Eleanor Mosley and Other Milliners in the City of London Companies 1700-1750

Abstract

The corporate records of the Clockmakers' Company and some of the other eighty London companies (gilds) in the first half of the eighteenth century reveal a large number of prosperous female milliners, many of whom took a string of apprentices. Since only a tiny proportion of the apprentices in the London companies were female, they have traditionally been dismissed as an anomaly. It has been suggested that these girls were probably only apprenticed in housewifery to the master's wife. On the contrary, the only reason for a woman to appear in the records of a company was that she required company membership to operate a business in the City. The parents of girls apprenticed in the London companies were usually of higher social status and paid higher premiums than the parents of male apprentices. While historians have assumed that apprenticeship was the most significant means of entry to the companies and the trading rights it represented, this article points to the significance of marriage as a means of acquiring company membership – for both women and men. A significant proportion of the women operating businesses and taking apprentices through the companies were milliners (that is, high class dressmakers) and in other luxury clothing trades. These trades required significant capital investment to set up shops, as well as high apprenticeship fees, and only gentlemen, clerics and wealthy tradesmen could send their daughters into this sector. The geographical location of the milliners among goldsmiths and apothecaries underlines their prosperity. This is an initial investigation into the companies' archives which demonstrates the potential for rewriting the history of women in business in the capital.