Female Entrepreneurs in Eighteenth-Century London: a Prosopographical Study of Businesswomen in Lombard Street, Gracechurch Street and Cornhill in the

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This project will investigate businesswomen in a variety of trades in a wealthy geographic area in the historic City ofLondon, in close proximity to the Royal Exchange, considered its commercial heart. This prosopographical study willtrace their occupational training, family circumstances, kinship and credit networks and measure the size and longevity oftheir business operations. In so doing, it will answer the question: how did women create, maintain and grow businessesat a time when prevailing narratives suggest women's declining economic participation? It will seek to identify anynotable characteristics in these individuals' lives and backgrounds and assess whether these may have changed overtime, for example as one's marital status and family situation changed or in response to external factors. This projectseeks to provide a more comprehensive picture of female entrepreneurship in the capital over a greater span of time andutilising a wider range of sources than other studies undertaken to date. It will contribute to scholarship in the field ofwomen's work, but also inform our understanding of business history and metropolitan history and address the relativeabsence of women in the historiography of both.