From openDemocracy:
Documenting women’s lives: mothers' names on marriage certificates
LAUREN JOHNSON 5 October 2015
In England and Wales in the twenty-first century we continue to perpetuate a system that writes women out of our collective history, and we are all poorer for it.
Her name was Thomasine Bonaventure. She grew up in Cornwall, then – like so many, before and since – she went to seek her fortune in London. She married three times, each time to a tailor of the city. Every time one of her husbands died she took over his business for a time, and on her third husband’s death she devoted the rest of her life to training up apprentices, educating a handful of disadvantaged children in her home and founding a school back in Cornwall. She was not only tremendously capable, but also a little showy in her good fortune, travelling the streets of London swathed in rich gowns and riding a horse decked out in blue velvet.
We know this much about Thomasine because before she died in 1512 she wrote a will in which her charitable work, her business and educational endeavours, and her husband's are all mentioned. Other documents help to fill the gaps that remain: the wills of those husbands, the royal licence for her education foundation, the records kept by the crafts of which her husbands, their apprentices and even Thomasine herself were members. In short, like all historical figures, our knowledge of Thomasine is a product of the paper trail she left behind.
But this paper trail would have been considerably fainter had Thomasine died a wife rather than a widow. Since a wife was the property of her husband, she was not permitted to write a will without her husband’s permission. As a result, far more men’s wills survive than women’s. It is very likely that Thomasine’s last husband Sir John Percyvale owed his swift rise to preeminence in the Merchant Taylors Guild and the City of London to his marriage, riding his wife’s coat-tails into the tailoring community. Yet if they worked together during John’s life – if they made decisions about their trade as a couple, if they co-tutored their apprentices, if they bought homes and furnishings and hired servants in consultation with one another, or even if Thomasine expressly dominated their decision-making process – we do not know it. Documents have serious limitations, particularly when it comes to charting the lives of women in the past.
More:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/lauren-johnson/documenting-womens-lives-%E2%80%A8mothers-names-on-marriage-certificates
Link
Documenting women’s lives: mothers' names on marriage certificates
LAUREN JOHNSON 5 October 2015
In England and Wales in the twenty-first century we continue to perpetuate a system that writes women out of our collective history, and we are all poorer for it.
Her name was Thomasine Bonaventure. She grew up in Cornwall, then – like so many, before and since – she went to seek her fortune in London. She married three times, each time to a tailor of the city. Every time one of her husbands died she took over his business for a time, and on her third husband’s death she devoted the rest of her life to training up apprentices, educating a handful of disadvantaged children in her home and founding a school back in Cornwall. She was not only tremendously capable, but also a little showy in her good fortune, travelling the streets of London swathed in rich gowns and riding a horse decked out in blue velvet.
We know this much about Thomasine because before she died in 1512 she wrote a will in which her charitable work, her business and educational endeavours, and her husband's are all mentioned. Other documents help to fill the gaps that remain: the wills of those husbands, the royal licence for her education foundation, the records kept by the crafts of which her husbands, their apprentices and even Thomasine herself were members. In short, like all historical figures, our knowledge of Thomasine is a product of the paper trail she left behind.
But this paper trail would have been considerably fainter had Thomasine died a wife rather than a widow. Since a wife was the property of her husband, she was not permitted to write a will without her husband’s permission. As a result, far more men’s wills survive than women’s. It is very likely that Thomasine’s last husband Sir John Percyvale owed his swift rise to preeminence in the Merchant Taylors Guild and the City of London to his marriage, riding his wife’s coat-tails into the tailoring community. Yet if they worked together during John’s life – if they made decisions about their trade as a couple, if they co-tutored their apprentices, if they bought homes and furnishings and hired servants in consultation with one another, or even if Thomasine expressly dominated their decision-making process – we do not know it. Documents have serious limitations, particularly when it comes to charting the lives of women in the past.
More:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/lauren-johnson/documenting-womens-lives-%E2%80%A8mothers-names-on-marriage-certificates
No comments:
Post a Comment