ABSTRACT
Women's identification with the domestic and moral sphere implied that they would only become active economic agents when forced by necessity. As the nineteenth century progressed, it was increasingly assumed that a woman engaged in business was a woman without either an income of her own or a man to support her. While in both the urban and rural areas women made up just over 50 per cent of the middle-class population, they were only 28 per cent of testators leaving wills and 20 per cent of household heads in the census sample. Of women in active occupations, the category of professional was most common; undoubtedly mostly schoolmistresses either owning their own schools or employed by others. Servicing lodgers as an extension of women's caring functions was carried out on a larger scale in inns, although the lines between private home, lodging house, public house and inn were sometimes difficult to draw.
