working life of women seventeenth century - School of Economics ...

CRAFTS AND TRADES CRAFTS AND TRADES 221in this, as in other trades, they shared to some extentin their husband's enterprises, is shown by the presentmentof " John Frank of New Malton, and Alice hiswife, for forestalling the markett of divers paniersof fishe, buying the same of the fishermen of Runswickor Whitbve. . . . before it came into themarkett."'The ~osition of the sisters of the Fishmongers' Company,London, was recognised to the extentof providingthem with a livery, an ordinance of 1426 ordainingthat every year, on the festival of St. Peter, " alle thebrethren and sustern of the same fratrnite" shouldgo in their new livery to St. Peters' Church, Cornhill.'An ordinance dated 1499 however, requires that nofishmonger of the craft shall suffer his wife, or servant,to stand in the market to sell fish,unless in his absence."An entry in the Middlesex Quarter Sessions Recordsnotes the " discharge of Sarah, daughter of FrancesHall.Apprenticed to Rebecca Osmond of the Parishof St. Giles' Without, Cripplegate, ' fishwomanA member of the important Fishmongers' Companywould hardly be designated in this way, and RebeccaOsmond must be classed among the " Fishwives "who are so often alluded to in accounts of London.Their business was often too precarious to admitof taking apprentices, and their credit so low that awriter in the reign of Charles I., who advocated theestablishment of " Mounts of Piety " speaks of thehigh rate of interest taken by brokers and pawnbrokers" above 400 in the hundred " from " fishwives,oysterwomen and others that do crye thinges up anddowne the street^."^ It was in this humble class of1 Atkinson, J. C. Tds. N. R. Q. S. Rrcords, Vol. I., p. 121, 1698.a Herbert, Livery Companks of hndon, Vol. II., p. eq.Ibid, Vol. II., p. 35.Middlrstx County Records, p. 160, 1696.6 A Prqrct for Mounts Pf Piety. Lansdowne MSS., 351 fo., 18b.trade rather than in the larger transactions of fishmongers,that women were chiefly engaged. InLondon no impediments seem to have beenin the way of their business, but in the pro~rincesthey, like the women who hawked meat, were persecutedunder the bye-laws against regratinp. AtManchester, the wife of John Wilshawe was amerced" for buyinge Sparlings [smelts] and sellinge themthe same day in 6d."' while at the same court otherswere fined for selling unmarketable fish.Brewers :-It has been shown that the position whichwomen occupied among butchers and bakers did notdiffer materially from their position in other trades ;that is to say, the wife generally helped her husbandin his business, and carried it on after his death ;but the history of brewingpossesses a peculiar interest,for apparently the art of brewing was at one timechiefly, if not entirely, in the hands of women. Thisis indicated by the use of the feminine term brewster.Possibly the use of the masculine or feminine formsmay never have strictly denoted the sex of the personindicated in words such as brewer, brewster, spinner,spinster, sempster, sempstress, webber, webster, andthe gradual disuse of the feminine forms may havebeen due to the grammatical tendencies in the Englishlanguage rather than to the changes which weredriving women from their place in productive industry; but the feminine forms would never havearisen in the first place unless women had been engagedto some extent in the trades to which they refer,and it often happens that the use of the femininepronoun in relation to the term " brewster " and even" brewer " shows decisively that female persons areindicated. At Beverley a bye-law was made in1364 ordaining that " if any of the community abusethe aff eerers of Brewster-gild for their aff eering,1 .l.:anchetter Court I-eet Rerords, Vol. I\'., p. 112, 1654.