Conclusion

Abstract

There is no evidence in this study of women and work to suggest that in eighteenth century Edinburgh women were cut off from the wider community in a private world of domesticity. In the urban context at least, most women’s employment took them well outside the confines of their own homes. The examination of women’s employment and what it entailed, as revealed in the records, suggests that perhaps some historians of women’s history in the early modern period, may have been too preoccupied with women’s private versus public role in society. The preoccupation with women’s domestic role has caused women’s employment to be seen as a mere ‘extension of their household tasks’. However in eighteenth century urban Scotland, certainly in Edinburgh, working women are seen operating in the same world as their male counterparts. This study shows that men and women not only carried on their activities in the same world but had many common experiences. In the eighteenth century, women were part of the great web of credit, also acting as factrices for their husbands when the latter were away from home on business. Men gave women credit and stood caution for them when required, while men like Blackwood and Bell were willing to act as factors for them as they did for male merchants.