Students and staff attended the latest Rose Lecture, where Amy Louise Erickson, Professor of Feminist History at the University of Cambridge, presented her research on businesswomen in eighteenth-century London. Drawing on a range of little-known primary sources, including women’s business cards advertising goods from fan-making to gunpowder, she demonstrated how such materials are often the only surviving evidence of these women’s working lives. The lecture also explored how many female property-holders used legal settlements to evade coverture, revealing how women navigated the restrictive gendered structures of early modern England. It provided us the opportunity to engage with a field of history that is typically underrepresented, illuminating the lives of ‘ordinary’ women whose experiences are rarely studied- a perfect addition to Women’s History Month!
Cecilia, year 12
