CHAPTER V
Crafts and Trades.
(A) Crafts. Influence of Gilds—Inclusion of women—Position of craftsman’s wife—Purposes of Gilds—The share of women in religious, social and trading privileges—Admission chiefly by marriage—Stationer’s Company—Carpenter’s Company—Rules of other Gilds and Companies—Apprenticeship to women—Exclusion of women did not originate in sex-jealousy—Position of women in open trades—Women’s trades.
(B) Retail Trades. Want of technical training inclined women towards retailing—Impediments in their way—Apprenticeship of girls to shopkeepers—Prosecution of unauthorised traders—Street and market trading—Pedlars, Regraters, Badgers—Opposition of shopkeepers.
(C) Provision Trades.
1. Bakers. Never specially a woman’s trade—Widows—Share of married women.
2. Millers. Occasionally followed by women.
3. Butchers. Carried on by women as widows and by married women—also independently—Regrating.
4. Fishwives. Generally very poor.
5. Brewers. Originally a special women’s trade—Use of feminine form Brewster—Creation of monopoly—Exclusion of women by the trade when capitalised—retailing still largely in hands of women.