ABSTRACT
Small businesses were at the heart of urban economic growth and social transformation during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 1 In towns across Europe, shops and workshops dominated the streetscape and helped to satisfy an increasing desire for consumer goods. Yet despite their significance, we know surprisingly little about these businesses and the people who ran them, for whilst those engaged in craft-based manufacturing, retailing and allied trades during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries constituted a significant proportion of the urban population, they have been often overlooked by historians. Instead, our view of the world of business is more usually taken up by narratives of particularly successful firms and especially those involved in new modes of production. Small businessmen and women have also rarely taken centre stage in histories of gender, and we know far more about the urban upper-middle and working or labouring classes than we do about those ‘in trade’. For scholars interested in gender and towns, however, this latter group is important, not just because of their contribution to economic and social development but also because of what their unique stories can tell us about gender and the urban experience. This chapter focuses on these men and women in the north west of England, an area famed for its striking urban growth and economic development during the period of the ‘industrial revolution’.
