Was it common for women to run and own businesses in the victorian/georgian era?
I expect it was a lot more common than we think. As a previous poster has said, women ran their own businesses for a wide range of reasons. If you did some digging around, you’d probably find that a lot of women ran small businesses – huckster shops, sewing operations, millinery and women’s tailoring, etc. If you want to go back further, women ran their own businesses in the Middle Ages as well. I’ve heard of a case in Manchester in the 1860s where business owners were eligible to vote in local elections; one of these was a woman, and she had to have a police escort to the ballot box because there was uproar that a woman was being allowed to vote! Can’t remember the source for this, sorry! According to Wikipedia, women got the vote in local elections in 1869 – maybe that was prompted by this particular case?
