ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth century the departement du Nord was one of the most heavily industrialized regions of France. Entrepreneurial or not, middle-class families were enmeshed in extensive and complex credit networks. Two factors reinforced each other and served to make women's participation in various credit markets possible. Moreover, widows' abilities to earn a living from their properties, their investments and, less often, their involvement in trade or manufacturing did not really change in course of the century. Many widows simply took over the running of the family business when their husbands died. One common type of partnership involving women was between a widow and her children. Partnerships between siblings were another common type of partnership involving women. There were different types of mortgages, only one of which interests us: loans secured with real estate. Women were not less likely to be multiple lenders than men in the 1830s and the 1890s, and just a little less in the intervening period.
