ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how individual women learned how, where, and when to venture their capital in the new public investment opportunities made available by England’s Financial Revolution of the late seventeenth century. This revolution in finance was characterized by the establishment of the Bank of England, the creation of a national debt, and the public trading of stocks and shares in joint-stock companies. Women learned how to navigate this new market in public stocks and securities alongside men. This chapter examines women’s access to the spaces of financial London in particular. Using evidence from the periodical press, personal diaries, correspondence, and accounts, Amy Froide shows that women were firsthand participants in these spaces and places of financial London—including coffee houses, lottery offices, the Bank of England, and joint-stock company meetings. Literate and numerate women (ranging from servant maids to middle-class, genteel women, and peeresses) also had access to what Froide terms “virtual economic spaces” such as almanacs, how-to guides for investing, and account books. The chapter shows how individual women navigated public financial spaces for both themselves1922 in the context and as brokers for others1922 in the context to negotiate the new financial transactions made available from the late seventeenth century onward.
