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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]

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]

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]