Family Fortunes Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780–1850

Acknowledgements　

Introduction　

Prologue　

Introducing James Luckcock of Birmingham – What was the English middle class? – Concepts and methods

Setting the scene　

Places: The town – Birmingham – The countryside – Essex and Suffolk

People: The family shop – the Cadburys of Birmingham – The family pen – the Taylors of Essex

Part One RELIGION AND IDEOLOGY　

Introduction　

1 ‘The one thing needful’: religion and the middle class　

Church and chapel activity – The Evangelical revival and serious Christianity – Church against Dissent – The religious community

2 ‘Ye are all one in Christ Jesus’: men, women and religion　

Doctrines on manliness – Doctrines on femininity – The ministry – The minister’s wife – John Angell James: ‘bishop’ of Birmingham – Church organization: women voting and women speaking – Laymen and women

3 ‘The nursery of virtue’: domestic ideology and the middle class　

The Queen Caroline affair – Middle-class readers and writers – William Cowper and Hannah More – Local writers on separate spheres – Domestic ideologies of the 1830s and 1840s

Part Two ECONOMIC STRUCTURE AND OPPORTUNITY　

Introduction　

4 ‘A modest competency’: men, women and property　

Enterprise organization – Land and capital – Enterprise finance – Providing for dependants – The interdependence of enterprise, family and friends – The role of marriage in the enterprise – Training for the enterprise – Retirement from the enterprise

5 ‘A man must act’: men and the enterprise　

Middle-class men and occupations – The search for a ‘sound commercial education’ – Commerce and trade – Banks and banking – Manufacture – Farming – The professions – The salaried

6 ‘The hidden investment’: women and the enterprise　

Women and property – Women’s contribution to the enterprise – The education of women and its effects – Women as teachers – Women as innkeepers – Women in trade – The marginal place of women in the economy – Women, men and occupation identity – How did women survive?

Part Three EVERYDAY LIFE: GENDER IN ACTION　

7 ‘Our family is a little world’: family structure and relationships　

The role of marriage in family formation – Fatherhood – Motherhood – Children – Brothers and sisters – The role of wider kin

8 ‘My own fireside’: the creation of the middle-class home　

What was a home? – The separation of home from work – The meaning of the garden – The lay-out of the home – Running the home – The question of servants

9 ‘Lofty pine and clinging vine’: living with gender in the middle class　

Manner and gentility – Changing attitudes to sexuality – Mobility and gender – Gender and the social occasion – Gender as appearance

10 ‘Improving times’: men, women and the public sphere　

James Bisset of Birmingham – Voluntary associations – Philanthropic societies – Leisure and pleasure – Men, women and citizenship

Epilogue　

1 Three poems by local authors – 2 Sources for the local study – 3 Tables

Notes and references　

Select bibliography　

People index　

Subject index　

Biography

Leonore Davidoff (1932–2014) was Emerita Research Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex and Founding Editor of Gender and History. One of the most influential historians of gender, her numerous publications included Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (1995) and Thicker than Water: Siblings and their Relations (2012).

Catherine Hall is Emerita Professor of History and Chair of the Centre for the Study of British Slave-ownership, UCL. Recent publications include Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain (2012) and with Nicholas Draper, Keith McClelland, Katie Donington and Rachel Lang, Legacies of British Slave-ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain (2014).