Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth CenturyClark, Alice
History
Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century
Clark, Alice
Women -- Employment -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century; Women -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century
Edward Prince brought a case in the Star Chamber, v. Thomas Woodward,
Ellenor Woodward, and Georg. Helliar defendants being Ironmongers for
supposed selling of iron at false weights to undersell plaintiff.
“Defendants respectively prove that they ever bought and sold by one
sort of weight.”[53]
Footnote 53:
_S.P.D._, clxxxi., 138, 1630.
For her tenancy of the Spy-law Paper Mill, Foulis “receaved from Mʳˢ.
lithgow by Wᵐ. Douglas Hands 85 lib. for ye 1704 monie rent. She owes me
3 rim of paper for that yeir, besydes 4 rim she owes me for former
yeirs.”[54]
Footnote 54:
Foulis, Sir John, _Account Book_, 5th Jan., 1705.
Joan Dant was one of the few women “capitalists” whose personal story is
known in any detail. Her husband was a working weaver, living in New
Paternoster Row, Spital Fields. On his death she became a pedlar,
carrying an assortment of mercery, hosiery, and haberdashery on her back
from house to house in the vicinity of London. Her conduct as a member
of the Society of Friends was consistent and her manners agreeable, so
that her periodic visits to the houses of Friends were welcomed and she
was frequently entertained as a guest at their tables. After some years,
her expenses being small and her diligence great, she had saved
sufficient capital to engage in a more wholesale trade, debts due from
her correspondents at Paris and Brussels appearing in her executor’s
accounts. In spite of her success in trade Joan Dant continued to live
in her old frugal manner, and when she applied to a Friend for
assistance in making her will, he was astonished to find her worth
rather more than £9,000. He advised her to obtain the assistance of
other Friends more experienced in such matters. On their enquiring how
she wished to dispose of her property, she replied, “I got it by the
rich and I mean to leave it to the poor.”
Joan Dant died in 1715 at the age of eighty-four. In a letter to her
executors she wrote, “It is the Lord that creates true industry in his
people, and that blesseth their endeavours in obtaining things necessary
and convenient for them, which are to be used in moderation by all his
flock and family everywhere.... And I, having been one that has taken
pains to live, and have through the blessing of God, with honesty and
industrious care, improved my little in the world to a pretty good
degree; find my heart open in that charity which comes from the Lord, in
which the true disposal of all things ought to be, to do something for
the poor,—the fatherless and the widows in the Church of Christ,
according to the utmost of my ability.”[55]
Footnote 55:
_British Friend_, II., p. 113.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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