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In comparison to larger English spa resorts like Bath, Buxton and Cheltenham, the commercial development of minor spas is an under-represented area in scholarship. Yet, they proliferated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The commercialisation of health saw landowners, like Nathaniel Curzon of Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, capitalise on mineral springs on their estates. The development of Kedleston as a minor spa with a Sulphur Bathhouse within sight of the Hall and an Inn on periphery of the park, however, necessitated balancing the aesthetics of their setting in the landscape and family privacy with commercial realities. As a place purpose-built for the public to 'take the waters', Kedleston operated in a competitive market place. The proprietors of the spa relied on newspaper advertising and took advantage of Kedleston Hall's appeal as a celebrated destination and the broader growth in leisure and tourism. Analysing the positioning of the inn and bathhouse in the commercial arena points to how and why the spa's lifespan extended well beyond that often characteristic of many similar places. Based on original extensive archival research, this article provides new information and insights into the development of minor spas and contributes to the wider discourse on health commerce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early-nineteenth century traders, manufacturers and retailers are often depicted as inhabiting a world where approval, trust and reputation mattered. Positive engagements with customers, fellow business-people and with the wider community were all, apparently, important. This has been made most obvious in the literature in relation to clients whereby shop-keepers eager to please an increasingly affluent population, offered liberal terms to encourage repeat business. Entrants to the market place, keen to forge new connections with peers, drew on established links to enhance their own fledgling businesses. Publicised via newspapers, they promoted their integrative rather than disruptive appearance. The career of Carlisle printer and publisher Charles Thurnam questions this narrative. Intermingled with his civic engagement, Thurnam's outbursts of violence and aggression, threatening behaviour, legal entanglements and witness intimidation reveal an approach seemingly at odds with the notion of a 'polite and commercial' people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where productive workhouse gardens and land existed they comprised an essential aspect of institutional management, yet they feature only briefly in accounts of workhouses and inmates' lives. Their location, desirability and benefits, however, occupied the minds of parish officials, doctors, Enlightenment thinkers and pamphleteers. Workhouse gardens provided food and were regarded as mechanisms for discipline, moral encouragement and therapeutic benefit, and they illustrate the management of pauperism in local contexts. Eliciting a greater understanding of their significance and refining established assumptions about dietary provision for inmates, this article analyses itemised bills, nurserymen's ledgers and attitudes surrounding workhouse gardens and workhouse land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing the role of the enterprising middle-ranking widow amongst the urban elite in Derby, England, this article focuses on Mary Pickford, the contribution she made to the early textile industry, her political engagement, and her charitable concerns. The interrelated aspects of Pickford's life simultaneously contributed to her social standing and to Derby's economic development. The East Midlands was synonymous with the large-scale textile concerns of the Strutts and the Arkwrights about whom much has been written. Pickford's moderately-sized business, however, is more representative of the majority about which far less is known. As such, an analysis of her activities, drawn from fragmentary sources, recognises the significance of the individual and the enmeshed nature of female involvement in urban life, thereby adding to a greater understanding of industrial and urban growth in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a case study of the prosecution of milliner Dorothy Gretton by the Company of Mercers, this article investigates how shifting relationships between guild jurisdiction, patriarchy and familial influence affected a woman's right to trade. Placed within the wider contexts of evolving economic practices and the expectation that many middle-ranking women should contribute to family incomes, it reveals how a minor spat in a provincial town escalated, drawing into its orbit the Lord Chief Justice of England. In doing so it highlights the obstacles and opportunities facing women in the early-modern economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the eighteenth century progressed, the number of spa resorts proliferated; so too did an elaborate range of leisure options associated with them. Such was the extent of these offerings that the therapeutic qualities of the waters have a tendency to be overlooked in assessments of spa culture as the century drew to a close. Using Hester Newdigate's correspondence and Jane Macartney's accounts relating to Buxton, Derbyshire, this article examines the extent to which the reputation and perceived benefits of a resort's waters determined the choice of destination and the significance of hydropathic regimens during visitors' repeat visits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This examination of a late-Georgian businesswoman, Barbara Ford of Ashbourne in Derbyshire, utilises an extensive but partial and fragmentary range of contemporary sources to demonstrate the significance of a familial network and its commercial undertakings in one woman's enterprise. The activities of Barbara's prosperous family, and its ability to exploit the changing economic circumstances of the age, were not lost on the newly-widowed Mrs Ford. It was not inevitable that she should enter the commercial world but her actions, viewed in the light of her extended familial network, are entirely consistent with their extensive business interests. The research places Barbara Ford in a local and provincial world where commercial success depended as much on interpersonal communication and reputation as it did upon business acumen. Rather than regarding Barbara Ford as an outlier, an atypical woman of middle-rank, forced into a commercial world by economic necessity, the evidence is strongly suggestive that her decision to continue her husband's business was guided by choice. Her reputation in the community was enhanced, not diminished, in consequence. Most of all, the research demonstrates female agency: the strength, skill, and determination of one woman to negotiate her way in an age that placed so many limitations on the lives of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]