Women are notoriously difficult to track in the archives. In the nineteenth-century, they had no legal identity apart from their fathers, brothers, and husbands. Nor were they part of compulsory education until 1880. They rarely owned property nor were they entitled to be part of local or national government decision-making. Unlike New Zealand who led the world in giving the vote to women in 1893, they were not enfranchised in the UK until 1918. However, women were included in decanal census returns and registers of births, deaths, and marriages. As widows, they often continued their husband’s businesses until their children came of age or until they remarried, often to someone already in the same or related business, thus creating powerful book trade dynasties. In nineteenth-century Southampton, there were a number of successful businesswomen who made their mark. Richard Preston has unpacked the life of E. Skelton - once assumed to be a man - until he uncovered her story. Ann Bown, Mrs Martin, and Mrs Hazleton all ran prosperous bookselling and news agencies, retailing religious periodicals, weekly digests, and popular magazines. A cluster of booksewers, like Miss Kinton below, populate the day books and ledgers of the longstanding bookbinding firm of George Cawte and H.D. Cox. Young, unmarried female bookworkers are sprinkled throughout the 1911 census, many of whom were employed at the Ordnance Survey Office. Charlotte Rayner is another one of these compelling, under-researched women. When her husband died in 1871, she became ‘sole proprietress’ of the family firm which published, amongst other things, the Southampton Observer, the pages of which are filled with advertisements promoting their stock in trade as well as local businesses including bookbinder Kelito Job Broadbere and Henry Rose, Printer, Engraver, India Rubber Stamp Manufacturer, Fancy Repositories, Bookseller and Stationer. Charlotte also set up a bookstall at the docks to rival W.H. Smith’s ubiquitous railway kiosk. When she died in 1879, she bequeathed the business to her faithful foreman, George Buxey who, along with his son, later published important pocketbook maps of the town.
If you’d like to find Charlotte’s final resting place, check out the Southampton Cemetery and do send us a picture! References Richard Preston, ‘A Precarious Business: the Skelton Family of Stationers, Printers and Publishers….’, Southampton Local History Forum Journal, no. 21, Autumn 2013, p3-14. http://sotonopedia.wikidot.com/page-browse:skelton-family http://sotonopedia.wikidot.com/page-browse:rayner-family
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AuthorSydney Shep, Reader in Book History & The Printer, Wai-te-ata Press, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ ArchivesCategories |