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Summary

Chapter 3 traces, for the first time, the role of women as mistresses of apprentices, using their membership of the freedom to set up businesses and train girls in them. Some became free after apprenticeship themselves and went on to establish generations of female artisans stretching into the eighteenth century: as single women, they had a unique and characteristic pattern of business. Others, as wives and widows, gained their role through and after marriage, producing an interesting position where they were training girls without formal training themselves, in a system that ran effectively parallel to that of male apprenticeship. The particular features of female apprenticeship fit flexibly around women’s lives, as well as reflecting the contingency of women’s economic autonomy. The last section of the chapter reconstructs the kinship and friendship networks through which mistresses and apprentices were bound together, creating a capillary system of skills, favours and credit.

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3 - Managing the Trade: Women as Mistresses

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3 - Managing the Trade: Women as Mistresses

Summary