Leisure1. Account Books Women of privilege and wealth with servants to help them had abundant leisure time available. Susannah Beaumont's account book, kept between 1703 and 1714, reveals that she liked to gamble. However, the account entries reveal that she was not particularly successful at gaming and invariably "lost at cards".
2. Journals and Diaries Other women of private means such as Lady Amabel Yorke used their abundant leisure time for extensive correspondence and the writing of journals. Anne Lister, a Tory landowner of Shibden Hall, Halifax, commenced a candid four-million word diary in 1817. Some of it is written in a secret code and reveals her business acumen, interest in politics and clandestine lesbian lifestyle. Florence Lockwood was married to the Linthwaite textile manufacturer Josiah Lockwood and was a suffragist, pacifist and feminist. She kept a diary during the First World War from 1914 to 1918 in which she reflected on the events of the war.
Copyright 2004, John Hargreaves |
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