Locating Female Business Owners in the Historiography

On 13 May 1872, a sixty-six-year-old woman named Ann Buckley died at her home in Leeds, Yorkshire. She left behind an estate valued at £14,000, which included paintings and prints, musical instruments, a warehouse property on Greek Street in the centre of Leeds, four trust funds each worth £2500 and the ‘capital share and interest in the business of Cap Manufacturers and Clothiers now carried on by me in co-partnership with my sons’. Ann’s late husband John Buckley had established the business in 1834 and operated it until his death in December 1850. After John’s death, Ann became the sole proprietor and although she employed her sons Joshua and John Camm in the business from this date, and eventually made them partners in 1856, Ann remained the senior (and only named) partner in the business until her death in 1872. Ann’s last will and testament reveals that in addition to her capital stake in ‘Ann Buckley and Sons’, she was also the sole owner of the firm’s large warehouse building on Greek Street, where the business had relocated in the mid-1860s. Upon her death, Ann used her capital stake in Buckley and Sons, and her warehouse property on Greek Street, to secure the financial future of her two sons and business partners and her two surviving daughters Eliza and Amelia.