ABSTRACT
In the agitation to include female suffrage in the Reform Bill of 1867 and in the attempt to place women on the register for the next election, an argument for granting the vote to women was provided by the existence of women as freemen in some towns and cities of the medieval and early modern periods. It was argued by Thomas Chisholm Anstey that, in those places where having the freedom of the town entitled a person to vote for Members of Parliament, women's sex had not been an obstacle to their exercising this right. 1 The records of towns and courts were ransacked to provide evidence. The same evidence was used to show that in the past women had been able to play a more active and responsible part in the economic life of towns than was later allowed to them. Women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century looked to the past to provide them with precedents, and they were less concerned with the actual extent of women's participation. That women had been active, and had been successful in trade was more important to their purpose.
