Gendering Political Economy: Laundry, Washerwomen and the Fall of the Westminster Soap Company in Charles I's London

Recent scholarship has shown that women contributed to almost every aspect of the early modern economy. This article suggests society's reliance upon women's essential work at times gave them greater political agency than hitherto appreciated. To develop this perspective, the article focuses on the Westminster Soap Company established in 1631, a notorious monopoly that disrupted the laundry trade needed for keeping linens clean. The new monopoly soap promoted by the company turned out to be of poorer quality because Charles I’s mercantilist priority led the company to cut imports and rely exclusively on English potash, an inferior raw material unfit for soap production. As women dominated laundry, they possessed a body of knowledge needed for verifying soap quality. The information derived from women’s work about the soap’s quality circulated well beyond London, undermining the reputation both of the product and of those involved. Trading companies tacitly incorporated women’s collective refusal in their petitions against the company. As the sales slumped, the Privy Council issued further orders to suppress rumours and punish opponents. Non-elite women involved in laundry thus played a pivotal role in the collective rejection of an essential monopolised commodity promoted by the Crown. While their rejection did not trigger a revolution outright, it had such far-reaching consequences that it merits the designation of an incipient product boycott, more than a century before the better-known mass organised consumer boycotts of the late eighteenth century.