Book contents
- Ingenious Trade
- Ingenious Trade
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Bred in the Exchange: Seamstresses and Shopkeepers
- 2 Girls as Apprentices
- 3 Managing the Trade: Women as Mistresses
- 4 What Girls Learned
- 5 Making Havoc: Discipline, Demeanour and Resistance
- 6 Freedoms and Customs
- Conclusion
- Appendix Who’s Who
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Girls as Apprentices
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 November 2021
- Ingenious Trade
- Ingenious Trade
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Bred in the Exchange: Seamstresses and Shopkeepers
- 2 Girls as Apprentices
- 3 Managing the Trade: Women as Mistresses
- 4 What Girls Learned
- 5 Making Havoc: Discipline, Demeanour and Resistance
- 6 Freedoms and Customs
- Conclusion
- Appendix Who’s Who
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
A carefully adapted indenture, made for a boy and rewritten for a girl, shows the ambivalence with which young women were bound into London’s Livery Companies, or guilds. Chapter 2 uses new data to estimate for the first time the numbers of London’s female apprentices, which were considerably higher than they appear from the formal record. The complex relationship between women, work and guilds across early-modern Europe often excluded and marginalised women, whilst in some places providing a parallel route to recognition. London’s distinctive customs presented particular opportunities as well as constraints for women. Within the companies, both officially and unofficially, and alongside them, the female apprenticeship sector was growing, prompted in part by economic and social dislocations and by family ambitions. Apprenticeship for girls was coming to be a significant and familiar option through the social spectrum.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ingenious TradeWomen and Work in Seventeenth-Century London, pp. 55 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021