Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

The couple of hosiers and half dozen hatters, who appear in Alcester’s archives in
Period D, may have made stockings and hats of various types, but probably also retailed
items made elsewhere. 114
Records from the 1820s to 1851 reveal the manufacture of
straw hats or bonnets. The employers include males and females whereas the employees
were mainly female, maybe working at home. 115
Of the twenty-four women who advertised in the town in 1792, ten were milliners
or mantua-makers. Though missing from many of the sources consulted, women had
run businesses making and repairing clothing in earlier times too. The seamstress
Elizabeth Harper and the mantua-maker Hannah Ashmead took on female apprentices in
1723 and 1779 respectively. 116
Milliners were scarce in local villages, so Alcester’s milliners (mainly female)
must have served the ladies of the hinterland. 117
Many milliners also doubled as
dressmakers, who, along with seamstresses, are fairly numerous in the 1841 and 1851
censuses. The household of Mary Whissell, milliner, in 1841, included two other
milliners and four apprentices. However, milliners’ businesses in 1835 were not so
numerous as in 1792 and the term ‘mantua-maker’, in evidence from 1779, becomes
redundant after 1830. 118
With the advent of censuses and directories the important role of women in the
textile and clothing trade, only fortuitously glimpsed in earlier records, becomes more
114 For example James and Joyce Whittingham, hosiers, were also haberdashers and shopkeepers.
115 One firm of straw-hat manufacturers was run by two women from Aylesbury.
116 TNA, IR1/48 and IR1/61.
117 The only instance of a male milliner is John Potts, who takes on a female apprentice in 1778. (TNA,
IR1/60, apprentice records). Female milliners appear in records from 1774.
118 There were 10 mantua-makers or milliners in 1792 and only 3 milliners in 1835.
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