The social shaping of business behaviour in the nineteenth-century women's garment trades

Journal of Social History, Spring, 1998 by Stana Nenadic

Margaret Cameron was twice sequestered for bankruptcy, first in 1839 and again in 1846. She survived the sequestration on both occasions, testifying to remarkable business skills. Indeed, the conduct of the firm provides a good illustration of effective business strategies within a framework of constraint.(41) According to a statement made at her second bankruptcy, Cameron first commenced in business as a milliner and dressmaker, trading under her own name; the business was launched with a small capital sum that had been borrowed from her widowed mother.(42) Cameron and Violard was founded on 25 May 1835 as a partnership of twenty-two years duration between Margaret Cameron and John Cameron, her bachelor brother. The articles of co-partnery for the business are summarised in Figure 1. The name "Violard" was fictitious and adopted for marketing purposes. The firm was initially styled "silk mercers, milliners and dressmakers," reflecting the principal business activity of John Cameron. Margaret Cameron was later to run the business as a sole proprietor engaged only in millinery and dressmaking, and her brother, from whom she parted in 1839, continued to trade in business on his own account as a silk mercer, apparently on good terms with Margaret and presumably providing her with valuable market connections. The partnership arrangement was business-like and efficient, and largely under the direction and control of Margaret, who owned the principal share of the firm. The brother was responsible for the financial affairs of the firm, which was an effective way of getting round some of the "separate spheres" barriers that doubtless existed for Margaret Cameron. Indeed, the formal distribution of business responsibilities within the firm while it was in joint ownership clearly conformed to a classic separate spheres dichotomy which protected the gender interests of both brother and sister. But Margaret had control of the essential aspects of the business, and was in a position to engage in travel, including travel abroad, to secure market information and materials. In her later business career, after the departure of the brother, Cameron and Violard was sustained by loans from commission agents acting on behalf of trade suppliers, and although there was a difficult period in 1846, when Margaret Cameron was obliged to suspend payments and enter sequestration for a second time, the business survived and went on to thrive in the 1850s and 1860s.

Margaret Cameron never married; one of the striking characteristics of this area of business is that the entrepreneurs were disproportionately spinsters.(44) Life-long spinsterhood was a common experience in nineteenth-century Europe, particularly among the middle classes, and pervasive in Scotland where male emigration was at an extraordinarily high level throughout the century. In Edinburgh, about a third of women were life-long spinsters, many born outside the city and attracted there by the opportunities for employment.(45) Most of these women had to make their own living through their own efforts, and they and their families planned for this from an early stage in life. The vast majority of families, even in the middle classes, could not afford to keep non-working daughters and marriage was not a certain alternative. Indeed, for many women marriage came late in life if it happened at all.(46)