Female Investors in England, 1850-1914: Influences and Experiences

Vosper, Hazel and Taylor, James and Peniston-Bird, Corinna (2025) Female Investors in England, 1850-1914: Influences and Experiences. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

From the earliest days of the Financial Revolution women in England invested in financial securities. The nineteenth century marked the start of an ongoing increase in the quantity of women investing, yet little is known about them. This thesis addresses this lacuna. Through an exploration of source materials drawn from personal papers, business records and print culture, many different points of contact that women had with investing is shown. Individual case studies illustrate the multiple influences – some highly personal, some reflecting the times they were living in – on female investors and the wide variations across their investment experiences. The cases shine a light on the various ways that women came into possession of financial securities, and that market, behavioural and personal circumstances could all play a role in a woman’s investment activities. This study demonstrates that investing was not necessarily a foreign world to many women. Aspects of investing were commonly encountered within the domestic environment, through education and in women’s day-to-day activities outside of the home. Access to specialist financial newspapers and investment guides offered women investment advice as well as the sense that they belonged to a community of women who took an interest – through necessity or inclination – in investing. Furthermore, this thesis establishes that family trusts were an important channel through which many women gained some degrees of exposure to investment options and processes. This is one of the first studies to examine the interaction of intermediaries with female investors in nineteenth and early twentieth century England. In most cases the non-gendered role of ‘client’ allowed female investors to both engage with intermediaries in a manner customary to commercial relationships and indirectly gain access into male social and professional information networks. More negatively, women could be vulnerable to financial fraud through such associations. This thesis presents a view of female investors that challenges studies which narrowly categorised women in terms of a limited number of gendered characteristics. Instead, the diverse experiences and representations of women presented in this study offer a new perspective from which to consider women as financial agents within the context of the reshaping of gendered roles inside and outside of the home during a period of significant change for women.