Domestic shopkeepers in mid-victorian Lancashire : middlemen and women of the working-class community

This study has tried to rescue domestic shopkeepers from historical neglect by showing their pivotal roles in the politics, society, and economy of three mid- Victorian Lancashire towns, Ashton, Bolton, and Rochdale. Rather than being a sub-class of the petite bourgeoisie whose property ownership alienated them from the working class, domestic shopkeepers were a margin of the working-class community and a bridge to those beyond. Domestic shopkeepers were not a stable class at all. Rather, the role of domestic shopkeepers represented a social status and economic function through which some working families passed at some time in their lives, a status and a function generated by the evolution of urban industrial society.

Domestic shopkeepers were small retailers in the general trade of basic foods and household goods which they sold out of their homes. They found their own economic niche among their working-class neighbors by granting credit and dividing provisions into very small quantities. Domestic shopkeepers served as leaders of their community, both politically and socially. Although the typical domestic shopkeeper was an adult male head of household, single and widowed women found the shop a respectable occupation, while the wives of working-class husbands were also shopkeepers in significant numbers.

The domestic shop tended to be a precarious, usually short-lived, enterprise. Often domestic shopkeeping served as a supplemental, part-time, orcasual means of income. Domestic shopkeeping offered members of the working class a chance to fulfill aspirations for respectability through property ownership and economic independence.