Agricultural History Review, Volume 65 Part 2 (2017), p. 343

In Family and business during the Industrial Revolution, Hannah Barker sets out to offer a fresh interpretation of family business history by challenging current perceptions of family, gender, work and power relationships in a period widely regarded as heralding significant economic and social change. By using the term ‘Industrial Revolution’ in her title, Barker immediately stakes her claim in a much broader historiography and demands that the reader considers the family business in the context of those ‘spectacular but isolated successes of small numbers of giant industrialists and financial elites’ described by Maxine Berg (p. 4). This is undoubtedly an ambitious undertaking, even though the evidence originates from a relatively small geographical area, namely Manchester and Liverpool.

In the Introduction, Barker argues that business owners viewed themselves as a ‘diverse, yet distinct, social group’ (pp. 9–10) and this idea of self-identification is a theme that is referred to throughout the following chapters. The importance of family to the majority of businesses cannot be underestimated, and although Barker herself has contributed to an important literature that demonstrated women’s place in the business world, this analysis moves the debate along to examine men, women and families; an avenue that will prove much more fruitful in uncovering the broader picture.

Family and business is split into six chapters. Chapter one, ‘Wealth Holding and Investment’ (co-authored with Mina Ishizu), uses 124 Manchester wills and 130 Liverpool wills to examine the preoccupation of small business owners with wealth generation. The diversity of these investments suggests that they could be both a ‘belt and braces’ form of security against the pitfalls of trade, as well as a ‘get rich quick’ scheme, and the pitfalls of the latter are colourfully described through the cautionary tale of Liverpool biscuit baker John Coleman. Examination of the probate process leads Barker to question the degree to which a testator’s last wishes were actually carried out and what the implications of this might be for the second generation of business owners.

The examination of probate records is further developed in chapter two, ‘Family and Inheritance’, which looks more closely at the motivations and practicalities of will writing. Barker argues that ‘will making was primarily driven by a desire to control one’s property’ (p. 48), and this desire for posthumous control is a factor that appears to underlie the majority of the probate process. The case studies of John Woodward, Thomas Kent and James Blomiley each demonstrate the way that the probate process could be used by people to attempt to control not just their family’s economic future (although she also presents plenty of evidence of this) but also the future personal relationships of family members and beneficiaries. Historians of women’s history and the legal practicalities of estate distribution will be particularly interested in the section on women’s inheritances (pp. 63–76).

In chapter three, ‘Family and Business’, Barker uses court records to try and differentiate the myriad of motivations and relationships that combined to create ‘family strategy’. She acknowledges that court records show fissures rather than cooperation, but they also show how these conflicts were resolved. Barker’s careful description of the court records also reveals the multiple levels of trust that existed between family members, supporting her argument that family should be considered a complicated and fluid organization rather than a single economic unit. The hostility of court battles is set aside in chapter four, ‘Cooperation, Duty, and Love’, and the focus turns to the ways that families worked together to create economic and social stability in a time of tumultuous change. Sections on parents and children, husbands and wives, and other family members allow Barker to remind the reader that the men and women in these pages experienced the deep and powerful emotional connections of family life: something that can easily be overlooked.

Chapter five, ‘Home, Business, and Household’ (co-authored with Jane Hamlett), and chapter six, ‘Family and Household’, use inventories and diaries to firstly reconstruct the physical space in which small businesses operated and secondly, examine how people used this space. Analysis of the layout of business and living premises is particularly interesting, not least because it refutes the arguments that the Industrial Revolution was the time of the separation of work and home. Barker contends that public and private spaces, those of work and home, were fluid and reflected the relationships that they housed. The case of George Haywood, an employee who found life very uncomfortable because of the bickering of his employer and his family, shows how the cheek-by-jowl existence that many of the tradespeople and their employees experienced meant the ‘metropolitan customs’ (p. 193) of separate rooms for different purposes were of little relevance or interest to the business owners of north-west England.

Family and business is an extremely focused work which makes excellent use of case studies to reveal the dynamics of family life and relationships within the context of small business ownership. There are some aspects that are perhaps not explored to their full potential, particularly the role that religion played in shaping communities, but this is a minor quibble given the way that Barker has successfully integrated the history of family enterprise into the wider economic, social and cultural history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. Moreover, Family and Business demonstrates the continuities that underlined business life in the epicentre of momentous economic change.