They faced a ‘judi-
ciary that was essentially a conservative all-male elite eager to preserve the
status quo’.5 More pointedly, as Mary Yeager writes, ‘the law, like business, was
a gendered instrument, used for different purposes by men and women to
achieve different ends’. She argues that
as laws came to be applied, they reinforced and legitimized inequalities of

power and status between men and women. . . . They gave men easier access
to and title of property; they reinforced men’s domination over the family
and over family businesses; they defined the rules of the economic game,
including patterns of competition and combination, acquisition and merger.6
In the courtroom and at the trials described here, men asserted a hegemonic
claim, while the women in question sought justice or a return of that which they
believed was being stolen from them. For a larger public, these trials, ‘like
rituals, [functioned] as a way for the public to confront chaotic, painful, and
contradictory social issues’ about the appropriate role for women in the larger
economy.7
Harriet Hubbard Ayer

Harriet Hubbard Ayer’s story is especially dramatic. After her marriage to
manufacturer Herbert Ayer failed, Harriet built a successful cosmetics business,
228 S.M. Yohn
the Recamier Manufacturing Company, only to have her principal financial
backer, James Seymour, challenge her business decisions. Initially he tried to
wrest control from her by contesting her patents in court. When he lost this first
case, he convinced Ayer’s former husband to have her committed to an insane
asylum in 1893. What followed was an emotional series of confrontations in
court where Ayer argued for her liberty. A year later she was free but she was
unable to reclaim her business. She spent the rest of her life lecturing and
writing beauty columns for the newspaper, New York World.8
Reporting on her committal to Granger’s sanatorium in Bronxville, the New
York Times summed up the whole of Harriet Hubbard Ayer’s adult life in just
one short paragraph:
Herbert C. Ayer was formerly a rich iron merchant in Chicago. His wife
secured a divorce from him, naming an actress as co-respondent. Mrs. Ayer
then came to this city and started in the business of manufacturing and
selling toilet articles. The custody of her two children was first given to
Mrs. Ayer, but Mr. Ayer afterward secured the control of the children
himself. The case was an exceedingly sensational one at the time. Mrs. Ayer
had much trouble with her partners in business, which resulted in a number
of law suits.9
Harriet Ayer’s life was lived in the public eye. When her demise came, when her
former husband, Herbert, and principal investor, Seymour, finally succeeded in
quite literally ‘capturing’ her, the doctors were reporting that she heard voices,
she cried constantly, she ‘declared that she wanted to die’ and she ‘was in acute
misery’. Having been committed on 9 February 1893, one month later a jury
declared her insane, appraised her property and directed that a guardian be
appointed for her. Called to testify on her own behalf, Ayer was reported to have
been dressed in black, covered in a veil and able only to say ‘no’ when asked if
she knew why she was in court.10
The ‘experts’ in this case were in agreement. Dr Granger, at whose institution
Ayer found herself, testified that her case was grave, that she was ‘probably
incurable’ and that her chances for recovery ‘were very small, but her case was
not hopeless’. Given that he also admitted that, while under his care, Ayer had
only spoken to answer his questions and then as briefly as possible, his diagnosis
was based on very little. He could not confirm that she was an alcoholic as her
family claimed because she had never asked for stimulants of this sort. Asserting
that he had known Mrs Ayer for six years, Dr George Hammond followed Dr
Granger and was emphatic that she had grown increasingly melancholy. To his
mind, she had become unquestionably insane. He was also sure that he knew the
causes. While there were ‘many’, he stressed that ‘over-attention to business
was doubtless one’.
Ayer’s insanity trial followed at least five years of relentless pressure from
Seymour, who acted in concert with his son, Allen, and daughter-in-law, Hattie
(Ayer’s older daughter) and Harriet’s ex-husband, to take the business from her.
The Times called these ‘sensational’ trials and indeed they were. Ayer’s charac-
ter was attacked; she was accused of being a morphine addict and alcoholic, a
negligent mother and was said to be unfit to run her business. How and when her
troubles began exactly and who instigated them is open to some question, but
Ayer had sued Seymour in 1889 for trying to wrest control of her business,
claiming that he had stolen documents from her apartment. Even then, the
charges exchanged in court were salacious. She claimed that Seymour and her
son-in-law had conspired to take control of company stock by both defrauding
and poisoning her. Foreshadowing events to come, she also claimed that they
were trying to ‘destroy her health and reason, and to have her considered
insane’.11
Ayer won this round, but newspaper accounts could not have helped her
image. The stories had everyone keeping their ‘cool’ (this was the word used)
except Ayer herself, as Seymour and her family argued that they simply wanted
to help Ayer overcome ‘the dreadful habit which makes everybody hate her’,
that is, her supposed alcoholism. In round two, Seymour persuaded a French
woman to sue Ayer, charging that the formula upon which the Recamier prepa-
rations were based had been stolen from her by Ayer. Again, Ayer won. The
victory was short-lived, however, as that case was followed by an attempt by
Herbert in 1891 to take custody of her youngest daughter, Margaret. Reeling
from these battles, Ayer was said to have been left both financially and physi-
cally spent. The final blow was Herbert’s signature on the order that led to her
committal.
Because the records do not remain, it is impossible to know exactly how
Ayer built and conducted her business. By all indications, her line of cosmetic
products was very successful. The speculation was that she had earned between
$10,000 and $15,000 a year as a designer, and $12,000 annually in salary from
Recamier. Calculated in 2005 dollars she was earning approximately $252,000
annually as she entered into her fight with Seymour and her ex-husband.12 Her
transition from designer and decorator, and saleswoman of antiques at New
York’s Sypher & Company, to beauty-product manufacturer, appears to have
been seamless. She continued selling antiques for a period as she built her cos-
metics business, with Seymour as her principal backer, but was able to repay her
$50,000 debt to him by 1888.13
Much of Ayer’s success was attributed to her advertisements, called a
‘system of bold advertising conducted on a scale seldom equalled’, which she
authored and which touted testamentary statements by famous users of her prod-
ucts.14 By the late 1880s her line had grown to include balm, freckle and mouth
lotion, soap and powder, all in addition to her original skin cream.15 Biographers
credit Ayer for her innovative promotional strategies, seen as setting the prece-
dent for the advertising campaigns of the twentieth century, but what draws the
most attention is the final chapter of Ayer’s life. Released from the sanatorium
after 14 months, Ayer lectured widely on the evils of involuntary confinement
and then, until her death at 54 in 1903, wrote a health and beauty column for the
New York World. These columns became the basis of a popular beauty book she
230 S.M. Yohn
published in 1899, Harriet Hubbard Ayer’s Book: A Complete and Authentic
Treatise on the Laws of Health and Beauty.
Ayer’s resurrection from her committal and her success as a writer and
beauty advocate is noteworthy. However, the six years of her undoing as a busi-
nesswoman are critical, for they point directly to the challenges that entrepre-
neurial women faced at the time, especially those who dared to build a major
firm. Ayer may well have been ‘insane’, though not in the ways that her family
claimed. Determined to make her own way after separating from and divorcing
Herbert in the early 1880s, she conceived of and produced a new line of prod-
ucts, and then built up the business by developing additional products. If the
speculations about her salary were correct, in the period between 1886 when she
began and 1893 when forced to give up her business, her personal income from
Recamier Manufacturing, in 2005 dollars, was well over one million dollars.
Certainly Ayer would have qualified as one of the handful of ‘brilliant suc-
cesses’ Fortune magazine was seeking. A successful capitalist at a time when
this was not expected of women, she related to a reporter in 1887 some of the
challenges she faced:
When I first announced my intention to go into business my friends were

very much concerned – everybody predicted sure failure, and did everything
in the world to persuade me to take a position as governess or companion,
or some other such position as is usually sought by women who have to
support themselves, but having two daughters to educate I felt that I would
be unable to do them justice on any salary that I could earn and determined
to branch right out into business (like a man,) and the results prove that my
judgment was correct – my success has been unprecedented. I have had a
hard fight, and am now victorious.16
Given what followed, we know that her ‘victory’ was a temporary one. Ayer’s
‘success’ was dependent on the support of her backer, James Seymour. Further-
more, like most working women, Ayer also relied on support (in her case emo-
tional rather than financial) from her family. When these were withdrawn, she
could not sustain her business. When Seymour moved in to claim his stake and
her daughters turned against her, Ayer was undermined. That her family moved
to incarcerate her seems extreme, yet it was not uncommon in this period for
women to be committed under these circumstances.17
Although news accounts of Ayer’s insanity trial mention her earlier legal
confrontations with James Seymour, her major creditor remained in the back-
ground in the final round. At the end, Ayer’s former husband, Herbert, claimed
that he had taken this action to protect her daughters’ interests.18 However, other
sources suggest that by the late 1880s and early 1890s Seymour’s growing finan-
cial troubles may explain his growing interest in Ayer’s cosmetic business and
his attempts to take it over. When the New York agents of the R. G. Dun & Co.
credit agency first reported on Seymour in 1882, he was listed as being in stocks
and mining and to have moved from Chicago to New York in 1880. He was
believed to be worth ‘a good deal of money’, made from investments in mining,
but his actual wealth could not be determined. The Chicago office of R. G. Dun
& Co. reported Seymour and his son Allen to be worth half a million dollars and
deemed them ‘a safe house with whom to do business’.19
By 1885 Seymour and son were largely out of business in Chicago. The 1886
update confirmed that
They have three large bank accounts and apparently are more than easy in
all money matters and are not borrowers. The main partner J.M. Seymour is
the principal capitalist and claims to be worth a million dollars personally
and this is believed to be true although it is very difficult to obtain a definite
confirmation of a broker’s statement. They are looked upon as shrewd
money making people and are considered pretty sharp in their transactions.
This success, however, was short-lived. The 1887 entry in the R. G. Dun & Co.
records show that judgments were ‘found against them’. By 1888, the firm was
said to be ‘dissolved, there will be no succession’. By 1889, the agent could find
no office, ‘the firm is not in existence and we do not know where any of the part-
ners are to be found now’.20
We can only speculate about Seymour’s interest in Harriet Ayer’s business.
Perhaps they had known each other or moved in the same Chicago society
circles. Seymour dealt in mining stocks and Ayer’s husband Herbert was the son
of a wealthy iron dealer; their business interests might well have crossed. Harriet
and Seymour both moved to New York in the early 1880s; here they might have
renewed an acquaintance.21 Ayer may have approached Seymour with her idea
for Recamier cosmetics at the height of his own financial power, when he was
flush with money to invest. The marriage of her daughter Hattie to his son Allen
probably further cemented the business alliance. When his other stocks declined
and other assets dwindled, his investment in her booming business may have
taken on greater significance.
Here, then, is the set up for a classic confrontation and business takeover.
Seymour, a powerful investor seeks to assert his managerial will and know-how
over the interests of the founding director, Harriet Ayer. But in this case issues
of gender come into play, as Ayer’s physical and mental health, and her family
obligations, were used to question the validity of her business judgements,
indeed, the integrity of the whole enterprise (i.e. the charge made that she ‘stole’
the formula while in France). Daughter Margaret Ayer’s biography of her
mother focuses on the doubts Harriet felt about the enterprise, saying that ‘she
was living, she knew, a strange kind of life. . . . Perhaps she wasn’t meant to be
happy. Perhaps she had been too ambitious’. Her ambivalence, suggests Mar-
garet, had business consequences. When she made her agreement with Seymour
for the initial $50,000, she neglected to draw up a contract that made official
what she believed to be their agreement. Upon repayment, Seymour would
return his stock and recognize her control. Says Margaret, ‘she was always
clever at making money, never very good at the details of keeping it’. Ayer
232 S.M. Yohn
neglected to make the agreement legal even though she knew that Seymour had
a reputation on Wall Street for ‘sharp dealing’.22
She had dared to think ‘like a man’ (her words) when she entered business,
but Ayer remained largely enmeshed in and could not think beyond traditional
gender roles. Marilyn Perry argues that in the final years of her life Ayer grew
more interested in feminism as she came into contact with women of different
social classes, but ‘her attitude that wives needed beauty to keep husbands and
that working women needed physical appeal to move ahead in the workplace
kept her within traditional attitudes of her time’.23 Even as she fought to hold on
to her business, she could not reconcile the conflicts she must have felt about her
failed marriage and her troubled relationships with her daughters to see the
charges she faced as primarily an attack on her economic autonomy. Even as she
appeared for a time in the 1880s to be a self-supporting independent woman, her
insanity trial in 1893 was a reminder to spectators of the power men held over
women, be they doctors, former husbands, creditors, lawyers or guardians. Ayer
regained her freedom the following year, her ambitions limited to that of beauty
consultant and writer, not entrepreneur; her new employer one of the news-
papers that had formerly advertised Recamier products.
Elizabeth Cochran Seaman

Before she became an entrepreneur, Elizabeth Cochran established her reputa-
tion as the popular journalist, Nellie Bly, stunt girl reporter who made her career
by masquerading as a hysteric, sex slave, exploited worker to reveal the lives of
marginalized women to the newspaper-reading public. Like Ayer, she under-
stood the power of the news as an agent of publicity and, like Ayer, Bly would
also find herself an object of the publicity generated by the news.24 Widely
hailed for her stories about the ‘common man’, her most famous reportorial
exploit came in 1889 when she challenged the 80-day round-the-world record of
Jules Verne’s fictional Phineas Fogg. In 1895 she added marriage to an ageing
New York industrialist, Robert Seaman, to her list of feats.25
By the time of her husband’s death in 1904, Bly had taken over running
Robert Seaman’s Iron Clad Manufacturing Company, held 25 patents in her own
name and claimed that she had increased its sales to $1 million a year, with an
annual profit of $200,000. Also important was the system of social welfare that
she instituted for the company’s 1,500 workers. Seaman’s special contribution to
the growth of this already established business was to open a subsidiary, the
American Steel Barrel Company, the first plant in the US to manufacture steel
barrels. Even though in a completely different business from Ayer, Seaman was
equally concerned with publicity. She attached her public name – Nellie Bly – to
the company’s products and proudly proclaimed on advertisements that she was
‘the only woman in the world personally managing industries of such a magni-
tude’.26 Seaman revelled in the Nellie Bly remade as businesswoman. An article
in 1906 stated her worth at about $5 million and had her producing 500 or more
steel barrels daily.27 This businesswoman also had a heart: she had installed a
gymnasium for her employees, she sponsored entertainments for them on Satur-
day evenings and she schemed to build a model town around her factories.
When the company issued its financial statement in 1906, all was well.28
By 1911 she was bankrupt. Seaman would later admit that she had never
taken any interest in the finances of the company and this would prove to be her
undoing. The company was in trouble as it was most profitable. Seaman con-
fronted a variety of problems – challenges from other companies that she
claimed were manufacturing containers based on her patents, a 1907 recession
which led to a downturn in real-estate values and the tightening of credit, and
evidence that trusted employees, among them her manager and cashier, were
stealing from her. Even before Robert’s death there were forewarnings that man-
aging a business of this size was not a simple endeavour. The Seamans had been
concerned as early as 1899 about the manner in which business was being con-
ducted and had moved to install a new general manager at Iron Clad.29 This
manager, Edward Gilman, would prove no better than his predecessor. Seaman
would learn after his death, in 1910, that he had stolen hundreds of thousands of
dollars from the company. In addition, the chief cashier, Charles Caccia, was
discovered to have cashed cheques at Brooklyn banks under Seaman’s forged
name. As the scheme began to unravel, creditors descended on Seaman,
demanding payment for outstanding debts. She soon learned, much to her sur-
prise and distress, that there had been what she called a ‘conspiracy to loot the
Iron Clad’ by employees of her finance department.30
She had only herself to blame, she said, for ‘not having learned banking
methods and commercial accounting when I first went to Iron Clad’, and her
lack of interest in the financial matters had allowed Gilman, Caccia and other
employees to take advantage.31 What followed was a veritable maelstrom as
various creditors pursued her, serving her summonses, with others ‘filing peti-
tions of involuntary bankruptcy’ to protect their interests. As the frenzy ensued,
Seaman sought to separate the American Steel operations from those of Iron
Clad, claiming they were two separate companies, hoping to preserve some part
of her investment and to keep American Steel operating and profitable. What is
striking is how surprised and disappointed she was that so many would want to
see her fail. She reminded her audience that many companies had been robbed
by dishonest employees; in this Iron Clad was not exceptional. Why, when a
company was otherwise productive, should it be crippled by the demands of
creditors? She chafed at the restrictions that were placed upon her by the courts
arbitrating these many claims; because of these her company could not produce
to capacity. She had to cancel orders because she could not ship barrels.32 Bank-
ruptcy proceedings might ensure that her creditors would see some of their
money, but they impeded productivity and profitability. Seaman was relegated to
watching her companies further undermined.
Seaman’s disappointment or ‘hurt’ turned to anger as events unfolded.33 She
was furious, for example, that banks had cashed cheques with her forged signa-
ture, especially those cheques where the written amounts had clearly been
altered. Iron Clad was put into receivership and, as the case dragged on, Seaman
234 S.M. Yohn
did battle with everyone. She refused to recognize Appleton Clark, the receiver.
She sued him and destroyed company property. She appeared irrational or
‘mad’. Women in business, she would conclude, were not ‘treated according to
that code by which men deal with one another’. Particularly harsh in her assess-
ment of lawyers, she said that ‘her finances are free-picking for every law firm
that can get its clutches on her’. Worse yet, nobody seemed to care that a wrong
was being done; ‘to stir any group of men to resentment against it’ she added, ‘is
very, very hard’. She had not been a ‘suffragette’ previously (as a journalist she
had written stories poking fun at suffrage activists) but given these experiences,
she proclaimed herself to be one. Without the ballot, Seaman asserted, she had
an ‘orphan-like struggle all the time’.34
Seaman refused to recognize the legitimacy of the actions against her. Jean
Lutes argues that as a reporter Bly’s popularity had been built on her refusal to
accept the growing class of professional ‘experts’ emerging in the late nine-
teenth century – whether this be in the courtroom, classroom or hospital. They
shared a language that marginalized and excluded those who did not share a
similar training or set of connections. As she battled to save her companies,
Seaman adopted the same ‘straight-shooting style she had presented in her
reporting’, fashioning herself the outsider bent on exposing, in this case, the
malfeasance of the legal and banking professions.35 She refused to cooperate
with the receiver appointed by the court. When she attempted to have him
removed, the court soundly chastised her. Called to testify, her answers were
evasive at best. So egregious was the fraud perpetrated against Seaman that even
New York Times editorial writers questioned the receiver who ‘[professed] an
inability to repair a machine which Mrs. Seaman, as soon as she can force her
way to it, promptly starts running as well as ever’. The court, they argued, would
be ‘judicious’ in moving to clear up the impression that ‘the “woman in the
case” is not getting fair treatment, to say nothing of consideration, and that she
has excuse, if not reason, for declaring herself a victim of a large, elaborate, and
continuing conspiracy’.36
This dizzying state of affairs lasted four years, during which Seaman fought
with judges, receivers, bankers and lawyers. Every interaction was fraught with
tension, so sure was she that she was being robbed. Indeed, her good friend and
employer, publisher Arthur Brisbane, did his part to underscore her predicament.
‘REMEMBER THAT MEN USUALLY CHEAT WOMEN WHEN THEY GET
THE CHANCE’, screamed one of his stories about her case.37 Privately, he reit-
erated this same message to Seaman, agreeing that she had been robbed, ‘I have
no doubt whatever that men have robbed you – as they usually rob women in
business and out of business – whenever they get the chance’.38 By 1914 this
chapter of Seaman’s life was over. She had lost Iron Clad but was once again
president of American Steel Barrel.39 In total she had lost over one million
dollars.40 Most unfair was that Iron Clad’s cashier, Charles Caccia, the man
whose actions had precipitated her undoing, was never convicted. Having eluded
prosecution for several years, his trial ended in a hung jury with the court decid-
ing not to retry him.
Harriet Ayer, whose path must have crossed Seaman’s in the mid-1890s
when they worked at the World, would never speak about the legal judgments
against her as a function of gender. Elizabeth Seaman, however, did. Central to
the presentation of her case in the court of public opinion was Seaman’s insis-
tence that women were especially vulnerable to fraud. They had neither the
experience, the skills, nor the support necessary to successfully represent their
interests in a court of law. Responding to a citation that she was in contempt of
court, Seaman said:
While I do not seek any consideration on the ground of sex, however, I may
say that I have been under a physical and mental strain for something like
two years that would have broken down many a strong man. To be forced to
look helplessly on at the destruction of property one has spent the best years
of one’s life in building up, that experience following months of wearing
anxiety due to the events that precipitated the catastrophe, is not conducive
to suavity of deportment.41
Had Ayer not been so beleaguered by the time of her insanity trial, she might
well have made a similar statement. Both women had spent over ten years
investing time and energy building businesses and in their late 40s (Ayer was 49
when committed and Seaman was 45 when her legal battles began) they con-
fronted situations where their authority was challenged, undermined and their
businesses essentially stolen from them. Seaman fought harder and longer,
perhaps because, unlike Ayer, she did not have to deal with the disapproval of
her family. Like Ayer, Seaman turned to reporting. They remained in the public
eye as salaried employees, not as manufacturers or producers.42 As reporters,
what power and influence they wielded was largely social or cultural but not
economic.
Hetty Green
By contrast, when financier and investor Hetty Howland Green died in 1916, at
the age of 82, she was the wealthiest woman in the world, leaving an estate
worth some $100 million. Starting with an inheritance of several millions from
her wealthy whaling and seafaring Rhode Island family, she had invested in
government bonds, railroad stock and real estate. Her strategy was to sell when
others were buying and buy when others were selling, and she kept a fair
amount of her money in cash which allowed her to make loans when credit was
otherwise tight. One imagines her reading the newspaper accounts of Ayer’s and
Seaman’s battles, perhaps sympathizing with their troubles, but also frustrated at
the faith they had placed in these men who had stolen from them.43 Her legal
battle in the 1860s to secure what she viewed as her rightful inheritance from her
aunt, and the subsequent claims made on her wealth, led Green to conclude that
lawyers especially were ‘schemers’ and ‘buzzards’, never to be trusted.44 She
accused these ‘schemers’ of trying to get her money. She hated them for robbing
236 S.M. Yohn
her of some part of her inheritance from her father. She regularly challenged the
integrity of various lawyers whom she encountered in the course of her business.
While Seaman and Ayer finally gave up, packed up their ambitions, ceded
control of their businesses and retreated to jobs considered more appropriate for
women, Green refused to be done in by the legal frictions she encountered. For
this she earned the reputation as the ‘Witch of Wall Street’. Her investment
skills, her ‘genius’– though one nineteenth-century observer called it a ‘terrible
genius’45 – with money, would be obscured by accounts that presented her as
penny-pinching and mean spirited.46
Green’s contentious relationship with lawyers started in 1865 when her father
died and she learned that by the terms of his will she was entitled only to one-
ninth of his $6 million estate outright. The rest was to be held in trust with
Green to receive the income annually, the estate administered by trustees.47 To
Green, who later recounted that she had early in her life developed an interest
and aptitude for business, these constraints were upsetting. Six weeks later, her
aunt, Sylvia Howland, died, leaving an estate worth some $2 million. Again,
Green was to receive the income with the principal to be divided among other
relatives after her death. Particularly upset by this turn of events, Green sued,
claiming that there was another will that made her the outright primary benefi-
ciary. This second will, which she produced, would become the centre of a
highly charged case – the Howland Will Case – which was eventually decided
against her on a technicality. However, her actions in this case would forever
brand her as avaricious and ruthless. Public interest in the case was piqued, says
writer Louis Menand, by the ‘spectacle of the female heir to one of the greatest
fortunes in the country fighting to gain control of every last penny’.48
Green built her $100 million fortune from the $1 million she inherited out-
right and the annual payments that would come for the rest of her life, but as she
grew older it must have galled her even more that she had not gained access to
the whole of her father’s and aunt’s estates. Reportedly she expressed sympathy
for women who had been denied access to or robbed of inheritances.49 When
asked at age 70 if she was not weary of all the litigation that she had undertaken,
she agreed that it was tiring and that she had contended with ‘persecution all of
my life’. ‘My whole life,’ she argued, ‘has been a struggle against heavy odds. I
have been more abused and misrepresented than any woman alive.’ Fully aware
of the stereotypes that dogged businesswomen, she continued, ‘periodical
attempts have been made to declare me crazy, and for forty years I have had to
fight every inch of my way’.50
A brilliant investor, it is worth considering what Green might have done with
an $8 million dollar inheritance outright, versus the $1 million plus annual pay-
ments that she did receive. Menand calls her ‘one of the greatest individual prac-
titioners of the art of finance capitalism who ever lived’ and compares her
wealth to that of J. P. Morgan who was worth $80 million when he died (though
Green’s wealth pales when compared to John D. Rockefeller’s $900 million
worth in 1916).51 Undaunted by the public attention focused on her, and the
mostly unflattering news accounts of her life and actions, she decided early on
that she was exceptional. She came to feel that she was destined to be a female
Ishmael – an ‘outcast’, portrayed as ‘heartless’ because people did not care to
know the ‘real’ Green.52 Her comments about women as money-makers echoed
every popular stereotype that existed at the time. She faulted women for not
being methodical enough, for impulsively investing in enterprises about which
they knew little, as well as being too emotional and easily diverted. While agree-
ing with her male contemporaries that women could not succeed at business, she
was not completely willing to agree that these were essential faults or part of
women’s nature per se. She preferred to lay the blame on their lack of training.
Even so, her judgement was harsh – women preferred to spend rather than save
and ‘as long as women won’t save we’re not likely to have many women mil-
lionaires in this country’, she concluded.53
Imagine Hetty Green sitting in her small apartment across the river from
Manhattan in Hoboken, New Jersey, dressed in the plain old black dress for
which critics disparaged her (after all, they argued, a woman with her wealth
should not be dressed in rags), reading newspaper stories of first Ayer’s and
then, later, Seaman’s legal problems. One supposes that she would have been
sympathetic to Ayer’s plight, recognizing her family’s attempt to steal from her,
to alienate her from the business she built, though she was probably also frus-
trated by Ayer’s refusal to fight the insanity charges. About Seaman, she would
have been more critical, particularly when she read Seaman’s statement that she
had taken no interest in the financial end of Iron Clad. However, she would have
admired Seaman’s fight to retain control. Like Green, Seaman showed no
respect while in court. Her charges that the court was against her, her refusal to
answer questions, the contempt she showed for the process, would have satisfied
Green. Green had spoken out of turn while in court, had insisted on cross-
examining witnesses in the cases that stemmed from the suits she brought, and
generally challenged the authority of lawyers and judges.
In each of these examples, these women’s court appearances were a literal
representation of the trials that they faced as businesswomen. In the courtroom
they engaged in a form of public theatre, exposing the authorities who would rob
them of their autonomy or limit their capacity to do business and to make
money. Newspaper-reading Americans could see clearly the obstacles that entre-
preneurial women of the time confronted. They watched the unfolding conflict
between the ‘individual autonomy of women and the social authority of men’
that marked the period.54 They also saw that women rarely won their cases out-
right. At best, the process was a draw, more often their claims were denied. For
Ayer and Seaman, losing meant the demise of thriving and profitable businesses.
Green persevered, but to do so she made choices that rendered her an outcast;
she became forever, the ‘Witch of Wall Street’.
Notes
1 New York Times, 28 June 1911, p. 7.
2 New York Evening Journal, 11 July 1911.
238 S.M. Yohn
3 The best general history of women in business in the United States is A. Kwolek-
Folland’s Incorporating Women: A History of Women and Business in the United
States, New York: Palgrave, 2002. W. Gamber’s Female Economy: The Millinery
and Dressmaking Trades, 1860–1930, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997,
provides a detailed analysis of the problems confronting businesswomen in a particu-
lar industry, while E. Sparks’ Capital Intentions: Female Proprietors in San Fran-
cisco, 1850–1920, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006,
provides a detailed analysis of the fortunes of businesswomen in one American city
during the period covered in this chapter. For a discussion of the ideas and attitudes
about women entrepreneurs see S. Yohn, ‘Crippled capitalists: the inscription of eco-
nomic dependence and the challenge of female entrepreneurship in nineteenth-
century America’, Feminist Economics 12 (1–2), 2006, pp. 85–109.
4 Quoted by M. Yeager, ‘Will there ever be a feminist business history’, in Mary
Yeager (ed.), Women in Business, 3 vols, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1999, vol. 1,
p. 3.
5 N. Basch, In the Eyes of the Law: Women, Marriage and Property in Nineteenth-
Century New York, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982, p. 208.
6 M. Yeager, ‘Introduction’, in Yeager, Women in Business, vol. 1, p. xxxiii.
7 I am indebted here to L. Winner for her ideas about the intersection of theatre, rituals
and trials. See Winner, ‘Democratic acts: theater of public trials’, Theater Topics 15
(2), 2005, p. 151.
8 The most complete, though undocumented, biography of Ayer is that written by her
younger daughter M. Ayer, The Three Lives of Harriet Hubbard Ayer, Philadelphia,
PA: Lippincott, 1957. Other biographical sketches consulted for this chapter include,
‘Ayer, Harriet Hubbard’, The National Cyclopedia of National Biography, vol. 43,
pp. 452–453, and M. E. Perry, ‘Ayer, Harriet Hubbard’, American National Biogra-
phy, vol. 1, pp. 790–791; and B. Weisberger, ‘Ayer, Harriet Hubbard’, Notable Amer-
ican Women: A Biographical Dictionary, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1971, vol.
1, pp. 72–74.
9 ‘The courts: questioning Mrs. Ayer’s sanity. A commission appointed to inquire as to
her mental condition’, New York Times, 28 February 1893, p. 9, col. 1.
10 ‘Found Mrs. Ayer insane: decision of a jury after hearing evidence. Testimony that
while her chances for recovery are small, her case is not hopeless – no signs of alco-
holism or the morphine habit – she could not testify’, New York Times, 11 March
1893, p. 8, col. 3.
11 ‘Mrs. Ayer’s queer story: she says she was drugged by Mr. Seymour. Stock in the
Recamier company in dispute – Judge Dale presented with many affidavits’, New
York Times, 21 May 1889, p. 4, col. 1.
12 ‘Mrs. Ayer in an asylum; the latest development in a remarkable career. Taken to a
Bronxville sanitarium on an order from Judge M’Adam – now her former husband
asks for a commission to pass on her mental condition’, New York Times, 28 February
1911, p. 1.
13 New York Times, 28 February 1911, p. 1.
14 The statement about her ‘bold system’ is from the New York Times, ibid. See also the
work of Melanie Gustafson who has extensively researched Ayer’s advertising inno-
vations and her paper, ‘The business of beauty: Harriet Hubbard Ayer’s New York
career in face creams, health tonics and advice to women and men’, presented June
2006 at the 27th Conference on New York State History, Columbia University.
15 Biographical information drawn from National Cyclopedia of American Biography,
and Perry, American National Biography.
16 ‘Mrs. James Brown Potter: A practical business woman expresses an opinion – what
Mrs. Harriet Hubbard Ayer thinks of this charming actress and society belle’, New
York Times, 4 December 1887, p. 5, col. 3.
17 For a discussion of women incarcerated because their families wanted access to their
money, see J. L. Geller and M. Harris (eds), Women of the Asylum: Voices from
Behind the Walls, 1840–1945, New York: Anchor Books, 1994.
18 See ‘Mrs. Ayer: her divorced husband tells why he had her placed in an asylum’, New
York Times, 3 March 1893, p. 6, col. 6.
19 For entries on James M. Seymour, see R. G. Dun & Co., New York, vol. 424, p. 819,
Cambridge, MA: R. G. Dun & Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business
School.
20 Ibid., p. 900 a/4.
21 The Cyclopedia of American Biography entry on Harriet Ayer claims that their busi-
ness relationship began when Seymour commissioned her to furnish his yacht. He
wanted a duplicate of that owned by the Prince of Wales, Cyclopedia of American
Biography, p. 452.
22 Ayer, The Three Lives of Harriet Hubbard Ayer, pp. 150–152.
23 Perry, American National Biography, vol. 1, p. 791.
24 For the observation of Bly as both an agent and object of publicity and how ‘girl’
reporters used this in their reporting, see J. M. Lutes, ‘Into the madhouse with Nellie
Bly: girl stunt reporting in late nineteenth-century America’, American Quarterly 54
(2), 2002, pp. 217–253.
25 This chapter relies heavily on B. Kroeger’s biography, Nellie Bly: Daredevil,
Reporter, Feminist, New York: Times Books, 1994, the most scholarly and complete
of Bly biographies. Additional biographical information can be found in I. Ross,
Charmers and Cranks, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1965, see chapter
‘Nellie Bly’, pp. 196–216, and B. Weisberger, ‘Seaman, Elizabeth Cochrane’,
Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press, 1971, pp. 253–255. Kroeger’s biography provides a critical antidote to the
judgements rendered by Ross and Weisberger. Ross claims that Seaman’s business
demise came because she was overly ambitious (p. 215) and Weisberger notes that
the Iron Clad chapter of her life was ‘anticlimactic’ by contrast to her years as a
reporter (p. 254).
26 Kroeger, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, p. 309.
27 From a Pittsburg Gazette-Time article, 5 May 1906, cited by Kroeger.
31 Kroeger, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, p. 329 – Quoted from ‘How I was robbed of two
million dollars’, Fair Play, 20 January 1912, p. 28.
32 Kroeger, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, pp. 333–335.
33 Kroeger, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, 334. See Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 21 June 1911, p. 2,
col. 2.
34 New York Times, 28 June 1911, p. 7. See also Kroeger, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, p. 339.
35 Lutes, ‘Into the madhouse’, pp. 225–227.
36 ‘Topics of the Times: appearances of evil to be avoided’, New York Times, 10 July
1911, p. 6.
37 New York Evening Journal, 7 July 1911, editorial page, col. 1. See also Kroeger,
Nellie Bly: Daredevil, p. 47.
38 Quoted by Kroeger, Nellie Bly: Daredevil, p. 362, from letter by Brisbane to Bly, 13
June 1912, in Brisbane Family Papers.
39 American Steel was not a going or viable concern after the bankruptcy trials. When
Bly died in 1922 the company had operated in debt for many years. See Kroeger,
Nellie Bly: Daredevil, p. 506.
40 ‘Say Nellie Bly was $1,680,000 fraud victim’, New York Evening Journal, 11 March
1913, p. 1, col. 2.
41 ‘ “Nellie Bly” explains: that worry and ill-health have affected her deportment in the
courts’, New York Times, 17 March 1912, p. 17.
240 S.M. Yohn
42 In subsequent chapters of their lives, both women recommitted themselves to tradi-
tional gender roles. Ayer stressed a woman’s health and beauty as playing an integral
role in maintaining happy marriages, while Seaman argued strenuously against
married women working outside the home when they had children unless they were
in dire financial need.
43 In her biographical entry about Nellie Bly, I. Ross, Charmers and Cranks, p. 213,
claims that Hetty Green and Nellie Bly were friends, saying ‘Among her friends was
Hetty Green, who had little use for human contacts but who found in Nellie a respon-
sive spark, an understanding of the intense drive that made both women such strong
individualists’. Ross’s entry is not footnoted, hence where the evidence for this claim
can be found is not clear.
44 L. M. Hodges, ‘The richest woman in America: Mrs. Hetty Green as she is seen in her
home and in the business world’, Ladies Home Journal 17, June 1900, pp. 3–4. She is
quoted as using the term ‘legal buzzards’ in ‘Mrs. Green is sarcastic: she remarks
about lawyer Stayton’s attentiveness to her’, New York Times, 18 May 1898, p. 12,
col. 1.
45 This was a description offered by a contemporary of hers, financier Henry Clews in
his 1882 book, Twenty-Eight Years in Wall Street, New York: J. S. Ogilvie Publish-
ing Co.
46 There are a number of different generations of biographies about Green. The most
sensational of these is by B. Sparkes and S. T. Moore, Hetty Green, A Woman Who
Loved Money, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1930. This was reprinted
in 1935 with the new title, The Witch of Wall Street: Hetty Green. More recent and
more balanced ones include, J. Coryell, ‘Hetty Green’, in Encyclopedia of American
Business History and Biography, Business and Finance, to 1913, New York: Bruccoli
Clark Layman, 1990, pp. 233–238; C. Slack, Hetty: The Genius and Madness of
America’s First Female Tycoon, New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
47 As late as 1894, Green had still not come to terms with this set up. She sued the
trustees for an accounting of the estate saying that there were irregularities. See ‘Mrs.
Green a plaintiff: trustees of her father’s estate charged with irregularities. accused of
spending $1,300,000,’ New York Times, 23 December 1894, p. 3, col. 4.
48 L. Menand, ‘Dept. of avarice: she had to have it: the heiress, the fortune and the
forgery’, The New Yorker, 23 and 30 April 2001, p. 66.
49 She also got herself in trouble by doing so. Green was sympathetic to the case of
Mary Irene Hoyt who, in the 1880s, fought a six-year suit contesting her father’s will.
The Jesse Hoyt Will case made headlines for years. Just before his death Hoyt had
rewritten his will stipulating that his daughter would inherit $1,250,000 to be held in
trust. The income would constitute the allowance on which she was expected to live.
Upon her death the money would be distributed to his nieces and nephews. The
reason for Hoyt’s action was said to be Mary Irene’s ‘infirmities’ and trial testimony
included details about her committal to insane asylums. Hoyt later settled out of
court. While engaged in one of her own lawsuits, Green revived memories of this
case when she invoked Mary Irene’s name to damn a group of lawyers she referred to
as ‘set of buzzards’. Hoyt, who did not appreciate Green’s support, sued Green for
slander, claiming that she had ‘been leading a quiet life, like any other sane and
respectable person’, and that she did not appreciate having public interest in her
earlier suit revived. See ‘Mrs. Hetty Green sued: Miss Mary Irene Hoyt charges her
with slander’, New York Times, 6 June 1895, p. 8.
50 ‘Seventy years rest lightly on Mrs. Hetty Green: Tuesday fortnight the richest woman
in America will be threescore and ten – her optimistic outlook upon life – foundation
and growth of her great fortune’, New York Times, 5 November 1905, pt. 3, p. 3.
51 Menand, ‘Dept. of Avarice’, p. 70.
52 For more information on Hetty Green’s attitudes towards women as money-makers,
see S. Yohn, ‘Crippled capitalists’, p. 90.
53 ‘Why women don’t get rich: Mrs. Hetty Green says it is because they try the wrong
way’, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1 July 1901. See also H. Green, ‘Why women are not
money makers’, Harper’s Bazaar, 10 March 1900, vol. 33, p. 201.
54 See N. Basch, Framing American Divorce: From the Revolutionary Generation to the
Victorians, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999, particularly chapter 6,
‘Divorce stories’, p. 185. She argues that larger social tensions about the social
freedom of women and the conjugal responsibilities of married men were exposed
and opened to public discussion in the newspaper coverage of divorce trials. These
stories were largely sympathetic to women and ultimately subversive of an older,
more conservative ideal of marriage. Newspaper coverage of Ayer’s, Seaman’s and
Green’s cases ranged from neutral to largely sympathetic but, most importantly, pro-
vided yet another platform from which they pleaded their case. For Ayer and Seaman
particularly, the newspaper was one more vehicle by which they could gain justice.
However, in the case of businesswomen, the take-away lesson for readers of these
stories was not inspiring. In other words, the stories underscored the perception, best
expressed by Brisbane, that women were often cheated.
Bibliography
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J. T. White, 1969, vol. 43, pp. 452–453.
Ayer, Margaret, The Three Lives of Harriet Hubbard Ayer, Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott,
1957.
Basch, Norma, Framing American Divorce: From the Revolutionary Generation to the
Victorians, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999.
Basch, Norma, In the Eyes of the Law: Women, Marriage and Property in Nineteenth-
Century New York, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982.
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nineteenth-century America’, American Quarterly 54 (2), 2002, pp. 217–253.
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lenge of female entrepreneurship in nineteenth-century America’, Feminist Economics
12 (1–2), 2006, pp. 85–109.
17 ‘The principles of sound banking
and financial noblesse oblige’
Women’s departments in US banks at
the turn of the twentieth century
Nancy Marie Robertson
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, a small number of financial institutions

in the United States – the Fifth Avenue Bank of New York; the First National
Bank of Chicago; the American Security and Trust Company in Washington,
DC; as well as banks in cities like Rochester, New Haven and Spokane – started
‘women’s departments’.1 They catered to the middle and wealthy classes by
offering separate spaces for women to escape from the hustle and bustle of the
busy street or jostling by busy men in the main banking rooms. The Garfield
National Bank in New York informed ‘ladies’ that the rooms meant that ‘they
do not have to come in contact with the general customers and business of the
bank’.2 The rooms included divans and upholstered chairs, writing tables,
flowers and (when available) telephones. A flyer for the Fifth Avenue Bank in
New York described ‘a comfortable and completely appointed reception room,
warmed in chilly days by an open fire and attended by a maid who has had
twenty years’ experience in this one department’.3 The homey spaces sounded
(and looked) like parlours, sometimes quite luxurious. Women were invited to
conduct their business in a leisurely manner or to meet acquaintances there. It is
clear from the locations of banks and the description of the departments that the
invitation was for a particular class of women, namely ladies of leisure.4
Banks were not alone in this effort to open commercial public spaces to
ladies. Department stores had waged a long campaign to bring women with dis-
posable incomes through their doors by including features like waiting rooms
and tea parlours. There were separate lines at some post offices, ladies’ rooms in
stockbrokerages, and ‘rest rooms’ in insurance offices. ‘Ladies’ compartments’
were increasingly commonplace on late-nineteenth-century railroads.5
Banks offered women more than their own space, as bank officials offered to
help women balance their bank accounts and determine budgets.6 In most cases,
the employees who met these needs were men – apparently the preferred person
was the ‘courtly gentleman who had a way with the ladies’.7 While there was
some awareness that a growing number of women had access to money (the
banks, along with a larger literature, urged men of means to give allowances to
their wives), there is little evidence that these departments were seen as paying
ventures.8 The financial and general press stressed the inconvenience to male
bankers of handling the accounts. There were constant jokes about women’s
244 N.M. Robertson
inability to handle money, especially cheques, and a sense, in the subsequent
reminiscences of one banker, that banks ‘often classed women’s accounts as a
“nuisance” ’.9
Given the domestic imagery associated with women’s departments, it is
tempting to see them simply as a reproduction of ‘separate spheres’. When
women appeared in the male public realm of business, every effort would be
made to recast the physical space as private and an extension of the home. An
examination of women’s departments, however, suggests ways in which the
boundary between the public world of finance and the private world of home
was, in actuality, quite blurred. Whatever their decor, the spaces were part of a
commercial world. The potential for women’s departments to challenge the
metaphor of separate spheres is further realized by an analysis of a second wave
of women’s departments.
In 1915, one of the first banks representing this trend, the Columbia Trust
Company of New York, appointed Virginia D. H. Furman as ‘Manager’ of its
new women’s department.10 By the early 1920s, female-run women’s depart-
ments had taken off. In an address to the Financial Advertisers’ Association,
Anne Seward, a pioneer in the departments, announced that in New York City
‘at present time there is scarcely a bank of note above the “Macy and Ditson”
line of Thirty-fourth street which does not have a women’s department managed
by a woman’.11 Women’s departments were observed throughout the country,
although commentators noted regional variations with the Midwest being more
supportive than the East, while the South was the most resistant.12
For almost two decades, women’s departments were one of the few areas in
banks where women were hired in an executive capacity. The number of women
who held these positions was minimal – perhaps no more than several hundred
at the most. Despite the limited number of women’s departments, the press
coverage was impressive.13 Not surprisingly women’s magazines like The
Independent Woman (the publication of the National Federation of Business and
Professional Women’s Clubs) and Ladies’ Home Journal covered the ‘ “Bank
within a Bank” for Women’, but so did house publications and industry periodi-
cals: The Chase, The Coast Banker, The New York Commercial, The Burroughs
Clearing House and Financial Age, among others, ran countless articles.14 As
might be expected, some of the latter coverage was negative. Writers queried
whether women could handle money or business, employing ‘nature’ to make
their case; one sceptic noted ‘woman’s lack of that cumulative experience which
is the inheritance of every man or boy who enters the office or factory’.15 Others
pointed to their lack of ‘permanence’ in the work force.16 Why, after all, should
banks train women who would only leave to get married?
Even the more positive articles raised questions about whether the depart-
ments were viable: would female customers come to women bankers or would
they choose men?17 For everyone who argued that women preferred men (either
for semi-flirtatious reasons or because men supposedly had better business
skills), the supporters of women’s departments argued that women customers
preferred female professionals. The reasons given as to why a woman might
‘The principles of sound banking’ 245
choose to go to another woman were various. One of the most frequently offered
was that a woman understood other women better than a man could. Anne
Seward of the Empire Trust Company said of women and their ‘financial per-
plexities’, that they
prefer to tell a woman about it. Women love to talk and women take a long
time, as a rule to tell their story. Men are too busy or interrupt. And it is
often the patient audience that does the most good.18
Banks’ hiring decisions, however, went beyond the presumed rapport

between a female banker and an individual female customer. Banking officials
knew (or quickly came to realize) that the women who staffed women’s depart-
ments were connected to a network of female voluntary associations. When the
Columbia Trust Company elected Virginia Furman as Assistant Secretary, the
first female officer in a New York City trust company, the Women’s City Club
of New York and the New York State Suffrage Party pulled their accounts out of
other banks to bring to Furman’s department.19 That the women involved in
women’s departments were active in a range of voluntary organizations
increased their banks’ chances of winning the accounts. As women’s organi-
zations were stressing the need to be more efficient and businesslike, promo-
tional literature for women’s departments emphasized the services that they
would provide to the treasurers of those groups to manage and grow their finan-
cial assets. ‘The old order changeth’ declared Cora Tatham of the Young
Women’s Christian Association,
And this change has a distinct bearing on the attitude of women toward the
securing of funds for the maintenance of charitable and philanthropic work.
It is a far cry from the day of the ice cream and strawberry festival to the
adoption of scientific methods in money raising.20
Banks capitalized on women’s social connections when selecting women for

women’s departments. What exactly qualified a woman to be selected was the
topic of many articles. Some, like Mina Bruère, started out as a private secretary
to a bank president and worked their way up. Others had been active in First
World War efforts – either administering relief efforts or fundraising. Mary Vail
Andress, billed as the ‘first woman to become an official at the main office of
one of the large downtown banks’, had overseen Red Cross work in France
during the First World War and was the first woman to receive the ‘Distin-
guished Service Medal’. Other women had played critical roles in the campaigns
to raise money for war bonds – some 65 per cent of American war funds during
the First World War were raised through voluntary efforts. Of course, as Anne
Seward admitted, ‘pull’ helped; a notable number of female bankers had male
family members who were also bankers.21
But however a woman acquired her position, the issue remained: what was
the head of a women’s department to do? The answer begins to suggest ways
246 N.M. Robertson
in which female bank officers helped to define the role of the financial profes-
sional in the twentieth-century United States. The woman banker, wrote Eliza-
beth Barry of the United States National Bank in Portland, Oregon, was a
‘friend and advisor, social worker, banker and economist, all in one’.22 As her
words suggest, female bankers emphasized a personal touch. Their speeches
and writings were full of terms like ‘service’ and ‘missionary’ efforts.23 Their
‘services’ ranged from locating a customer’s purse that had been left at the
opera to advising women on budgets, from promoting well-being in the office
to offering financial advice.24 These tasks required a range of skills. Helen
Knox, of the Chase National, described the need to have learned both the
‘principles of sound banking and financial “noblesse oblige” ’.25 Businesses,
especially those in what would come to be thought of as the service sector,
increasingly provided personal assistance in an impersonal world. Women’s
ability to combine financial expertise and service represented a valuable
combination.
The supporters of women bankers offered one other reason why they
appealed to women customers: the belief that the bankers themselves had to
learn the information and, therefore, their customers would not see themselves
as comparatively stupid. Customers ‘mind, perhaps, appearing slow or dull
before men, and they know that the woman manager has also had to make a
study of this work’, observed one banker. ‘[With] what incredulous eyes I saw . . .
a woman akin to myself, a mere human being – perhaps a humane being – one
whose own mother might have congenital difficulty adding nine and seven’,
wrote one customer of her encounter with a woman banker.26 This formulation
took women’s supposed ‘lack of that cumulative experience which is the inheri-
tance of every man or boy’ and turned it into an asset.
We make a profound error, however, if we see women’s departments in
banks as benefiting only women and not the banks – if we think of their signific-
ance as being for the historians of women but not business historians. Women
bankers and their supporters argued that women’s departments made financial
sense to banks. In a 1924 survey, Paul Hardesty of the Union Trust Company
concluded that a higher percentage of women’s accounts (32 per cent) were
profitable than men’s (23 per cent).27 A critical service that women bankers pro-
vided was to advise women, especially widows, on investments. Women’s
ownership of stocks was increasing as was concern about that ownership.
Writing in the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1931, Catharine Oglesby graphically
conveyed the magnitude of the situation when she wrote that if current trends
continued, ‘in 2025 the entire wealth of America will be in the hands of
women’.28 Emilie H. Burcham of the Old National Bank and Union Trust
Company of Spokane thought her department justified itself,
Because of the friends it has won for the Bank and Trust Company, for the
habit of thrift it has helped to establish, for the money it has saved from
unwise investment, and for the hundreds of small services it has been able
to render women.29
The discussion of ‘unwise’ investment reveals that banks faced competition –
from legitimate and illegitimate businesses – for investment funds. Grace Stoer-
mer, of the Bank of Italy, repeated Andrew Mellon’s observation in 1929 that
$790,000,000 worth of fraudulent stocks had been sold to women the previous
year.30 ‘Service’, then, was a term that covered potentially profitable business
endeavours at the same time that it encouraged female customers to expect a
certain relationship at their banks.
It is clear that, if women’s accounts had once been deemed a ‘nuisance’, that
was no longer the case. Given the success of women’s departments, it is striking
that by the mid-1930s, many, if not most, had been eliminated. In 1929, the
Association of Bank Women (ABW) reported a membership of 350 women who
were bank officers, of whom 44 were managers of women’s departments. By
1935, membership had dropped to 208, of whom 30 were managers of women’s
departments. By 1942, ABW members who had once seen the departments as
gateways for female customers and professionals worried that they had come to
represent ‘segregation’.31 Additionally, the economic devastation of the Great
Depression wreaked havoc on departments as fewer people had money to save,
women were often fired and replaced by men, and banks closed. But problems
for women and the departments predated the 1930s.
Some women had always opposed women’s departments, cautioning that
women might find themselves trapped in them. Even women who had advocated
for women’s departments had developed a strategy to promote some interaction
between men and women in banks. Anne Seward approvingly spoke of places
where the manager of the women’s department also served male customers and
male bankers could serve women for the customers’ convenience.32 It is tempt-
ing to conclude that once women’s departments had succeeded in winning the
profitable accounts of women, male bankers came to see serving female cus-
tomers as good business. Opportunistically utilizing a language of equality, they
sought to ease female professionals out of the picture. Some argued that chang-
ing social conditions (particularly the 1920 ratification of the Nineteenth
Amendment to the US Constitution giving the vote to American women) meant
that ‘no special consideration’ for female customers was necessary. In the mid-
1920s, the National Bank of Commerce in St Louis responded to requests for a
women’s department by saying, ‘We feel that so many women like yourself
have entered the business world with such success that it is no longer necessary
to treat them as a separate entity in business relationships’.33
Women bankers had walked a tightrope – as women, they were supposed to
have a unique bond with female customers, but as financial professionals, they
were to be distinguished from their female customers. Again and again as
women bankers argued for a shared experience with their customers, they also
laid claim to the skills which they had acquired that separated them. Katherine
Buckeley expressed alarm in 1922 that newspaper accounts suggested ‘that the
way into the Women’s Department of today was through the presidency of
the local Woman’s Club’. She and her sister bankers preferred to emphasize the
knowledge of banking and long training necessary for female bankers to be
248 N.M. Robertson
successful (whether or not they themselves had had such experience prior to
assuming their positions).34 In a 1935 series on women in business, Fortune
magazine vividly presented how difficult it could be to negotiate the relationship
between financial professional and customer:
The women of Los Angeles complained that Grace [Stoermer] was bossy
and that they didn’t come in to be talked of as though they were feeble-
minded and why should they be herded off by themselves anyway as though
they didn’t know how to write a check?35
In learning ‘to talk like a man’ and teaching their customers how to function in
the economic world, women bankers had undermined the rationale for their
positions.36
The challenges that women faced were not simply found in women’s depart-
ments. The historical literature on women’s voluntary associations points out
that during the 1920s, increasing emphasis was placed on coeducation and there
was a shying away from – even attack upon – sex-segregated organizations and
spaces. While the trend was by no means complete or unchallenged, many men
and women alike promoted a heterosocial culture where men and women should
be treated equally. Among the women bankers themselves, the pioneers were
retiring or dying and they were seemingly unable to recruit or train the next gen-
eration. And, by the 1930s, many men believed women professionals were no
longer necessary and, amid financial turmoil, the departments became a luxury
rather than a necessity.
If we were to stop here, we would simply have a compensatory history –
identifying an example of early female financial professionals. Their experiences
have, however, the potential to shift our analysis of the economic transformation
at the end of the nineteenth century. The rise of corporate capitalism saw
changes in the kinds of work open to women. But the changes went beyond
those of individual women. Banking, like other financial industries, was increas-
ingly conducted in bureaucratic organizations. But even as bureaucracies were
large and impersonal, there was a rising importance placed on ideas like
‘personality’ and ‘service’. In his study of banking, Richard Germain has noted
that it was precisely at this time that male bankers adopted (were forced to
adopt) a more service-oriented approach to customers to offset the growing
impersonal nature of the interaction.37
In examining women’s impact on these processes, we can profit from the
historical and sociological literature on women’s support for the establishment
of the European and US welfare states. Scholars such as Seth Koven, Sonya
Michel, Robin Muncy and Theda Skocpol have demonstrated how a full under-
standing of political history necessitates examining the history of women and
vice versa.38 Even when women lacked full political citizenship, it was their
activism in the voluntary sector that provided a critical bridge between an osten-
sibly ‘private’ world of women’s culture and the major changes in a ‘public’
world of politics. In the process, they, in Paula Baker’s words, ‘domesticated’
politics.39 The ostensibly gender-neutral language of expertise and professional-
ism had served to undercut female bankers’ position. But ‘service’, in all its
meanings, worked to ‘domesticate’ business for men as well as women.
Notes
1 Brief scholarly accounts of women’s departments include: W. H. Chafe, The Amer-
ican Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic, and Political Roles, 1920–1970, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1972, pp. 90–1; S. Alpern, ‘Women in banking: the
early years’, in L. Schweikart (ed.), Banking and Finance, 1913–1989, New York:
Facts on File, 1990, pp. 468–71; S. Alpern, ‘In the beginning: a history of women in
management’, in E. A. Fagenson (ed.), Women in Management: Trends, Issues, and
Challenges in Managerial Diversity, vol. 4, Women and Work, Newbury Park, CA:
Sage Publications, Inc., 1993, pp. 19–51; A. Kwolek-Folland, Engendering Business:
Men and Women in the Corporate Office, 1870–1930, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1994, pp. 103–5, 150–1, 171–3; R. N. Germain, Dollars through the
Doors: A Pre-1930 History of Bank Marketing in America, Westport, CT: Green-
wood Press, 1996, ch. 5, ‘Gender Segregation’, pp. 77–96; A. Kwolek-Folland, Incor-
porating Women: A History of Women and Business in the United States, New York:
Twayne Publishers, 1998, pp. 108–10; and E. Sparks, Capital Intentions: Female
Proprietors in San Francisco, 1850–1920, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press, 2006, esp. pp. 94, 97–8, 170–2. For an indication of the variety of
banks that offered services, see Germain, Dollars through the Doors, esp. Tables 5.1
and 5.2.
2 Typescript for undated booklet (issued prior to 1909), JP Morgan Chase Archives
(hereafter JPMC).
3 Quoted in the ‘Story of the Fifth Avenue Bank Service’, 1932, Bank of New York
Archives (hereafter BONY).
4 Although this chapter focuses upon women’s involvement in banks and trust com-
panies, there is a complementary story to tell of women’s activities in the savings and
loan industry; see D. L. Mason, From Buildings and Loans to Bail-Outs: A History of
the American Savings and Loan Industry, 1831–1995, New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2004, pp. 29–32, 62–3, 273. He notes that working women’s association
with the home, as well as morality and thrift, meant that savings and loans were often
seen as part of their sphere. Also useful in this context is the work on African-
American women’s involvement in mutual aid societies; see E. Barkley-Brown,
‘Womanist consciousness: Maggie Lena Walker and the Independent Order of St.
Luke’ in V. L. Ruiz and E. C. Dubois (eds), Unequal Sisters: A Multi-Cultural
Reader in U.S. Women’s History, New York: Routledge, 1994, pp. 268–83.
5 On department stores, see W. R. Leach, ‘Transformations in a culture of consump-
tion: women and department stores, 1890–1925’, Journal of American History 71,
1984, pp. 319–42, esp. 329; for post offices and brokerage firms, see L. L. Levinson,
Wall Street: A Pictorial History, New York: Ziff-Davis, 1961, pp. 122, 200; and for
railroads, A. G. Richter, Home on the Rails: Women, the Railroad, and the Rise of
Public Domesticity, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005, esp.
ch. 4. For an insightful analysis of architectural patterns for customers in commercial
buildings, see Kwolek-Folland, Engendering Business, pp. 103–6.
6 Bank Notes for Women, Rochester, New York: Alliance Bank, 1905, p. 9 (JPMC).
7 See Germain, Dollars through the Doors, pp. 88–9; the quotation is from an infor-
mant describing the male banker for a Washington, DC bank’s women’s department.
The department was one that continued into the 1950s, but apparently held onto the
nineteenth-century patterns.
250 N.M. Robertson
8 On allowances, see J. G. Cannon, Bank Accounts for Women, New York: Putnam,
1888, pp. 5–7 (BONY).
9 For ‘humorous’ stories about cheques and accounts, see C. K. Hood, ‘The trials of
bankers who received deposits from women’, Business Woman’s Journal 3,
January–February 1891, p. 16 and ‘A bank woman’s department’, The Coast Banker
12, January 1914, p. 462. For the quotation about nuisance accounts, A. P. Kenny,
‘Women and banking’, Association News Bulletin 9, 9 March 1928, p. 37.
10 ‘Woman gets bank office: Columbia Trust elects Miss Virginia Furman as Assistant
Secretary’, New York Times, 18 July 1919, p. 7.
11 Anne Seward’s address to the Financial Advertisers’ Association reported in ‘Women
bankers give distinctive service’, (probably the Springfield Republican, c.1926; clip-
ping located in the Sophia Smith Collection). ‘Macy’ and ‘Ditson’ were New York
department stores, although the comment is also clearly a play on the phrase
‘Mason/Dixon line’.
12 For comments on the East and ‘West’ (meaning the American Midwest), see A.
Seward, The Women’s Department, New York: Banker’s Publishing Company, 1924,
pp. 14–15; for an indication of less activity in the South, see pp. 114–20.
13 Based on census figures, Angel Kwolek-Folland estimates the number of women
employed by banks in 1910 as approximately 22,000 and in 1930 as 158,700. The
number of women identified as bankers and bank officials in 1910 was 325 (or 1.5 per
cent), while in 1930 the comparable number had risen to 5,927 (or 3.7 per cent),
Kwolek-Folland, Engendering Business, pp. 5–6.
14 The phrase is from P. E. Ritchey, ‘The “Bank within a Bank” for Women’, The Bur-
roughs Clearing House, 8, June 1924, p. 12.
15 M. C. McCarroll, ‘Women in business’, The New York Commercial, 2 April 1926,
p. 3.
16 J. L. Blauss, ‘Speaking of women as bankers’, Bankers Home Magazine 17, Septem-
ber 1923, p. 1; ‘If we call the roll of the 39 women Assistant Cashiers reported in
1913, a matter of 10 years, the silences are amazing. The names drop out of the bank
directories like the leaves in an October wind’ (located in the Schlesinger Library on
the History of Women in America’s microfilmed records for the Bureau of Vocational
Information (hereafter BVI)).
17 E. Wallace, ‘Pioneering in Wall Street’, Century Magazine, August 1927, pp. 411–19
and L. L. Clarke, ‘Women and the banking field’, The Independent Woman, July
1927, pp. 8, 32.
18 Seward, The Women’s Department, pp. 76–7. For a recent example of similar lan-
guage, see T. L. Duffy, ‘Women feel they’re better suited to trust work than men!!’,
Trusts and Estates, August 1977, pp. 530–1.
19 G. N. Gildersleeve, Women in Banking: A History of the National Association of
Bank Women, Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1959, pp. 1–2.
20 C. L. Tatham, ‘Women in finance’, Association Monthly 14, January 1920, p. 14.
21 For Mina Bruère, see records at JPMC. As Sara Alpern and others have observed,
‘private secretary’ was more of an executive training position than it is now; see
Alpern, ‘In the beginning’, pp. 32–3. For information on Andress’s war efforts, see
‘Mary V. Andress, banker, 86, dies’, New York Times, 17 May 1964, p. 87. Julie
Russel, of the Union Trust Company of Detroit, had also been active in France during
the War; ‘Girl holds novel position with Trust Co.’ (BVI).
On ‘pull’, see Seward, The Women’s Department, p. 104; see also M. V. Andress,
Banking as a Career for Women, New York: The Chase National Bank, 1928, p. 7
(JPMC). The female bankers discussed here who had male family members who were
also in banking include Bruère, whose brother was president of the largest savings
company in the country, as well as Virginia Furman and Helen Knox, whose fathers
were bankers. It is not clear whether this trend for female bankers was different than
that for male bankers.
22 E. Barry, ‘Where women bankers excel’, The Coast Banker 36, May 1926, p. 541.
23 Alice Fairbrother of Chase National said ‘service’ was ‘the chief feature of a
woman’s department’; quoted in ‘The Chase Bank leads again’, The Chase, Novem-
ber 1924, p. 329 (JPMC).
24 Women bankers were equated with service, which could entail many kinds of activ-
ities: as a concierge (Seward, The Women’s Department, pp. 60–2); providing corpor-
ate welfare for other women within the Bank (‘Girl holds novel position with Trust
Co.’); and aid to customers on budgets – often referred to as ‘home economics’ (E.
Wallace, ‘Banking Careers’, The Independent Woman, November 1927, p. 14). There
is a growing literature on the importance of service, corporate welfare and personnel
work; see Kwolek-Folland, Engendering Business, pp. 138–9 and A. Tone, The Busi-
ness of Benevolence: Industrial Paternalism in Progressive America, Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1997, esp. ch. 7.
25 Quoted in ‘Miss Knox’, The Chase, August 1927, p. 324 (emphasis added) (JPMC).
26 Comment from a woman banker from Seward, The Women’s Department, p. 89; quo-
tation from a customer, A. O’Hagan, ‘Jean Arnot Reid, who makes banking easy’,
Woman’s Journal, October 1920, p. 20.
27 P. L. Hardesty, ‘Are women better savers than men?’ Bankers Monthly 41, May 1924,
pp. 9–10, quoted in Germain, Dollars through the Doors, p. 93.
28 C. Oglesby, ‘Women in banking’, Ladies’ Home Journal, March 1931, p. 26.
29 ‘Woman banker heads new kind of department’, The Coast Banker 36, January 1926,
p. 101.
30 G. S. Stoermer, ‘How women best serve banks’, The Coast Banker 43, 20 November
1929, p. 430.
31 E. L. Maddison, ‘Women to bank upon’, The Coast Banker 43, 20 October 1929,
p. 344 and the ‘Association of Bank Women: 1935 list of members’ (BVI). The
concern can be found in a 1942 survey included in Association of Bank Women,
Women in Banking: 25th Anniversary Edition, n.p., Association of Bank Women,
1946, p. 48. Women who were active in and strong supporters of women’s depart-
ments had founded the ABW in 1921.
32 Seward, The Women’s Department, pp. 33–4. Clara Porter, who had participated in
early planning meetings for the ABW, withdrew apparently over the issue. She had
proudly stated there was not a women’s department in her bank because ‘we believe
there is no sex in business’; quoted in ‘Women in the banking field’, American Busi-
ness & National Acceptance Journal, 20 August 1920, p. 33 (BVI). See also Alpern,
‘Women in banking’, p. 469.
33 Quoted in ‘Why a Women’s Department’, Financial Age, 9 November 1924 (BVI).
One of the earliest analyses of the phenomenon is E. B. Freedman, ‘Separatism as
strategy: female institution building and American feminism, 1870–1930’, Feminist
Studies 5, 1979, pp. 512–29.
34 Seward, The Women’s Department, pp. 70–2; K. Buckeley, ‘A follow-up letter’, BVI
News-Bulletin, 1 December 1922, p. 5.
35 ‘Women in Business’, Fortune, 12 September 1935, p. 88.
36 The metaphor is Sarah Deutsch’s; see her ‘Learning to talk more like a man: Boston
women’s class-bridging organizations, 1870–1940’, American Historical Review 97,
1992, pp. 379–404.
37 See Germain, Dollars through the Doors, pp. 38–9; he identifies a long history of
complaints about poor service from male employees.
38 The literature is extensive, but useful pieces include: S. Koven and S. Michel,
‘Womanly duties: maternalist politics and the origins of the welfare states in France,
Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880–1920’, American Historical
Review 95, 1990, pp. 1076–108; T. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The
Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1992; R. Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform,
252 N.M. Robertson
1890–1935, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991; and N. M. Robertson, ‘Kind-
ness or justice: women’s associations and the politics of race and history’, in W. W.
Powell and E. S. Clemens (eds), Private Action and the Public Good, New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1998, pp. 193–205.
39 See her ‘The domestication of politics: women and American political society,
1780–1920’ American Historical Review 89, 1984, pp. 620–47.
Bibliography
Alpern, S., ‘In the beginning: a history of women in management’, in Fagenson, E. A. (ed.),
Women in Management: Trends, Issues, and Challenges in Managerial Diversity, vol. 4,
Women and Work, Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1993, pp. 19–51.
Alpern, S., ‘Women in banking: the early years’, in Schweikart, L. (ed.), Banking and
Finance, 1913–1989, New York: Facts on File, 1990, pp. 468–71.
Association of Bank Women, Women in Banking: 25th Anniversary Edition, Association
of Bank Women, 1946.
Baker, P., ‘The domestication of politics: women and American political society,
1780–1920’, American Historical Review 89, 1984, pp. 620–47.
Barkley-Brown, E., ‘Womanist consciousness: Maggie Lena Walker and the Independent
Order of St. Luke’, in Ruiz, V. L. and Dubois, E. C. (eds), Unequal Sisters: A Multi-
Cultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History, New York: Routledge, 1994, pp. 268–83.
Chafe, W. H., The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic, and Political
Roles, 1920–1970, New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.
Deutsch, S., ‘Learning to talk more like a man: Boston women’s class-bridging organi-
zations, 1870–1940’, American Historical Review 97, 1992, pp. 379–404.
Duffy, T. L., ‘Women feel they’re better suited to trust work than men!!’, Trusts and
Estates, August 1977, pp. 530–1.
Freedman, E. B., ‘Separatism as strategy: female institution building and American
feminism, 1870–1930’, Feminist Studies 5, 1979, pp. 512–29.
Germain, R. N., Dollars through the Doors: a Pre-1930 History of Bank Marketing in
America, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Gildersleeve, G. N., Women in Banking: A History of the National Association of Bank
Women, Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1959.
Koven, S. and Michel, S., ‘Womanly duties: maternalist politics and the origins of the
welfare states in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880–1920’,
American Historical Review 95, 1990, pp. 1076–108.
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United States, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998.
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1870–1930, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Leach, W. R., ‘Transformations in a culture of consumption: women and department
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Mason, D. L., From Buildings and Loans to Bail-Outs: A History of the American
Savings and Loan Industry, 1831–1995, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Muncy, R., Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935, New York:
Richter, A. G., Home on the Rails: Women, the Railroad, and the Rise of Public Domes-
ticity, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
Robertson, N. M., ‘Kindness or justice: women’s associations and the politics of race and
history’, in Powell, W. W. and Clemens, E. S. (eds), Private Action and the Public
Good, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998, pp. 193–205.
Seward, A., The Women’s Department, New York: The Banker’s Publishing Company,
1924.
Skocpol, T., Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in
the United States, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Sparks, E., Capital Intentions: Female Proprietors in San Francisco, 1850–1920, Chapel
Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Tone, A., The Business of Benevolence: Industrial Paternalism in Progressive America,
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.
18 Women, money and the financial
revolution
A gender perspective on the
development of the Swedish financial
system, c.1860–19201
Tom Petersson
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Sweden experienced an intense
industrial spurt that brought the levels of general economic progress and welfare
much closer to those of the more developed countries in Western Europe. An
important part of the industrialization process, which thus transformed Sweden
from one of Europe’s poorest economies to one of its richest, was the parallel
development of a modernized financial system. The internationally recognized
Swedish financial historian, Lars Sandberg, has stated that an important reason
for the successful transformation of the Swedish economy was the financial lib-
eralization and growth from the 1860s. A large number of private banks were
established, the institutional and organizational boundaries between private and
public financial intermediaries were made clear and, most importantly, a wide
range of new financial services were introduced to the general public.2
Studies on the development of the financial system in this period have con-
tinued to be an essential part of research in Swedish economic history and have
flourished in recent years. In thorough and substantial empirical studies, several
contemporary researchers, especially Anders Ögren, have taken on the task of
testing Sandberg’s statements regarding the positive role of the financial system
for general economic growth. There is a general consensus that the financial
system to a high degree supported the industrialization process and spurred
general economic development. The industrial revolution was thus supported by
a financial revolution.3
However, there is one perspective that has often been overlooked in previous
studies of the Swedish financial system: the gender perspective. Given the fact
that there exists a wide range of studies on women capitalists and business-
women in general, this lack of perspective is perhaps even more striking.
Contemporary research has, for example, concluded that women, especially
widows and unmarried younger women, were very active as small-scale entre-
preneurs within commerce and traditional crafts in cities all around the country.
In the late nineteenth century approximately one-third of all urban retailers in
Sweden were women.4 Also, the much larger industrial companies, which have
Women, money and the financial revolution 255
been considered one of the hallmarks of the Swedish industrial revolution, to
some extent depended on the contributions of women capitalists. Studies have
shown that women, especially those belonging to the founder families, in many
cases supplied these companies with venture capital. But they could also make
use of their personal networks in order to enhance the development of the com-
panies; that is, women made use of both their financial and social capital.5
The aim of this chapter is to place a gender perspective on the development
of the Swedish financial system in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies. The analysis will briefly include the general economic development of the
Swedish economy and the institutional arrangements regarding women’s legal
rights and their potential to act as independent economic agents. One underlying
issue, which will be addressed throughout this chapter, is the question of
women’s subordination or empowerment within the new and modernized finan-
cial system that developed from the 1860s onwards.
The Swedish industrial and financial revolution

Up until the late nineteenth century Sweden was a relatively undeveloped and
poor country on the northern periphery of Europe. To paraphrase Alexander
Gerschenkron and his grand scheme on national industrial and economic devel-
opment, Sweden, like the other Scandinavian countries, was a ‘moderately back-
ward’ economy. In such economies, capital and entrepreneurship were
considered to be scarce production factors. Banks, together with active govern-
ment measures, could, however, compensate for the lack of private initiatives
and scarcity of resource within other sectors of the economy. The large German
universal banks have often been regarded as probably the best example of how
banks aid the successful industrial transformation of an economy.6
Sweden’s road to industrialization accelerated from the 1870s. In fact, from a
European perspective the Scandinavian countries are all cases of successful
industrialization and economic growth from the latter part of the nineteenth
century (Table 18.1). Swedish industrial development has been ascribed both to
Table 18.1 Growth rates of real GDP per head of population in Sweden, Denmark,
Finland, Norway, UK, Germany and France, 1820–1913 (annual average
compound growth rates)
Sweden Denmark Finland Norway UK Germany France
1820–70 0.7 0.9 0.8 0.7 1.2 0.7 0.8

1870–1913 2.0 1.6 1.4 1.3 1.0 1.6 1.5
Source: A. Maddison, Dynamic Forces in Capitalist Development. A Long-Run Comparative View,

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 49.
Note
Data for Sweden 1870–1913 are from O. Krantz ‘Svensk ekonomisk tillväxt under 1900-talet’,
Ekonomisk Debatt 28, 2000, p. 9.
256 T. Petersson
external and internal (domestic) forces. Some scholars have stressed the
performance of the export sector and open economy forces; industrialization
was, according to this perspective, by and large a response to foreign demand,
especially from the most industrialized and developed countries such as Britain,
Belgium and France.7 Others have stressed the importance of internal factors for
the successful transformation. Evolving domestic demand and efficient markets
have been considered to be important explanations for the country’s capability
to respond to external influences and demands.8
Turning now to the development of the Swedish financial system, it was in an
embryonic stage up to the mid nineteenth century. The severe economic crisis in
the late 1810s had wiped out the few existing financial organizations that were
open to the public (the so-called discount houses). Naturally, the public’s confi-
dence in banks and financial intermediaries in general, as well as its willingness
to hand over its money to such organizations, also diminished. The informal
credit market, dominated by local merchants and moneylenders, continued to be
the main source for capital for several decades. Early-nineteenth-century credit
markets thus had a very strongly local and fragmented, and therefore limited,
character. By 1850 Sweden had only eight commercial banks and 90 savings
banks, all of which were strictly concentrated in small, local credit markets.
Cooperation between banks in different regions, which could have transferred
capital from regions with a surplus of capital to regions with large investment
needs, was very rare. In addition, the National Bank of Sweden had a monopoly
on conducting banking business in the three largest cities, thus effectively
keeping private initiatives down. And the National Bank was more interested in
the distribution of subsidized loans, preferably to large landowners, than in con-
tributing to the build-up of a nationwide, modernized financial system.9 In
summary, up to the mid nineteenth century there was a constant lack of money
for large-scale investments and the possibilities for the private banks to play a
part in the capital-intensive industrial transformation was very limited.
But in the 1860s something happened that could be called the start of a
Swedish financial revolution. In their extensive work on financial revolutions
throughout the world Peter Rousseau and Richard Sylla have listed five key
components that constitute the existence of a ‘good’ financial system, i.e. a
financial system that supports and drives general economic growth and develop-
ment. These components are: (1) sound public finance and public debt manage-
ment; (2) stable monetary arrangements; (3) a variety of banks, some with
domestic and some with international orientations; (4) a central bank to stabilize
domestic finances and manage international financial relations; and (5) well-
functioning securities markets.10
Several studies indicate that there actually was a financial revolution in
Sweden and that the financial system had a strongly positive effect on general
economic growth. One study of the relationship between financial markets and
economic growth between 1834 and 1991 concludes that this relationship was
mutually beneficial during the whole period and that, in the period from 1890 to
1930, financial growth preceded economic growth. Other studies have confirmed
that Sweden was a case of finance-led economic growth. In a recent study
Anders Ögren concludes that the Swedish financial system in the nineteenth
century did indeed develop in the way that would be expected in the case of a
financial revolution. The supply of liquidity played a major role in the possibil-
ity of allocating resources, and thus the part of the financial revolution that
facilitated monetization also encouraged economic growth.11
Together with a considerable number of studies of local and regional credit
markets, and especially of financial networks and the interaction between differ-
ent kinds of financial organizations, there is quite a lot of empirical evidence
supporting the idea of a financial revolution in Sweden and that the financial
system did drive general economic growth.12 The exact timing of the financial
revolution, however, remains somewhat unclear. If we look at some aggregate
statistics reflecting the financial revolution, for example the growth of the banks’
business in relation to GDP, the 1860s was indeed a period of remarkable expan-
sion (see Table 18.2). But on the other hand, it was not until the late nineteenth
century that the financial system became truly inclusive, in the sense that almost
every inhabitant had the possibility of using the services offered by the banks.
And it was at this point that the long-lasting and in many ways highly effective
bank–industry networks within Swedish business were established.
The legal framework

Before exploring women’s role in the financial markets in more detail, we must
consider the legal framework. In practically all economies extensive legal frame-
works and institutional arrangements have surrounded financial activities,
Table 18.2 Various financial measures in percentage of GDP and the organizational
development of the Swedish banking system, 1860–1910
1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910
Money supply (M2) 13 19 36 50 62 78

Commercial bank assets 10 20 37 45 62 79
Savings bank assets 4 7 12 21 22 28
Commercial bank deposits 2 8 19 24 35 46
Savings bank deposits 3 6 11 19 20 25
Commercial bank lending 5 11 21 31 46 65
Savings bank lending 3 6 9 17 17 23
No. of commercial banks 30 36 44 43 67 80
No. of commercial bank offices 50 136 205 190 269 625
No. of savings banks 155 251 347 380 391 441
No. of savings bank offices n.a. n.a. 921 909 748 854
Source: A. Ögren, ‘Financial revolution, commercial banking, liquidity and economic growth in
Sweden, 1834–1913’, paper presented at the Sixth European Historical Economics Society Confer-
ence in Istanbul, 9–10 September 2005, and T. Petersson, Framväxten av ett lokalt banksystem,
Uppsala Studies in Economic History 56, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University,
2001, pp. 71–5.
258 T. Petersson
including matters such as indebtedness and the granting of credits. The legal
system in Sweden, as well as in other parts of Western Europe, was to a great
extent built around the concept of the household, since men and women worked
together in what generally has been called ‘the family economy’.13
One of the most important aspects of individual independence in economic
and financial transactions is the issue of property rights or ownership. In the
nineteenth century the Swedish Code of 1734 was in force in all its parts. The
Code has been recognized as being in accord with the societal needs of the pre-
capitalist economy, i.e. the basic need to guarantee household production.
Hence, the concept of ownership in the Code was a collective one, and in
general the master of the household had the right to dispose of the property
belonging to the household. Also, according to the Code of 1734, women and
children were placed under the father’s, brother’s or husband’s legal guardian-
ship. The only women with full legal rights in economic matters were the
widows.14
But in the nineteenth century legislation was thoroughly reformed, and the
Code was broken up into its components. Many of the reforms constituted the
first steps towards legal equality between men and women. The right of inheri-
tance was cognatic, but still not equal. Among the nobility and the peasants in
the countryside, sons inherited twice as much as daughters, while the inheritance
rights among burghers and clergymen in towns were equal. In 1845, daughters,
regardless of their parents’ economic or social status, were granted the right to
inherit an equal share of their families’ estates. Between 1846 and 1864
women’s rights to conduct commerce were greatly extended. From 1858 to 1884
unmarried women were gradually released from their legal incapacity. The age
of majority of unmarried women in 1884 was thus 21 years, the same as for
unmarried men. Another change in the legal system took place in 1874. Now it
was possible even for married women to control their own property, which
could be withdrawn from the husband’s disposal either in premarital settlements
or through a division of the joint property of husband and wife. Under the same
provisions, a married woman also had the right to dispose of her own income.
However, it was not until 1921 that married women had the same economic and
legal rights as their husbands. From this point on, men and women in Sweden
were equals in the formal, legal sense. But for spouses this was only the case
provided that they were married after 1921.15
However, in spite of the numerous changes towards equality between the
sexes, it is not true that men and women had the same opportunities to act as
independent economic agents. Women in general, and wives and adolescent
women in particular, at least up to 1921, were in this respect subordinated, both
in relation to men in general and within the socio-economic system as a whole.
Women and the growth of institutional savings

One of the most important features of an effective financial system is its ability
to collect and redistribute the savings of ‘ordinary people’, i.e. the bulk of the
population. In this sense the Swedish financial organizations, especially the
savings banks and the commercial banks, were very successful. From the 1860s,
a long period of growth in the deposits collected by these banks occurred.
Playing the role of market makers on local savings markets, the savings banks
had a quantitative advantage in relation to the commercial banks up to the late
1860s. Another explanation for the success of the savings banks was their phil-
anthropic and non-profit character, which in turn attracted new socio-economic
categories of savers and increased their trust in the savings banks.
Beginning with Stockholm’s Enskilda Bank, commercial banks from the
1860s also began to get interested in exploiting local and regional deposit
markets as a way of funding their lending activities. In 1868, the total deposits in
the commercial banks surpassed those in the savings banks for the first time. The
savings banks never managed to catch up with the commercial banks. By 1920
the public’s deposits in the commercial banks were almost three times larger
than those in the savings banks (see Table 18.3). It is also important to empha-
size that it was the savings banks and the commercial banks that totally domin-
ated the institutional deposit market in Sweden. Together they accounted for
around 90 per cent of the Swedish market from the 1850s onwards. It was not
until the inter-war years that other financial organizations, especially insurance
companies, managed to establish themselves as credible savings alternatives to
the savings banks and commercial banks.16
A number of investigations have been carried out on the socio-economic
structure of depositors in the savings banks, both in the cities and in the country-
side. Approximately one-third of all depositors in the savings banks were chil-
dren under the age of 16. As it was the parents who opened accounts in their
names, these children naturally often belonged to the middle and upper classes.
Approximately 50 per cent of the adult depositors were women. A very large
share, often between 70 and 75 per cent, of the women depositors was young
(16–25 years of age) and unmarried. One must also stress the importance of
young, unmarried female servants as a category of depositor in the Swedish
savings banks, often making up more than half of the woman depositors.17
And as mentioned, the commercial banks also soon realized the advantage of
offering financial services, at least the possibility of saving, to a broad layer of
the public. Their strategy of engaging in the local deposit markets was intention-
ally aimed directly at some of the savings banks’ traditional customers, espe-
cially the wealthier private persons, among them widows. For example, in
Stockholm’s Enskilda Bank, 40–50 per cent of the individual deposit accounts
were held by women in the late nineteenth century.18 Considering the socio-
economic structure of the depositors in the Swedish banks, it is thus possible to
consider the financial system as being truly inclusive, i.e. a financial system that
was open to all socio-economic categories of the population.
It is also obvious that the savings behaviour of women depositors differed
considerably from their male counterparts. Women in general saved much more
than men in the same socio-economic category, both in absolute and relative
terms. The balances of women’s savings accounts were often 20–30 per cent
Table 18.3 The growth of deposits in the savings banks and the commercial banks, 1860–1920 (at 1860 constant prices)
Year Total deposits, millions of SEK No. of accounts, thousands Average balance, SEK
■ ■
Savings banks Commercial banks Savings banks Commercial banks Savings banks Commercial banks
1860 27 18 188 n.a. 145 n/a

1880 159 268 753 128 177 1,416 (151)*
1900 466 824 1,201 446 334 1,608 (478)*
1920 614 1,598 2,270 2,752 270 798 (427)*
Source: Statistics of Swedish Commercial Banks; K. Lilja, Marknad och hushåll, Uppsala Studies in Economic History 71, Department of Economic History, Uppsala
University, 2004, p. 33 and T. Petersson, T., Framväxten av ett lokalt banksystem, Uppsala Studies in Economic History 56, Department of Economic History,
Uppsala University, 2001, p. 73.
Note
* Average balance on savings accounts.
higher than men’s. The most diligent savers were young, unmarried women in
their twenties, who saved more than twice as much as men of the same age and
marital status. Perhaps even more important, women depositors, at least in the
savings banks, saved continuously and on a long-term basis. This meant that
once their savings had been deposited in the savings bank, the capital could be
transformed into productive investments. There is also a lot of evidence suggest-
ing that, once the young female depositors got married, the savings within the
family/household were transferred to the husband’s accounts. For the ages 55
and above, an age when many women had became widows, the average female
depositor once again saved considerably more than male depositors of the same
age.19 From the banks’ point of view, the female savers must have been con-
sidered the ultimate customers: they were loyal, saved large amounts on a long-
term basis and very seldom, if at all, made any demands to gain influence (for
example, regarding how the banks were managed and who was granted credits)
in correlation to their actual importance to the banks.
What was the reason for women’s propensity to use the new financial organi-
zations and their decisions to leave their money in the hands of savings and
commercial banks? Research does not, so far, offer a satisfactory answer. Obvi-
ously some of the deposits made by women were more or less non-voluntary,
since it was common for employers to open an account in their employees’
names and to transfer part of their salaries to these accounts. But there must also
be other explanations. Perhaps the older, informal financial system was con-
sidered less attractive due to its lack of transparency and stability. In any case,
an important explanation as to why the Swedish financial system was able to
show a steady growth for more than half a decade and to contribute to the
financing of the industrial revolution was its ability to attract women’s financial
savings.
Women as bondholders and shareholders

Another important factor in the formation of a new financial system in Sweden
was the national market for bond issuing. As early as the 1830s a number of
regional mortgage institutions had issued bonds to finance the restructuring and
modernization of the agricultural sector. But the volume of issued bonds was
very modest up to the 1870s. Then new categories of borrowers, particularly the
state, local municipalities and railway companies, started to issue bonds on a
much larger scale than before. By the turn of the century, as the industrial
revolution gained momentum, private industrial companies took over as the
largest category among the bond issuers (see Table 18.4).
Who then bought the bonds? Up to the 1870s a large majority of the issued
bonds were sold on foreign markets, especially in Hamburg, London and Paris.
After that, and up to the early twentieth century, domestic buyers absorbed
approximately half of the bonds issued by Swedish borrowers. It is thus obvious
that the inflow of foreign capital was exceptionally important for the financing
of the Swedish industrial revolution. Among the domestic buyers, financial
262 T. Petersson
Table 18.4 Swedish bond loans distributed by borrower, 1835–1916
Years Mortgage State Municipality Railway Industry Others Total,

institutions (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) millions of
(%) SEK
1835–49 100 0 0 0 0 0 34
1850–9 77 22 0 0 0 1 101
1860–9 53 35 8 1 3 0 265
1870–9 47 26 5 15 6 1 669
1880–9 36 39 14 4 5 2 761
1890–9 19 18 13 25 24 1 500
1900–9 11 21 24 7 34 3 1,048
1910–16 18 35 14 4 29 0 2,040
Source: T. Petersson, Framväxten av ett lokalt banksystem, p. 147.
organizations, especially savings banks and insurance companies, invested

heavily in bonds, not least due to new legislation that more or less forced them
to invest in such ‘safe’ financial instruments. In the 1920s the savings banks and
the insurance companies together held around 70 per cent of the bonds sold on
the Swedish market.20
Studies of households’ and private persons’ investments in bonds are very
rare. Daniel Waldenström has, however, carried out a study on the structure of
bond customers at by far the largest private banker in Sweden, the banking firm
C.G. Cervin from 1881 to 1930. The speciality of C.G. Cervin was to intermedi-
ate in bond issuing, and it had its clientele primarily in the largest cities, i.e.
Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö. Waldenström’s study, based on more than
1,200 observations, divides the bond customers into two categories: institutions
(banks, companies, insurance companies, etc.) who bought bonds for their own
accounts, and households that invested their capital in long-term bonds. The
trend towards increased institutional bondholding in the C.G. Cervin firm was
clear. In 1881 40 per cent of the bonds intermediated by C.G. Cervin were sold
to institutions, and in 1930 the quota had risen to almost 70 per cent. Walden-
ström’s results thus confirm the general trend within the Swedish bond market.21
The gender distribution of the bond customers can also be studied. The pro-
portion of women among the household clients rose from 20 per cent in 1881
and the mid-1890s to approximately 40 per cent in the 1910s and 1921, then
finally to 60 per cent in 1930. Women in general invested smaller amounts than
did men, so women’s share of the total household investments was lower than
for their number. But one must also bear in mind that among the household
clients of the C.G. Cervin firm we find a number of Sweden’s largest and, at the
time, most successful industrial entrepreneurs, such as James Dickson in Göte-
borg, who in 1894–7 invested more than one million SEK in bonds issued by
industrial companies. Dickson’s investment alone corresponded to one-third of
all the industrial bonds intermediated by the C.G. Cervin firm in these years.
There does not seem to be any significant difference regarding the investment
behaviour of women and men respectively. Women invested in approximately
the same type of bonds as men did. The only noteworthy difference that can be
observed is in 1920–1, when women preferred to invest more heavily in bonds
issued by industrial companies, while men preferred bonds issued by financial
organizations (see Table 18.5). There is thus no support in this source material
for the hypothesis that women in general were more risk-averse than men in
their investment behaviour.22
The joint-stock company, and the related concept of limited liability, was yet
another financial innovation that appeared in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. From the 1890s onwards, there was a sharp rise in the establishment of
joint-stock companies in Sweden, especially within industry and trading.23
Unfortunately, as in the case of the bond market, empirical studies into the indi-
vidual investors in shares are very rare. A few case studies of industrial com-
panies have shown that women owned considerable numbers of the shares, but
did not engage actively in the management or on the boards of these com-
panies.24 When it comes to the financial sector, there are some findings concern-
ing the so-called Enskilda banks, i.e. commercial banks based on the principle of
personal responsibility. A rather rudimentary study of the ownership in eight
such banks came to the conclusion that between 25 and 43 per cent of the share-
holders were women. And since women shareholders in general did own almost
as much as their male counterparts, women owned between 23 and 36 per cent
of all the shares in these banks.25
Was the new financial system mutually beneficial?

We have concluded that the Swedish financial system from the 1860s onwards
gradually became more inclusive as it offered its services to a wider range of
the population. It is also apparent that woman depositors contributed a sub-
stantial part of total savings within the institutional financial system and that
the banks, both savings and commercial, depended on women’s savings for the
financing of their lending activities. Considering this dependency, one might
have expected there to be a corresponding increase in the number of women
borrowers. This, however, was not the case. Only a very small proportion of
the total credit volumes in both savings and commercial banks were granted to
women. Based on a large number of investigations on the subject of the com-
mercial banks’ lending and financing activities, combined with data from the
governmental Banking Inspection, there is no empirical evidence of women
being borrowers in the commercial banks to any measurable extent. Also, the
savings banks granted only a very small share of their loans to women. Data
from a number of savings banks, both in cities and in the countryside, show
that approximately 2–4 per cent of annual new loans were granted to women.
Widows were, not surprisingly, the predominant category of woman borrow-
ers. The savings banks also demanded better collateral from the women bor-
rowers. Women could not, unlike male borrowers, depend on their good name
and their personal networks. Signature loans were thus not an option for
Table 18.5 Women investors at the C.G. Cervin banking firm, 1881–1930
Year Total no. of household Total household Distribution of bond investments, women and (men) respectively (%)
investors (%) investments (%)
Railway Industry Municipal Financial
1881 20 12 78 (79) 10 (13) 12 (8) 0 (0)

1894–7 18 7 33 (23) 66 (69) 1 (8) 0 (0)
1909–11 42 25 41 (33) 51 (52) 8 (15) 0 (0)
1920–1 39 14 0 (0) 100 (100) 0 (0) 0 (0)
1928–30 61 40 0 (0) 78 (45) 0 (0) 22 (55)
Source: List of bondholders, the archives of the C.G. Cervin banking firm, National Archives, Stockholm.
Note
In 1921, the C.G. Cervin firm only intermediated bond loans issued by industrial companies/borrowers.
women. Instead, woman had to possess some kind of real estate that could be
used as collateral.26
Neither were women able, or allowed, to advance in the organizational hier-
archies of the banks. Up until the late 1920s, we do not find a single female
board member or executive in the Swedish commercial banks. As in other
Swedish companies, ownership, even of a substantial nature, was not a guaran-
tee for gaining influence and the possibility to execute the power of ownership.
Women shareholders were thus by and large reduced to taking the position of
silent partners. Women did, however, become more visible in financial organi-
zations in one particular aspect: as employees. Initially, women bank employees
mainly worked in the ‘back office’, as cash controllers, bookkeepers and check-
ing clerks, and thus did not usually have direct contact with the customers.
Gradually, however, the number of female cashiers rose, as it became more
accepted to have women in direct contact with customers (see Table 18.6). It is
also notable that Stockholm’s Enskilda Bank, the first commercial bank to really
specialize in attracting women depositors, was also the bank that had the largest
proportion of female employees. As early as in the 1890s, one-third of its
employees were women.
Conclusion
The Swedish financial system underwent a remarkable period of growth,
renewal and innovation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A
large number of relatively new financial organizations, especially savings banks
and commercial banks, were established, the institutional setting was redefined
and adjusted to new demands and standards, and a wide set of financial services
were offered to the greater public. The financial system was thus both effective
and inclusive, and perhaps most important of all, it contributed largely to the
successful Swedish industrial revolution.
In explaining the success of the financial system, previous research has,
among other things, stressed the importance of the high level of literacy as one
reason why the Swedish population in general so swiftly accepted the new finan-
cial organizations and the new way of saving and investing. The commercial
banks’ ability to create liquidity and thus to contribute to the creation of credit
and the changes in the institutional setting, thereby promoting the establishment
of more commercial banks, is another important explanation put forward by
recent research. Perhaps one can add an argument concerning the role of women
and their financial capital.
This chapter has tried to show that women as a collective category did play
an important role within the new institutionalized financial system. Women had
a high propensity to use the new financial organizations and to leave their
savings in the hands of savings and commercial banks. They were, from the
banks’ point of view, probably the ideal customers. They saved on a long-term
basis with relatively large sums of money and did not demand influence, or even
credit, in return. Also, in the emerging markets for bonds and company shares,
Table 18.6 Gender distribution of executives, middle managers and employees in Swedish commercial banks 1891, 1916 and 1927
1891 1916 1927

■ ■
N Men (%) Women (%) N Men (%) Women (%) N Men (%) Women (%)
Executives 41 100 0 45 100 0 155 100 0

Branch managers 31 97 3 241 98 2 244 98 2
Middle managers 248 98 2 867 98 2 967 98 2
Cash controllers 35 63 37 143 52 48 189 49 51
Cashiers 173 84 16 573 53 47 986 49 51
Bookkeepers 349 80 20 1,128 68 32 1,168 63 37
Checking clerks 31 6 94 132 37 63 267 9 91
Others 91 92 8 561 84 16 2,121 84 16
Total 999 85 15 3,690 76 24 6,097 73 27
No. of banks 43 – – 61 – – 27 – –
Source: Svensk Bankmatrikel 1891, 1916 and 1927.

Note
Middle managers = accountants, chief of cashiers departments, ombudsman and controllers.
both key elements in the financing of the industrial revolution, women capitalists
made substantial contributions.
Did the new financial system mean that women’s position as independent
economic agents was strengthened or weakened? Despite the institutional
changes towards equality between the sexes, there is no doubt that woman capi-
talists in general continued to face severe problems in exercising their economic
power. For example, woman shareholders, mostly because of strong traditions
regarding what a woman could and could not do, had to delegate their authority
as shareholders and capitalists to men. There is thus not much evidence of
women increasing their formal influence as the financial system became more
institutionalized. Instead a majority of the women capitalists continued to be the
silent partners of the financial system, loyally and continuously delivering their
savings and investments to the new financial organizations.
Notes
1 I would like to thank Mats Larsson, Kristina Lilja, Hilda Hellgren, Anders Sjölander,
Lars Fälting and Lynn Karlsson. I have also benefited greatly from Anders Ögren’s
extensive research on Swedish financial history. I am very grateful to Daniel Walden-
ström, who provided me with data on the C.G. Cervin banking firm, and to Johanna
Rosén, who let me use data on employees and managers in Swedish banks.
2 L. Sandberg, ‘Banking and economic growth in Sweden before World War I’,
Journal of Economic History 38, 1978, pp. 650–80 and L. Sandberg, ‘The case of the
impoverished sophisticate: human capital and Swedish economic growth before
World War I’, Journal of Economic History 39, 1979, pp. 225–41.
3 A. Ögren, Empirical Studies in Money, Credit and Banking: The Swedish Credit
Market in Transition, 1834–1913, Stockholm: Stockholm School of Economics,
2003; A. Ögren, ‘Financial revolution, commercial banking, liquidity and economic
growth in Sweden, 1834–1913’, paper presented at the Sixth European Historical
Economics Society Conference in Istanbul, 9–10 September 2005 and A. Ögren,
‘Free or central banking? Liquidity and financial deepening in Sweden, 1834–1913’,
Explorations in Economic History 43, 2006, pp. 64–93. See also H. Lindgren and H.
Sjögren, ‘Banking systems as “ideal types” and as political economy: the Swedish
case, 1820–1914’, in D. Forsyth and D. Verdier (eds), The Origins of National Finan-
cial Systems. Alexander Gerschenkron Reconsidered, London and New York: Rout-
ledge, 2003, and O. Broberg, Konsten att skapa pengar. Aktiebolagens genombrott
och finansiell modernisering kring sekelskiftet 1900, Göteborg University, Depart-
ment of Economic History, 2006.
4 T. Ericsson, ‘Limited opportunities? Female retailing in nineteenth-century Sweden’,
in R. Beachy, B. Craig and A. Owens (eds), Rethinking Separate Spheres. Women,
Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe, London and New York: Berg
Publishers, 2006, p. 144.
5 A. Göransson, ‘Gender and property rights: capital, kin and owner influence in nine-
teenth and twentieth-century Sweden’, Business History 35, 1993, pp. 11–32 and K.
Norlander, ‘Women capitalists and the industrialization of Sweden’, Umeå Papers in
Economic History 12, 1994, Umeå University.
6 A. Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. A Book of
Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965; R. Cameron, Banking in the
Early Stages of Industrialization, New York: Oxford University Press, 1967 and D.
Ziegler, ‘The influence of banking on the rise and expansion of industrial capitalism
in Germany’, in A. Teichova, G. Kurgan-van Hentenryk and D. Ziegler (eds),
268 T. Petersson
Banking, Trade and Industry. Europe, America and Asia from the Thirteenth to the
Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
7 R. Cameron, A Concise Economic History of the World, New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1997, pp. 252–5; B. Gustafsson, ‘The Industrial Revolution in Sweden’, in
M. Teich and R. Porter (eds), The Industrial Revolution in national context: Europe
and the USA, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
8 J. Ljungberg and L. Schön, ‘Domestic markets and international integration. Paths to
industrialization in the Nordic countries’, paper presented at the Biannual Swedish
Economic History Meeting, 19–21 October 2001, Gothenburg. See also E. Hansen,
European Economic History. From Mercantilism to Maastricht and Beyond, Copen-
hagen: Copenhagen Business School Press, 2001.
9 B. Andersson, ‘Early history of banking in Gothenburg. Discount house operations
1783–1818’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 31, 1983, pp. 49–67, and I.
Nygren, ‘Transformation of bank structures in the industrial period: the case of
Sweden 1820–1913’, Journal of European Economic History 11, 1983, pp. 575–603.
10 P. Rousseau and R. Sylla, ‘Financial systems, economic growth and globalization’,
NBER Working Paper 8323, 2001, pp. 2–3. See also P. Rousseau and R. Sylla,
‘Financial revolutions and economic growth’, Explorations in Economic History 43,
2006, pp. 1–12.
11 Ögren, ‘Free or central banking?’. See also P. Hansson and L. Jonung, ‘Finance and
economic growth: the case of Sweden 1834–1991’, Research in Economics 51, 1997,
pp. 275–301 and P. Rousseau and P. Wachtel, ‘Financial intermediation and eco-
nomic performance: historical evidence from five industrialized countries’, Journal of
Money, Credit and Banking 30, 1998, pp. 657–78.
12 See for example T. Petersson, ‘Framväxten av ett lokalt banksystem’, Uppsala
Studies in Economic History 56, Uppsala University, Department of Economic
History, 2001; H. Hellgren, ‘Fasta förbindelser’, Uppsala Studies in Economic
History 66, Uppsala University, Department of Economic History, 2003, and K. Lilja,
‘Marknad och hushåll’, Uppsala Studies in Economic History 71, Uppsala University,
Department of Economic History, 2004.
13 See L. Tilly and J. Scott, Women, Work and Family, New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1978.
14 G. Qvist, ‘Policy towards women and the women’s struggle in Sweden’, Scandin-
avian Journal of History 5, 1980, pp. 51–74, and Norlander, ‘Women capitalists’.
15 Qvist, ‘Policy towards women’; Göransson, ‘Gender and property rights’, and M.
Ågren, ‘Fadern, systern och brodern’, Historisk Tidskrift 119, 1999, pp. 683–708.
16 M. Larsson, ‘Aktörer, marknader och regleringar’, Uppsala Papers in Financial
History 1, Uppsala University, 1993, and Petersson, ‘Framväxten av ett lokalt
banksystem’, p. 71.
17 T. Petersson, ‘The silent partners: women, capital and the development of the finan-
cial system in nineteenth-century Sweden’, in Beachy et al., Rethinking Separate
Spheres. The savings banks considered depositors older than 16 years of age to be
adult, although up to 1884 the formal full age was 21 years for men and 25 years for
women.
18 Petersson, ‘The silent partners’.
19 Petersson, ‘The silent partners’, and A. Perlinge, Sockenbankirerna, Stockholm Uni-
versity, Department of Ethnology, 2006, pp. 110–11.
20 H. Sjögren (ed.), Obligationsmarknaden, Stockholm: SNS Förlag, 1993, pp. 62–82,
and Petersson, ‘Framväxten av ett lokal banksystem’, pp. 146–7.
21 D. Waldenström, ‘Early bondholding in Stockholm 1881–1930’, Research Report no.
8, Stockholm: Stockholm School of Economics, 1998, p. 27.
22 List of bondholders, D IV:1–4, Archives of C.G. Cervin, National Archives, Stock-
holm. Women’s occupations were generally not stated in the source material from
C.G. Cervin so it is not possible to make an exact socio-economic classification of the
women bondholders. There is, however, no doubt that a large majority of them
belonged to the middle and upper classes.
23 Broberg, Konsten att skapa pengar, p. 85.
24 See for example Norlander, ‘Women capitalists’.
25 Petersson, ‘The silent partners’.
26 Petersson, ‘The silent partners’; Perlinge, Sockenbankirerna, p. 193.
Bibliography
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Andersson, B., ‘Early history of banking in Gothenburg. Discount house operations
1783–1818’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 31, 1983, pp. 49–67.
Broberg, O., Konsten att skapa pengar. Aktiebolagens genombrott och finansiell mod-
ernisering kring sekelskiftet 1900, Göteborg University, Department of Economic
History, 2006.
Cameron, R., A Concise Economic History of the World, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997.
Cameron, R., Banking in the Early Stages of Industrialization. A study in Comparative
Economic History, New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.
Ericsson, T., ‘Limited opportunities? Female retailing in nineteenth-century Sweden’, in
Beachy, R., Craig, B. and Owens, A. (eds), Rethinking Separate Spheres. Women,
Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe, London and New York: Berg
Publishers, 2006, pp. 139–51.
Gerschenkron, A., Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. A Book of Essays,
Göransson, A., ‘Gender and property rights: capital, kin and owner influence in nine-
teenth and twentieth-century Sweden’, Business History 35, 1993, pp. 11–32.
Gustafsson, B. ‘The industrial revolution in Sweden’, in Teich, M. and Porter, R. (eds),
The Industrial Revolution in National Context: Europe and the USA, Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1996, pp. 201–25.
Hansen, E., European Economic History. From Mercantilism to Maastricht and Beyond,
Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press, 2001.
Hansson, P. and Jonung, L., ‘Finance and economic growth: the case of Sweden
1834–1991’, Research in Economics 51, 1997, pp. 275–301.
Hellgren, H., ‘Fasta förbindelser’, Uppsala Studies in Economic History 66, Department
of Economic History, Uppsala University, 2003.
Karlsson, M. and Petersson, T., ‘Banking or philanthropy? The development and
characteristics of the nineteenth century Scandinavian savings banks’, Nordic Histor-
ical Review 2, 2006, pp. 167–92.
Krantz, O., ‘Svensk ekonomisk tillväxt under 1900-talet – en problematisk historia’,
Ekonomisk Debatt 28, 2000, pp. 7–15.
Larsson, M., ‘Aktörer, marknader och regleringar’, Uppsala Papers in Financial History,
no. 1, Uppsala University, 1993.
Lilja, K., ‘Marknad och hushåll’, Uppsala Studies in Economic History 71, Department
of Economic History, Uppsala University, 2004.
Lindgren, H. and Sjögren, H., ‘Banking systems as “ideal types” and as political
economy: the Swedish case, 1820–1914’, in Forsyth, D. and Verdier, D. (eds), The
Origins of National Financial Systems. Alexander Gerschenkron Reconsidered,
London and New York: Routledge, 2003, pp. 126–43.
270 T. Petersson
Ljungberg, J. and Schön, L., ‘Domestic markets and international integration. Paths to
industrialization in the Nordic countries’, paper presented at the Biannual Swedish
Economic History Meeting, 19–21 October 2001, Gothenburg.
Maddison, A., Dynamic Forces in Capitalist Development. A Long-Run Comparative
View, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Norlander, K., ‘Women capitalists and the industrialization of Sweden’, Umeå Papers in
Economic History 12, 1994, Umeå University.
Nygren, I., ‘Transformation of bank structures in the industrial period: the case of
Sweden 1820–1913’, Journal of European Economic History 11, 1983, pp. 575–603.
Ögren, A., ‘Free or central banking? Liquidity and financial deepening in Sweden,
1834–1913’, Explorations in Economic History 43, 2006, pp. 64–93.
Ögren, A., ‘Financial revolution, commercial banking, liquidity and economic growth in
Sweden, 1834–1913’, paper presented at the Sixth European Historical Economics
Society Conference in Istanbul, September 9–10, 2005.
Ögren, A., Empirical Studies in Money, Credit and Banking: The Swedish Credit Market
in Transition, 1834–1913, Stockholm: Stockholm School of Economics, 2003.
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Petersson, T., ‘The silent partners: women, capital and the development of the financial
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Rethinking Separate Spheres. Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-century
Europe, London and New York: Berg Publishers, 2006, pp. 36–51.
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History 56, Uppsala University, Department of Economic History, 2001.
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Journal of History 5, 1980, pp. 51–74.
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Economic History 43, 2006, pp. 1–12.
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NBER Working Paper 8323, 2001.
Rousseau, P. and Wachtel, P., ‘Financial intermediation and economic performance:
historical evidence from five industrialized countries’, Journal of Money, Credit and
Banking 30, 1998, pp. 657–78.
Sandberg, L., ‘The case of the impoverished sophisticate: human capital and Swedish
economic growth before World War I’, Journal of Economic History 39, 1979, pp.
225–41.
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Economic History 38, 1978, pp. 650–80.
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Svensk Bankmatrikel [Register of board members, directors and employees in Swedish
banks], 1891, 1916 and 1927, Stockholm.
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1978.
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in Germany’, in Teichova, A., Kurgan-van Hentenryk, G. and Ziegler, D. (eds),
Banking, Trade and Industry. Europe, America and Asia from the Thirteenth to the
Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 131–56.
19 Women’s wealth and finance in
nineteenth-century Milan
Stefania Licini
In 1865, the introduction of a new civil code in the Italian Kingdom consoli-
dated women’s dependence on men. Wives needed their husband’s authorization
both to handle their own property autonomously and to allow them to trade.
Women on the whole were hindered from practising liberal professions and they
had no free access to secondary schooling.1 However, as an equitable inheritance
system was in force and sons and daughters had the same rights to their parents’
property,2 women’s proprietorship was neither occasional nor trifling at the time.
This is why the chapter aims to provide evidence about the economic position of
women in nineteenth-century Italy, especially concerning the amount and kind
of financial assets they held.
The share of wealth retained by women is the first question highlighted, then
attention turns to the structure of female patrimonies. Both men’s and women’s
estates are analysed and details on wealth composition are given. Finally, the
research focuses on the loans made by women in order to reveal their role in the
credit market.
The research is based on fiscal sources, estate and income tax returns. More
precisely, all the papers recorded at the Registry Office of Milan in the period
1862–19003 are taken into account, along with a list of taxpayers published by
the Ministry of Finance in 1872.4 Milan, a large northern Italian city, was at that
time second only to Naples in demographic size and first in terms of economic
development. By the 1880s, the early phase of industrialization was already
complete there: many textile industries (silk and cotton) had settled in the
surrounding areas and, inside the town, in addition to a few mechanical factories
established during the 1840s, chemical works, paper works and ceramic manu-
factures were starting up.5 As early as 1881, during the first national industrial
exhibition, people had begun to refer to Milan as the ‘economic capital’ of Italy.
However, Milan, up to the end of the nineteenth century, suffered from the lack
of an institutionalized financial system: only savings and cooperative banks were
located there, besides one joint-stock bank and the local branch of the National
Bank. Before 1894, when a big investment bank, the Banca commerciale ital-
iana, was established in the city, there was in Milan chiefly a network of private
bankers, entrepreneurs, friends and relations that granted the credit required by
trade and industry.6 As many scholars have pointed out,7 wealthy women could
272 S. Licini
play a significant role in such a context and hence they merit special considera-
tion in order to assess, first, who and how many they were.
Wealthy women
Among the 39,122 decedents with positive wealth recorded at the Registrar’s
Office of Milan in the second half of the nineteenth century, there were 15,499
women: they held almost 500 million lire, 23 per cent of the total amount of the
estates.8 In Milan, two out of five individuals with positive wealth at death were
women, although, being poorer than men, they owned less than one-quarter of
the urban fortunes (Table 19.1). The average and median values of the estates,
respectively 72,026 and 6,924 lire for men, 32,006 and 4,305 lire for women,9
confirm the expected, unequal distribution of wealth between the sexes.
Results are similar if we take another standard indicator such as percentiles.
Men, being 60 per cent of the total population with positive wealth, accounted
for 84.4 per cent of the top first percentile and 77.3 per cent of the top tenth.
Symmetrically, women accounted for 15.6 and 22.7 per cent, regaining some
position only in the bottom fiftieth (43.6 per cent) (Table 19.2). The female top
first percentile and top tenth accounted, respectively, for 0.4 and 5.7 per cent of
women with positive wealth at death, compared to 1.4 and 12.8 per cent of men
included in the male top first and tenth percentile. The female fiftieth bottom
percentile made up the majority (54.4 per cent) of women, while men owning
assets valued less than the median value were only 47.1 per cent (Table 19.3).
From another point of view, less than 1 per cent of women (0.79 per cent)
held estate valued at more than 500,000 lire, while affluent men owning at least
Table 19.1 Decedents with positive wealth at death, by sex, Milan, 1862–1900
Cases Wealth (lire) Cases (%) Wealth (%)
Women 15,499 496,056,374 39.6 22.6

Men 23,620 1,701,250,285 60.4 77.4
Not known 3 – 0.0 0.0
All 39,122 2,197,306,659 100.0 100.0
Sources: ARSM, database, 1862–1900.
Table 19.2 Top and bottom percentiles, by sex. Total population with positive wealth,
Milan, 1862–1900
Top first Top tenth Bottom fiftieth

(%) (%) (%)
Men 84.4 77.3 56.4

Women 15.6 22.7 43.6
All 100.0 100.0 100.0
Source: ARSM, database, 1862–1900.

Wealth and finance in nineteenth-century Milan 273
Table 19.3 Female and male population with positive wealth: percentile shares Milan,
1862–1900
Top first Top tenth Bottom fiftieth share

(%) (%) (%)
Men 1.4 12.8 47.1

Women 0.4 5.7 54.4
500,000 lire at death were nearly 2.69 per cent of the male population. In con-
trast, 87 per cent of women, compared with 77 per cent of men, owned property
worth less than 50,000 lire (Table 19.4). Moreover, it must be stressed that men
greatly prevailed in the highest echelons of wealth: no woman, but 18 men,
owned more than 5 million lire at death and just 6 women, compared with 44
men, had fortunes assessed at more than 3 million lire. The great majority (83.7
per cent) of millionaire individuals were men (Table 19.5). In short, in Milan, as
in various other European and American areas, ‘women tended to be skewed
more towards the lower end of the ownership spectrum’,10 although a number of
them sometimes possessed very large fortune and female wealth, on the whole,
was ‘by no means insubstantial’.11
The second topic under consideration is the composition of male and female
wealth. In order to analyse this in detail, the assets men and women held at death
in 1871 and 1881 have been considered, as census figures regarding nineteenth-
century Italy are available only for these two years. They are essential in order to
link probate data with civil status and job position of the decedents, so such a
choice is unavoidable.12 Nevertheless, is worthwhile assessing how far these
sample years are representative.
Both the proportion of women and their share of wealth in 1871 and 1881
(Table 19.6) are consistent with the data regarding the entire period 1862–1900,
although, on the whole, the average value and the degree of concentration of the
Table 19.4 Distribution of the estates, by sex and rank of wealth, Milan, 1862–1900
Rank (thousand lire) Women Men

■■■■
No. % No. %
>500 122 0.8 621 2.6

>100<500 906 5.8 2,737 11.6
>50>100 953 6.1 1,992 8.4
>10<50 3,601 23.2 5,227 22.1
>1<10 5,545 35.8 7,273 30.8
<1 4,372 28.2 5,770 24.4
Total 15,499 100.0 23,620 100.0

274 S. Licini
Table 19.5 Distribution of large estates, by sex, Milan, 1862–1900
Rank (thousand lire) Women Men All

■ ■
% No. % No. % No.
>1,000 16.3 47 83.7 242 100.0 289

>3,000 12.0 6 88.0 44 100.0 50
>5,000 0.0 0 100.0 18 100.0 18
Table 19.6 Decedents with positive wealth, by sex, Milan, 1871–81
Cases Wealth (lire) Cases (%) Wealth (%)
Men 933 91,812,496 58.7 77.4

Women 657 26,791,711 41.3 22.6
All 1,590 118,604,207 100.0 100.0
estates are slightly higher. In fact, in 1871 and 1881, the top first percentile of
the population accounted for 37.6 per cent of wealth compared with 32.8 per
cent calculated for the period 1862–1900; moreover, the mean value of the
estates worth more than 500,000 lire is particularly high. However, being aware
of such discrepancies, as well as of the fact that the standard deviation of the
value of the estate is particularly broad in 1871,13 these two sample years can be
reasonably accepted and utilized.
Wealth composition
A comprehensive glance at the composition of the estates first reveals that in
women’s fortunes, the share of real estate was lower, amounting to 48.9 per cent
compared with 59.8 per cent of men (Table 19.7). The long-standing Italian dowry
tradition helps explain such figures. According to the Italian civil code, enacted in
1865, daughters and sons, ‘without any prejudice of age or sex’, were equitably
entitled to their parents’ inheritance.14 However, the legal obligation concerned
only the so-called ‘legittima’: a share of inheritance amounting, at the time, to 50
per cent of the decedents’ assets. Customarily, female offspring were left only
what the law required, while males received also the ‘disposal’ portion; moreover,
widespread inheritance practices favoured sons in the transmission of land, build-
ings and industrial concerns, so that daughters were left mostly personal property.
Also, it must be pointed out that in Milan, as in many other European areas, only
very rich individuals could invest in real estate and, as women were hindered from
undertaking profitable activities, it was very difficult, if not impossible, for them to
purchase land and buildings by themselves during their lifetimes.
Table 19.7 Wealth composition, by sex, Milan, 1871–81
Men (%) Women (%)
Real property 59.8 48.9

Financial assets 31.1 45.1
Other 9.2 6.0
Total 100.0 100.0
Nevertheless, the circumstance of having no male competitor for the family

fortune could drive large landed properties into women’s hands and this is likely
to have happened in a number of cases, given the value of the female real estate
totalling more than 10 million lire.15 It is also plausible that houses and allot-
ments of land were bequeathed to daughters when the parents were entre-
preneurs and their purpose was to comply with the inheritance law while
preserving untouched the family business. Whatever the circumstances were,
evidence from Milan further emphasizes that landowning, in nineteenth-century
Europe, was not only a men’s affair.16
Focusing now on personal property, the first thing worthy of note is the high
share of financial assets held by women: on the whole it accounted for 30 per
cent, while women’s global share of wealth, as reported above, was 23 per cent.
From another point of view, just one-third of men’s estate was put into financial
assets compared with 45.1 per cent of women’s estate (see Table 19.7).
In detail, women held more than half of the personal loans in the sample,17
42.2 per cent of bonds, 39.5 per cent of government securities and 23.9 per cent
of private loans, that is, loans given to any person who was outside the dece-
dent’s family or business relations.18 Men, instead, owned the absolute majority
(98.5 per cent) of partnership shares and commercial loans (95.9 per cent) along
with the bulk (87.5 per cent) of stocks (Table 19.8). Not surprisingly, female
wealth was not correlated to personally run economic activities. Besides, a large
part (31 per cent) was invested in government securities, thus apparently con-
firming the hypothesis that while men held proactive capital, suitable for seeking
‘higher returns and higher risk of entrepreneurial activity’,19 women sought
‘lower gains and risks’.20 This assumption seems to be reinforced by the percent-
age of bonds and stocks held, respectively, by men (4.1 and 13.5) and women
(6.9 and 4.5), the latter clearly shrinking from shareholding (Table 19.9).
However, further specifications could at least partially disprove such evidence.
Wealth holding was at the time much more connected with inheritance than
income. The assets that single individuals owned at death were often simply the
results of investments or acquisitions made by parents and other ancestors,
although, occasionally, large fortunes had been accumulated during the course
of life, especially by ‘first industrialists’ and other entrepreneurs. The occupa-
tional status provided by census data, available for 560 women and 796 men21
confirms this situation.
276 S. Licini
Table 19.8 Financial assets, by sex, Milan, 1871–81
Men (%) Women (%) All (%)
Bank deposits 75.2 24.8 100.0

Personal loans 42.8 57.2 100.0
Private loans 76.1 23.9 100.0
Commercial loans 95.9 4.1 100.0
Government securities 60.5 39.5 100.0
Bonds 57.8 42.2 100.0
Stocks 87.5 12.5 100.0
Partnerships 98.5 1.5 100.0
Total 70.0 30.0 100.0
Source: ARSM, database,1871–81.
Table 19.9 Financial assets composition, by sex, Milan, 1871–81
Men (%) Women (%)
Bank deposits 4.3 3.4

Personal loans 7.8 24.2
Private loans 28.4 28.7
Commercial loans 12.3 1.2
Government securities 20.2 30.8
Bonds 4.1 6.9
Stocks 13.5 4.5
Partnerships 9.4 0.3
Total 100.0 100.0
Heirs and heiresses

One woman out of three from this sample was in employment, the others
declared themselves ‘possidenti’ (landowners), ‘benestanti’ (well-off) and
‘agiati/e’ (annuitants) and held, on the whole, more than 95 per cent of female
wealth. Some 22.5 per cent of men did not work and they owned more than half
of the male wealth (Table 19.10).
The data must be treated with caution as, at the time, many people pro-
claimed themselves to be men – or women – of property, simply to give them-
selves a more respectable standing, all the more in the case of women who were
expected not to work unless it was absolutely necessary. However, the figures,
in addition to exposing the different position of men and women, definitely
stress the significance of bequests as a source of male, and especially female,
wealth. Evidence provided by the top first percentile further corroborates the
assumption, revealing that only one out of three of the richest men were engaged
Table 19.10 Decedents by occupational status and sex, Milan, 1871–81
Women Men
Cases (%) Wealth (%) Cases (%) Wealth (%)
Rentiers 68.2 96.5 22.5 61.5

Others 31.8 3.5 77.5 38.5
All 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Table 19.11 Top first and tenth percentiles by occupational status and sex. Total popu-
lation with positive wealth, Milan, 1871–81
Men Women
■
Rentier Others Total Rentier Others Total
Top first 8 4 12 6 0 6
67% 33% 100% 100% 0% 100%
Top tenth 66 54 120 36 1 37
55% 45% 100% 97% 3% 100%
in some economic activity,22 while no woman was. In the top tenth percentile,
men employed in trade, manufacturing and the professions increase to 45 per
cent, but only one woman (out of 37) declared herself not a ‘rentier’ (Table
19.11). She was a needleworker who had inherited some plots of land just a few
months before dying).23
Bearing in mind that both men and women belonging to the top tenth per-
centile, due to the high rate of wealth concentration of the time, held a very large
share of the urban fortunes (respectively 77.1 and 75.2 per cent), it is worthwhile
turning attention to the composition of their estates. The aim is also to compare
it with that of the estates owned by the population under the median, who were
mostly employed in professions, shopkeeping, arts and crafts and a variety of
salaried jobs.24
Real property was of overwhelming importance in the estates of both very
rich men and women, although the figures differ by ten percentage points (63.8
and 53.9 per cent, respectively). In the bottom fiftieth percentile, the share of
real property was scarce on the whole, but, again, it was greater in the male
estates. Symmetrically, financial assets, always noticeable in the female patri-
monies, increase along with the decrease in the level of wealth (Table 19.12). A
closer look at the single patrimonial items shows that government securities
were predominant in rich women’s estates (32.5), while stocks and partnership
shares, totalling 28.6 per cent, were prevalent in men’s (Table 19.13). As
278 S. Licini
women’s large fortunes were inherited, the data once more denotes that mostly
resources not necessary to the economic activity of the family were bequeathed
to daughters, with the aim of granting them a safe and secure income. Sons, on
the other hand, were directly involved in business. From a different point of
view, the contribution of women to financing state expenditures, which has been
highlighted with regard to other European areas, is definitely corroborated by
data concerning Milan.25
In fact, although the distance between the female and male share of public
debt certificates narrows in the bottom fiftieth percentile, women still held a
more conspicuous portion of government securities. In contrast, commercial
loans, stocks and partnership shares still remain higher in the male heredita-
ments, albeit very low, just what was required by the management of small
enterprises, shops or craft studios. On the whole, among the poorer part of the
population, equities and debentures drop, while the value of bank deposits, both
Table 19.12 Top tenth and bottom fiftieth percentiles: wealth composition by sex. Total
population with positive wealth, Milan, 1871–81
Women Men
■
Top tenth (%) Bottom fiftieth (%) Top tenth (%) Bottom fiftieth (%)
Real property 53.9 9.4 63.8 17.6

Financial assets 40.3 57.1 28.9 41.1
Other 5.8 33.5 7.3 41.3
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Source: ARSM, database 1871–81.
Table 19.13 Top tenth and bottom fiftieth percentiles, financial assets by sex. Total popu-
lation with positive wealth, Milan, 1871–81
Women Men
■
Top tenth Bottom fiftieth Top tenth Bottom fiftieth
(%) (%) (%) (%)
Bank deposits 2.4 15.4 2.9 14.9

Personal loans 23.0 29.9 8.5 7.3
Private loans 27.5 22.0 25.0 35.6
Commercial loans 1.0 0.6 12.7 12.2
Government securities 32.5 29.3 18.0 22.2
Bonds 8.1 0.8 4.3 2.1
Stocks 5.2 1.9 16.0 3.7
Partnerships 0.3 0.1 12.6 2.0
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Source: ARSM, database,1871–81

for men and women, rises considerably (Table 19.3). It is likely that, at the
lowest echelon of the wealth structure, people of either sex mostly attempted to
secure their earnings and savings in this way.
A feature common to the high and low ranks of wealth that is worth high-
lighting is the structure of female and male loans. Both in the top tenth and
bottom fiftieth percentiles, commercial credits were irrelevant in women’s port-
folios, while they varied between 22 and 27 per cent in the men’s. Personal
loans, that is, the dowry, undivided inheritance and sums of money lent to rela-
tives for whatever reason, were mainly connected with women, instead. Private
loans, finally, were almost equally distributed between the sexes, although their
share decreases among the poorer female population in favour of loans given to
family members (Table 19.14). On the whole, liquidity provided by both men
and women to various borrowers against mortgage or a simple IOU (credito chi-
rografo) accounted for more than half of the loans item in the top male and
female tenth percentile (Table 19.14).
Lending was a safe investment in nineteenth-century Milan and the return,
given the current interest rate assessed at around 5 per cent, was good. Wealthy
men, in particular entrepreneurs, often put their surplus liquidity in loans and not
infrequently the fathers’ portfolio was bequeathed to daughters, along with bond
and government securities. However, another point worth considering is the total
amount of loans women held. If personal loans are added to private ones, it
appears that 53 per cent of female financial assets, compared with 49 per cent of
men’s, were tied up in loans (Table 19.9). This phenomenon merits further
examination.
The credit market: an equal opportunities arena?

That women played an important role as money lenders in industrializing areas
of Europe has been recently highlighted by many scholars.26 In Milan, the evid-
ence provided above corroborates such an assumption and additional proof can
be found in another fiscal source available in Italy: the Ricchezza Mobile, an
income tax put into effect in 1866.
The tax was organized into three categories, A, B and C. The first aimed to be
a charge on the ‘revenue from capital’ (the returns of lending activities); the
Table 19.14 Men’s and women’s loans
Top tenth Bottom fiftieth All estates

■ ■
Men (%) Women (%) Men (%) Women (%) Men (%) Women (%)
Personal 18.5 43.8 13.3 56.4 16.0 44.7

Private 54.1 54.2 64.5 42.6 58.5 53.0
Commercial 27.4 2.0 22.2 1.0 25.5 2.3
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
280 S. Licini
second, the ‘mixed revenue from labour and capital’ (entrepreneurial activities);
and the last, the ‘revenue from labour’ (professional activities).27 Unsurprisingly,
given the legal context, no women except for three teachers and two midwives,
were included in the list of 500 professionals recorded in category C. Women
increased to 7.1 per cent among the taxpayers of category B – shopkeepers,
craftsmen/women, heads of small workshops, etc. – but their revenues
accounted only for 3 per cent of the total declared income.28 In contrast, in cat-
egory A, women played an important part.
According to the category A tax rolls, published by the Ministry of Finance
in 1872 and reporting the name of every person taxed for a yearly income worth
more than 1,000 lire, women accounted for 37.4 per cent of the taxpayers and
owned 38.6 per cent of the overall declared income (Table 19.15). As the inter-
est rate was at the time around 5 per cent, the return of 1.7 million lire a year
means women lent at least 35 million lire, a truly high amount considering that,
in Milan, the share capital of a large joint-stock company was on average worth
nearly 30 million lire.29 Besides, avoidance and evasion must be taken into
account, as private loans were often made without mortgage, simply against an
IOU. It should also be considered that the List reports only incomes totalling
more than 1,000 lire, thus excluding, for example, the great quantity of modest
dowries most women ‘lent’ to their husbands. On the whole, it is evident that
women’s capital was significant in the local supply of liquidity and this fact
becomes even more relevant considering the paucity of the urban financial
system previously described.
Moreover, it is worth noting that a number of women (19) were among the 51
individuals who could be considered ‘professional lenders’, as they were listed
in the category A tax rolls with an income over 10,000 lire and the capital they
lent was assessed at around 50 million lire. The percentage of women was more
or less the same among the taxpayers with an income assessed over 20,000 lire
(five out of 14) and further increases (up to 50 per cent) among the very rich
lenders (income in excess of 30,000 lire) (Table 19.16). A considerable amount
of capital was in women’s hands, but this does not mean that they actually con-
trolled the credit activity. In fact, according to the law, women, upon marriage,
would remain owners of their property, but would lose the right to administer it.
In the Kingdom of Italy, the legal institution of ‘marital authorization’ was
Table 19.15 Taxpayers, category A, by sex, Milan, 1872
Number % Income (lire) %
Men 1,001 58.3 2,509,677 56.3

Women 642 37.4 1,721,719 38.6
Both 75 4.3 226,800 5.1
All 1,718 100.0 4,458,196 100.0
Source: Ministero delle Finanze, Direzione generale delle imposte dirette, Elenco dei contribuenti,
pp. 5–11.
Table 19.16 Taxpayers, category A, by sex. Income >10,000, Milan, 1872.
Income Men Women All

■ ■
Rank (lire) No. % No. % No. %
>10,000 32 63 19 37 51 100
>20,000 14 74 5 26 19 100
>30,000 3 50 3 50 6 100
Source: Ministero delle Finanze, Direzione generale delle imposte dirette, Elenco dei contribuenti
pp. 5–11.
Table 19.17 Female wealth composition, by civil status, Milan, 1871–81
Widows Married Spinsters

(%) (%) (%)
Real property 50.1 44.7 49.1

Financial assets 39.4 47.3 46.2
Other 10.5 8.0 4.7
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0
effective from 1865 to 1919 and married women needed their husbands’
approval both to handle their own resources autonomously and enter in trade.30
Personal information would be useful in order to verify whether civil status
did matter in shaping the female role in the credit market, but the tax rolls did
not provide it, nor did the census for the year 1872. To overcome this obstacle,
the estates that spinsters, widows and married women held at death, in the
sample years 1871–81, have been taken into account.
Looking at wealth composition on the whole, no substantial difference
emerges in the structure of female fortunes, apart from the slightly lower share
of real property married women held (Table 19.17).31 On the contrary, focus-
ing on the financial assets, the amount of government securities owned by
spinsters (47.7 per cent) stands out, as well as the quantity of personal loans
(44.1 per cent) married women made (Table 19.18). On one hand, the rele-
vance of the dowry is reaffirmed; on the other, the role played by inheritance
strategies is further underlined: unmarried daughters were left mainly safe
public certificates, which upon marriage were converted into a loan to the
husband, the dowry. Spinsters’ share of loans was unsurprisingly very low (35
per cent) compared with widows’ and married women’s. The last-named lent
mainly to family members and other relatives, while widows, who probably
had more freedom to act, also provided liquid capital to people outside the
family network (Table 19.19).
282 S. Licini
Table 19.18 Female financial assets, by civil status, Milan, 1871–81

(%) (%) (%)
Bank deposits 5.0 3.5 14.7

Government securities 23.4 31.6 47.7
Bonds 4.9 2.4 0.7
Stocks 5.3 6.2 1.6
Partnerships 0.7 0.0 0.0
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0
Table 19.19 Female loans composition, by civil status, Milan, 1871–81

(%) (%) (%)

Total 100.0 100.0 100.0
Loans as percentage of financial assets 60.7 56.3 35.3
The identity of the people who borrowed from women, and why, is the final
topic to deal with, to further describe the role of female financial resources in an
industrializing area like Milan.
The loans portfolio of four (out of five) top wealthy female lenders (income
in excess of 20,000 lire) is, fortunately, recorded in every detail on the act of
succession registered in their name. This allows us to identify the borrowers
and, in a few cases, the use they made of the money they received. It should,
however, first be stressed that taking into account these four women, located at
the top of the income echelon, we are dealing with persons whose credits at
death amounted on the whole to 4.35 million lire (Table 19.20). This means
that they were not only very rich but also quite influential from a social point
of view. So, notwithstanding the sample is numerically poor, it could be con-
sidered significant and, overall, a good starting point for further reflection and
enquiry.
Conclusion
Focusing on the four very wealthy female lenders under examination (Table
19.20), it is worthwhile pointing out, first, that they were all independent
women: three widows and one divorced. So the case of Milan further confirms
that it was principally femmes sole who could act autonomously and play a role
in the European financial markets of the nineteenth century.32 Second, it is
important to underline that they all belonged to the bourgeois elite of the town.
Since noblewomen were mostly left real property, they had more difficulty in
disposing of liquidity, all the more so because at the time the Italian aristocracy
had to face serious economic problems.33
Looking in detail at the ‘loans portfolio’ of the four female ‘great lenders’, it
must be noted that in the case of Adele Antonelli, it was simply the result of her
father’s strategies. She was the only daughter of a prominent merchant of the
city and she died very young. The property she held at death, which included
government securities, stocks and bonds, together with a number of safe loans
made to aristocrats and landowners,34 was typical of the well-balanced portfolio
constituted by entrepreneurs in order to diversify risks.
The composition of Carolina Angiolini’s fortune was quite similar. It must be
emphasized, however, that such a various and secure patrimony was not the
mere outcome of an inheritance process. Carolina, in fact, achieved most of her
property by herself, using her own personal ‘substance’, as stated in the will.
She had inherited some allotments of land and a certain amount of movables
from a bourgeois landowner; she then personally bought some land and a certain
number of buildings in a semi-central area of Milan. She participated directly in
the restructuring of these buildings and purchased a number of stocks and bonds;
in addition she gave loans for a global value of 1.5 million lire. A number of
loans, amounting to nearly 300,000 lire, were made to the aristocratic elite of
Milan, the rest to entrepreneurs and enterprises involved, unsurprisingly, in the
construction industry.35
As a widow, Carolina Angiolini was free to act and so she did, all the more
so because neither her husband – a well-known art collector – nor her two sons
were interested in economic or financial activities. On the contrary, it is likely
she was endowed with a certain entrepreneurial talent that she decided to direct
Table 19.20 Female ‘great lenders’, income >20,000 lire, Milan, 1872
Last name First name Income (lire) Estate at death (lire)
Angiolini Carolina 44,751 3,147,080

Vonwiller Sofia 35,525 1,979,773
Antonelli Adele 32,394 1,331,654
Besana sisters 29,035 not known
Mennet Sofia 23,622 1,574,176
Sources: ARSM Database, 1862–1900; Ministero delle Finanze, Direzione generale delle imposte
dirette, Elenco dei contribuenti p. 5. ASM, Successioni, 198/3, 182/20, 133/26, 135/15.
284 S. Licini
towards the business of the time: building speculation,36 although such a risky
investment was accompanied by the safer purchase of securities and credits.
Quite different was the position of the remaining two, elderly widows Sofia
Mennet and Sofia Vonwiller, both belonging to a religious (Protestant) and lin-
guistic (German) minority as well as to entrepreneurial dynasties. They were
clearly bound by their familial ties, to the point that the majority of their pro-
perty had been lent, respectively, to a son and to a brother. In particular, the
former gave 1.2 million lire to her son Federico Mylius, when the Genoa branch
of the Milan-based banking house he had inherited from his father opened. The
latter simply renounced her share of inheritance, formally giving her brother a
loan worth 800,000 lire.37 Though these women were both daughters of entre-
preneurs engaged in trade and manufacture, their behaviour was not at all
similar. The former, Sofia Mennet, utilized the wealth bequeathed to her in order
to benefit her new family by lending money to her son; the latter, Sofia Von-
willer, left her property at the disposal of the original family firm. The entrepre-
neurial dynasty to which Sofia Vonwiller belonged was still active; consequently
her fortune was simply a resource for the enterprise. In the other case, instead,
Sofia Mennet was free to make a choice and she undertook the risk of granting a
loan to her son. This is enough to strengthen the thesis that in order to under-
stand the economic activity of women ‘the main place to look is the family’,38 all
the more so because, as seen above, nearly one-quarter of the financial assets
held by women were in the hands of family members.
Summing up, women were far from being a ‘unitary entity’, but a number of
them, although they prioritized family needs, certainly actively supported the
credit market and the economy in general. As many scholars have pointed out,
women usually preferred to stay ‘hidden from public eyes’,39 lending their
money to individuals or companies directly engaged in trade, service or manu-
facture, but along this way the contribution they provided was significant and
deserves to be fully assessed and appreciated.
Notes
1 For an overview of women’s legal position in nineteenth-century Italy, in addition to
Codice civile del Regno d’Italia, Firenze: E. Sonzogno, 1865, see M. Bellomo, La
condizione giuridica della donna in Italia. Vicende antiche e moderne, Turin: Eri,
1970; M. Fioravanzo, ‘Sull’autorizzazione Maritale. Ricerche sulla condizione
giuridica femminile nell’Italia Unita’, Clio 4, 1994, pp. 641–725; C. Saraceno,
‘Women, family, and the law, 1750–1942’, Journal of Family History 15, 1990, pp.
427–42; E. Sarogni, La Donna Italiana. Il Lungo Cammino Verso i Diritti,
1861–1994, Parma: Pratiche, 1995; P. Ungari, Storia del diritto di famiglia in Italia,
Bologna: Il Mulino, 1974; D. Vincenzi Amato, ‘La famiglia e il diritto’, in P. Melo-
grani (ed.), La famiglia italiana dall’ottocento ad oggi, Bari: Laterza, 1988, pp.
629–700; G. Vismara, Il Diritto di famiglia in Italia dalla Riforma ai Codici. Appunti,
Milan: Giuffrè, 1978; A. M. Galoppini, Il lungo viaggio verso la parità. I diritti
civilie politici delle donne dall’unità ad oggi, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1980.
2 Codice civile and P. Ungari, Storia del diritto, pp. 50–68.
3 In the new Kingdom of Italy (1861), on 21 April 1862, the Registry law was enacted.
Following the French example, it obliged any person who had inherited an estate to
declare it and give an estimate of its worth. Both real and personal estate had to be
listed and the form (declaration) submitted to the Registrar’s Office nearest to the
deceased’s residence. For an exhaustive description of this fiscal source in the Italian
context, see A. M. Banti, ‘Una fonte per lo studio delle élites ottocentesche: le
dichiarazioni di successione dell’Ufficio del registro’, Rassegna degli archivi di stato
1, 1983, pp. 83–118; and S. Licini, Guida ai patrimoni milanesi. Le dichiarazioni di
successione ottocentesche, Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino, 1999. Further references can
also be found in ‘Legge generale sul Registro’, 21 April 1862, in Raccolta ufficiale
delle leggie dei decreti del Regno d’Italia, Torino: Stamperia reale, 1861–1946.
4 In 1866, an income tax, Ricchezza Mobile, was introduced in Italy and lists of the
major taxpayers were published by the Ministry of Finance for 1872, 1874, 1889,
1922, 1924, 1928, 1929, 1933 and 1960. This study takes account of the publication
in 1873 (1872 tax returns), because it is the only one that also considered income
generated by money-lending activity. See Ministero delle Finanze, Direzione generale
delle imposte dirette, Elenco dei contribuenti all’imposta sulla ricchezza mobile
aventi un reddito imponibile complessivo superiore alle 1,000 lire, desunti dai ruoli
principali del 1872. Firenze: Stamperia reale, 1873, vol. 1.
5 For information about the industrial and economic development of this Italian region
and its chief town, refer to E. Dalmasso, Milano capitale economica d’Italia, Milano:
Franco Angeli, 1972; V. Hunecke, Classe operaia e rivoluzione industriale a Milano,
1859–1892, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1982; B. Caizzi, L’economia lombarda durante la
Restaurazione, 1815–1859, Milano: Banca commerciale italiana, 1972; F. Della
Peruta, Milano. Lavoro e fabbrica, 1814–1915, Milano: Franco Angeli, 1987; S.
Zaninelli (ed.), Un sistema manifatturiero aperto al mercato, dal Settecento all’Unità
politica, Milano: Il Polifilo, 1988; S. Zaninelli and P. Cafaro (eds), Alla guida della
prima industrializzazione italiana. Dall’unità politica alla fine dell’Ottocento,
Milano: Il Polifilo, 1990.
6 See P. Cafaro, ‘Finanziamento e ruolo della banca’, in S. Zaninelli and P. Cafaro
(eds), Alla guida della prima industrializzazione italiana, Milan: Il Polifilo, 1990–1,
and S. Licini, ‘Banca e credito a Milano, nella prima fase dell’industrializzazione
(1840–1880)’, in E. Decleva (ed.), Antonio Allievi: dalle ‘scienze civili’ alla pratica
del credito, Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1997, pp. 527–59.
7 See especially R. C. Beachy, B. Craig and A. Owens, ‘Introduction’, and T. Peters-
son, ‘The silent partners: women, capital and the development of the financial system
in Nineteenth-century Sweden’, both in R. C. Beachy, B. Craig and A. Owens (eds),
Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Oxford: Berg, 2006,
pp. 1–19 and pp. 36–51, respectively. See also M. E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in
Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
8 The calculations are made on a database, constructed by utilizing all the documents
recorded at the Registrar Office of Milan between 1862 and 1900 and available on the
website www.uni-unibe.it, which includes name, surname, date of death and gross
amount of the estate of each decedent (henceforth ARSM, database, 1862–1900). The
original papers are deposited at the State Archive of Milan, fondo Successioni (here-
after, ASM, Successioni).
9 Calculations on ARSM, database 1862–1900.
10 D. R. Green, ‘Independent women, wealth and wills in nineteenth-century London’,
in J. Stobart and A. Owens (eds), Urban Fortunes. Property and Inheritance in the
Town, 1700–1900, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, p. 221.
11 D. R. Green, and A. Owens ‘Metropolitan estates of the middle-class, 1800–50: pro-
bates and death duties revisited,’ Historical Research 70, 1997, p. 310.
12 Another database has been constructed (hereafter, ARSM, database, 1871–81), taking
into consideration every item of the assets each decedent declared. Civil status and
job position have been linked, when available.
286 S. Licini
13 Only in 1871 and 1889 was the value of the standard deviation more than 400,000
lire. See ARSM, database, 1862–1900.
14 Codice civile, art.38. On inheritance laws and dowry system in Italy, see also I. Fazio,
‘Valori economici.e. valori simbolici: il declino della dote nell’ltalia dell’Ottocento’,
Quaderni Storici 27, 1992, pp. 291–311; and I. Fazio, ‘Le ricchezze e le donne: verso
una ri-problematizzazione’, Quaderni Storici 34, 1999, pp. 539–50.
15 More precisely, the value of female real property was 13,043,292 lire and the men’s
was 54,066,364. See ARSM, database, 1871–81.
16 Female landowning is particularly emphasized by A. Mitson, ‘An exchange of
letters: estate management and Lady Yarborough’, Women’s History Review 7 (4),
1998, pp. 547–63; M. Malatesta, Le aristocrazie terriere nell’Europa contempo-
ranea, Bari: Laterza, 1999; I. Chabot, ‘Risorse e diritti patrimoniali’, in A. Groppi
(ed.), Il lavoro delle donne, Bari: Laterza, 1996, pp. 47–69; B. A. Crosswhite,
‘Women and land: aristocratic ownership of property in early modern England’, New
York University Law Review 77 (4), 2002, pp. 1119–56. The share of real property
held by women was demonstrated some years ago by M. Berg, ‘Women’s property
and the industrial revolution’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24 (2), 1993,
pp. 223–50.
17 Dowry or portions of unclaimed inheritance as well as other credits given to close rel-
atives have been included in this category.
18 Under the item ‘loans’, Registrar officials entered any sum of money that the
deceased had lent to any person or body. The name of the borrower (person or
company) was always reported on the papers, so that it is possible to identify which
kind of loan it was.
19 R. J. Morris, ‘Men, women and property: the reform of the Married Women’s Prop-
erty Act 1870’, in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), Landowners, Capitalists and Entre-
preneurs: Essays for Sir John Habbakuk, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994, p. 179.
20 Ibid.
21 See Historical Town Archives, Milan, Registers of death 1871 and 1881.
22 There were two merchants, one manufacturer and one professional accountant.
ARSM, database, 1871–1881.
23 This was the case of Caterina Baroggi, see ASM, Successioni, ad vocem.
24 Further details on this topic can be found in S. Licini, ‘Women’s wealth in
nineteenth-century: some evidence from the probate records of Milan, Italy
(1862–1900)’, Women’s History Magazine 53, 2006, in particular pp. 14–15.
25 On this topic, refer in particular to D. R. Green and A. Owens, ‘Gentlewomanly
capitalism? Spinsters, widows and wealth holding in England and Wales, c.
1800–1860’, Economic History Review 56, 2003, pp. 510–36. See also Licini,
‘Women’s wealth’.
26 Refer in particular to M. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 and T. Petersson, ‘The silent partners’,
in R. C. Beachy, B. Craig and A. Owens (eds), Women, Business and Finance in
27 Ministero della Finanze, Direzione generale delle imposte dirette, Elenco dei con-
tribuenti all’imposta sulla ricchezza mobile, pp. 4–5. Further considerations on this
Italian fiscal source in P. Frascani, Finanza, economia ed intervento pubblico dall’U-
nificazione agli anni trenta, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1982.
28 S. Licini, ‘Donne e affari a Milano nell’Ottocento’, Annali di storia d’impresa 18,
2007, pp. 53–73.
29 See, on the topic, S. Licini, ‘Finanza e industria a Milano nel triennio 1870–73: azion-
isti.e. nuove imprese’, Rivista di storia economica, n.s., XI (2), 1994, pp. 213–52.
30 On the topic see in particular C. Saraceno, ‘Le donne nella famiglia: una complesssa
ricostruzione giuridica, 1750–1942’, in M. Barbagli and D. Kertzer (eds), Storia della
famiglia italiana, 1750–1950, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992, pp. 103–27.
31 Due to the fact that in the sample years 1871–81 a widow and a spinster died who
were great landowners’ only heiresses. Licini, ‘Women’s wealth’.
32 See, for example, the evidence provided by A. Owens, ‘Making some provision for
the contingencies to which their sex is particularly liable: women and investment in
early nineteenth century England’, in Beachy, Craig and Owens, Women, Business
and Finance and D. R. Green, ‘Independent women’, in J. Stobart and A. Owens
(eds), Urban Fortunes: Property and Inheritance in the Town, 1700–1900, Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2000.
33 S. Licini, ‘Women as investors: some evidence from the case of Milan, Italy
(1860–1890)’, paper presented at the Sixth European Social Science History Confer-
ence, Amsterdam, 22–25 March 2006.
34 ASM Successioni, ad vocem.
35 ASM Successioni, ad vocem.
36 Details about the buildings speculation in nineteenth century Milan, can be found in
G. Bigatti, ‘Spazi urbani.e. industria a Milano nei decenni centrali dell’ottocento’,
Società e storia 52, 1991, pp. 363–91, and M. Tiepolo, ‘La proprietà immobiliare nel
quartiere dell’ex Lazzaretto a Milano dal 1882 al 1892’, in Storia urbana 39, 1987,
pp. 163–84.
37 ASM Succesioni, ad vocem.
38 M. R. Hunt, The Middling Sort. Commerce, Gender and the Family in England,
1680–1780, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996, p. 146
39 Beachy et al., Women, Business and Finance, ‘Introduction’.
Bibliography
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cessione dell’Ufficio del registro’, Rassegna degli archivi di stato 1, 1983, pp. 83–118.
Beachy, R. C., Craig, B. and Owens, A., ‘Introduction’, in Beachy, R. C., Craig, B. and
Owens, A. (eds), Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe,
Oxford: Berg, 2006, pp. 1–19.
Bellomo, M., La condizione giuridica della donna in Italia: vicende antiche e moderne,
Turin: Eri, 1970.
Berg, M., ‘Women’s property and the industrial revolution’, Journal of Interdisciplinary
History 24 (2), pp. 223–50.
Bigatti, G., ‘Spazi urbani.e. industria a Milano nei decenni centrali dell’ottocento’,
Società e storia 52, 1991, pp. 363–91.
Cafaro, P., ‘Finanziamento e ruolo della banca’, in Zaninelli, S. and Cafaro, P. (eds), Alla
guida della prima industrializzazione italiana. Dall’unità politica alla fine dell’Otto-
cento, Milan: Il Polifilo, 1990–1, pp. 159–259.
Caizzi, B., L’economia lombarda durante la Restaurazione: 1814–1859, Milan: Banca
commerciale italiana, 1972.
Chabot, I., ‘Risorse e diritti patrimoniali’, in Groppi, A. (ed.), Il lavoro delle donne, Bari:
Laterza, 1996, pp. 47–69.
Codice civile del Regno d’Italia, 2nd edn, Firenze: E. Sonzogno, 1865.
Crosswhite, B. A., ‘Women and land: aristocratic ownership of property in early modern
England’, New York University Law Review 77 (4), 2002, pp. 1119–56.
Dalmasso, E., Milano capitale economica d’Italia, Milano: Franco Angeli, 1972.
Della Peruta, F., Milano. Lavoro e fabbrica, 1814–1915, Milano: Franco Angeli, 1987.
Fazio, I., ‘Le ricchezze e le donne: verso una ri-problematizzazione’, Quaderni Storici
34, 1999, pp. 539–50.
288 S. Licini
Fazio, I., ‘Valori economici.e. valori simbolici: il declino della dote nell’ Italia dell’Otto-
cento’, Quaderni Storici 27, 1992, pp. 291–311.
Fioravanzo, M., ‘Sull’autorizzazione maritale. Ricerche sulla condizione giuridica fem-
minile nell’Italia Unita’, Clio. Rivista trimestrale di studi storici 4, 1994, pp. 641–725.
Frascani, P., Finanza, economia ed intervento pubblico dall’Unificazione agli anni
trenta, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1982.
Galoppini, A. M., Il lungo viaggio verso la parità. I diritti civili.e. politici delle donne
dall’unità ad oggi, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1980.
Green, D. R., ‘Independent women, wealth and wills in nineteenth-century London’, in
Stobart, J. and Owens, A. (eds), Urban Fortunes: Property and Inheritance in the
Town, 1700–1900, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, pp. 186–221.
Green, D. R. and Owens, A., ‘Gentlewomanly capitalism? Spinsters, widows and wealth
510–36.
Green, D. R. and Owens, A., ‘Metropolitan estates of the middle-class, 1800–50: Pro-
bates and death duties revisited’, Historical Research 70, 1997, pp. 294–311.
Hunecke, V., Classe operaia e rivoluzione industriale a Milano, 1859–1892, Bologna: Il
Mulino, 1982.
Hunt, M. R., The Middling Sort. Commerce, Gender and the Family in England,
‘Legge generale sul registro’, 21 April 1862, in Raccolta ufficiale delle leggi.e. dei
decreti del Regno d’Italia, Turin: Stamperia reale, 1861–1946.
Licini, S., ‘Donne e affari a Milano nell’Ottocento’, Annali di storia d’impresa, 18, 2007,
pp. 53–73.
Licini, S., ‘Women as investors: some evidence from the case of Milan, Italy
(1860–1890)’, paper presented at the Sixth European Social Science History Confer-
ence, Amsterdam, 22–25 March 2006.
Licini, S., ‘Women’s wealth in nineteenth-century: some evidence from the probate
records of Milan, Italy (1862–1900)’, Women’s History Magazine 53, 2006, pp. 13–21.
Licini, S., Guida ai patrimoni milanesi. Le dichiarazioni di successione ottocentesche,
Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino, 1999.
Licini, S., ‘Banca e credito a Milano, nella prima fase dell’industrializzazione
(1840–1880)’, in Decleva, E. (ed.), Antonio Allievi: dalle ‘scienze civili’ alla pratica
del credito, Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1997, pp. 527–59.
Licini, S., ‘Finanza e industria a Milano nel triennio 1870–73: azionisti.e. nuove
imprese’, Rivista di storia economica, n.s., XI (2), 1994, pp. 213–52.
Malatesta, M., Le aristocrazie terriere nell’Europa contemporanea, Bari: Laterza, 1999.
Ministero delle Finanze, Direzione generale delle imposte dirette, Elenco dei contribuenti
all’imposta sulla ricchezza mobile aventi un reddito imponibile complessivo superiore alle
1.000 lire, desunti dai ruoli principali del 1872, Firenze: Stamperia reale, 1873, vol. 1.
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History Review 7 (4), 1998, pp. 547–63.
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Act, 1870’, in Thompson, F. M. L. (ed.), Landowners, Capitalists and Entrepreneurs:
Essays for Sir John Habbakuk, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, pp. 171–91.
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larly liable: women and investment in early nineteenth century England’, in Beachy,
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Century Europe, Oxford: Berg, 2006, pp. 20–35.
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system in nineteenth-century Sweden’, in Beachy, R. C., Craig, B. and Owens, A.
(eds), Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Oxford: Berg,
2006, pp. 36–51.
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1750–1942’, in Barbagli, M. and Kertzer, D. (eds), Storia della famiglia italiana,
1750–1950, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992, pp. 103–27.
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1990, pp. 427–42.
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Pratiche, 1995.
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1700–1900, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.
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al 1892’, Storia urbana 39, 1987, pp. 163–84.
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dall’Ottocento a oggi, Bari: Laterza, 1988, pp. 629–700.
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Giuffrè, 1978.
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Dall’unità politica alla fine dell’Ottocento, Milan: Il Polifilo, 1990.
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politica, Milan: Il Polifilo, 1988.
20 The transformation from ‘thrifty
accountant’ to ‘independent
investor’?
The changing relationship of Japanese
women and finance under the influence
of globalization1
Naoko Komori
Introduction
Japan is witnessing the increasing involvement of women in investment and
financial activities. The issue of finance is a key concern among Japanese
women: a recent survey reported that ‘finance and money’ is the primary interest
of women in Japan, pushing ‘health’ into second place.2
The growth in investment activity among women highlights how the relation-
ship between women and finance in Japan has changed. Women in Japan have
historically had a strong association with bookkeeping and accounting at home,
and they have had control over the domestic economy since the pre-modern era.3
Household accounting practice has been a significant tool in household manage-
ment: it has enabled women to manage and control the behaviour of their hus-
bands and has been the backbone of their authority within the household at key
points in Japanese history. This strong association between women and domestic
accounting has been closely linked to the government-defined social role of the
household: to accumulate savings that can be used to fund investment in indus-
try. However, under the influence of globalization, government policy with
regard to the social role of the household has changed. The recent strengthening
of the relationship between women and investment has been driven by policy
changes that have encouraged them to make the transition from accountant to
investor.
The changes that Japan is currently experiencing in the relationship between
women and accounting and finance provide a number of interesting perspectives
from which to develop the historical study of gender issues in accounting and
finance. First, the experience of Japanese women as financial managers and
accountants in the domestic arena may illuminate a history that in the past has
all too often been ignored in favour of concentration on women’s experiences in
the public arena. Recent decades have seen a growing awareness in gender
research in accounting in the West of the importance of shifting the research
From ‘thrifty accountant’ to ‘independent investor’ 291
focus onto the experiences of women in the private arena.4 Using new materials
such as personal records, these studies have shed valuable light on the hidden
economic activities of women outside the accounting profession.5 In particular,
Japan provides an interesting research site since women have continued their
accounting practice in the domestic arena at the same time as they have started
to enter the public arena. Monitoring their accounting practice in the two differ-
ent spheres will help us to understand how women’s relationship with account-
ing in the domestic arena has been affected by their changing role in the public
arena.
Second, the study of Japanese women’s experiences will supply evidence
from a non-Anglo-Saxon context. Although gender research in accounting has
made significant progress, this area of research is still dominated by the experi-
ences of women in Anglo-Saxon countries and their perspectives. There has
been a call for research that looks beyond the comfort zone of the Anglo-Saxon
countries and reveals accounting in action in unfamiliar, non-Anglo-Saxon set-
tings.6 Study of the Japanese context would be a profitable way of responding to
this call.
Third, such a study will illuminate women’s role and position in the world of
investments. Although many studies have revealed the relationship between
gender and accounting, the close examination of the role of women investors has
only just begun.7 By examining the changing nature of Japanese women’s finan-
cial activity, the process by which women have made the transition from
accountants to investors may be mapped.
With these aims in mind, this chapter seeks to understand the driving forces
behind women’s changing relationship with accounting and finance, and what
the resultant changes signify. It does so by locating the increasing involvement
of women with investment activities within the historical development of the
relationship between women and accounting in Japan. First, the chapter exam-
ines the relationship currently developing between Japanese women and invest-
ment agencies. The following section gives an overview of the changing
relationship between women and accounting in different periods in Japanese
history. These include: pre-modern times; the periods of modernization, indus-
trialization and the inter-war period; the post-war period and the era of global-
ization currently taking place. Each section explores the changes in the role and
position of women in accounting and finance and how these have influenced
women’s lives. The chapter concludes by considering the forces driving their
increasing involvement in investment activities.
Women and investment: the experience of women in Japan

The relationship between women and investment activity has become stronger in
Japan in recent years. A number of securities companies, in conjunction with the
Tokyo Stock Exchange, now hold investment seminars for women to promote
their understanding of investment. A number of large department stores and cos-
metics companies have held women-only investor relationship (IR) seminars.8 In
292 N. Komori
these seminars, the lectures on how to build up an investment portfolio follow
make-up lessons and wine-tasting sessions. Women investors are beginning to
feature in the mass media. An increasing number of books and articles have
been published that talk about the significance of investments for women and
encourage their involvement.9 The increasing involvement of women in invest-
ment activities signifies that the traditional role of women in the household and
their relationship with household accounting are undergoing profound change.
The current trend is being driven by the interaction between women’s
demand for investment activities and the supply from banks and business corpo-
rations eager to offer them such opportunities.
Japanese women are showing a keen interest in investing in property as well
as in stocks and other financial products. The first women-only IR seminar held
in March 2006 by Resona Bank, one of the major banks in Japan, attracted
applications from some 500 women for 180 seats.10 Their growing interest in
investment activities reflects their demand for independence from their tradi-
tional role in the household. This is also evident in women’s increasing aware-
ness of their entitlement to a share of the household assets. According to a study
conducted by the Institute for Research on Household Economics, approxi-
mately 46 per cent of women interviewed in 2000 felt it was important to protect
their entitlement to joint assets; this figure had increased to 80 per cent by
2006.11 The growing awareness among women of their entitlement to property
ownership signifies a change in the gender roles that have historically sustained
the integrity of the Japanese household; old attitudes are dissolving, with house-
hold members becoming more individual-oriented.
Since the end of the 1990s, as interest among women has grown, companies,
banks and securities companies have been intensifying their efforts to attract
more women investors, in order to increase diversity among independent
investors. These companies are paying particular attention to female investors,
whom they consider more careful and serious, qualities conducive to long-term
investment relationships.12
Thus, as women demand greater access to investment opportunities and
Japanese companies seek to attract more female investors, this mutually support-
ive cycle means that the involvement of women in finance may be expected to
strengthen. The fact that this process has been led by the demand from women
raises the question of what has aroused women’s interest in investment issues.
What is their role within the household, how has this role been constructed and
what makes them seek independence from it? We now turn to the past to seek
answers to these questions.
The historical development of women’s role in financial
management and their accounting practices
‘Okami-san’ (female proprietor): women’s role as financial managers

in the pre-modern era
We first examine the pre-modern period before the Meiji Restoration in 1868;
this includes ancient and medieval times (chusei) as well as the Tokugawa
Shogiunate Era (kinsei), the period when Japan prepared for the coming of mod-
ernization under the Tokugawa Regime (1603–1867).
In ancient and medieval times (until the middle of the fourteenth century),
farmers, fishermen and merchants made up 80 per cent of the population in
Japan. The household as a social unit, based upon the husband and wife partner-
ship, did not prevail until the tenth century.13 Many of the ancient agricultural
villages were organized along communal lines with the community determining
issues such as exchanges of work and marriage alliances for its members.14 In
these villages, where the economy ran on a non-monetary basis, women had
control over rice. In a context where rice functioned as a form of currency,
‘control over rice meant control over the domestic economy’.15
The woman’s role as the manager of the domestic economy was further
strengthened in medieval times when the household started to prevail as a social
unit. In medieval times, the household (ie) came increasingly to replace the
community, establishing itself as the unit that determined the social role of indi-
viduals. Women were allocated the job of managing the finances of the house-
hold and their role was closely linked to the nature of the ie.
Under the Tokugawa Regime (established in 1600), the country isolated itself
from foreign trade and set up a social structure that would later enable it to resist
the unwanted elements in the tide of Westernization that swept the country at the
end of the nineteenth century. Alongside the drive towards modernization,
Tokugawa society retained the pre-modern characteristic of being strictly
divided into different classes, and there were clear differences between the
ruling samurai class and the other classes in terms of the position of women.
In the samurai class, which enjoyed the most privileged position in Toku-
gawa society, women were kept out of the public sphere, which was dominated
by men. Instead, they remained in the back room of the house (oku) and had no
involvement with economic activities. On the other hand, women in the com-
moner’s class, which was unaffected by Confucian ideology, enjoyed a more
significant role. Women in the merchant class, in particular, occupied important
positions as bookkeepers16 and financial managers, running the business in the
absence of their husbands.17
Mine (1771–1828), the only daughter of a merchant in Wakayama in Western
Japan, married a man who at 21 succeeded to the household business. It was her
job to record the flow of goods through the shop, bookkeeping and cross-
checking the accounts.18 She also supported her husband by welcoming visitors
and keeping a detailed record of the gifts they were given (type and volume).
294 N. Komori
Women household heads did not just play a supporting role to their male
counterparts; they often took centre stage if the male household head died or
was incapable. Juhou (1590–1676), the mother of Takatoshi Mitsui, the first
master of a prominent merchant family that developed itself into one of the
biggest zaibatsu families in Japan, actively engaged in the family business,
while her husband devoted his time to reading poetry, playing cards and art. Her
talents for business and client management were widely recognized; subsequent
generations of the Mitsui family paid great respect to Juhou, calling her the
founder of the Mitsui business.19
In merchant families of the Tokugawa era, women were called Okami-san,
which means female proprietor, and not Oku-san, which literally signifies wives
who stay in the back room of the house (where samurais’ wives were located).
Bookkeeping and accounting work was a central task for the women in merchant
households.
Growing awareness of identity among women and state control:

modernization, industrialization and the inter-war period (from the
Meiji Period (1868) to the beginning of the Showa Period (early
twentieth century))
However, women in the commoner’s class began to lose the power they had had
in the traditional household (ie) in the modern period. The modern period began
with the defeat of the Tokugawa Regime in the middle of the nineteenth century
and the establishment of the Meiji government in 1868. After isolating itself for
more than two centuries, the country opened up commercial and diplomatic con-
tacts with Western countries. Under the national goal of ‘catching up with the
West’, the Meiji government made a series of social, economic and political
reforms to transform Japan from an agrarian to an industrial economy. One such
reform was the construction of the family–state structure. The traditional Japan-
ese household (ie) eventually came to be replaced by the patriarchal family
system instituted by the Meiji government. In this family–state structure, the
role of women was to serve their men and to maintain the continuity of the
Japanese patriarchal family system. The role defined for women by the Meiji
government led to a change in the role of household accounting, and con-
sequently to a decline in the power and position of women in the household in
the commoner’s class.20 The state stressed that it was important for women to
manage their household accounting in such a way as to accumulate savings that
could then be used to fund the new industries and develop military power. The
government also introduced informal bookkeeping into the formal education
programme for women. Thus, accounting was employed by the state as an
instrument to construct the knowledge that helped to establish social gender
roles and the position of women in society.21
The significance of household accounting was also recognized by some of the
women themselves. Mrs Motoko Hani, Japan’s first woman journalist, played a
leading role in the modernization of Japanese households by establishing the
women’s magazine Fujin no Tomo (The Women’s Friend), and publishing the
first household accounting book in Japan. Since its establishment, Fujin no
Tomo has played an important role in supporting women’s household accounting
work.22
The position determined for women by the state was challenged during the
process of modernization and industrialization. From the last decade of the nine-
teenth century, the government set up initiatives to make the country an industri-
ally advanced nation and to build up its military power to enable it to defend its
independence. The demand for workers helped to increase the opportunities
available to women to engage in work beyond the household. As their activities
outside the home expanded, some women in Japan’s urban centres started to
question their position and their identity, which encouraged the growth of the
feminist movement in Japan.
It was the war regime that resolved the conflict between the role and position
advocated for women by the state and women’s own growing awareness of their
feminine identity.23 The Japanese government not only controlled the entire
economy but also initiated a number of policies to strengthen national unity and
accumulate capital to support military and industrial development. Savings goals
were set by the government for Japanese citizens: they were ordered to save 23
billion yen in 1941. The state also redefined the role of women as ‘mothers of
the nation’, encouraging women to serve their country by helping to amass the
savings necessary for military and industrial investment.
Women proactively responded to the role given them by the government to a
degree unique in Japanese history. A number of women’s groups were set up,
the initiative coming from women themselves rather than from the government,
coming together to share ideas and give mutual support with household account-
ing practice.24 They particularly emphasized that cooperation among neighbours
was a way of enhancing community spirit. Fujin no Tomo encouraged this
community spirit by urging its readers to share their household accounting prob-
lems with their neighbours:
After paying rent, tax, compulsory savings, and sending some money to my
mother, 33 yen remains in my hand. I cannot spend this on clothing, furni-
ture or entertainment. I have an extra income of 14 or 15 yen which I earn
once or twice a year. For food, I spend 2 sen [1 yen equals 100 sen] in the
morning, 3 sen on lunch, and 4 sen for dinner. I spend 24 sen 5 days a
month in order to enjoy eating beef and pork. My husband’s pocket money
is 3 yen and 82 sen. This amount seems large, but this is actually used for
my children’s stationery and snacks for guests. When some money remains,
we go somewhere with the children.25
It must be noted that these actions by the publishers of women’s magazines,

like women’s efforts to encourage national unity, were not the result of state
intervention. Women were seeking an independent feminine identity and a sense
of social purpose, which they found by embracing the ‘mother of the nation’ role
296 N. Komori
advocated by the state and by contributing to national savings through their
household accounting practice.
Becoming an independent investor: post-war and the influence of

globalization
The war regime set down the basis of the social structure that operated in post-
war Japan. After Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, the Allied Forces
embarked on the drastic reform of Japanese society, with the aim of rebuilding
Japan as a democratic country. Society was reconstructed in such a way as to
revitalize its economy and industry: in the so-called ‘Corporate Society’, busi-
ness enterprises would play the central role.26 Japanese companies and the
government constructed the post-war Japanese family as a site for the reproduc-
tion of the human resources that corporations need and to generate savings for
corporate investment. The government took the initiative by supporting a
savings promotion movement. In 1952, the Central Council for Savings
Information (CCSI) was established with the support of the Japanese govern-
ment. CCSI organized study groups and sent officers to different districts in
Japan to spread the idea of lifestyle planning and to emphasize the importance of
saving through prudent household accounting practice.
Housewives became a widespread phenomenon in the Corporate Society.
This development came to Japan relatively late compared to the Western indus-
trialized nations, where a large proportion of women were already housewives in
the nineteenth century.27 However, housewives in Japan were expected to play
an important social role; they were initially expected to support corporate activ-
ities from within the household, bringing up the next generation of corporate
warriors and accumulating the savings necessary for corporate investment. They
proactively responded to this call through the practice of household accounting.
The nature of their household accounting practice was and remains unique; it is
characterized by detail and cooperation, taking in lifestyle choices, family values
and broader social issues such as the environment. Some women in Japan have
used accounting at home to foster shared values and family unity by holding
family conferences to design long-term investment plans. Household accounting
information has not only assisted women to educate their children about mone-
tary values; it has also helped to raise the awareness of family members of wider
social policies by highlighting non-consumable expenditure such as tax, social
insurance, health and housing. In addition, by enabling families to calculate their
CO2 emissions from their expenditure on fossil fuels, household accounting has
made consumers more environmentally aware.28 The household accounting prac-
tice of generations of Japanese women has made a vital contribution to the
country’s national savings and corporate activities.
However, some women have more recently begun to use accounting for a dif-
ferent purpose. In the 1970s, housewives established a number of consumer
groups, such as Shufu Rengo Kai (The Japan Housewives’ Association). These
associations have acted collectively to challenge powerful corporate/government
institutions and have exerted political influence over political activities. House-
hold accounting records gathered from association members have provided
significant evidence to legitimize their actions.29
Post-war change has also brought new opportunities for women to engage in
accounting work in the public arena. With the introduction after the Second
World War of the US model of auditing and corporate financial disclosure,
accountants began to organize and establish their profession. For those women
seeking to escape from their traditional role and lead an independent life, the
accounting profession has offered a good career. In 2002, women comprised
19.2 per cent of the candidates for the CPA examination. This highlights the dra-
matic increase in the number of women in the accounting profession since the
early 1980s, when the figure was 3 per cent. The increase in the number of
women seeking entry into the profession is expected to continue, as more
women are driven by their wish to realize their independent identity.30
Following the globalization of the last two decades, women in Japan are
increasingly taking up investment activities. Under the aim of establishing an
internationally attractive financial market, Japan’s Financial Service Agency set
up a programme they called ‘Moving towards a financial service nation’ to
reform the financial system. In this programme, the emphasis in household
finance has shifted from savings to investment and asset management, with the
aim of revitalizing the economy by mobilizing the huge savings currently frozen
in banks offering close to zero interest rates. In 2001, The Central Council for
Financial Information (CCFI) was established, replacing the CCSI. The CCFI is
playing a major role in the disseminating of financial and economic information,
running a wide range of activities in schools and local communities to promote
sensible financial and life planning.
Women’s increasing involvement in investment activities is also related to
the growing globalization of the capital market and the influence this has had on
the ownership structure of Japanese corporations. Foreign investors have grown
significantly; by 2005 they were some of the biggest traders in the Japanese
securities market.31 Through their repeated criticism of the group-oriented nature
of Japanese corporate management, these foreign investors have helped to
promote transparency among Japanese corporate management, leading to a
reduction in mutual shareholdings among Japanese banks and business corpora-
tions. Currently, a number of government policies are being redirected towards
individual investors, and business corporations have also been at pains to
improve their relations with individual investors. In this context, women
investors are expected to have a significant effect on the business corporations’
shift from group-oriented financing in a development that could further enhance
the transparency and diversity of corporate management. Increasingly, invest-
ment companies are launching products designed specially for female investors;
the latest ethical investment funds encourage women to invest in companies that
promote women to managerial positions and sell women’s goods and services.32
Simultaneously, women themselves are showing increasing interest in
becoming investors. This is one outcome of the greater freedom Japanese
298 N. Komori
women have to choose their own lifestyle. In contrast to the past, when the only
option open to women was to be a ‘good mother and wife’, a growing number of
women are marrying later, or choosing not to marry at all; the percentage of
unmarried women has continued to rise, while the average marriage age is now
27-plus, compared to 24 in 1990.33 The general tendency is for these unmarried
women to live with their parents, a phenomenon that is affecting the housing
market. At the same time, women in Japan are increasingly seeking independ-
ence from their traditional household role; the divorce rate has climbed steadily
from 0.5 per cent in 1970 to 2.4 per cent in 2003.34 These figures suggest that the
gender roles embedded in the Corporate Society and the traditional life patterns
(particularly of women) that have sustained it are dissolving. In spite of the
changing expectations and perceptions of women, however, corporations still
offer few opportunities for women to progress their careers. Less than 10 per
cent of women are promoted to managerial positions, the lowest figure in any
industrialized country.35 Although employment among women is increasing
steadily, many are still positioned as only ‘irregular’ employees (i.e. temporary,
part-time or casual workers). Against this background, more women are realiz-
ing that, in order to have the freedom to live as they wish, they must first secure
economic independence; and that skilful asset investment and management
should form part of their life plan.
Conclusion
Maltby and Rutterford (2006) identified two ways in which women are involved
in economic activities: as accountants and as investors. This historical review of
the experience of Japanese women in accounting and finance has revealed that
women in Japan are currently making the transition from the first role to the
second.
The growth in their involvement with investment activities has been led by an
increasing demand among women for independence from the household, and for
freedom from the role and position that has been defined for them by the state
since the modern period. Examination of the historical relationship between
Japanese women and accounting demonstrates that their demand for independ-
ence has developed gradually throughout Japanese history; their role in house-
hold accounting has had a significant impact on women’s lives, and in the
post-war period, it helped to shape their sense of independent feminine identity.
In a social context where the opportunities for women to enter the public arena
are still limited, investment activities have the potential to help them achieve the
economic independence they need to realize this identity.
At the same time, globalization has significantly helped to strengthen their
relationship with the investment market. With the globalization of business and
capital markets, Japanese business and society have had to restructure them-
selves: Japanese business corporations have been pressured to change their tradi-
tional behaviours, while the state has redefined the role of the household. The
repositioning of Japanese corporate business in the global economy and the
impact this has had on society have been key factors in raising the profile of
female investors.
The Japanese experience suggests that the relationship between women and
investment in the country is crucially affected by the interactive relationship
between women’s social role and position, and the position of the Japanese cor-
porations in the global economy. It would certainly be worth monitoring
whether their investment activities have as significant an impact on these
women’s lives and identities as accounting has done throughout Japanese
history.
Notes
1 I would like to express my thanks to Professor Kimiko Kimoto, Ryoko Okazaki and
Masaya Ono from the Bank of Japan and Koko Chiba from Fujin no Tomo for offering
me much valuable information. This project was supported financially by The Daiwa
Anglo-Japanese Foundation and the Japan Foundation. Both are gratefully acknowledged.
2 Nikko Cordial Co., ‘Josei ni yutaka na jinsei no tameno toshi wo gotean suru
kikakubusho wo shinsetsu (Attracting women to investment)’, 2005, available online:
www.nikko.co.jp/news/2005/pdf/050310.pdf (accessed 5 June 2006).
3 N. Komori, ‘The “hidden” history of accounting in Japan: an historical examination
of the relationship between Japanese women and accounting’, Accounting History 12
(3), 2007, pp. 329–358.
4 See for example, S. Walker, ‘Identifying women behind the railed in desk’, Account-
ing, Auditing and Accountability Journal 16 (4), 2003, pp. 606–639; S. Walker and S.
Llewellyn, ‘Accounting at home: some interdisciplinary perspectives’, Accounting,
Auditing and Accountability Journal 13 (4), 2000, pp. 425–449. Also, see L. Kirkham
and A. Loft, ‘The lady and the accounts: missing from accounting history?’, Account-
ing Historians Journal 28, June 2001, pp. 66–80: G. Carnegie and S. Walker, ‘House-
hold accounting in Australia: a microhistorical study’, Accounting, Auditing and
Accountability Journal 20 (2), 2007, pp. 210–236.
5 Stephen Walker, ‘Octavia Hill: property manager and accountant’, Chapter 12 in this
volume.
6 See, for example, M. Annisette, ‘People and period untouched by accounting history:
an ancient Yoruba practice’, Accounting History 11 (4), 2006, pp. 399–417.
7 J. Maltby and J. Rutterford, ‘Editorial: women, accounting and investment’, Account-
ing, Business and Financial History 16 (2), 2006, pp. 133–142.
8 Nikkei Financial Newspaper, ‘Shiseido and Kosei – developing women investors’, 9
November 2004; Nikkei Marketing Journal, ‘Kosei – holding women-only IR semi-
nars with make-up lessons’, 7 September 2004, p. 27.
9 For example, the Mainichi Economist Journal published a special issue on female
investors in March 2006, highlighting their experiences of and perspectives on invest-
ment.
10 The Japan Times, ‘Banks target women’s purse strings amid growing interest in
investment’, May 23 2006, available online: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/
nb20060523a4.html (accessed 2 June 2006).
11 M. Mihune, ‘Josei no kinyu shisan to jutaku shoyu (Women’s ownership of financial
assets and property)’, in Kakei Keizai Kenkyusho (Institute for Research on House-
hold Economics), Research Report no. 3: Josei no Lifecourse to Jutaku shoyu
(Women’s Lifecourse and Property), Tokyo: Institute for Research on Household
Economics, 2006, p. 76.
12 K. Kawabuchi, ‘Josei kabunushi kakutoku no torikumi (Activities to attract women
investors)’, Kigyo Kaikei (Corporate Accounting) 57 (6), 2005, pp. 70–71.
300 N. Komori
13 K. Inuma, ‘Goke no chikara-sono seiristu to yakuwari wo megutte (Power of goke: its
establishment and role)’, in S. Minegishi (ed.), Chusei wo kangaeru kazoku to josei
(The Study of Family and Women in Medieval Japan), Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan,
1992, p. 164.
14 C. Ueno, ‘Position of Japanese women reconsidered’, Current Anthropology 28 (4),
August–October 1987, S77–78.
15 C. Ueno, ‘Position of Japanese women reconsidered’, S77–78.
16 M. Maxon, ‘Women in family business’, in J. Lebra, J. Paulson and E. Powers (eds),
Women in Changing Japan, Boulder, CO: Western Press, 1976, pp. 89–106.
17 R. Hayashi, ‘Machia josei to kagyo (Women and household business)’, in H. Wakita,
R. Hayashi, and K. Nagahara (eds), Nihon Josei Shi (Women’s History in Japan),
Tokyo: Yoshikawa Koubunnkan, 1987, pp. 155–159.
18 R. Hayashi, ‘Machia josei to kagyo’, pp. 157–158.
19 R. Hayashi, ‘Machia josei to kagyo’, pp. 156–157.
20 N. Komori, ‘The “hidden” history of accounting in Japan’.
22 Fujin no Tomo, ‘Itsukara demo Kakei Jouzu (Good Household Economy)’, Tokyo:
Dainihon Insatsu, 2006, p. 33.
23 For a discussion on how household accounting helped to strengthen women’s motiva-
tion to support the war regime, and helped to accommodate the interests of the state
and those of women, see N. Komori, ‘The “hidden” history of accounting in Japan’.
25 Fujin no Tomo, ‘Kakeibo ga kataru seikatsushi (The Life History of 90 Years of
Household Bookkeeping)’, Fujin no Tomo 87 (4), 1993, p. 58.
26 K. Kimoto, Kazoku, Gender, Kigyoushakai (Family, Gender, Corporate Society),
Kyoto: Minerva Shobou, 1995; K. Kimoto, ‘Kigyou shakai ron karano approach
(Approach from corporate society perspective)’, in K. Ishihara (ed.), Kazoku to
Shokugyo: Kyougou to Chousei (Family and Work: Competition and Control),
Tokyo: Minerva Shobou, 2002, pp. 62–86.
27 K. Tanaka, ‘Work, education and the family’, in K. Fujiwara-Fanselow and A.
Kameda (eds), Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present
and Future, New York: The Feminist Press, 1995, p. 305.
28 For examples of household accounting practice in post-war Japan, and how this prac-
tice and people’s experiences have changed, see N. Komori and C. Humphrey, ‘From
an envelope to a dream note and a computer: the award-winning experiences of post-
war Japanese household accounting practices’, Accounting, Auditing and Account-
ability Journal 13 (4), 2000, pp. 456–470.
30 N. Komori, ‘Choosing to be kyapi kyapi or gati gati: the real-life experiences of
women in the accounting profession in Japan’, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on
Accounting (IPA) conference, Cardiff, July 2006.
31 Tokyo Stock Exchange, ‘The survey result on the stock distribution and ownership
structure in 2006’, Tokyo: Tokyo Stock Exchange, 2006.
32 Financial Times, ‘Japanese funds tap into women power’, 1 June 2006.
33 National Council for Women’s Education, Danjo Kyoudo Sanka Toukei Data Book
2003 (Statistical Data Book on Gender Equality in Japan), Tokyo: Shinyosha, 2003,
pp. 22–25.
34 A. Nagai, ‘Women’s lifecourse and property’, in Kakei Keizai Kenkyusho (Institute
for Research on Household Economics), Research Report no. 3: Josei no Lifecourse
to Jutaku shoyu (Women’s lifecourse and property), Tokyo: Institute for Research on
Household Economics, 2006, pp. 56–64.
35 National Council for Women’s Education, Danjo Kyoudo Sanka Toukei Data Book
2003, p. 38.
Bibliography
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Carnegie, G. and Walker, S. ‘Household accounting in Australia: a microhistorical
study’, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 20 (2), 2007, pp. 210–236.
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Fujin no Tomo, ‘Itsukara demo Kakei Jouzu (Good Household Economy)’, Tokyo:
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establishment and role)’, in Minegishi, S. (ed.) Chusei wo kangaeru kazoku to josei
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Index
Aberdeen Fire and Life Assurance bankruptcy 6, 232

Company 106 banks: England 48–54; Sweden 255–61;
Aberdeen Gas Light Company 106 women’s departments 243–9
account-keeping 11–12 Barchester Towers (Trollope) 155
accounting: apprenticeship in 166–7; for Barker, Hannah 73
business 73–82; and gendered spheres Barnard’s Act (1734) 31
171–2; Japan 293–8; Octavia Hill’s Barnsley Banking Co. 120, 122, 123, 124
approach to 167–70 Barry, Elizabeth 246
Acheson, Graham 184 Barth, Louise 61–2
American Senator, The (Trollope) 154 Basch, Norma 219, 227
American Steel Barrel Company 232, 234 Bateman, John 9
Andress, Mary Vail 245 Baxter, Mary Ann 184–5, 186, 189
Angiolini, Carolina 283–4 Baynes, J. 202
Anglo-Saxon countries 291 Beard, Mary 219
Anna of the Five Towns (Bennett) 158 Bennett, A. 158
Antonelli, Adele 283 Berkeley, George 48–9
Armstrong, Nancy 151, 156 Birmingham & Midland Bank 123, 124,
Army Pay Department (APD) UK 126
197–211 Black, John 197–211
Artificial Stone Manufactory 78 Bly, Nellie 226, 227, 232–5, 237
Association of Bank Women (ABW) 247 bondholders, Sweden 261–3
Austen, Jane 75–6, 151, 152 Boulton & Watt 78, 80
awards, Army Pay Department 207 Bradford Banking Co. 123, 124
Ayer, Harriet Hubbard 227–32, 235, 237 Bradford Union 116
Ayr Gas Company 107 Braukman, Stacy 220
Braybon, G. 197, 198
Baker, Judith 80 Brisbane, Arthur 234
Baker, Paula 248–9 Britain: clerical staff 197–211; stock
Balen, Malcolm 3 company investment 95–108; wealth
bank collapse 126 and women 86–91; see also England
Bank of England 30, 33–4, 36–7, 38–40, Brontë, Charlotte 151
65, 78, 95–6, 106 Bruère, Mina 245
Bank of Liverpool 100, 120, 123, 124 Bubble Act 96
Bank of Scotland 107 Buckeley, Katherine 247–8
Bank of Westmoreland 117, 120, 123, 124 Bunyan, John 95
bank staff 244–9, 265–6 Burcham, Emilie H. 246
Banker’s Wife, The (Gore) 156 Burke’s Order of the British Empire 207
Banking Co-partnerships Act (1826) 115, business 145–6; accounting in 73–82;
116, 120 apprenticeship in 166–7
304 Index
businesses, US 220–1 company formation 86–8
businesswomen: England 73–82; Japan company governance 106–7
293–4; legal challenges to 226–37 company law, liberalisation of 126
competence 152–3
Caccia, Charles 233, 234 compilation clerks 205–6, 208
Cady Stanton, Elizabeth 220 Consolidated Tea and Lands Co. 186
Caledonian Bank 105 Consols 125
Calenbergische Witwen-Verpflegungs- consumer groups, Japan 296–7
Gesellschaft 66–7 Copeland, E. 152–3, 155
Campbell-Kelly, M. 197, 204 corporate capitalism, rise of 248–9
Canada Permanent Loan and Savings Corporate Society, Japan 296, 298
Company 184 Cottrell, Philip L. 115–27, 184, 190
Carlos, Ann M. 2, 33–43, 47, 156 County of Gloucestershire Banking Co.
Carruthers, Bruce 46, 54, 55 123, 124
Carter, Alice Clare 4 Course of the Exchange (Castaing) 38
Castaing, John 38 Coventry & Warwickshire Banking Co.
Central Council for Financial Information 116
(CCFI), Japan 297 Coventry Union Banking Co. 123, 124
Central Council for Savings Information coverture 7–10
(CCSI), Japan 296 Cowper, Countess Mary 64
Cervin, C.G. 262–3 Cox, Adelaide 188
Chalus, Elaine 54 credit market: equal opportunities in
Chambers, William 78, 81 279–82; Sweden 263–4
Chandler, Alfred 222 Cumberland Union Banking Co. 116, 117,
Chase National 246 123, 124
Child, Sarah 6
Church, Col. A.B. 208 d’Orleans, Duchess Elisabeth 64–5
City of Glasgow Bank 126 Dale, Richard 2
Civil Code: Germany 60; Italy 261, 274; David Copperfield (Dickens) 155
Sweden 258 Davidoff, Leonore 6, 63
Clark, Alice 7 de Pisan, Christine 11
class 5–7 Defoe, Daniel 76
Clayton, Sarah 6 demographic trends 12–17
clerical function, downgrading 205–7 department stores 243
clerical labour-saving devices 204–5 Dickens, Charles 87, 152, 155
clerical posts, Army Pay Department Dickson, P.G.M. 4, 48, 54
197–211 Dickson, Richard 137, 139
Clery, E.J. 1 diversification 179
Clews, Henry 221 dividends 36–7, 52, 53, 122–4
Coade, Eleanor 6, 77–8, 80, 81 Doctor Thorne (Trollope) 154
Cock, Johanna 38–9 Dodge, Grace 222
Cockerell, Sydney 171 Dombey and Son (Dickens) 152
Collins, Wilkie 88, 154 ‘Dover’ system 201–2
Columbia Trust Company 244 Dower 5, 8
commercial banks, Sweden 258–61 dowries 5, 8, 30, 60–2, 274, 279, 281
commercial joint-stock bank investment: Dundee Gas Commission 184
mid-nineteenth century investment duty 145–6
opportunities 122–6; promotions 116;
shareholders 120–2; subscriptions to Earle, Peter 5, 6
promotions 117–20 East India Company 30, 52, 53, 95, 99
commoner’s class, Japan 293–4 Eastern Telegraph Company 186
Companies Acts 126 Ecclesiastical Commissioners 167
Companies Clauses Consolidation ecclesiastical courts 135–6
(Scotland) Act (1845) 106–7 economic growth 255
Index 305
education 75–6, 200 Furman, Virginia D.H. 244–5
Edwards, Ermin 187 Garfield National Bank 243
Eliot, George 134 gas industry 97
emotion 145–6 Gay, H. 207
Empire Trust Company 245 gender 3–5
England: banks and securities market Gender and Power in Britain 1640–1990
46–55; commercial joint-stock bank (Kent) 54
investment 115–27; eighteenth-century gender perspective, Swedish financial
finance 30–1; financial acumen during system 254–67
South Sea Bubble 33–43; see also gendered spheres and accounting 171–2
London Germain, Richard 248
Enskilda Bank 265 Germany, investors and financial
equal opportunities, credit market 279–82 knowledge 59–67
Erickson, Amy Louise 8 Gerschenkron, Alexander 255
estates: distribution 273–4; entailed 153–4 Gilbart, J.W. 117
‘Everywoman’ policy 16 Gill, Thomas 142
executors 105, 140, 146 Gilman, Edward 233
expectations and work 1700–1950 12–17 Gissing, G. 158–9
globalization, influence of 296–8
family and wealth 153–6 Gordon, Eleanor 178
family share ownership 105 Gore, Catherine 156
family-state structure, Japan 294 government debt, Britain 47–8
feme sole merchant right 31 GPO 197–8, 200, 210
feminist economics 17–19 Graham, Janet 186
fiction, women and wealth in 151–60 Grant, Baron 10
Fifth Avenue Bank 243 Great Depression 247
finance: charting presence in 10–11; Great Western Railway 106
eighteenth century England 30–1; and Green, David R. 123–4, 133–46
globalization 290–9; Milan 271–84; US Green, Hetty 235–7
221–2 Griffiths Report 199, 201, 203, 205–8
financial acumen 33–43 Guest, Lady Charlotte 6
financial crisis (1866) 126 Guide to the Unprotected, A 12
financial independence 35–6, 184–5 Guild, John 179
financial information 10–12
financial knowledge 59–67 Halifax & Huddersfield Union Banking
financial management, Japan 293–8 Co. 116, 120, 123, 124
financial managers, Japan 293–4 Halifax Joint Stock Bank 116, 117, 123,
financial press 65–6 124
Financial Services Agency, Japan 297 Halifax, Marquis of 11–12
financial system, Sweden 254–67 Hall, Catherine 6, 63
Finn, Margot 12, 74 Hamburgischer Correspondent 65
First Scottish American Investment Trust Hani, Motoko 294–5
(FSAIT) 178–91 Hardesty, Paul 246
First World War 197–211, 295 Harvey, E. 199
Fleming, Robert 179 He Knew He Was Right (Trollope) 154,
Florence, Sargant 17 155–6
Foreign and Colonial Investment Trust 180 heirs/heiresses , Milan 276–9
Forster, E.M. 158 Henry, N. 151, 152
Fowler, William 221 Herbert, Lady Mary 6
Framley Parsonage (Trollope) 154 Hibernian Bank 104, 105
freehold property 143–5 Hill, Octavia 165–73
Freeman, Mark 95–108, 184 Hinüber, Catharina, Margarete 64
Froide, Amy 47 Hoare’s Bank 46, 48–54
Fujin no Tomo (Women’s Friend) 295 Hoppit, Julian 47
306 Index
household accounting 79, 293–7 Joint Stock Company Act (1879) 180, 181
housing management 166–7 jus administration 189
Howard’s End (Forster) 158 jus mariti 188–9
Howland Will Case 236
Huddersfield Banking Co. 116, 120, 123, Kent, Susan Kingsley 54
124 Kessler-Harris, A. 199
Hudson’s Bay Company 95 Knox, Helen 246
Huguenots 63–4 Kwolek-Folland, Angel 220
human behaviour and demographic trends
12–17 L’Argent (Zola) 157–8
Hunt, Margaret 5, 73, 88 Laurence, Anne 1–19, 30–1, 46–55, 156
Law, John 4, 6, 62, 63
identity, awareness of 294–6 Leamington Priors Gas Light Company
In the Year of Jubilee (Gissing ) 159 107
incorporation acts 97 leasehold property 143–5
independent investors, Japan 296–8 Lebsock, Suzanne 219
industrial revolution 7, 255–7 ledger systems 203–5
industrialization, Japan 294–6 legal challenges to businesswomen 226–37
Ingrassia, Catherine 1, 35 legal framework: England 5, 7–10, 18,
inheritance: Italy 274–5, 279, 281, 284; 88–9, 141, 156–7; Germany 60; Italy
London 133–5; of shares 122, 186; 280–1; Scotland 188–90, 191; Sweden
Sweden 258 257–8; US 218–20, 227
Institute for Research on Household Lemire, Beverly 73, 77, 79
Economics 292 Letters to My Fellow-Workers (Hill) 170,
institutional savings, Sweden 258–61 172
intellectual clerical processes 200, 205–7 Lewis, J. 168–9
interdisciplinary work 17–19 Licini, Stefania 271–84
International Economic History life expectancy 13
Association 19 limited liability 126, 263
investment agencies, Japan 291–2 Lippe, Countess Margaret Gertrud 64
investment trusts, Scotland 178–82; data Little Dorrit (Dickens) 152
and methodology 182–3; further Liverpool Union Banking Co. 123, 124
research 190–1; legal implications London & Edinburgh Shipping Company
188–90; participation levels 184–8 107
investment: capacity for 123–5; choices in London Joint Stock Bank 116, 122, 123,
90–1; decline in opportunities 125–6; 124
eighteenth century 47–8; financial London, middle class investors 133–46
knowledge for 59–67; Japan 297–8; Loose-leaf ledger system 203–5, 207–8
Milan 278–9; nineteenth century 89–90; lotteries 48, 51–2
and speculation 156–8; US 221–2 low-risk investments 123–6
investor-relationships (IR) seminars 291–2 Lutes, Jean 234
Ireland, stock company investment 95–108
Iron Clad Manufacturing Company 232–5 Maclagan, Augusta 167, 168
Is He Popenjoy? (Trollope) 154 Maguire, Karen 33–43
Maltby, Josephine 1–19, 73, 76, 123–4,
Jane Eyre (Brontë) 151 151–60, 184, 187, 298
Japan, finance and globalization 290–9 Man and Wife (Collins) 88
Jefferys, James 90 marital status: effects of 11; investment
Jewry, Germany 61 trust investors 182, 184–8; joint-stock
John Halifax, Gentleman (Mulock) 156 bank investors 117–20
joint investments 189–90 Marperger, Paul Jacob 63
Joint Stock Banking Act (1844) 115 marriage contracts 30, 31, 61–2, 189
joint stock companies: emergence of 34–5; marriage settlements 8, 154–5
Sweden 263 marriage, age of 13–14
Index 307
Married Women’s Property Act 5, 18; occupations: British/Irish investors 105–6;
England 7, 88–9, 120, 141, 152; English/Welsh investors 117, 122;
Scotland 188–90; US 218–20, 227 London property owners 136–8; Milan
Martin Chuzzlewit (Dickens) 87 276–7
Martin’s Bank 99–100 Odd Women, The (Gissing) 158–9
Martin, Isabella 188 Ogilvy, Eveline 186
Martindale, Hilda 210 Oglesby, Catharine 246
Marwick, A. 197 Ögren, Anders 254, 257
Matthews, Charlotte 6, 77–8, 80, 81–2 ‘okami-san’ 293–4
mechanical clerical processes 205–10 Old National Bank 246
Mellon, Andrew 247 Overend Gurney crisis (1866) 104–5
Menand, Louis 236 Owens, A. 123–4, 139–40, 141, 144–5
Mennet, Sofia 284
merchant class, Japan 293 paymasters, British Army 201, 206
Michie, Elsie B. 153 peacetime role, Army Pay Department
middle class investors 5–7, 59–61, 133–46 200–2
Milan, wealth and finance in 271–84 Pearson, Robin 95–108, 184
Mill on the Floss, The (Eliot) 134 Pedersen, S. 198
Ministry of Finance, Italy 271, 280 pensions 15–16
Mississippi Scheme 62–3 Pensions Act (1925) 16
modernization, Japan 294–6 Perry, Marilyn 232
money: and ‘new women’ 158–9; US personal credit 61
218–22 personal property 7–10
Moray Firth & London Steam Packer Petersson, Tom 254–67
Company 107 philanthropy 165–6, 172–3
Morrell, Henry 137 Phillips, Nicola 76
Morris, Jessie 185 Pilgrim’s Progress, The (Bunyan) 95
Morris, R.J. 8, 134, 141, 143, 144 Pinchbeck, Ivy 7
Mortimer, Thomas 156 Pocock, J.G.A. 1
Muldrew, Craig 74 politics and the market 54–5
Mulock, Dinah Mary 156 Politisches Journal 65
Münter, Balthasar 66 Pollard, Sidney 75
Poovey, M. 151
Nair, Gwyneth 178 Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) 197–8,
National Bank of Commerce 247 200, 202, 203–4, 208, 210
National Bank: Italy 271; Sweden 256 Post Office Savings Certificates 17
National Debt (1693) 30 poverty, dangers of 152–3
National Trust 167, 170 Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC)
Navy Bills 48 134
Neal, Larry 2, 33–43, 47 Preston Gas Company 107
Nefarious Practice of Stockjobbing Pride and Prejudice (Austen) 151, 152
Unveiled, The (Mortimer) 156 primogeniture 153–4
Nevinson, Margaret W. 173 Prochaska, F.K. 173
‘new women’ and money 158–9 property-owning class, size of 136–7
New York Earnings Act 219 proprietorial autonomy 139–45
New York State Suffrage Party 245 proprietorial rights, shares 105–7
Newton, Lucy A. 115–27, 184, 190 proxy voting 106–7
North & South Wales Bank 123, 124 Prudential Assurance Company 16, 100,
Northanger Abbey (Austen) 75–6 182, 197
Northwest Mutual 33 ‘pull’ forces 122–3, 125, 126
Nunokawa, J. 152 ‘push’ forces 123–6
Nussbaum, Martha 2
railways 96–7, 125
O’Connor, M. 157 Read, William 143–4
308 Index
real estate: England 7–10, 48, 125; Italy Seymour, James 228–9, 230–2
275, 277–8 Shadwell, T. 156
Recamier Manufacturing Co. 227–32 Shaen, William 171
Reed, M.C. 88, 151 Shammas, Carole 219, 220
Registry Office of Milan 271, 272 Shannon, H.A. 88
Report of the Committee on Army Pay share ownership/access 105–7
Office Organisation 1919, The (Army share prices 124
Pay Department) 199 shareholders, Sweden 261–3
“reserved liability” 126 Sheffield & Hallamshire Banking Co. 123,
Resona Bank 292 124
Ricchezza Mobile 279–81 Sheffield & Rotherham Banking Co. 116
Rio de Janeiro City Improvement Sheffield New Gas Company 107
Company 186 shopkeepers 74
Robertson, Nancy Marie 218–22, 243–9 short-term (terminable) debentures 180
Rodger, Richard 178 single women: as businesswomen 81;
Rose, Jonathan 156 economic role of 47; investment trust
Rosenhaft, Eve 59–67 participation 185–7; as social problem
Ross, Michael 220 14–15
Rousseau, Peter 256 Sloan, J. 158–9
Royal African Company 33–4, 36–7, 40–2, social connections 54, 61, 245
95–6 social housing 165–73
Royal Bank of Scotland 107 South Sea Bubble (1720) 4, 30–1, 33–43,
Royal Fishery Company 95 46–55, 62–3
Rubinstein, W.D. 1 South Sea Company 30, 46, 51–4, 55, 64,
Ruskin, John 166, 171 95, 106
Russell, N. 156 Souvenir, The (Army Pay Office
Rutterford, Janette 1–19, 73, 76, 123–4, Woolwich) 199, 203, 208, 209, 210
151–60, 184, 187, 298 Sparks, Edith 221
speculation and investment 156–8
samurai class, Japan 293 Spicksley, Judith 5, 48
Sandberg, Lars 254 Stasavage, David 54
savings banks, Sweden 258–61, 263–4 state control, Japan 294–6
Schaumburg-Lippe, Johanna Sophie 64 Staves, Susan 54
Schofield, R.S. 13 Stebbings, Chantal 8
Schwartz, L.D. 136 stock company investment: datasets 96–8;
Scotland: investment trust movement proprietorial rights 105–7; results
178–91; stock company investment 98–105
95–108 Stock Jobbers, The (Shadwell) 156
Scott, Joan 18 stock market 31, 38–42
Seaman, Elizabeth Cochran 226, 227, stockbroking, development of 48–9
232–5, 237 stockjobbers, reputation of 156
Searle, G.R. 152 Stoermer, Grace 247, 248
Second Scottish American Investment Stone, Lawrence 48
Trust (SSAIT) 178–91 Stratton, William 185
Second World War 295–6 superintendents, Army Pay Department
secondary markets 30–1, 34–5 206–7
sentiment 80–1 ‘surplus women’ problem 14–15
separate spheres, ideology of 6, 133–5, Swaledale & Wensleydale Banking Co.
244 123, 124
separation allowances 199, 201, 202, 203, Sweden, financial system 254–67
207–8 Sylla, Richard 256
Seward, Anne 244–5, 247
Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act (1919) Tait, Jane 6, 77–9, 80, 81
210 Tatham, Cora 245
Index 309
tax 48, 54, 279–81 War Office Finance Branch 197–211
Taylor, James 95–108, 184 wartime role, Army Pay Department
Temin, Peter 49, 54 200–2
Third Scottish American Investment Trust Watkins, John 142
(TSAIT) 178–91 Way We Live Now, The (Trollope) 153–4,
Thirsk, Joan 3 157
Thom, D. 197 wealth: composition of 273–6, 281; and
Thurland, Capt. J.E. 209 family 153–6; in fiction 151–60
Trachtenberg, Alan 222 wealthy women 272–4
trade credit 73–5, 81 widow’s fund, Germany 66–7
training 75–6, 81 widows: as businesswomen 81–2;
Trollope, Anthony 10, 153–6, 157 investment trust participation 187;
trusteeships 105, 106 provision for 8–9
trusts 8–9, 141, 143–5 will makers/will writing 135–9
Turnbull, Mary 190 wills 133–5; types of provision 141–5
Turner, John 184 Wilts & Dorset Banking Co. 116, 124
Wiskin, Christine 6, 73–82
Ulster Bank 99, 184, 189 Withers, Hartley 17
Union Trust Company 246 wives: investment trust participation
United States National Bank 246 187–8; male provision for 139–45
US Constitution 247 Wolley, Hannah 12
US Supreme Court 220 Woman in White, The (Collins) 154
US: legal challenges to businesswomen Women’s City Club of New York 245
226–37; women and money 218–22; women’s departments, US banks 243–9
women’s departments in banks 243–9 women’s groups, Japan 295–6
work and expectations 1700–1950 12–17
Vickery, Amanda 12 Working Men’s College, London 166
voluntary associations 221–2, 245, 248 workplace inequalities 205–7, 209–10
von Hameln, Glückel 60–1 Wright, Robert 221
von la Roche, Sophie 65 Wrigley, E.A. 13
Vonwiller, Sofia 284
Voth, Hans-Joachim 49, 54 Yates, Lucy 16
voting rights 106–7 Yeager, Mary 227
Yohn, Susan M. 218–22
Waldenström, Daniel 262 Yorkshire Banking Co. 124
Wales, commercial joint-stock bank Young Women’s Christian Association
investment 115–27 245
Walker, Stephen 76, 159–60, 165–73
Walpole, Horace 78, 81 Zimmeck, M. 198, 200, 205, 206
War Loans/Savings Certificates 16–17 Zola, E. 157–8
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Women and their Money 1700–1950

Anne Laurence is Professor of History at the Open University and author of

1 Management, Education and Competitiveness

2 The Development of Accounting in an International Context

3 The Dynamics of the Modern Brewing Industry

4 Religion, Business and Wealth in Modern Britain

5 The Multinational Traders

6 The Americanisation of European Business

7 Region and Strategy

8 Foreign Multinationals in the United States

9 Co-operative Structures in Global Business

11 Dutch Enterprise in the 20th Century

12 The Formative Period of American Capitalism

13 International Business and National War Interests

14 Narrating the Rise of Big Business in the USA

15 Women and their Money 1700–1950

Edited by Anne Laurence,

ISBN 0-203-88599-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-41976-X (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-41976-5 (hbk)

2 Women and finance in eighteenth-century England 30

3 Women in the city: financial acumen during the South

4 Women, banks and the securities market in early

5 Women investors and financial knowledge in

6 Accounting for business: financial management in the

8 Between Madam Bubble and Kitty Lorimer: women

9 Female investors in the first English and Welsh

10 To do the right thing: gender, wealth, inheritance and

11 Women and wealth in fiction in the long nineteenth

12 Octavia Hill: property manager and accountant 165

13 Female investors within the Scottish investment trust

14 Women clerical staff employed in the UK-based Army

15 Women and money: the United States 218

16 ‘Men seem to take delight in cheating women’: legal

18 Women, money and the financial revolution: a gender

19 Women’s wealth and finance in nineteenth-century

20 The transformation from ‘thrifty accountant’ to

3.1 Prices of Royal African Company senior shares, Ps, and

3.1 Women’s transactions by value and number by social and

John Black is a part-time Research Associate at the School of Accounting and

Coverture and women’s real and personal property

Charting women’s presence in finance

Women and account-keeping

Women’s lives: expectations and work c.1700–c.1950

Opportunities for building up funds included insurance, savings funds and

The Coffee-man leaves Chocolate, Tea, Coffee,

That for the prospect of uncertain Gain

Women’s financial independence

The Royal African Company and the Bank of England

Bank of England stock

Book value of shares Number of transactions

Nobility 38,532 20,830 34 21

Source: Bank of England transfer books, 1720, AC28/1545–1554.

Number of transactions Sellers Buyers

Source: Bank of England transfer books, 1720, AC28/1545–1554.

Book value of shares (£) Sellers Buyers

Source: Bank of England transfer books, 1720, AC28/1545–1554.

Royal African Company stock

Senior (#) Engrafted (#)