ABSTRACT
The economic, legal and customary form of the middle-class enterprise has been surveyed. It had its origins in a combination of landed estate practice and merchant commercial experience, but it was middle-class men who built on these origins, expanding and moulding devices such as the trust to their purposes and needs. The masculine persona which emerged within the group was organized around a man's determination and skill in manipulating the economic environment, always within an abiding belief in a world shaped by religious forces. Both men and women had to balance their time and energy between a wide range of duties. The families which patronized the school represented the backbone of the local middle class: merchants, manufacturers, well-to-do surgeons, many of whom were already living in Edgbaston. The incomes of many professional and salaried men ceased when they stopped practice, but the plant and property created by manufacture endured.
